Cold Drinks and Warm Friends

On a cold winter’s night in Dura, a child sat on a small longship in the harbour.  Ribbons of light cascaded like festival banners across the sky, dying the snow-covered streets of the city below a peculiar greenish-blue colour.  Snow still fell gently, although nothing like the blizzard that they’d seen earlier in the day.

Eyvindur had thought to bring something warm to drink, to fend off the winter’s chill, but all he had ended up doing was holding the mug until it stopped steaming and was unappealingly cold.  He took a sip, wrinkled his nose, and debated what exactly to do with it.  After a moment of hesitation, he dumped it over into the dark waters below the ship.

“That’s a bit of a waste, isn’t it?”  The ship’s dragonish figurehead tilted back to ‘look’ at him, glowing eyes as unblinking as ever.  “A perfectly good drink, thrown away.”

He just shrugged.  A year ago, the way the not-ship twisted and moved and talked would have unnerved him, but a few months of secretive nighttime visits had made all the difference, and he was used to Ran’s… well, existence by now.

“Something wrong?  Not feeling talkative tonight?”

“I’ll be turning sixteen next year,” Eyvindur said, setting the mug down on the slightly too smooth ‘wood’ of Ran’s decking.  “I’m going to join the soldiers, then.”

Ran paused.  “Isn’t that a bit young?”

He snorted.  “Hardly.  The raiders don’t care how old you are if you get in their way.  Why shouldn’t I learn to defend myself?”

“Hm,” was all the familiar had to say to that.

Eyvindur waited for a few minutes, then flicked the side of the not-ship and raised an eyebrow at Ran.  “My parents are in the army, you know.  Hippogriff riders, with the Thorns, since before I was born.”

“Hippogriffs.  Those are the weird bird-things with horse arses, right?”  Ran said, snickering.  They laughed for a few moments longer, then asked, their voice a touch quieter,  “and you want to be like them?”

“Really?  You know what a hippogriff is, Ran.”  He rolled his eyes, then paused and stared uneasily out at the water of Dura’s river..  “...Yes.  Of course.  Why wouldn’t I?”

Ran hmmed to themself for a minute and Eyvindur tapped a fingernail against his seat as he waited.  When there was no response, he asked again, “why wouldn’t I?”

“War can be dangerous.”

“I know that,” he said and huffed out a sigh.  “I’m not an idiot.  I can be brave.  No sense sitting around here waiting for the next raid to find us and just hoping that nothing bad will happen.”

He still remembered what had happened a few years ago, when soldiers with their skin painted in red-and-green had reached his home; all that Eyvindur had been able to accomplish then was simply to distract them so that Rikard and the others could get to safety.  It had taken months for those bruises to heal and for him to walk properly again.  He never wanted to be that helpless again.

Ran let out a sound something akin to a sigh, bobbing up and down slightly in the water.  “I suppose not.  But why not wait a few years?  Surely you’re not even finished… school?  Is that what it’s called?  Surely you’ve still got a few years of that left ahead of you.”

Eyvindur shrugged.  “So?  It’s boring.  And I can always catch up on whatever I’ve missed after.  It’s not like it’s that important.”

“And what do your parents think of all this?”

“What’s that matter?”  Eyvindur shrugged again, “haven’t asked.  It’s been a few years since I last saw them.  They’d be proud of me, though.  I know that much.”

“Perhaps they’d prefer you stay home, where it’s safer.”

Right.  Safe.  Dura was the capital of Dutoria, they got raided nearly every month; it was hardly what he would call safe.  Even if Eyvindur had wanted nothing to do with the fighting and just to live in peace with his siblings—which he didn’t, he wanted to get back at Hovell—that wouldn’t have been an option for him.  Maybe if they were much further inland, in some city with nothing of value for raiders, then that would be possible.  But not here.

“Maybe.  But I have to do this,” he said at last.  “It’s important.”

Splashes from behind him told him that Ran’s tail was lashing back and forth, and Eyvindur wondered what he’d done to irritate them.  He hadn’t insulted them, had he?

“...Will you visit?”

“Uh.”  Eyvindur hesitated, running his hand over the false-wood that lined the edges of Ran’s hull.  “Maybe?  Why?”

Water sloshing more urgently was the only sound for a few moments as Ran, apparently needing a moment to think, said nothing.  He waited as long as he could bear, then asked, “Ran?”

“It’s just—well—I’ll miss you.”

Eyvindur stared up at the familiar’s dragonish ‘face’, trying to read the odd expression its stiff features wore.  He hesitated a moment later, and then blurted out, “come with me, then.”

“What?”  Ran’s head leaned down to peer at him more closely, casting a strange blueish light across his skin.  “Do… do you mean it?”

