Back in the 1980s, it was considered 'edgy' to have a 'mixed race' couple. In the 90s, it was 'gay rights'. In the 00s marriage for everyone has finally started taking hold. In Twoarth, those things were compounded by having not just human 'color' issues, but actual Fur-side species differences to tackle. Alicia had been going steady with her caninemorph boyfriend Terrance through high school, and they became engaged at Kitty Khat's 20th birthday celebration, and married early the next year after... well, a lot of troubling local racists and bigots getting their dumbass word in.

They were both working their way through college, and Alicia graduated C4 with a Bachelors in Race Relations, and has used it basically every day before or since. She'd been on the cheer squad back in Carramba, but concentrated much more on Journalism, Relations, and Administrative work well into her college years.

These days, she's picked up several classes from retired prof Pox, and puts her own spin on them.

"So you know how the dragons talk, right?" H'lis, or Hollis if he wasn't feeling particularly pretentious, had slid up to the Anthropology instructor and had a grin on his handsome pale face. Alicia nodded, but she knew she wasn't going to get a word in, once he got rolling. "Well, they've been saying things about these 'Court' dragons... And not the local ones, if you know what I mean."

She did not, in fact, but she was fairly sure that he was about to tell her. And she was very interested in listening. After all, they'd all seen the ads or caught whispered rumors about dragons being hatched somewhere on campus all the time. Since the start of the dragonry here, there had been an increasing number of them ridden or sponsored by both students and staff.

Hollis obliged her curiosity, "Well I have a pleasant surprise for you," he draped his arm over her shoulder, and she melted a little. Hollis was super charming, and like many girls she would have swooned at the thought of his casual touch when she was younger! She was, however, a happily married woman, and this little brief flutter would hardly have lasted in her heart anyway. Terrance was her man. She did however see the looks of longing and heard the sighs from the seniors they passed as they walked down one of the paths toward the Humanities building. "There is a place that's somewhat new, out there in the multiverse," he waved his hand and she all but saw the sparkles... "Empyrean Stair, hosting a big clutch filled with those."

Hollis pointed toward a four-some that had been hanging out recently, sponsored by a couple who'd graduated and returned to help plug the CyberCourt. They were tall, leggy dragons, two had long slender horns and spines on their necks, another had finned tail and neck frills, another had jaunty forward-leaning crests and horns. They were all very bright, nearly neon dragons - Dark, Blood, and Light Courts, as Hollis named them off. He seemed to want to add something, but did not.

"They'll be hosting a large clutch at the Stair, I admit I don't have much more information than that." Hollis withdrew his arm and stopped walking, so Alicia also paused in her step and looked at the white-haired rider. "But I can say that Synesth thinks you - and maybe some of your students - are right for this. It'll be nice to have some new, old blood in the wings here. What do you say?"

Ali just blinked, and Hollis knew she was stunned, knew she was trying to keep from squealing, but if that showed on her face no one else could possibly have seen it - he only knew because he was an empath.

"I... will have to get some leave set up?" She glanced at the wall multi-towered structure where her classes were held, "I mean, the semester's just started."

"We'll handle that," Hollis winked, and she knew that there was more to it than just his typical stunt riding...

***

That did turn out to be 'we'll be moving back and forth through time', but that didn't really cause her any distress. It was more that one of her students was having a hard time getting his mother to sign off on the waiver allowing him to go on escorted off-world trips. Kinda turned out there was a reason that 'mom' didn't want 'son' signing off on something like this... That was because he was a clone experiment from Black Mesa, so technically it was a three-fer. Either they all went or none, because they needed something-something-control-versus-experiment... But in the end? Ali managed to convince the scientist to sign off on all of them. You want a control subject? Well apparently they had seventeen others of this kid scattered across another half-dozen schools around the country! Pick one! These are getting to stand for dragons!

