Two hours and a pair of roasted rabbits later, the two ladies were relaxing by the fire with some mint tea. Though she felt the tiredness in the very core of her bones, she forced herself to stay awake so that she could question Bel while the thoughts were still fresh in her mind. The tea helped some, but what really helped was the anxiety she felt at why Bel had that look of concern on her face, even now.
“I know what you want to hear from me,” Bel called out, “but I don’t have any solid answers right now.”
“How about we start with what you do know?” Kitalia offered. “My father used to say that it was the best place to start when you were uncertain.”
“A wise man,” Bel smiled. “Very well.” She did the clothes smoothing thing that she tended to do before engaging in a long discussion.
Kitalia sat up a little straighter and topped off her tea. Bel had picked some excellent mint leaves and even found a bit of honeycomb in a tree that provided the extra sweetness that the tea needed. She was continuously impressed by the dragon’s wilderness survival skills, though she supposed she shouldn’t be. There was a lot that her people did not know about dragons, but they were always said to be ancient and worldly. Certainly, a little forest foraging and a list of wild tea recipes would be within their realm of experience.
“When we move in the manner of dragons…”
“The dragon stride,” Kitalia interrupted, very much wanting the term to stick.
Bel nodded, “Our… stride. We focus our minds on that which is more than the physical world. It is the only way that we can move as quickly as we do. We, and others that we surround with our power, exist partially in this world and partially in another.”
Kitalia cocked her head slightly, “Does that mean that we very likely ran through trees and rocks?”
“Yes,” Bel answered, “and no.” She sipped her own tea and put some thought into her next words. “As I said, we were straddling two worlds at once during our stroll. It was pretty much only your steps that existed here and we were able to shift to the other place for all the actual movement. While in the other place, there was no forest so there was nothing to block our passage. It’s all a very difficult thing to explain,” she said sighing, “and I have never been good at understanding it enough myself to be able to teach it. For us, it just is.”
“Then let us not worry on the how so much as the why,” Kitalia said. “During the dragon stride, you suddenly changed course.”
Bel nodded and she cast her eyes downward, “I am very sorry about that. To shift direction so suddenly,” she took a deep breath before continuing, “I am truly sorry, and I am thankful that nothing terrible happened.”
Kitalia made a mental note to file that one away both as something to ask about later and as something to hold over Bel’s head should she need some sympathetic leverage. “Again, let us focus on the why…” she encouraged.