Chapter Text
He still wasn’t used to the wings.
They’d finally started grow in a few seasons after he turned seven. He’d been so excited at first – he’d been waiting most of his life, and everyone had been so happy for him. Even the people who talked about him when they didn’t think he could hear had suddenly stopped caring about his stutter and pets. Everyone wanted to be friends with the “Lord Summoner,” and he’d – well, of course he’d liked it! Who wouldn’t like being friends with everybody? It wasn’t being naive, no matter what Karkat said; it was just taking advantage of a good thing!
...Of course, nobody had expected growing wings to hurt. What had first been a faint, nagging itch had gradually grown into a steady ache, and then a full-bodied, throbbing pain as the fleshy, veiny, smelly lump on his back grew steadily larger. Towards the end he’d had to concentrate until he had a migraine just to get his pets to come near him – and of course nobody but his closest, truest friends wanted anything to do with him. He’d spent the final season and a half locked up in his personal blockset, relying on Karkat and Aradia to bring him food and his coursework (the Mastericators and teachers hadn’t even protested! They’d wanted him to sequester himself). And then, and then...
Just when he’d thought it couldn’t get any worse...
The lump had cracked open in the middle of the day. He’d woken up covered in half-dry blood and a weird, clear fluid, like the pus his pets sometimes made when they got hurt from playing too hard but without the smell. He’d dragged himself out of his modified recuperacoon and over to the mirror, too tired to be scared but too worried to go back to sleep. What he’d seen in the mirror had been...There was nothing else to call it but a miracle.
He hadn’t tried to fly right away. Some guiding instinct, plus sweeps of caring for winged beasts, had made him wait. His new wings had needed time to dry and harden; he’d sent for Aradia with the help of one of his fastest pets, and together they’d cleaned up the mess, grinning and giggling as they changed the slime in his recuperacoon and carefully wiped the goo and blood off his back. He’d been so happy.
That had been before he’d realized just what a nuisance they could be.
“I am so sorry,” Tavros groaned as he surveyed the wreckage of what up until a few seconds ago had been a very pretty vase. He’d turned too quickly, forgetting that there was a small display table right there -- he quickly began to stoop, meaning to rescue the flowers and maybe pick up a few of the larger shards.
“Oh, please don’t trouble yourself, my lord!” The Cavalreaper commander said quickly, standing up from behind his desk. “It’s only a trifle, please pay it no mind.”
Tavros looked at the commander helplessly, his hands full of wet flowers. It wasn’t only a trifle, he’d just broken the private property of a superior officer. It’d been an obvious accident, true, and the commander was only a few sweeps older than him – though not so young that he and Tavros had been in the towers together, thank goodness – but if Tavros had been anyone else he would have been getting the lecture of his life right now, with punishment detail to follow, not watching the commander ring for a slave to come clean up the mess. He seemed almost happy to have had one of his things broken by the Lord Summoner!
“At least let me replace it,” Tavros said resignedly, surrendering the flowers to a deferential slave who had ducked through the tent flap almost before the commander had put the bell back down beside his blotter. He quickly raised one hand, warding off the commander’s protests. “Please sir, it would...well, it would make me feel better.”
“As you like, my lord,” the commander said, subsiding. It was always like this. He had yet to meet a single officer who treated him like an actual person; they all either treated him like scum, just to prove that they weren’t impressed by his ancestor’s reputation, or they were impressed to the point of falling over backwards to please him. At least this one didn’t resent him for his rank. As Tavros had been placed in charge of the construction of a new, permanent Cavalreaper installation on the southern coast, while the commander – his name was Merahn – was responsible for general military actions in the region, the two of them were technically equals. There were any number of ways that Merahn could have made life difficult for him, but if anything he seemed grateful for Tavros’ presence.
“As I was saying, my lord,” he said, taking a rolled up map out of its case. “I believe you’ll find our local geography to be quite the novel experience, to say nothing of the weather.” He was eyeing Tavros speculatively – no, Tavros suddenly realized, the commander wasn’t looking at him at all. He was looking at the small camp chairs arranged in front of his desk. “Perhaps a tour would be in order?” Merahn asked after a brief pause.
In truth, Tavros had already studied the area around the camp extensively, using books and maps that he had found in the Academy of Natural Science’s library – but he was so glad to hear Merahn make a constructive suggestion that he agreed immediately.
