“You’ll be an Auntie, too.”
Missandra smiled and nodded, excited at the prospect of her new title.
“I’ll make sure to protect it. I mean him! It’s a boy, you say? How do they even know that?”
Cassandra chuckled and explained the whole situation about Krai’s egg as they were making their way back to the breakfast area. Just as they were halfway there, the sun was briefly blotted out as a dragon-sized shadow passed over them.
Krai softly landed right next to them after letting out a loud growl, causing Missandra to scream and hide behind Cassandra, utterly terrified.
“Missandra. He won’t do anything…”
“You can’t be sure of that!! He eats humans.”
“He eats pigs!” yelled Shareen from the table, as they were now close enough.
“I saw him eat a man just yesterday!” Missandra retorted back.
“Isn’t that exactly what I said?” Shareen laughed.
Missandra frowned. But to their surprise, Krai kept sniffing and wiggling closer, showing some interest in Missandra. She kept hiding behind Cassandra, making a comedic scene of the dragon and her circling around the young concubine for a while.
“Why does he want to sniff me?!” she cried.
“He’s just curious,” Cassandra guessed. “Here, scratch him there, he loves it.”
“I am not scratching a dragon! My arm would just be a little snack for him!”
“I promise, it won’t,” said Cassandra, encouraging her younger sister in front of her.
Missandra was trying hard not to scream while Krai’s body was encircling her, but the dragon indeed seemed curious about her. It kept sniffing and gently pushing her arm with its snout until Missandra had no choice but to give it a shy scratch in the spot her older sister had pointed out. Immediately, the dragon started acting a little sprightly, growling softly and moving its head so she’d scratch more.
After a minute, Missandra’s terrified expression softened a little.
“Oh… alright…I guess you might not be so…dangerous after all,” she said.
Cassandra chuckled and left her sister and Krai to get to know each other as she walked back to the breakfast table. Shareen and Kareen were laughing at Missandra’s awkward introduction to the dragon, but they undoubtedly hadn’t forgotten the previous matter.
“So?” asked Kareen with a knowing smile.
“Alright, we can do a Rain Ceremony,” Cassandra conceded. “But we’ll need to prepare a few things and it’ll have to be a simpler version. It also needs to be done on a rainy day.”
“Oh great! The next rainy season isn’t due for months here!” growled Shareen.
“Stop fussing,” her mother scolded her. “We’ll do this at the Diamond Palace, my city has far more rainy days. What else, darling?”
“We will need some Borean ink, purified water, a silk thread...”
“The water flowers, too!” Missandra shouted from where she was still rubbing the scales of a very contented Krai.
“Yes, and we should find green outfits.”
“Green? Like servants?”
“It’s the color of happiness for our tribe. We usually make traditional wedding clothes with green fabric and embroider them with prayers and symbols with a white thread, but I guess we can skip that…”
“What are you talking about?” protested Kareen. “Even if it’s a secret, a ceremony is a ceremony! We will go by the book, so make a list of anything you need for your Rain Ceremony, and I promise this old woman will get it right on time for the next rainy day in the Diamond Palace! You’ll see!”
They resumed breakfast after that, Kareen asking Cassandra a lot of questions about the Ceremony, making sure she knew absolutely everything they’d be needing. It was obvious she was only too happy to organize all of this, and Cassandra started to suspect Shareen was right when she said her mother was happy to have something to do behind their Father’s back. She repeated several times that it would be her responsibility to gather everything Cassandra had mentioned so they could plan the most perfect ceremony possible once they’d be back in the Diamond Palace. They were still a few days away from that, though.
