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Fly High	By : IcarusComplex Category: 1 through F > Dinotopia Views: 1455 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own any incarnation of Dinotopia (book, miniseries, TV series); James Gurney does. Similarly, I don't own characters, places, or a dinosaur, and I make no money from this. At all.

Chapter List
- 1-Runaway
- 2-Tomorrow
- 3-Luck
- 4-Elf
- 5-Joke
- 6-Secret
- 1
- 2
Post-Miniseries, does not follow the chronology of the (mostly non-canonical anyway) TV series.
Written in part of a valiant effort to finish a 100 Themes I'm no longer interested in.

31 -- Runaway

After the Scotts’ return from the world beneath, David had held every intention of attempting to resume normal Dinotopian life. He was going to introduce their father to the dinosaur citizens, coach him through the adjustment period like David wished someone had coached him, make up with Karl – almost dying together kind of put their little brotherly scraps into perspective – apologise to Marion for acting so boorishly…
One step into Zippeau’s house that afternoon threw all those plans out the window.
David had been in the library, picking up an annotated copy of a biography of Gideon Altair for Romana. The library in Canyon City held a great number of scrolls but the Library of Waterfall City was still the most extensive book repository this side of the Rainy Basin. Bouncing the scroll in a leather travel tube, the Skybax rider weaved through the afternoon chaos with good-natured haste. The luxuriant splashes of colour adorning Dinotopian clothing – gold, turquoise, royal purple, viridian, ruby – no longer dazzled him the way they once had. Nor did the tantalising scents of spice and grilled nuts wafting on the breeze with the sweetness of jasmine and orange blossoms from the arbours lead him astray to the street vendors as they once might have.
No, he was focused. Marion had agreed to take a walk by the canal with him this afternoon, and David intended to tell her he was sorry for the way things transpired in Canyon City and make amends. He’d been avoiding it all week. Surely it was time to stop running.
It was a perfect afternoon for it: warm and mellow, with a light wind down the river scouring the edge off the late sun. Karl was upriver overnight fishing with their father. Even Zippeau would be at the library until late; the rediscovery of multiple entrances to the World Beneath and the Council’s public acknowledgement of a need for more sunstones had kept him extremely busy for the last week. Everything was in place.
About to set the scroll down on the sideboard, David drew up short. Zippeau’s house was supposed to be empty. He frowned and cocked his head. Had he imagined--?
Another stifled sound. Definitely from the bedroom he had shared with Karl. Twenty-six might be here. Zippeau hadn’t mentioned if Karl took her with him or not. Setting the scroll down, David padded down the hallway to the door. It was slightly ajar. It crossed his mind to call out, but something held him back.
The Skybax rider stepped up to the crack and peered in. Stone hands seized his ribcage. Squeezing what they found there to pulp, they collapsed under their own weight and fell, taking out the bottom of his stomach as they went. Another breathy sound half giggle half sigh. They fitted together so neatly atop the blankets, his brother and his friend. Perfect opposites: knees and foreheads touching; fingertips tracing a delicate wrist; bare feet pale against the dark fuzz of Karl’s comforter.
David turned on his heel and walked away. He barely remembered to take the scroll from the table; its smooth tube thumped rhythmically against his side as he strode towards the Rookery, nodding jerkily at passersby like an automaton. Marion must have arrived early. Karl must have given up on fishing, or forgotten something and returned for it. When Marion rang the doorbell, Karl must have answered.
David swerved from the path of a Chasmosaur deep in conversation with a Chandaran trader. If they shot him curious, offended looks, he didn’t notice. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Alone, Karl and Marion would have had time to talk. Karl would have used his irrepressible charm: that charm that soothed angry fathers, deceived teachers, and seduced ex-girlfriends back into his arms. It made David sick how easy Karl got everything. After the World Beneath, he’d thought Karl had found something that could change him. David thought he himself had changed; he thought after everything they’d been through together, he could finally understand Karl. He could learn to forgive his brother past transgressions and overlook his faults.
As David now knew, that was a crock of naïve horseshit. Karl would never change. Marion would never see him for what he truly was. And David – for all his good intentions – couldn’t wrap his mind around the very idea of forgiving Karl for being a lying, cheating, manipulative prick. Or Marion, for falling for Karl’s act, while being so righteously high-and-mighty about her virtues.
He was heartily sick of both of them. The sun could come and go a thousand times before he would be happy to set eyes on either of them again—that, and a thousand times again.
Freefall would be glad of a bout of strenuous exercise. David felt his chest – as weighty as if his very bones had been wrought of iron – lighten at the thought of climbing on the pteranadon’s back and just… going. Leaving Waterfall City, tonight, now, and never coming back. He couldn’t do that, not with his father here, but there was nothing to stop him from returning to Canyon City right now. All of his things were in a dormitory bunk in the Rookery, and he was only in Waterfall City at all because Mayor Waldo had petitioned the Skybax Corps to allow one of the Heroes of Dinotopia a few days to relax and recoup his strength, and David had gratefully accepted.
Entering the Sauropod Dwelling through the cavernous main doors, the rider cut across the compass rose deeply graven into the stone floor to a narrow flight of stairs that would bypass the public floors and take him directly up to the Rookery. He took the steps two at a time. By the time he reached the Skybax Corps’ Waterfall City headquarters, he was already miles ahead of himself, seeing the ground slip away behind Freefall’s mighty wingstroke in his mind’s eye. He stopped only briefly to leave a message at the administration desk for his father (or whoever should come looking) that he had returned to Canyon City. A second brief stop by the dormitories to collect his kit, and then it was straight up to the roosts. He wasn’t running away. He wasn’t. It was simply time for him to return to work.
He was a citizen of Dinotopia now and more than that, a Skybax Rider. It was only to be expected that he do his part in the service of the people who had taken him in when all other rejected him. Freefall screeched a saurian joy when the human climbed into his roost.
David Scott, Skybax Rider Cadet, First Year, left Waterfall City and flew east in all haste, abruptly, and without saying goodbye.

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I have no idea where the Skybax roost while in Waterfall City. I have a street map around here somewhere, but I can't for the life of me find it. If someone knows where/what it is actually called, please do enlighten me.
EDIT: I now have the three original books (although none of the text-only ones, so if some canon writer has designated a Skybax roost in Waterfall city, I still don't know about it) so I'm putting your friendly neighbourhood Bax-cote in the centre tower of the Sauropod Dwelling (that big hulking rectangle at the top of the The World Beneath map of Waterfall City, at the northern edge of the city.)
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Fly High

31 -- Runaway