Koletise armastus

“Have you been standing here for so long? Oh my poor girl…” Once Avril came out of the castle gate, she ran up to her dragon, who didn't even seem to have moved from the moment her rider left. The white one always stayed where her owner left her, but sometimes she flew away, knowing that Avril would not come out to her in the near time. Avril might not have said when she would be back, but her dragon felt everything. This time, it seems, she chose to stay close. Lowering her muzzle to her rider, the dragoness growled softly. Not aggressive at all, but even somehow joyful. “We'll fly home now, don't worry.” “Seventh!” A familiar voice appeared behind, calling her. When she heard it, at first she did not understand why this specific person would suddenly call her, but there could still be a reason. “Oh, Carin, William, Glad to see you.” Turning to those who came up to her, Avril smiled warmly. She never talked to them much, but they were in Philipp's squad, so she had some kind of connection with them. “How can I help you?” “We wanted to ask about Philipp. Is everything alright? “ Carin, like William, were like sister and brother to Philipp, and of course, they were worried about him when suddenly he was put in charge of another team all of the sudden. “He didn't talk to us at all.” “Oh... We found the enemy's attack site today, so he was a little tense after we left it all there.” Laughing awkwardly, the girl patted her dragon's neck and climbed into the saddle with her help, preparing for flight. “It's getting pretty late, go get some rest, okay?” “Yes, thank you.” William decided to answer for his girlfriend, nodding gratefully to the girl with a smile. Avril waved goodbye, flying away and leaving her comrades on the ground. “Carin… Don't forget what we have to do.” “I know, don't remind me so often. Actually, the boss should do it, not us.” The girl snorted in annoyance, heading further into the city. “You think the boss is not trying?” The guy muttered with a grin as he followed her. “He's trying and then more trying, but not moving forward at all with this.” She muttered the same way. “Oh, come on!”

***

“Lui! Are you home?” Landing on the roof of a house a little further from the city, Avril patted her dragon’s neck, getting down from the saddle straight after and picking up her bag. Lui and Avril were almost sisters to each other, so they visited each other's houses as if they were coming to their own. Rolling down the roof to the balcony, the girl landed quietly on the fence, squatting down. “Oh-ho-ho, so you're eating my salads here?” “Ria?! What the hell! I told you, don't come in from the balcony anymore!” Luiana was calmly sitting in the kitchen, eating some kind of salad. As it turned out, this salad was prepared by Avril, and when she saw her friend with it, she grinned, shaking her head, at the same time going down to the balcony and of course entering the house. The window that faced the balcony was full-length, so from the balcony you could see what was happening in the kitchen pretty clearly. “And certain someone said that they didn't want to eat my salads.” Grinning again, Avril took off her shoes, leaving them at the door and walking to the far wall, lowering some kind of lever, whistling long. Just a couple of moments later, a slight shake went through the house and somewhere under the floor there was a satisfied dragon growl and hearing it, Avril lifted the lever back. “Oh, come on. I was too lazy to cook.” The elf huffed in response. “Mhm, you don't know how.” She chuckled back. “If the captain knew that I was cooking everything, he would be… Sad I guess?” Putting the bag on the table, the girl went to the refrigerator. Despite the world outside the cities and the castle, everything inside was pretty technological. Many houses and apartments had things like refrigerators, bathroom boilers, and microwaves... Everything worked, however, on magic and the energy of light. They absorbed solar spheres, at least two of which were located on each roof. Solar spheres equipped each house with electricity for the operation of technologies and various electronics, such as communication spheres, hologram tables and all sorts of stuff. “By the way, what's with the light? Have new spheres been delivered yet?” “I literally live on the last sphere. Tomorrow at dawn I will fly to buy new ones, when Phill left us in front of the hall, he left us without the delivery of spheres too.” She grumbled dissatisfactionedly while talking and finishing her salad after putting one foot on a chair. Despite the fact that Lui looked like an elegant girl, she acted more like a kid, even if she dressed appropriately for a young lady she was. Lui herself was from the family of elves, as evidenced by her unusually purple hair with the ends dyed blue and, of course, pointed ears. Regardless of the whole nature of the elves; cooking well, having a penchant for medicine and intelligence, Lui met only one part of the criteria of the elves. She was good at intelligence and nothing more of the above. Let her go to the stove and she will immediately burn down the whole house, let her go to medical devices, she will immediately break something. But her friend, who was always there, saved the situation by intercepting this or that case if Lui showed signs of inability to do this or that thing. Avril by nature was somehow the ideal of a girl, both in appearance and in manners, but her constant calm and sometimes cold face to everyone, said the opposite to people. It seemed that she was supposed to be a “different type” one, because even in her clothes she looked like it, but everything was wrong down to the look. She had known Lui since childhood, because they grew up on the same street of the northern village, but as soon as one found a dragon, the second followed. Lui was the first to find her dragon, and Avril found her own a couple of months later. As soon as everyone found out that the girls were raising dragons in secret, they immediately informed the King and the girls were taken away, cutting off any contact with their relatives and their native village in general. At first, they grieved and missed everything, but Felix replaced their father and always supported them, no matter what. That's why they didn't rush home anymore… At least, Avril didn’t. “By the way, Lu, Felix left something in my library today.” Taking an envelope from her bag, she handed it to Luiana, who immediately took it, recognizing the red seal. “It's from my parents!” With the “pants full of joy”, after seeing the first lines, Lui finished the salad to the end, leaving it on the table and running to her room to read the letter. “Thank you, Ria!” “Like a little child, I swear.” Avril whispered with a laugh, remaining in the kitchen, picking up a salad bowl from the table and soaking it with water in the sink. “I wish …” Stopping in mid-sentence, the girl shook her head, closing her tired eyes. “Although... it doesn't really matter.”

