Adaptation

This is a prequel short story to The Cloud Roads, the first novel in the Books of the Raksura series, which is available from Night Shade Books in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.  You can find more information about the series, plus more extra short stories, on my web site at http://www.raksura.com.

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Chime woke to dim dawn light coming in through the air shaft high above his bower. He wanted to sleep more, but his curved basket bed was too hot and crowded. Rill was cuddled against his chest, and she had been here when he went to sleep. But he didn't remember inviting the third occupant. Squinting back over his shoulder, he identified Braid. Grumpy and still half-asleep, Chime nudged the hunter with an elbow. "What are you doing here?"

Braid yawned. "Oh, is this your bed?" he said. "I thought it was Blossom's."

That was annoying. If someone was going to invade Chime's bower, it could at least be for sex with him. He elbowed Braid again. "Get out."

Rill poked him in the chest. "If you're getting up, tell Petal I'm working in the gardens today."

"I'm not-- All right, all right." Giving up, Chime pushed himself up and clambered over Rill to drop down out of the basket bed.

He pulled on his clothes, then picked his way through the stray belongings littering the floor to the doorway. His bower was at the top of the long open hall of the teachers' level of the colony. A faint breeze came down the air shafts, carrying the green scents of the jungle and the cool damp of the shallow river beyond the heavy stone walls. The groundlings who had originally built this structure turns and turns ago might have meant it to be a palace or temple, but it made a fine Raksuran colony, with lots of long passages and plenty of nooks and crannies for bowers. This hall had many tall doorways, opening to narrow stairways and bowers curtained off with long drapes of fabric, and there was a shallow pool of water down the center for drinking and washing.

Chime splashed water on his face to wake himself up, and made his way out of the hall and through the passages to the center well. It was a big airy chamber with a shaft open to the floors above and below, dawn light falling down it from openings in the upper part of the structure. Hanging beds with fruit vines hung down from the three levels above, their sweet scent lacing the cool morning air.

Chime was about to shift and climb down to the work areas below, when six warriors dropped down the shaft, their wings partially spread, spines flared, tails whipping around. Chime stumbled back as they flashed by, their bright scales blending into a rainbow of colors. "Watch it!" he shouted. This was just more confirmation for his private theory that wings made people stupid.

The only response was a laugh, echoing up from below.

Raksura were divided into winged Aeriat and wingless Arbora, and sometimes they were divided in more ways than one. The four Arbora castes of teachers, hunters, soldiers, and mentors cared for the colony and took care of its children, and produced everything it needed. The Aeriat, warriors and the queens and consorts, protected and guided it. Or that was the idea, anyway. In Indigo Cloud, the queens did the protecting and guiding and the warriors, especially the young male ones, mostly caused trouble.

"Stupid warriors," he muttered. "Oh, sorry, Balm." She was just climbing down from the open platform on the level above and dropped to land on the floor beside him. Balm was a warrior too, but a cut above the others; she was clutchmate to Jade, the colony's daughter queen.

She waved away the comment with a distracted expression, and shifted to her groundling form. Like all the warriors she was tall and slim, with sharp features. She had the dark bronze-brown skin common to the main Indigo Cloud bloodline, but her curly hair was a lighter color, reminiscent of the gold scales she wore in her other body. "They're just excited. Jade suggested to Pearl that we send a group to visit Mist Silver, and they all want to go."