Dolanna had promised to fix that. The Faerie's games with Tarrin kept him in a state of almost perpetual anger, and that was causing everyone around him to suffer. Everyone but Sarraya was paying for her games, and they were all getting just a little put out with her. Tarrin had no idea what wild notion Sarraya contracted to start playing pranks on him, but just knowing that Dolanna was going to put a stop to it made him feel much better.

It was such a wonderful day. Tarrin closed his eyes and soaked up the summer sunshine, letting the sound of the creaking ropes and the shifting sails meld with the subtle shifting of the wood. The smells of the sea and the ship danced inside his nose, smells of wood and hemp and canvas, salt and water with a hint of tar, and the scents of the humans in the rigging as they adjusted one of the sails to better catch the wind. There was also the scent of the lookout, one of the acrobats, who sat in the crow's nest not far from him to keep an eye out for ships and other potential hazards. The angle of the wind brought the smell of the iron in the manacles to his nose, as well as the strange smell of the black metal of his amulet.

Thinking of the amulet made him think of Keritanima. She was on the way back to Wikuna, probably with some very unpleasant plans for her father. He missed his clever little sister a great deal, missed her wit and her toothy grins, her cute little jokes and the calm presence of her. He wanted her to come back, but he knew that she had something that she had to do first. There was no telling what evil schemes she had concocted for her father, but if he knew her, they'd be very thorough ones. Keritanima hated her father with a passion that was nearly religious fervor, and his attack on her, his injuring of Tarrin and kidnapping, had absolutely enraged his intelligent sister. That much was easy to tell, with what he knew of her and how she sounded when the spoke to her some rides ago. He knew she'd deal with her father and be back as soon as she could but it didn't make her not being here any easier on him. Keritanima was a very important part of his life, and not having her there with him brought to him the most curious sense of loss. It was almost as bad as when he left Aldreth, or worried that his parents would reject him after he had been turned Were. But there was nothing he could do about it. She would come back when she would come back, and all he could do was wait for her. Just knowing that he could speak to her was a comfort, but hearing her voice without her being with him, without the scent of her reassuring him she was there, was curiously painful. Close enough to communicate yet not close enough to feel she was there, it felt like some cruel joke to him, and he actually preferred not talking to her unless it was necessary. Hearing her voice just made it that much worse.

The fluttering of wings made his ears turn towards the sound, and the woody smell of Sarraya touched his nose. He opened his eyes to see the blue-skinned sprite, with her multicolored chitinous wings, land lightly on the spar in front of him. She was so very tiny. He could never get over that, no matter how many times he saw her. She brushed her auburn hair out of her face absently and sat down on the spar, looking down. She was quiet, and that told him more or less why she was there.

"Who did you outrage this time?" he asked with only mild curiosity.

"Renoit has no sense of humor," the sprite fumed.

"No. Renoit doesn't have your sense of humor. I don't think anyone on this ship appreciates the things you do."

"I didn't come up here to be lectured," she flared.

"You came up here to get away from Renoit," he said with calm logic. "Anyway, let me show you how we feel after one of your pranks."

And with that, his tail struck over his head like a cobra, the tip smacking her squarely in the belly. She was carried forth with his tail like a leaf blowing in the wind, and it knocked her off the spar.

It took her nearly thirty spans to gain control of her fall. She stopped tumbling and managed to pull out of her freefall, then flitted between ropes and around jibs and landed back on the spar, out of the reach of his tail. She put her hands on her tiny hips and glared at him. "I have half a mind to get you for that, Tarrin!" she shouted in her high-pitched, piping voice.

"Renoit has a whole mind to get you for what you did to him, Sarraya. If you get me, then it's only fair that he gets you."

"But that wasn't funny!"

"Really? I thought it was very funny," Tarrin said in a low voice, staring at her. "Who doesn't have a sense of humor now?"

"No sense of humor at all!" Sarraya growled as her wings began beating at the air, making that peculiar rhythmic buzzing sound, and she flew over to a spar on the foremast.

Tarrin settled back down and closed his eyes, his tail swatting at something that touched his back before returning to rest.

Things were different now, different but the same. Meeting the other side of his family had shown him things about himself, but so far they were things that he couldn't change, couldn't conquer. He didn't fit in with them anyway. He was turned, not born Were, and that gave him a fundamentally different personality than them. To him, the others were strange, even a little worrisome. He saw things through eyes that had once been another species, and even now the memories of his human life influenced what he saw. The Cat was a relatively new resident inside him, and even though he'd come to terms with it, it couldn't help but still be influenced by what had always been there. He wasn't the same person that left Aldreth anymore. He wasn't even the same person that left Suld. Time and events had forced him to change to adapt, forced him to change or risk being driven insane by his own instincts. He could reconcile that, but there were times when it saddened him. Being feral was a self-imposed prison, Mist had shown him that. He was a prisoner of his own fear, and knowing it was fear made him angry and easy to set off. There was alot of life out there he was missing simply because he couldn't bring himself to associate with strangers, alot of things he could learn if only he could bring himself to talk to people. But there was no changing it. He was restricted to those few people that he trusted, and he relied on them in ways that made him feel more of a pet than a sentient being.

But it was water under the bridge. He looked down at the jugglers, two young human men from Shace who had been born and raised in this circus. There were other children in the circus, but they had been left in Dayise with some of the performers, because Renoit wouldn't risk them in the long and dangerous journey to Arak, nor would he expose them to the slavers and kidnappers that preyed on children who were notorious in the capital city. Outlanders were always at risk in Dala Yar Arak, and the younger they were, the better. The number and wide racial range of slaves one owned was a symbol of status among the Arakites, and non-human slaves were especially prized. From what Dolanna told him, there were a large number of Goblinoids serving as slaves in Arak, and the Arakites constanty sought to invade the desert and steal Selani children. This they did with the utmost caution, for fear that a single mistake would bring the entirety of the Selani race sweeping over Saranam to attack Arak once again.

They had to go to a cesspool like that and perform, entertain the people, while they looked for the Book of Ages. Just thinking about that worried him. Dala Yar Arak was the largest city in the world, and it would make the task nearly impossible. There were countless people with the resources to own a rare book like that, and that was just assuming someone knew they had it. It could be hidden behind a loose stone in a poor man's hovel, for all they knew. It would be a very dangerous place for both him and Allia, probably for Camara Tal as well, because they were all so blatantly exotic.