*

The villages of the Empire are all different. Some were distant, some were close to the capital, but the village from which Lui and Avril arrived was different. In that village, every adult has a partner almost from birth. First, the older daughters are married, and after that the sons are sent to look for a wife to their liking. Almost from birth, parents are looking for a couple for their children for the future, so that there will be no infidelities or anything like that. Immediately after the end of the war, five centuries ago, their village was founded and those who came from the Shadow Empire lived there… Well, or it was only in those days, because in the end, everyone who lived there to this day were the indigenous inhabitants of the Light Empire. The whole subject of the Empire and the Empire of the Shadow has been bothering people from the very beginning. Everyone was constantly confused about where was one and where was the other, but it was from that village that the habit began to spread, to call their native Empire in one word, and someone else's with the definition of Light and Shadow. As travelers from the Shadow Empire said, even in their homeland, the other Empire was called the Empire of Light, as if because of the differences in magic, people, and even the colors of buildings. Moving away from the topic, there really were differences between Empires. The Empire of Light, to clarify, was really "light", because from time immemorial, mages it used the magic of the sun, and the mages of the Empire of Shadow, respectively, used the magic of the moon, or as it is called at the moment, the magic of darkness. As such, there were no positive or negative types of magic, but the very word "darkness and shadow" spoke of something bad, not good, negative and far from the concept of good itself, but the inhabitants of the Shadow Empire were even proud of it, not taking the word "Light always defeats Darkness" personally. In the history of peace between Empires, there were words, “As there is life, so there is death. As there is a shadow, so there is light.” These words marked the beginning of peace and truce for decades and generations to come. These words were uttered by Emperor Kalips when he crossed his sword with the sword of the Dark Emperor, bleeding his former enemy with his sword, as the Dark Emperor did with him to sign a blood peace treaty. The words have remained in the memory of all people and so far there has always been a question among them… What is life and what is death? What is light and what is shadow? Everyone said Life is Light and Death is Shadow, but then why did the Emperor change the order of his words? If he meant what he said, it meant that Life is Shadow, and Death is Light, but this was nonsense for every inhabitant of both empires and only two Emperors knew the real meaning of these words, which marked the beginning of the peace. Going back to the present, and going back to Avril and Luis' native village, it was safe to say that their village was the oldest and most old-fashioned of all that existed at that time. While the Capital surprised with its technologies, the beauty of architecture and generally shone with novelty, the village remained the same as before, not a gram of modernity and not a gram of technology. Maybe for some, life in the village could be very difficult, but for some, life in the village could seem like heaven on earth. Peace and quiet, the laughter of children playing in the snow and the songs of winter birds. And yet... many were inclined to the first thought. Lui and Avril, since they were taken to the capital, have never visited their relatives, nor have they visited the girls. Not because it was forbidden, but because neither one nor the other had the desire or time for it. The girls had work as riders, and the village had such things as children, prosperity and survival. While the riders receive everything they need, their families receive only temporary support during the year to adapt to life without those who left them for the service of the Empire, and after that, the riders are almost completely forgotten. Surely, if someone finds out about the village where Lui and Avril grew up, they will have a question, since the village is so old-fashioned and almost from birth everyone chooses a couple, could it be that Lui and Avril could also have couples for the future? This is true. They could have been, but in the case of Avril and Lui, they were lucky, because they were the youngest in the family and they just didn't have time to find a couple because their parents still had to marry off the older daughters and marry off their sons, and then think about what to do with the youngest. It worked out, if we may say so. The fact that someone else wrote to Lui meant that she was still remembered and loved, since with each letter Lui literally runs away to read the letter with a smile from ear to ear. And Avril… No one wrote to her. She had been quiet since childhood, so she was not noticed at all among her adult brothers and sisters. They probably didn't even notice that she was taken away, and if they did, they probably already forgot that she was even there. The template story of the "main character" person, but here, fortunately, the whole family is alive and well, not dead and has been resting two feet underground for a long time. If you want to come back, no problem, if you don't want to, so be it. And as they say, home and family are where there are people dear to you, and for Avril, Lui and the captain are enough to consider them her home and family.

