The Dragon Knight; The Secrets of the Desert

The Secrets of the Desert (Chapter 12)

So, there is a name in here that I want to explain;

Edur --> Basque name meaning snow. It's a name, not a word. Snow in Basque is 'elurra' which is different from the Spanish 'nieve'...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“He’s a skirt-chaser, the Kingdom would be in ruins in less than a month,” I complained, folding my arms over my chest and slumping back in the chair.

“Because you would do better?” Daniel asked me incredulously as he glanced over his shoulder at me.

I glared at him, receiving a broad smile in response before he got back to his work. After I left the dining room and took the first horse that I could find out of the stables and came straight to Fullmåne. People had been surprised to see me, which was only natural given I had been gone for nearly four months. Daniel’s mother had greeted me with a warm smile and a hug before pointing me to the back of the bakery.

It was good to see Daniel again, with everything that was going on, elves and Dragon Knights and shadows, he was the normality that my life had been lacking. He had swept me up in a hug before planting me in the chair where I was sitting now. Of course he had taken the opportunity to get flour over my face and clothes but I didn’t mind; we used to have flour battles when his father still allowed me to help make the bread.

For the past two hours or so I had told my best friend all about the past four months, from the moment I left Fullmåne to the revelation in the dining room earlier. But Daniel didn’t know my cousin so I had had to dig up as many memories as I could of Nolan and tried to give him an idea of what he was like.

I hadn’t realized it before but Nolan really was nothing but a skirt-chaser. And he hadn’t been here for my birthday; I wondered why but it wasn’t like him to pass up on an opportunity to charm new girls he had never met. Then again, why did I care?

“Of course I could do it better,” I huffed, offended.

I watched him knead the dough he was making for a new batch of buns, watching the muscles of his back and shoulders work underneath his shirt the same way I had watched Robin and his friends while they fought. Although the activities weren’t even close to being similar, observing both of them felt the same to me. Both men knew what they were doing and did so with ease and grace. It was weird thinking of kneading dough as something graceful but somehow it was. Daniel didn’t hesitate in his moments, added some more flour when the dough stuck to the bench he was working on, and kept folding.

It was safe to say that when he had tried to teach me the bread didn’t come out too great but it hadn’t been terrible either. But I would always ask him if I was doing everything right and could never just chain the movements.

With sword fighting it was the same. Robin knew what he was doing, his movements smooth and one following the other without a pause. Once again, it was graceful and even more so with the grace he had naturally from being an elf. When I fought I primarily tried to keep from getting hit too badly. Aside from that I did try to win but with tricks, not with graceful swings of my blade; dragon, I wouldn’t even know how to be graceful with that dragon sword of mine. Or without it for that matter.

Daniel and I were silent for a moment while he finished and put the buns in the oven. Then he came to take a seat opposite from me and ran a hand through his dark brown hair, leaving it with plenty of flour in it. And before I could stop him, he dropped his head in his hands and sighed. When he looked up, having felt the flour on his face I burst out laughing. Soon he laughed as well and reached his hand into the bag, throwing a handful of the powder my way. I didn’t retaliate because the bag was too far away and instead laughed harder.