Curse of the Phoenix

Ch.26 -Catching Up

~Iara

After the fight, things settled down. All of the other dragons, including Verdana, welcomed Grimm and I back with open arms. Extremely open, at least in the case of my siblings. The sun had just set, and all of the stars were out. The stars were quite visible, even over the soft glow of the fire. All of the dragons were bigger than I remembered, especially Giligan, Alice's partner.

He was the purple, but in some places he wasn't even purple. Mostly he seemed to be of a dark violet, but sometimes he seemed red or blue. Blue about the feet, red about the eyes. Strange, almost like a combination of Verdana and Vrinda, who was Luna's dragon.

Eragon, Murtagh and Arya even came over with us, all ten dragons, and all ten people crowded around the same fire. Me and Marumen both dog piled on top of Dru, he seemed okay with it. Alice and Luna were leaning on each other's shoulders, while Luke and Mikael were squished together between their dragons. Well, more like Mikael had half of his body sprawled across Luke, and Luke was too busy sleeping to notice.

The fire was warm, and the breathing of the dragons became a small part in a giant melody. Their breathing, the swishing sound of the waves against the sand, the snapping of the pine logs, all of it was enough to lull me to sleep. It was warm here, with all of my siblings. And I was perfectly content.

Before I knew it, the sun was rising over the mountains, and it was too bright to remain resting. I moaned and further buried my head into someone's chest, then Dru whispered something and slowly got up without disturbing me further. I yawned, then opened my eyes. Marumen had ended up on the ground in the fetal position, while I was off the ground, Grimm's tail curled around me like a little nest, the warm scales rather comfortable, at least through the wool I was wearing.

"C'mon Iara, it's time to get up." Alice said softly.

"But I don't wanna get up!" I protested.

"Aww, Alice let her sleep." Said a voice. Luke or Dru, I assumed.

"We all have to get up, why not now?" Alice complained. She liked being right.

"Remember how tired you were once we got here from Gil'ead?"

"So!"

"It's the same distance, pretty much. You can bug Marumen, he didn't spend the last few days in the saddle." Alice seemed to hesitate for a moment, before bending down and gently shaking Marumen's shoulder.

"Urgh..." he said quietly.

"Marumen, it's time to get up."

"But i'm busy."

"Busy doing what?"

"Doing nothing of course."

"What do you mean, nothing?"

"Nothing is still something. Right now nothing is the equivalent of relaxing." I glanced up at Grimm. We had had the "nothing" conversation many times.

See? Even your brother agrees that nothing is really something.

I know..

Now come on, you really should get up.

But...but....but Luke said...

And I say that Alice was probably right. You'll just be more tired later if you lay around longer.

You owe me another ten minutes of sleep then!

Ten minutes is nothing to a dragon. Grimm slowly got to his feet. The night before, we hadn't really paid attention to the fact that he could have been healed up. He didn't seem to care either, he was barely even wounded, except for the bite that Verdana had given him. When he got up, I groaned. The snow was dappled red, red as the sunrise.