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Paradise
She looked up as the sun seemed to sink into the water, her coloration making her look like a piece of the sunset had been cut out and placed on the land. Rising, Zasse stretched herself out, her slim, smooth form perfect for flowing through the water.
Zasse slipped into the water, forming barely a ripple as she did so, her gills opening to allow her to breath underwater. With strong, powerful strokes of her tail she sped off through the water, using her wings and webbed paws to adjust her course.
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“By Tayrith’s mane, Jared! What do you expect me to do? Summon the ancestors?!”
Jared looked up at the angry water dragon from his position on the sandy beach of a tiny island, “Of course not, Vandrin, it’s not as hard as that. I know you know the spell that allows you to travel across worlds, and I know Zasse does as well.”
“What do you want of us?” Vandrin asked, eyeing Jared suspiciously.
“Look, there’s this place called the Healing Den tha…”
“Neither Zasse nor I require healing, Jared.” Vandrin growled dangerously.
“Let me finished, Van. This place is like a gathering place for all sorts of dragons, water dragons included. Right now they’re holding a Swim.”
“Why would we want to go to a strange place just to swim? Hmm?”
“No no no, its not for just swimming, it’s a mating flight for water dragons of all types, but instead of flying they swim, so its called a Swim instead of a flight.”
Vandrin started pacing, thinking. He and Zasse hadn’t joined any of the mating swims yet, but he could tell that she was seriously thinking about doing so, but still…
“Jared, why would this Healing Den place want something as plain as Zasse and me? Why don’t you go and ask someone like Zander?” he asked, glancing at his gold and green swirled hide and his green and white swirled wings, quite plain considering that Zander and some of the others had around eight or so colors swirled together on themselves.
Jared looked up at Vandrin, his slit pupil golden eyes holding laughter, “Because, Vandrin, for the Healing Den, you aren’t plain at all.”
“…… I’ll think about it, Jared.”
Vandrin turned and slipped into the water, leaving barely a ripple to show that he had passed. His front paws stretch out, the claws on them longer and more curving than the claws on his hind paws, perfectly designed for catching anything, from food to females.
He twisted his body around, spreading strong, thick wings to help him maneuver. Reveling in the feel of the water sliding over his body and gills, he turned and dived, doing underwater acrobatics.
Zasse swam up beside him, only a few feet shy of his length of thirty feet. She twisted around and through his underwater patterns, grinning as she did so. He returned her grin and started to make his patterns more random and faster, to which she just let out a burst of mental laughter and matched him, still twisting around and through his patterns.
Jared wants us to Slip through the realms to some place called the Healing Den. He sends to Zasse.
Why?
For a mating swim, there’ll be a whole bunch of other types of water dragons there as well.
She thought about it for a time, her eyes glittering with laughter as she purposely messed up one of his patterns then dragged her tail lightly across his side, causing him to double over, writhing to get out of her way, his mental and verbal laughter echoing though the water.
You… are… MEAN! He managed to gasp out between fits of laughter as she kept tickling him.
I know. She purred to him, still thinking about the mating swim, I think I will go to this proposed swim.
Stop… tickling me… and I’ll… lead you there… he managed to say.
Grinning, she stopped tickling him and ‘hovered’ there in the water, watching him. He mock glared at her then drew up a picture of what Jared had said about the place, then spiraled deeper into the water and then, twisting, spiraled just as quickly back up, the water changing its feel as he did so. Looking down, he saw Zasse swimming with her head almost resting on his tail spade, another thing that females of his race didn’t have along with the longer front claws.
Turning his head back to look at the rapidly approaching surface, he sees other dragon like shapes on the water.
Well, looks like we’re here. He sends to Zasse.
Zasse powered up past him, breaking the surface with a massive eruption of water. Vandrin surfaced not far from her, but in a less spectacular way, just rising out of the water without any fancy eruption of water.
They were there, but when would the swim start?