Chapter Text
He had ridden dragons before, but nothing greater than mid-sized couriers, and only for short sprints, commissioned as a temporary guide for aviators ferrying orders in Madras or Calcutta. Despite that he knew it hardly made much difference hundreds of feet up in the air whether he was on a dragon just larger than a horse or on a heavyweight like Temeraire, the experience of it was yet foreign enough that even he could not entirely mask his wonder.
Or perhaps, it was more the sights that captured his fascination, the novelty of seeing familiar places from a wholly new vantage point. From above, Xi’an appeared as a chessboard, the old capital structured as a well-ordered grid, multicolored lanterns illuminating each square, with tall imposing walls to frame the entirety. Wuwei was a city of crossroads, paths tangled like a web, thin filaments reaching out north to Yinchuan, east to Lanzhou, or to the west, to Xining and the desert beyond. Dunhuang, a great oasis curved on the banks of a crescent-shaped lake, was a shock of verdant colour against the dull brown of the endless dunes.
One morning, when Temeraire and Laurence had taken Tharkay aloft to survey ahead of their party, he saw before him the wide expanse of the Taklamakan, stretching for miles and miles until the sands met the foot of the Tian Shan. A shimmering haze outlined the distant horizon, so that the deep blue of the skies and the mountains seemed nearly to float above the desert—a clear demarcation of where the earth ended and the heavens began.
“Mr. Tharkay, are you alright?” a voice asked behind him, and a hand on his shoulder gently brought him out of his reverie. He turned to Laurence, who beheld him with an expression of curiosity and concern, realising only lately that he’d been quiet, moreso than his usual, enough that the aviator had taken note.
Tharkay gave a brief nod. “Yes, Captain. I have just—” he paused, in some effort to find the words. “I have never seen the Taklamakan from the sky before.”
Laurence considered the desert before them, and the far-flung mountains. “Yes, it is quite a sight.”
Tharkay paused, then said, “I suppose such views are commonplace for you, with all the time you spend on dragonback.”
“On the contrary,” Laurence replied, his voice low and contemplative, “I do not think I have ever seen such a beautiful, yet desolate place—as though loneliness itself had taken form. The only place I would say could compare,” he continued, “is the open ocean,” and Tharkay did not think he imagined it, the note of wistfulness in his voice.