“Of course!”  Eyvindur said, “you could come with me, couldn’t you?  We could help people together, you know, do some real good.  You must have noticed the raids.”

The familiar let out a soft sound and bobbed their head in a nod.  “I noticed.  I… lost someone important to one, some years ago.”

Eyvindur paused for a moment, suddenly at a loss for words.  He leaned over the side of Ran’s body and picked at some of the ice crusting the edge.  “Oh.  I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Ran said, then quickly followed that with, “...you’re going to do this whether or not I accompany you, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah.”

Ran snorted and rolled their eyes.  “Well.  It would be rather irresponsible of me to allow a friend to go it alone, especially one so young and reckless—”

“I am not,” Eyvindur muttered back at them.  “You’re the reckless one.”

“How so?”

“You just are.”

“Of course.”  Ran giggled, a high-pitched sound that Eyvindur had once found incredibly unnerving.  Now it reminded him more of a drunken sparrow than anything else.  “Yes, I—I would like to go with you, if you’ll have me.”

Eyvindur was about to immediately give his assent, but then paused, sensing that there was more to that question than Ran had said outright.  A moment later, he felt something odd brush against his thoughts.  It felt almost peculiarly as though someone had asked for a handshake, although it was just him and the familiar and—oh.

He tapped his fingers against Ran’s side.  After that first awkward encounter, Eyvindur had asked around at the docks during the day and heard all sorts of stories about Ran—they had just appeared at the harbour after the Siege of Dura a few years ago, and refused to leave or bond with anyone who approached them.  Eventually, they learned to just leave them alone.

What had changed?  Eyvindur hesitated a moment longer, then decided to throw caution to the wind, and reached after the sensation.

For the briefest instant, it felt as though someone had pressed their hands against the sides of his face.  Then it was gone.  He waited for something else—something more—but heard nothing aside from the water lapping gently against the docks and the soft sound of the wind.

“Huh,” Eyvindur said, awkwardly.  “That was interesting.”

Ran laughed softly, and he tilted his head slightly when he realized that he could feel, ever-so-slightly, the echo of their amusement in his own thoughts.  That was… odd.  But cool.  “Yes.  It was, wasn’t it?”

He nodded.

Eyvindur glanced up at the sky overhead.  It was hard to tell the time; the sky would brighten a bit at midday like the sun was struggling against the perpetual gloom of the winter months, and then the soft glow would fade and after a few hours, ‘nighttime’ would set in once more.

The dead quiet of the city told him that it was likely long past the time he should have returned to his quarters and slept.  “It’s getting late.  I—we should head back.”

“Ah.  Yes.  I forget you humans need to sleep.”  Ran said, and then Eyvindur almost fell backwards off his seat when he felt them lurch underneath him.

He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he had no interest in falling into the cold water of the river, and scampered out onto the snow-covered pier nearby, “what are you doing?”

“Climbing out,” they said in a matter-of-fact tone, and suddenly they rammed themself against the side of the dock and… and a pair of seal-like legs splashed out of the water and grabbed at the stone.  With an exaggerated groan and a sound not unlike metal grinding against rock, Ran began to drag themself up.  They slipped on the ice and briefly splashed back down into the water with a hiss—and the plink of Eyvindur’s forgotten mug being thrown off them and into the river—before starting again, and after a few minutes, managed to join him on the pier.

Out of the water, Ran’s ship-like body had all the grace of a beached whale.  Eyvindur stared at the four pairs of legs that had previously been hidden under the waves; they didn’t look like they’d be very helpful for walking.

Ran attempted as much, however, awkwardly dragging themself through the snowdrifts and leaving a v-shaped path as they went.  They paused after a minute, having only made it a few feet, and sighed.  “Now this won’t do.”

“I could… try pushing you?”

The familiar paused, then laughed.  “No, I’m much too big for that.  I have a better idea.”

Eyvindur’s only warning was an ‘I won’t be able to talk to you like this’ before Ran’s body seemed to pull inwards on itself, and then all he could see was scattered barnacles and a small, faintly glowing shape in the snow.

“Uh,” he walked over to where Ran had just been, crouching down on the ground and squinting at what appeared to be a necklace with a small, ship-shaped pendant at the end.  Pieces of it glowed the same colour as the familiar had, and he poked at it with a fingernail.  “...Ran?”

As promised, there came no response.  Eyvindur thought he could feel vague amusement, but couldn’t be sure if that was real or… just his thoughts playing tricks on him.

He scooped the necklace out of the snow and stared at it.  The glow flashed a few times before becoming even once more.  Eyvindur shrugged and draped it over his neck.

“Well.  Let’s go home, then.”