Sineus could hardly contain her excitement. For the first time in a very long while, she felt like everything was new. Especially when the hatching was announced. Loudly - by it's mother. The colorful pigment shifter was clearly worried that all her babies were going to have to be perfect. Sineus kind of felt that they should just be allowed to strut their stuff without her worries.

But then Sineus had never been a mother.

Pez made little noises and then joined the other flitters and such that gathered around such an event. The hatching would be best viewed from above, apparently.

When the first egg broke everyone almost held their breath. The lovely dragon who came from the shell was obviously like his mother, able to shift between colors. He did so dramatically! Two others, plus a third a little behind them, began to hatch.

One was green to start with, the other purple. They both could shift colors - and the green proudly rainbowed herself out. But then the purple changed to the colors of the sands below them, and the little green annoyedly came to Sineus.

The green female flicked her tail at her sister petulantly and jogged forward to meet her chosen. Sineus found herself faced by a bundle of dragon-child, switching colors at whim. ~Sineus, she's bothering me!~

The teacher almost groaned, then laughed, at the similarity to this child to some of those at her school. "I'm sure she'll stop. What's your name?"

~I'm Causka,~ purred she, changing demeanors quickly from sulky to adoring. Sineus smiled.

Yes, Sineus thought that this might just be the adventure she'd been needing for quite a while... The hunger inside her was brought by the fresh dragonet's tummy - and the dizziness of bright light, the feel of sound heard in open space and not from a confining shell. These things were flavors of experience that Sineus had been waiting for.

Causka held her head regally high, but then looked with a faint glance to Sineus. Are we doing this right?

"Of course we are," the word-witch announced with a grin. She held out her hand in a friendly salute when one of the ranking riders walked by, and Causka had to stop her tail tip from twitching.

All this formality is making me wish we had gone back to House Domina, the dragon said, and her color began to slip.

Sineus elbowed her dragon in the neck, and though she stood nearly three times as tall as the witch, dragon neck still compresses with a sharp elbow. Her green turned emerald, markings displayed brightly.

The rider walking by with his cadre of officials caught a glance of the color shifting but said nothing.

Shortly, right after they were escorted into the officer's dens, Sineus whispered to her dragon, "let's go, I think we've done our job here..."

Their job at the moment was simply to fill the ranks. This world had dragon riders, but they were heavily funded by people who thought it was more important to look good than to do the right work. Too many of this particular dragonry's men and women had drifted away to other pursuits, and their base needed funding. To get funding, they had to have people who could stand in a line and emulate a well-organized detail of riders.

That role was one that Sineus could do, Causka was a bit shaky on it...

"I think we'll head back now," Sineus said, and Pez chirped happily. The cockatrice never quite liked it when they traveled so far from the kids at House Domina. After all, they were apt to toss goodies in the air that were easily caught.

Good, I like it there. Do you think that ghost will try and ride me again?

Sineus laughed, "no I think Donovan learned his lesson the first time... When you shift your colors, he falls through. It's funny!"

He did not think so...

"Well everyone else did. Let's go!" They bid the others farewell, and probably would leave the visiting officials wondering where the peacock-colored green had got to...

Name: Causka

Gender: Female

Color: Half-Peacock Green

Species: Mutt (Dracanian x Danachian) Vereyas x Pauskema

Size: Medium-small

Abilities: Psionics (telepathy, teleportation), chameleon (color-shifting)

Personality: petulant, childish, a real handful, but utterly devoted and defensive. Could become jealous, or could become powerful and queenly.

Bonded: Sineus