Rays of hazy sunlight beamed from the eye, a curving elemental mirror in which their scene was reflected. Dragon Food looked into the eye from around the eye, and recognized the Dragon.
– Arkuda! At the beginning and the end of my personal journey. What brings you here?

– That is what I am wondering. I sense that that there is something that brings me here. And, what is this? What are you?

– This is whatever you think it is, and whatever I think it is, which may not be the same thing. I am whatever I think I am, and possibly some of what you think of me. I’m really trying my best to say it in a way you will understand, because I don’t have to understand it. It just is, we just are.
– Welcome to the Fray, Dragon Arkuda. Where we Kao-Sidhe battle wits until we drop, then recuperate forthwith to begin again.
– Debate or debacle? You decide!
– Here we are inclusively divisive. I’m not sure I remember if we’ve ever had a Dragon drop in; this seems to be a unique circumstance.
– It’s my fault, I did it. But it was already trying to happen.

The context delivery was acting upon the Dragon, who like the others could now follow between fragmented opinions with the facility of one who knows what everyone is talking about. These varied considerations contained high relevance to matters the Dragon had been pondering and discussing with other Dragons. These Kao-Sidhe were good at making points, though they jabbed them about so. Arkuda could project voice into here, which came through like a whisper through water.

– I can work with this.

Dragon Food popped out, and through to a place that was a place, landing squarely on a bed of rose petals.

The wide, elevated meadow full of people was in a somewhat festive mood. They’d just done something harrowing and hard, but they had done it. They believed in themselves that much at least. Captain Wendel Harper’s runners from the field had been tying up the passenger organization so people could get aboard and they could go. The fuels money was there, she believed them. This was actually a nice place for a breather. There was a mist of flowers over the ground. Flowers. It was just her again on the road, plus this next bunch.

Wendel had been called in to redistribute people in an inaccessible meadow. Vedani throughports had already sent some of them home. If this worked out, Wendel might be hiring more shuttle power to help, and this could go faster. Sending everybody somewhere specific wasn’t as easy as doing it the way they’ve done it before; conundrums like this are situationally unique, as tend to be their solutions. Only so much could safely be done at a time, given the energy resources. They’d ported out a fleet of soldiers all at once, but that had been improvised on the spot with the emergency inspiration of a unique set of embodied forces. Vedani formulae had to respect some laws of nature, so things progressed steadily apace. People were doing well enough hanging in there, prepared and lighter-hearted, even celebratory. There were no Vedani in this meadow, just humans. They did all know Vedani, and confirmed that the ride was called for them.

There were still a lot of people left here, but not too many. That’s what the encoded request for service had said when it came to her through Drift X. The message popped up through an obscure node of the system that she’d barely remembered was active. It was written in knowledgable cargo/passenger format, but came over a Vedani signal. They had her number, alright. So did a lot of people, and Wendel usually didn’t mind too much. So, she took the weird job, going somewhere weird to take some people home. Long way to come for just another forty people (out of a lot), but they’re the next most important forty people, all going to their own homes. It’d be some work.

She’d just taken people to safety, now she was taking them home. There was lots of hugging and exchanging of information. The sun was shining. Moments like these, she loves her job. Wendel has high job satisfaction, though. This is when it’s simple. This is when it’s easy to be proud of herself.

– I perceive a number of obstacles in this consideration.
– There must be a way around that.
– Very little precedent.
– I’m balancing considerations.
– Whether or not we can will have to depend.

After expanses of creating a new mind to understand things he was seeing along his journey while being something totally other than himself, this was actually familiar. There was a cadence to these perspectives that resided within the Kao-Sidhe realm. Dragon Food was remembering again who he was and what he was, something that always came back to him if he forgot a little while mostly disincorporate.

The sound of this group was not squabbling, exactly – more like jocular and determined divergence of opinion. A pastime for some, a passion for others. Dragon Food had occasionally joined in himself, being a personage of at times unique perspective begging to be flexed. They would draw him in when he had particular relevance, and he frankly enjoyed the multi-faceted and contradictory nature of what might be called truth, but is more often a common ground. The ground. He forgot about the ground! Dragon Food loves the ground, he sometimes finds himself there. He gravitated toward the common ground being found.

– And if they should find it thus…
– It could be seen differently.
– It’s time to resolve a longstanding issue.
– The dangers are clear.

Dragon Food breached the membrane of understanding, and the decontextualized comments gained their background and discussion history. He prodded his being and discovered that he was completely himself again. He knew they were talking about matters of great recent interest, in which he was deeply involved. The bodies in discussion had had the presentiment for some time that they would be called in on this, and had made it their business already. They were enjoying themselves, and welcomed Dragon Food to join in the Fray.

– Please reaffirm the agreement.
– I agree to disagree.
– Good! Let’s begin again.