Before Evander took Fia and Viliant all the way to the Carlinoa Clan's village, he stopped at the beach. When he swooped lower to skim across the sand instead of the waves, the orange dragon asked, "Ready, Viliant?"
"Ready," Viliant echoed with a grimace. Although flying in another dragon's claws did not amount to the most comfortable experience, he appreciated the warning. Rokirith had done no such thing before flinging him across the ground, so Viliant tensed up too much, expecting a similar treatment. Instead, the black dragonet had a soft landing on his feet. He blinked against the buffet of sand caused by the wings of the large, orange dragon who landed ahead of him.
"Why are we stopping?" Fia asked. The curious, pink dragonette leaned over Evander's curved horns to look at his face.
Evander bowed his head to let Fa dismount easily. With a happy rumble in his throat, Evander said, "Someone's been waiting for you, Fia."
Closer to the treeline, a red dragonet bounded across the beach. "Fia!" Arenis shouted for joy. When he reached her, the red dragonet tackled Fia and pinned her like the old friends used to do in their wrestling matches. Arenis picked up right where they left off, playing on this very stretch of sand where the humans had taken her away. The fire dragonet's intense breath heated her face. "I missed you so much!"
"I missed you too," Fia replied, her voice choked with emotion. At some point, she had stopped dwelling on how she missed Arenis, thinking that she would never see her best friend from Carlinoa again. Now that they were reunited, she resumed her connection with Arenis as though nothing had changed.
But something had changed. When Fia pushed against Arenis to break his pin on her, she found that she was no longer strong enough to throw him off her anymore. How..? she wondered. The dragonette swallowed the smoke in her throat and exerted all her might against Arenis. How come I can't push him off me anymore? I've gotten so much stronger, she thought.
Because of her familiarity with Arenis, she had connected with him over telepathy without a second thought. I've gotten stronger too, he clarified. Not only had the red dragonet enhanced his physical prowess, but he also improved his form. The quality of his pin did not leave any weakness for Fia to exploit and throw him off balance.
The pink dragonette flopped her wings out on either side. Her neck sagged against the sand. Despite her irrevocable happiness that she had made it back to Carlinoa Island, she also felt a twinge of disappointment that she did not return as much stronger as she had expected. But I was fighting every day....
Arenis curled his wings in abashment. And I was training every day since you were gone. An inferno blazed behind the dragonet's eyes, barely contained within himself. I missed you, Arenis reiterated to sum up the guilt and rage which had consumed him since that fateful day on the beach.
Fia had no other choice but to accept their difference in strength. She only got up once Arenis allowed it. The red dragonet ruffled his wings while Fia shook the sand from her pink scales. When they stood side by side, Fia realized how much taller Arenis had grown and how much wider his wings now stretched. The dragonet who had once been just a scale bigger than Fia now outsized her by the same amount as Viliant when she first met him. Her old friend served as a mirror through time—what both Fia and Viliant could have been if they had not undergone the harsh conditions of the coliseum and subsequent survival as fugitives. I didn't realize I could've grown bigger too, Fia lamented. She glanced at Viliant who was closer in size to Arenis, the seven-year-old dragonet, than he should be for a dragonet his age—five years older.
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Despite all this, Fia stood her tallest. Their stunted growth was another accolade for the burden that they bore, just like the tatters which remained of Viliant's wings. I'm proud of how we survived, she thought.
Meanwhile, Viliant seethed in the shadow of Evander's wing which stuck out to hold him back. The dragonet wanted to launch himself into the foray from the moment that a strange dragonet had charged at Fia.
"They're friends, Viliant," Evander clarified.
Are they? Viliant wondered, but he had no reason to distrust the dragons from Fia's clan. They had every reason to distrust him—the outsider. Even if Viliant knew that his best friend had a happy life before she was thrown into the same cage as him, it pained him to watch Fia's reunion with her old friend. This was different from the times when Fia played games with an armored bear and a human child. This was different from the Malakow tournament where Fia had bonded with Ori, the lame mold dragonette. This was a friend that Fia had made, long before she knew Viliant. She's my only friend, he thought by comparison.
As if to rub salt under his scales, Evander revealed, "They've been friends their whole lives, ever since their mothers placed their eggs next to each other."
A low growl peeled from Viliant's throat. Even though he had yet to learn the red dragonet's name, Viliant already knew that he disliked him. At least I'm her best friend, Viliant figured smugly to reassure himself.
The gleam in Fia's eyes redirected to focus on Viliant. "Ooh! You have to meet my new friend!" She trotted over, the red dragonet close behind her.
When Viliant realized that Fia spoke to the other dragonet over him, his stomach wrenched like he had eaten rotten meat. Any worry that had seized him had dissipated as soon Fia introduced him.
"This is my best friend, Viliant," Fia said. Her chipper voice over his name sounded like a bird's twitter.
The black dragonet bobbed his chin along. That's right, he thought. I'm her best friend, after all.
The tail of the red dragonet slumped. Even though he might be one of Fia's friends, he did not get the coveted position as her best friend. What? Arenis asked, sharing his disbelief just between him and Fia. I thought I was your best friend.
You are, Fia corrected after two, stunned blinks. She did not mean to cause any offense to her long-time playmate since the day of her hatching. Fia needed to do something to correct her blunder.
Immediately afterward, Fia made the same introduction the other way around. "And Viliant.... This is my best friend, Arenis."
"What?" Viliant snapped, his voice cracking into a roar.
Fia cowered at his outburst. In a small squeak, she explained, "You're both my best friends."
Viliant's eyelids became hooded in his glare, unamused. "You can't have two best friends, Fia."
"Yeah," Arenis chimed in, confident that their long-time friendship had forged a stronger bond than Fia could possibly develop with the vagabond that she dragged back to the island with her. "That's what 'best' means," Arenis explained, in case Fia did not fully grasp the definition of the word. "There can only be one."
"Um...." Fia kneaded her claws into the sand, overwhelmed by the avaricious gazes of Viliant and Arenis. The dragonette did not know what to tell either of them, but she needed to do something. "My best friend is...."