*

The market of the capital, or even a kind of bazaar, was not at all small in size. Quite interesting goods arrived from all corners of the continent, which could be needed in the household, work or simple life. One of these things were the solar and lunar spheres. The solar spheres worked from the sun, of course, and held their charge the longest, and the lunar spheres, respectively, were charged from the moon and held their charge for ten hours. While the solar spheres were charging, the lunar ones worked replacing the solar ones, and during the night the opposite one worked. Otherwise, while one sphere was charging, the other was running out of charge and it was discharged when the other was ready to work. There were both solar and lunar spheres on each house, but this was mostly for those houses in which people worked at night or, for example, for those houses in which night races lived. There were many races in the capital. Humans, elves, half-humans, and so on, the creatures were nocturnal, which is why there were fewer solar spheres on some houses than lunar ones. Anyway, the market was open at any time, just the residents replaced each other with the onset of sunset and sunrise. The relentless bazaar was always replenished and always filled with customers. It was almost impossible to squeeze through during rush hour. Everyone was in a hurry, running somewhere and not giving way, but for a couple of people it was a common thing and there was always a detour. “Good morning, are there any new spheres for this month?” Each store had some windows that allowed you to enter the store from above, but there were no those who used them, because by the time you climb in, you will forget what you even wanted in there. Some of them, of course, climbed onto the roofs to go to the store faster, but they were kicked out by throwing sandals after them with the words "where are you going, urban monkey". And yet, there were those who were not expelled, namely… “Mother of... Avril! Stop looking in like that all the time! You'll give me a heart attack!” The old lady who was behind the cash register turned sharply to the voice when a light-haired head appeared in front of her face hanging down. The saleswoman screamed when she saw her, clutching at her heart. The girl hanging from the window only laughed awkwardly, jumping to the floor, apologizing along the way. Avril always came from above and no one really knew how she got to the roof so quickly. No sooner had the store opened properly, than she was right there for a new product. “Oof, it's good that you didn't jump off right away at least, otherwise I would have hit on the head.” “No need to hit me, there's a scar from the first time.” Avril laughed awkwardly again. The first time Avril entered the store through the roof, she scared the store owner so much that she hit her with one sphere, which crashed on the rider's head, leaving cuts above her right eye and on her eyebrows. Fortunately, that sphere was discharged, otherwise there would have been not a scar, but a huge burn on half of the face, if not the completely burned skin on the face with no trace. Solar and lunar spheres are terribly fragile when they fail or when they no longer work from being "old" and if there is still a charge in them, they can explode if a small crack appears anywhere. Such spheres are used as explosives, either by removing some charge or adding it for power. Back then Avril was incredibly lucky and got off with only scars. “Let's not talk about the bad stuff. The spheres were delivered just yesterday and some have not even been unpacked yet.” The saleswoman went into the back closet, if you can call it that, the room next to the toilets of the store where all the boxes were in. She pointed to several rather large boxes in the corner. “How will you pick it up? There are six of them here, you can't take that many yourself, for sure.” “I can't drag it away, but I can easily drag Saph here to help me.” Picking up one box, Avril successfully dragged it to the window on the