Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: penny@agora.rain.com (Penny Hutchison) Subject: [AU] Tiger Beat Message-ID: Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1993 14:53:29 GMT [ADMIN written by Penny Hutchison and Liralen Li, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, with cool additions by Stephen Hutchison. - li] --- Kardia helped ar'Elya setup the yurt. When they finished, they moved over to the fire. Watching the flames she asked softly, "How do you know when you've fallen in love?" ar'Elya laughed, "Hmmm... that sounds like a question better answered by you than I, if you really want to know the answer." Kardia blinked and then laughed as well. "Alistair used to say that you can tell a hermetic mage because every time you ask them a question, they'll answer with a question. He said that's better than the crazy shamanic types, 'cause they'll answer with a story you can't understand..." She watched the flames as they danced, and glanced over towards the boy and the unicorn filly. They were gently and comfortably tangled, asleep. The question tumbled its way around Kardia's head and she could only shake her head, "I don't know..." Kardia glanced at ar'Elya, but the red headed woman only smiled and put another piece of firewood on the fire. So Kardia sat and watched the flames, thinking hard. "Hmmm... I guess I've never really fallen in love... only found myself in it. I mean Alistair knew me from the time when I was six, all my good points, bad points, temper tantrums, everything; and... it felt like I knew him for as long as I'd been alive." Kardia chuckled softly, "I guess I did... I guess the question I should be asking is, how can Kadrys know, so thoroughly, that he's in love with me?" Her grin went slightly crooked, "Or what is there in me that he could love so completely in so short a time? Or how I'd be able to return something so completely and freely given? He's so... beautiful..." She blushed, suddenly aware of the longing in her voice. "Yes, he is, isn't he?" said ar'Elya quite matter-of-factly. "That hair and those eyes..." Kardia sighed, "Yeah... those eyes..." She watched the flames curling, fluttering over the black and red of the coals. She whispered, "Black as coal, red as blood." she shivered, and then laughed. "Some pretty amazing grace there..." "Mmm... and those hands..." "Yeah... so delicate and precise..." "... gentle and strong..." "... and the softness of his skin is like silk. None of that hairy... oops." Kardia giggled at the sound of 'Raf and Clyde galloping through after a pale glow-in-the-dark Frisbee that flew eerily bright before them. ar'Elya grinned, "Have you seen Kadrys' musculature?" Kardia nodded eyes wide, "Yeah... it's amazing... all whipcord under satin..." "Oooo... isn't he *dreamy*?" ar'Elya's wistful tone set them both to giggling. Kardia coo'ed, "Yeah... eyes like pools to fall into..." "All that sheer intensity..." "Couldn't you just *die*..." "Already done that, not quite what it's cracked up to be, but yeah..." When Kardia finally stopped laughing she sighed and then nodded, "O.K. I'm definitely attracted to him; but I'm really uncertain if I can give him what he wants or what he needs or if he even really knows who and what I am." "Hmmm... that last can be fixed pretty quick, if you really want to. Just give him some of your blood." ar'Elya said as she warmed her hands by the fire. "Oh." Kardia blushed, "I already have..." "Then how can he not know you?" "Hmmm...." Kardia thought about that and frowned slightly. "You mean that it's not just a form of surface telepathy, but that he actually can get to everything that I am?" At ar'Elya's nod, Kardia sighed and sat back to think that over. Finally, slowly, she said, "I guess the one thing that bothers me the most is... it's not his age in that he's old or decrepit or whatever... it's his age in that I feel a little bit like the gnat meeting the unicorn in _The Last Unicorn_... where there's something whose entire life is measured in a day trying to establish something of a relationship with something that measures its life in centuries..." "Millenia, actually..." Kardia blinked at ar'Elya's steady gaze and then snorted softly, "Worse yet..." She leaned forward and put her chin in her hands to watch the flickering of the fire. "I mean how much can he care about the things that I care about?" Ar'Elya picked up a stick and pointed at the fire. "You're making the mistake of confusing two different qualities of life. Look. We are not just sparks compared to his fire, burning out as he continues on. He burns with a bright light now, but in time he will bank his fires only to flare brightly again later." Her grin glinted in the light as she turned to Kardia. A flash of blue light from the field lit their faces -- a shout of outrage came from 'Raf and Clyde started laughing. "No fair using the horn!" "But those of us who are alive, our fires may not burn as long but they create as much light over the time they burn. Or, to get away from the fire analogy, look at the quality of people he's surrounded by, the people who are attracted to him. Look at the ones he chooses to acknowledge and care about. Would a man indifferent to people and their cares inspire this?" Kardia slowly nodded and then smiled. ar'Elya pushed embers back into the fire with her stick, then looked at the stick speculatively. "Marshmallows. Chocolate. Graham crackers." She reached into the pouch at her hip and pulled out an improbably colorful plastic bag, a box and a handful of long brown-and-silver wrapped bars. "Conversation this serious cries out for s'mores." She pulled a knife from her boot and sharpened the stick, then impaled a marshmallow over the flames. Kardia laughed softly and looked around for a likely stick as well. "May I borrow that?" She whittled away at the point and then stuck two marshmallows on the end of her stick. She returned the knife and, in true camping tradition turned the first two marshmallows into flaming torches. Kardia waved them in the air a bit and finally blew them out and let the fire have them as her first offering. The next two roasted a bit more slowly. As they turned their marshmallows over the fire, ar'Elya said, "He obviously sees a great deal in you to care about. If I were the kind to give advice, I'd say kick back and see where it goes." She grinned rakishly. "It's not like he has to hurry and make a decision." Kardia pulled her marshmallows out to see how done they were and put them back in. "True." she said, softly. Then she chuckled, "Sounds like good advice..." There was another shout from the field. A winded, sweaty Andrea (in human form) came into the camp, giving up on the Frisbee game to the catcalls of 'Raf and Clyde. She wiped her face on a camp towel, and sat down at the fire. She watched with one eyebrow raised as Kardia took the two toasted marshmellows and gently squashed them into a gooey white and crunchy gold mass between two crackers with a square of brown stuff inbetween. "Hmm. Smells good, what is it?" "They're called s'mores," Kardia said. "What's that?" "The reason they made me stop playing," she grinned, holding up a faintly green disk, with a large hole torn through the middle.