***
As it turned out, the Academy’s books and maps weren’t as accurate as he’d believed. “Things don’t change very often around here, but when they do they change dramatically,” Merahn said apologetically, and pointed over Tavros’ shoulder. The two of them had taken an open-air motorized vehicle out to a high cliff, rising far above the beating waves. Merahn was pointing to the south, where the cliff had been ground into a rocky slope, studded here and there with clumps of coarse grass.
“When I was first sent out here as a young officer,” Merahn said, withdrawing his hand and thoughtfully tucking a few strands of his hair back behind one of his down swept horns, “it must have been about four, maybe five sweeps ago...Anyway, there was a very fine stand of trees over there, and the ground was a great deal higher. But then we got one of our squalls – I’m sure you’ve heard about them, my lord – and the whole lot was torn up by the roots and thrown out to sea. Without the root system to hold it in place, the entire hillside began to slide into the water, and you can see what we ended up with.” He smiled slightly. “I’m sure you won’t find the change on any maps.”
“Not that I can remember, anyway,” Tavros admitted, studying the hill through his field goggles. “But that’s so strange...I thought Natural Science was supposed to send out surveyors, what was it? Every two sweeps?”
“Of course I wouldn’t dream of criticizing the academy,” Merahn said judiciously; Tavros tried to give him a reassuring smile without turning his head.
“I would, if they deserved it,” he said casually, “one of my clutchmates went into the academy last sweep; you wouldn’t believe some of the things she’s written to me about. Uh, sir,” he quickly added. Merahn’s casual manner was proving contagious; at least he didn’t seem offended. In fact he had begun to grin widely.
“Well, in that case,” he said, with a quiet chuckle, “I suppose I might as well mention that the acadecimators see our little territory as something more like a waystation than an actual place of research. We do see surveyors every now and then – and also zoologists, genetists, arthropologists...We had a very lovely young gentleman three seasons ago who said he was a ‘socioentomologist;’ apparently he was studying social insects in the hope of gathering clues about the evolution of the mother grubs!” There was a definite bitter taste to his amusement; Tavros could only sit there and stare with no small amount of surprise. Fortunately Merahn calmed himself quickly, and continued, “There’s far more fame to be found in the south, you see; in the islands and wet forests. A young acadecimator might spend a sweep or two studying some poorly-understood species of beetle or documenting hurricanes, write a book about it, and set herself up for life.” Merahn shrugged. “We simply can’t compete.”
“But that’s terrible!” Tavros said, sharper than he’d meant to. “There was an agreement, I can’t believe...Does high command know about this?”
“Why should they care?” Merahn asked. He was giving Tavros a strange look; Tavros hoped he hadn’t overstepped himself. “We’re a very small outpost, my lord, and not terribly close to any point of significant action. I think you may well be the first person of importance to visit us since the Great War.”
“I’m not so important,” Tavros demurred. “But if Natural Science is, is so unreliable, why don’t we just do it ourselves? Making accurate maps can’t be that difficult...”
“Do you know how to survey territory?” Merahn asked, his expression growing ever stranger.
“Uh,” Tavros said intelligently. “...No.”
“Neither do I,” Merahn informed him. “And neither do any of the other Cavalreapers stationed here – believe me, I asked. I suppose if one were to look hard and long enough, one might find someone who learned how to survey in the caverns, but she isn’t here. And asking for a trainer is right out; high command doesn’t want to go to the expense, especially when Natural Science is “supposed” to be helping us.”
It was a classic case of military unintelligence, Tavros finally realized, just like Karkat and Sollux has always teased him about. Luckily he had an idea for getting out of it.
“Well, we definitely can’t go on like this,” he said after a moment’s thought, and sat back down in the jeep’s passenger seat, taking care to avoid hitting Merahn with his horns. “We might not be able to get anyone in to train the men, but, well, there’s no reason why they couldn’t teach themselves. I have a clutchmate in the Academy of Natural Science; I’ll just write to her and ask her to send us some books on the subject, and, that’ll be that.” He looked up at his putative commander shyly, hoping his plan would sound as good when laid out on the metaphorical table as it had in his head.
Merahn was all smiles. “I believe that would work out nicely, my lord,” he said, and sat back down himself, putting the motorized vehicle back into gear. “Yes, very nicely indeed,” he repeated, half to himself, then turning back to Tavros continued, “Now, there were one or two other places I thought you might like to see, before we go back to camp...”
As they drove off, Tavros belatedly realized that the “strange expression” Merahn had been wearing earlier hadn’t been strange at all. It had been hopeful. Perhaps Merahn had reasons other than the purely sycophantic for being glad to see “the Lord Summoner.”