Fausto Salvatore

Male, age 12

Hair - dark red; Eyes - grey-blue; Skin Tone - olive

Preferred Clothing - modern, some local flavor from Portugal, but mainly whatever fits floppy.

Specialties - Arithmancy and Astronomy are Fausto's preferred subjects. While most others are unable to glean any good information or even form a spell from numbers, he has grasped it and embraced the complexities of both mundane Muggle numbers as well as the flowing architecture of Magical ones. Astronomy - both Muggle and Magical - he enjoys because he can be alone or with people, either way he can point out the stars and their meanings.

Weaknesses - Charms simply elude Fausto, he likes understanding relations between objects and people and time, but has difficulty when forcing changes between them. He feels that the level of 'dishonesty' in using charms and illusions sullies everything else he can do.

Wand - 12 inch, Hazel (wisdom and wrath) with a Centaur blood core. This clearly accents his fondness for Astronomy and astrology, knowledge and exposing the truth.

Familiar - a male shoulderdragon named Lava (That's a teenydragon from a very old, very gone website)

Unusual Studies - Fausto will probably want to go into a more firm Fortelling and Disobfuscation career.

Fausto was glad that his little brother Maximo was with him in school. They had always done things together, from learning English to casting spells. Even though Maximo was several years younger, he was clearly at least as smart as Fausto, a fact which the brothers acknowledge frequently. Even so, their interests were very different. Fausto had always been curious about the stars and abstractions like numbers. His little brother was completely the opposite, preferring charms and flashy alteration spells. Their parents were quite happy with all this, and even more so when they learned that the pair would be accepted to House Domina together. Geneva and Rufino have girl triplets that are just now starting to develop their magic... They've got their hands full in other words, and having the boys being 'someone else's troubles' is a great relief.

Fausto turned his pen quill around in the ink, and dabbed it onto the scroll, expertly lining out a star chart. He rarely made mistakes when using his quill, it was a gift from his father and was enchanted to correct itself on command. The Parastronomy instructor nodded and appraised her students' work, clucking her tongue at one girl whose chart was simply a mess with lines and dots which connected to make a silly face. Even though Fausto would get a 100 grade on this project, his mind was elsewhere.

He had an egg, after all, sitting on his dorm's hearth. One of the dragon riders had been jaunting around the dimensions and managed to pick up a dozen of the little flitter eggs from various places, and distributed them secretly. Fausto was lucky enough to have gotten one, Galo and Tadia as well as a couple of the professors. The scroll with the star chart on it was actually a prediction of when the egg might hatch... Which meant any moment now. Fortunately the class let out and everyone got to break for a long lunch. Fausto grabbed what he could from the plates in the dining hall and sprinted back up to the tower where he and his brother had their dorm. Alone, because Maximo was outside practicing his spell casting (loudly) Fausto watched as the creamy colored egg wobbled and broke open. A tiny red colored creature, a mini-mini dragon, came out.

He fumbled around on the desk where Fausto had placed the egg once he got back from class, searching for --

"Food! You're looking for food," Fausto grinned, offering, as the mystery rider had left a note, some meat in the form of scraps in the kitchen (which was hard to do, because of the House Elves cleaning up and only making just the right amounts for everyone's lunches...). The little red flitter stood up, flared his wings, and tried to flap toward Fausto and his food. "Oh - you're already gonna fly? I didn't know you could fly so soon!" The flitter moved up and landed on Fausto's arm, where he then got quite comfortable with his scrap of pork. Fausto named him lava, for the way he bubbled redly out of his egg.

When lunch was over, he took his new little flitter with him to his Pronounciation and Enunciation class. The professor Sineus had her own flitter-like shoulder pet, a weird little cockatrice. The rest of the day's classes went on with a few tests and an armful of scrolls in overnight work. As he was a good student any way you looked at him, Fausto did his assignments immediately, even before heading to the dining hall again for dinner. Everyone was fond of telling him how cool Lava looked, could they pet him, what was his name, yadda yadda. He got used to it quickly but it wasn't the kind of attention that the boy wanted. Even as a Tween, he really just wanted intimate conversation with someone who was smart and didn't want to blather about sports or something. At least here at House Domina, that kind of conversation could take place and hardly be out of the ordinary.