It didn't hurt that one of his classes was instructed by Mr. Lane. Not their Lane - he wasn't from Twoarth like theirs was, but hardly anyone who didn't know him could say for sure whether it was a 'local' version, or, in this case, one who already had dragons and ran his whole Rookery thing on another dimension's earth... His intimidating presence lurking in the background of that particular conversation went a long way. The fact that the other two also had some version of that man in their own class schedules, along with the markedly scary Wilson Carver? Sure, put that guy in a room with the most stoic of scientists and see what happens? Not to mention... That clone class with Paxton Fettel. Who - apparently - was... Carver's son? How many generations did that family of guys have?

Well, no matter. Once that issue was solved, Hollis declared that he was going to start looking for help with transporting them all to the Stair. Not like his massive bronze dragon wouldn't have tried having 8 people riding him, it was in no way outside of the realm of possible for him. But their gear, goods, and all? Yeah, easier to use several dragons that did the job on the regular.

The kids were all still looking at each others lists of homework assignments, but only one of them questioned that they'd really be needing to complete it while away. "Wouldn't it just be easier to have a refresher when we get home and finish testing?" Marcus asked. "I mean, I know I'll remember this," he tapped his temple, "but I remember everything."

Either way, their course loads were put onto personal hard drives and devices that the school would use to calibrate their progress. Ali thought that it was all rather clever, and wondered why other schools didn't use similar things. Then she realized it was because the Admin Torus was something that most schools... or top-secret dimensional laboratories... across the world didn't have.

For her own part, Ali couldn't wait to see what to see what other cultures were like offworld. There was always the nagging question: would they judge her because she's a woman? Or because she's black? Or because of her husband being a canine kin? It was always one of those three, maybe sometimes also 'and she's so politically active', or 'she dresses like that to go to work at a school?!'.

She wasn't resigned to taking any abuse though. She never had. With two decades of growing up with it, surviving through and through... Ali was a shining example of grace and wit. She'd never hesitated to fact-check, bullet-point list, multi-quote... All while never using anything worse than very subtle hints at insults. It could easily be inferred that she was in fact insulting someone on a forum or in a debate, but never to the word, never with an angry fist held up. Always with a faint smile, a gentle head tilt. Her southern-living friend could confirm this as a 'bless your heart' kind of angle.

Hopefully, dragons would understand that subtle interaction. She'd heard - and read - and seen - some dragons on campus who absolutely did not 'get' some human methods. Ones that didn't understand the banter and back and forth between teenagers, the brief but seemingly intense rivalries of high school kids. She did know of one incident between the time she was graduated from and then working at Carramba, that a dragon outright fried a tree in anger at a pair of boys who were making her rider flustered!

At her age, Ali hoped that she would take any future... intimate actions between a dragon mind and her own to heart.

And then, there was Terrance.

He'd miss her of course, but he and Hollis had been talking, and that could only mean one thing: he was probably due his own trip to a dragonry soon anyway!

Her fluffy lover still had a little wistful look - as a canine of course that meant it was all in the eyebrows, as they shifted around comedically. But he was the surfer-dude to her librarian-activist type. He took things in stride in a different way than she did. He'd work out his frustrations in the pool or on the beach, jogging or swimming to take his mind off of the worries of the day. And always, he offered his own shoulder to her when she'd had more than she could take.

She barely came up to his shoulder, even in heels, but today she looked him in the eyes with a broad smile. Even if there were tears in hers, they were of joy and amazement, rather than any sorrow he'd helped soothe away from her. "I'm so proud of you," he said. His mustached muzzle was smooth and not bristly, she could always tell when he was riled up by whether that mustache had a padding of forward-facing whiskers. (Yes, he had both...) Ali snugged her arms around his narrow hound waist, he was her warm fluffy pillow, her keenly listening friend, her heart and soul.

Hopefully there would be room in their connection for dragons... hopefully, there would not be rivalry. But any dragon either of them bonded to or even just brought home from a place - they would have to accept that they could never be parted. Not by time, space, dimensions, or disasters. And they had seen all of those things, in their short lives, already.

***

It took a bit of time for the group to get settled, but eventually they would all stand for dragons. Who would be first? Who might not come home with one? Would they have to go to another place just in case? They were in it to answer all those things.

Plus they'd be getting extra credit in their courses if they could somehow integrate all their new experiences and relate them!