roof, from which a white tail appeared as soon as the girl whistled. The tail easily wrapped around the box and pulled it onto the roof. The same happened with the rest of the boxes, which were probably already on the back of the white dragon. “Thanks for saving it for us.” Brushing her hands off the dust, the girl turned her attention back to the saleswoman, who was looking at the girl with a slight smile. “It's my pleasure. Philipp didn't come for them yesterday, so I thought he would come the morning before the opening.” The old woman sighed, wiping the dust from the boxes from her hands. After all, she helped carry one to the window. “That's our day shop, when else would he come for the spheres. You can't pass by with this amount of boxes during the noon after all.” “We had problems at work, so he didn't come. If anyone else comes, tell them to pick them up at my place.” Whistling once more, the girl waited for the tail and with its help climbed to the roof, of course saying goodbye to the old lady. Climbing into the saddle, the girl finally breathed a sigh of relief, arranging the boxes in the saddle better. This time she equipped her dragon with a magnetic platform, to which the boxes were attached, preventing them from flying off. The pointed ears twitched in an instant. “Okay, lets …” she didn't even have time to give the command, as she noticed one person on another roof. The man apparently saw her too, and judging by the expression on his face, he was surprised, but still waved a greeting as he approached. “Advisor? What are you doing here in the market?” “And good morning to you, young lady. I decided to shop like everyone else at this hour before work.” It turned out to be the same man from the archives of the Empire. However, at the moment, he looked very young. His clothes did not make him look older, but rather younger. He was rather skinny and pale, not what he seemed in the archives. Surely the rider did not notice this precisely because of the lighting, but here everything was visible under the rays of the rising sun. “Oh, good morning.” Realizing that she did not say hello, the girl quickly corrected herself, smiling easily. “Since I did see you, I can't help but say that His Majesty is grateful that you saved that piece.” As if casually saying this, the archivist examined the dragon, touching her feathers. “And I can't help but notice that you have a rather rare dragon. There have been no feathered dragons for generations of riders, and this one is also half albino.” “An albino? I didn't think she could be an albino.” Having ignored the words about the King, she looked at the wings of her dragon herself and missed the moment when the Adviser stared at her with a glassy stare, then returning a relaxed look. “She's pure white, and her eyes are blue. If not an albino, then what?” With a grin, he plucked out one old feather, which he saw among the snow-white feathers. “Her feathers are not sharp at the ends, so she is from the genus of ice dragons. Her eyes are blue, not red like those of ordinary albino dragons too.” “I've never seen lines in books about dragon eyes or feathers meaning gender and type.” Saphira turned her head looking at the man next to her wings. She didn't feel threatened by him, so she lowered her head lower to him, sniffing. “Hello, gorgeous.” The adviser, with a quiet, pleasant laugh, stroked the dragon's nose, causing a satisfied growl. Avril herself smiled at this sight. It's not often that her dragon is so friendly with strangers, and as soon as she thought about it, the albino jerked her head, inhaling the chill and lifting her head, immediately turning away. “Apparently, she doesn't like it when her nose is tickled.” “Oh... yes.” Shaking her head, Avril answered anyway, breathing in fresh air. “I think we should fly already, the meeting is coming soon.” “Then I can only wish you luck, young lady.” That was all he said before they left. “So she felt it …” lowering his head, the archivist sighed, clenching his hand with a white feather in his fist.