It wasn't long before the semester drew to a close. Winter was here. And... dragons! Jesi had spoken to him about something, and he'd managed to wheedle a trip for himself out of it. Now that he had a flitter, shouldn't he also have a dragon to go with it? That was a giggle-inducing moment for Jesi when he told her. He really like the winter spirit girl, she was willing to help a kid like him, or even his brother - who Fausto had to admit learned a bit more from her Charms tutoring than he ever could... but she also learned quickly and well. He'd seen a dozen students much older than himself all but fail out of the Arithmancy class who were too proud to ask for help. It was obvious though that if he'd had to go to Hogwarts or Ebalias Magicorium he'd never have even gotten into the class until he was fourteen!

He wasn't one to flaunt his abilities - at least, not in a braggarty-way. Fausto got up onto the beautiful huge golden dragoness behind Zora and in front of Jesi (what a great place to be... heh) and brought his thoughts to the present. ((read Jesi's page for that!)) Arrival to Ryslen brought all new wonders.

Zora instructed the two of them to play safe and not to use their magic overly much. Then, she apparently went off to a tavern and did whatever adults do... Jesi and Fausto settled themselves into their separate dorms for the duration. Winter was going to be such a blast!

***

Fausto carried his flitter around proudly, showing Lava the places he'd discovered at Ryslen. The hatchery for flitters had apparently been replaced or taken over by larger dragon-types - and by larger, Fausto learned, that meant 'about three feet tall' large. "Well I suppose it'd be hard to carry around a three foot tall flitter, but they're too tiny to ride, aren't they?" Lava chirped. Then they moved into the larger hatching sands - almost unseen, people were busy with helping the queen dragons get their eggs warmed. Fausto knew he would probably be kicked out if he were seen... So he muttered the one incantation he knew from Charms, an Invisibility spell. He dared not touch anything, after all, he didn't even know if the spell worked to disguise himself from the dragons vision - or other senses. He was SO not good at that kind of spellcasting! But what he did know, was math.

The math going through his head included a ratio of eggs to dragons, and eggs to people, and he discovered that there needed to be a lot more people to collect these hatchlings! But it was too late to go back to House Domina and locate a couple other students, Zora was seen flitting around with the local riders and whoever so she couldn't really be asked. That was all right. Fausto and Jesi would come back with their own unique dragons!

Fausto amused himself with watching the goings-on in the hatchery for a while, but then he got the feeling that his rather weak incantation was wearing off. So he made his way back to his dorm. From there, he could see some of the lights in the hallways - strung along were blue, white, green, yellow... pink and gold, all sorts of colorful lights. If he squinted and let his sleepy mind drift, he could almost imagine he was back in the Nexus space, watching the beautiful parade of souls as they moved from place to place...

***

The hatching was announced, when the first blades of grass began to poke through the snow-covered landscape. Though it was still technically winter, Fausto got the feeling that there was something a little ... delayed about this whole thing. They weren't among the very first to arrive, but they had been earlier than many, and it took another few weeks to really get going.

But it wasn't all that long into the dramatic and colorful hatching when Fausto saw a rainbow-muted white dragoness approach him. She and her similarly shaded brother had collided to open their shells, and while the other dragon went toward a were-creature, this one came toward Fausto.

My name is S'selani, she spoke in his mind.

She seemed like she wanted to say more, but for the moment there was food to be eaten and bonding to do. She was unsteady on her hind paws, but she'd never be a quadroped! That was obvious to Fausto, and it seemed pretty cool too. She had horn buds on her head, three of them, and a heavy tail end that he suspected would someday become sharp. That too - cool.

I like how you dream of the future, she bespoke, sleepily. Your mind is orderly, that is nice. But I will help you do things you didn't know how to do... Once I'm more grown...

"And awake," chuckled the boy. He wondered what she meant. He didn't really know that her sire could do morphing magic on things, but he'd know quickly enough. Once they were headed back to House Domina after the big parties and some short lessons on the needs of their hatchlings, Zora and Lucas would be handing out even more instructive bits to get S'selani's magics under control!