text: The drakes weren't so cheerful, when I got back. They were sitting in a triangle around a burning cinnamon tree, chatting or meditating quietly. I didn't want to send them out to Chevethna. I'm not sure she could cheer three of them up at once in any case. Not in the same way certainly. Only one of them gets to marry now, and him to someone far, far less impressive and desirable than Csirnis.
  
  "Did she put up much of a fight?" asked Nrararn.
  
  "Not a bit. I healed her, as if we were fighting a Caramelle," I said.
  
  "I suppose the dignity of the occasion is somewhat compromised in any case," said Csirnis. "Arilash did not prove to care that much for honor, in the end."
  
  I prowled around the fire, and embraced my drakes. "I'm sorry. I'll try to do what I can to take her place."
  
  Osoth snarled, "Your place and hers are utterly different. Our needs for reprehensible behavior and shame by association are quite satisfied. You need not exert yourself in the slightest in that regard."
  
  I shrank back. "I mean, about being a decent dragoness for you."
  
  "I am unaware that Arilash ever was decent," Osoth snapped.
  
  "I believe she is offering to copulate more," said Csirnis. "With us, I mean."
  
  "Well, yes. Sorry if I'm still a bit of a prude."
  
  "I thank you for your offer, Jyothky. I cannot fault prudery today, having seen the opposite extreme rise to icarean heights," said Osoth.
  
  "He said 'yes, thanks'," noted Nrararn. "I say 'yes, thanks' too. Because we're trying to be decent drakes, that is, not out of any particular urgent need." Which is how they smelled to my tongue too.
  
  "It's not urgent in the sense of overwhelming lust. You'll never get that from me, I don't think," I said. They all nodded. "It's urgent in the sense of, we ought to reaffirm that we're a mating flight and not a total disaster."
  
  "Not a total disaster, no. 5/9 of a disaster."
  
  "Besides, I do want my eggs to be part-fertilized. That will be important to my husband and me in some years," I pointed out. Which was calculated to say that I was going to marry one of them in the ordinary way, and hatch dragonets in the ordinary way, and never mind all the crazy things like flying off or getting killed that half the flight had done.
  
  So we got out some ghee, and some male members, and behaved as we ought. The drakes were still rather grumpy, but I did have the sense that they'd rather mate with me than go off and be violent to Arilash. Just barely.