"Come on, Evelyn," Marvin muttered, his face stiff in concentration, "You can do this."

    Evelyn took a deep breath to prepare herself and then sank back into a trance. A half-week ago, she had so easily snapped minds with her dragonet to save the day at the bunker, yet now the simple task, the very first of exercises that trainees learned, was close to impossible.

    She felt the frustration that knotted in her shoulders and forced herself to relax before trying again. Luna, precious though she was, was worn out from several days worth of Marvin drilling them to the bone.

    "I think we need to take a break," she said wearily, dropping out and pinching the bridge of her nose. At least she wasn't getting headaches anymore.

    "Again," Marvin said firmly. "Just once more, and then we'll break for supper."

    Luna looked up at Evelyn from her spot on the floor across from Evelyn and snorted disapprovingly in her mind. "Mean Marvin."

    Evelyn had to stop herself from laughing at the dragonet's decisiveness. She had begun to speak and form words in her thoughts just after they had arrived at the hideout. "Just one more try; we can do it this time," she added encouragingly.

    They both sank down into trance, reaching for each other with their minds, their eyes closed. Evelyn could 'feel' Marvin watching them too, on her peripheral 'vision', but her focus was all on Luna. They made several passes at each other, but they kept missing and overreaching. It was extremely frustrating, especially when Evelyn could remember doing it as easily as thought with Indigo.

    But Luna was tiny and young, and the expectations on her were enormous. Most dragons never chose before they were five or six, when they were mostly full-grown and had finished their flight training, so they never had to start training before they were capable of doing it. In the mornings, Luna trained with Seraphine for her own flight while Evelyn worked up her own agility back to speed with Marvin. Although Luna probably wouldn't be able to make her first flight until at least her second year, and certainly not with Evelyn on her back until year four, her training had to start as early as possible in order to make her a threat to anyone trying to kidnap or kill her.

    After lunch it was mental exercises until supper, after which Luna promptly fell asleep from exhaustion. Evelyn was exhausted too; she hadn't undergone anything so grueling since her own training many years ago.

    "Enough," Marvin said, once they had made several more passes and misses. "Go relax outside for a few minutes. I'll prepare supper."

    With that, Evelyn and Luna exited the riders' cabin, Luna trotting easily by Evelyn's side through the light crust of snow. She had grown stupendously, as all dragonets did fresh out of the egg, and in part due to the early flight training. She now came up to Evelyn's knees, but she was still tiny for her age, and sometimes in the daylight she seemed ghostly see-through.

    "Tired," she said, jumping up and flopping down on to a stone bench that was snow-free between two cabins. "Need to rest."

    "I know," Evelyn said, sitting on the ground next to the bench so that their heads were level with each other. She scratched her behind her ears affectionately. "But we'll get it soon."

    Luna snorted. "Mean Marvin."

    Evelyn chuckled. "You know he's not mean. He just wants to help us get better." She stared at her dragonet for a few more moments before reaching over to tickle her under her chin. "Hey, don't go to sleep yet. We'll have supper soon."

    When she remained silent and her breathing deepened, Evelyn took a small handful of snow from a small pile by the bench and flung t lightly onto Luna's muzzle. The dragonet started and fell off the bench, but Evelyn was already several yards away when Luna came bounding after her.

    She overtook her quickly, of course, even in her exhausted state, and pounced on Evelyn from the front.

    She was air-light, even though she came up to Evelyn's stomach on her back feet, but Evelyn let her push her over as part of the game, falling into the snow and laughing.

    A shadow passed overhead and Seraphine spoke a moment later.

    "Having fun, youngling?" Her wings sent up a mini snow storm as she landed.

    "Younglings?" Evelyn said indignantly. "you're only three years older than me, Seraphine." Luna ran over to greet the dragoness, and Evelyn picked herself off the ground with a smile, brushing snow off her body before it could melt.

    "Oh, you know what they say," Seraphine said airily, bending down to touch noses with Luna. "Being chosen is like being born again. That makes you two the youngest members of this wing."

    Evelyn laughed. "A wing with only two pairs! That makes you the eldest, Seraphine."

    "Old? Me? Never! I'm still in the prime of my youth!" She nuzzled Evelyn gently in greeting and tried to push Luna away from her. "Sweet thing, get off, dear, you shouldn't be as sticky as honey." Speaking to Evelyn, she said, "Is Marvin still in there fussing over the food? Field rations never taste good no matter what you do to them."

    "I think so," Evelyn said. "He chased us outside just a couple of minutes ago."

    Seraphine clucked her tongue. "That old meanie," she said as a sly grin spread across her toothy face. "Honestly, sometimes I wouldn't mind trading riders for a day. What do you say, Evelyn?"

    A spoon came flying out of the cabin's nearest window, to whisk by Seraphine's head and land by a startled Luna. "I heard that!" was Marvin's distant shout.

    "And such a temper, too," she sighed. Evelyn thought she almost looked disappointed when no further spoons came flying out of the windows. "Ah, well. We better return his spoon."

    Inside the cabin, it was beginning to look a little more like home. After some extensive searching, using Seraphine as eyes in the sky, the least dilapidated cabin had been found and converted into more livable quarters.

    The riders' quarters were actually quite extravagant, when considering that they had been built who knew how long ago. It had a small kitchen, a large storage room, and two small bedrooms and bathrooms. Then again, there had always been both sexes in the Wings, even though more riders were male, so perhaps the ideas of separate bedrooms and bathrooms weren't so extravagant so long ago.

    But what Evelyn loved most about the quarters was the door that connected each bedroom with the corresponding dragon's nest. Even though Luna still slept in Evelyn's quarters for now, Evelyn felt some reassurance in the fact that she would only ever be a few steps away, even in the dead of night.

    All their supplies had been brought earlier. Seraphine had said a few days ago that she and Marvin had brought them in a couple of weeks ago, as the world had been about to be put to use to house a wing of fighters, before it had been delegated to this cause. Right after that information had followed a stern admonishment not to feel guilty about it, as most of the supplies hadn't even been brought in yet, and the pairs that would have been sent here were saved from having to abide in at least two-hundred year old buildings.

    "Marvin and I tried to look into this place a little bit," she had said, "but I don't think we found much. Either that or I fell asleep. Probably the latter. Those dusty old files are incredibly dull. You should ask him about it."

    And Evelyn wanted to, but Marvin seemed to avoid her when they weren't forced to work together. He seemed cold, distant, and distracted, and she often caught him looking at her with worry in his eyes. Or was it pain? She stole glances at him during dinner, and he was definitely  distracted as he tried to serve soup with forks, and his eyes were dull as he seemed to stare into the distance between spoonfuls. Sometimes she worried that something major had happened directly to him in the two years that she had been gone, and no one had told her. At other times she feared that he had found another person that he loved more than he had loved her, and that's when she had to shake herself mentally.

    She had left all of society because she had felt unable to cope with it after Indigo's death. Now that she was back, it was a time for rejoicing, but that didn't mean that everything could go back to the way it had been. Oliver was dead! She had given up all the friends she had ever known, an act of betrayal in itself, and if Marvin had moved on from the heartbreak, that was the better for him.

    She lay awake that night, struggling to remind herself that there was nothing in between them any more, except for maybe friends, and that was not necessarily a bad thing.

    It didn't keep her from wishing it was.