text: Gyovanth is Csirnis' second cousin or something. (Yes, that's a girl's name in most universes, too; I guess that good style on Chiriact is to give girl's names to boys.) He's approximately as beautiful as Csirnis: eyes like sapphires, eight wide crescent-moon horns (two of them real), a gleaming silver crest, silvery diamond-shaped scales, claws like scimitars of ice. He moves like Csirnis too: every wing-twitch and neck-bend is an elegant gesture in the grand dance that is his life. His parents own a continent, and more dragons are subordinate to them than live on all of Mhel. So Roroku got exactly what she came to Chiriact to find.
  
  As the wedding-grounds came into sight, Roroku stopped in midair, folding her wings and levitating. "I don't think I'm invited," she said.
  
  "Of course you're invited. What, do you need to be asked personally to come to a wedding?" hissed Gyovanth. "You know the celebrants and their families. And as my wife, you are even related to one of the celebrants." As if a prince of Chiriact, however much self-exiled he might be, could possibly lose to dragons of Mhel.
  
  "The others must still hate me," said Roroku.
  
  "You are a dragon. At least you look like one. You can endure a little hatred. You will endure a little hatred."
  
  "What if they attack me?" whined Roroku.
  
  "Don't be an arrogant little snake, Roroku," snapped Gyovanth. "Do you think that my cousin will permit his wedding day to be ruined over you?"
  
  Roroku kept her wings firmly folded. "...maybe afterwards?"
  
  Gyovanth circled around her in the air. "Don't be more of a coward than you have to be, Roroku. What would you do if some actual danger appeared, I wonder? Perhaps an aged mhelvul nun, attacking you with archaic religious philosophies and a blunt guisarme?"
  
  Roroku snapped at her husband's wingtip, but he glided out of her reach without bothering to notice the strike. "You don't need to be so insulting!"
  
  "And you do not need to be so incompetent! You are representing Chiriact now! The behavior that might suffice for a dragon of Mhel is greatly inadequate!" snarled Gyovanth. By this time, they had collected an audience of a dozen dragons, all of whom took great glee in repeating this story to me, Arilash, and anyone else who might perhaps be interested or couldn't get away fast enough.
  
  "I'm not from Chiriact!" whined Roroku.
  
  "That has become abundantly clear," said Gyovanth in a voice as sharp and icy as his claws. "Your tutor has noted that you are the worst student she has ever taught. You will have to apply yourself with far greater vigor to train the Mhel-ness out of you!"
  
  Roroku howled, and turned tail and flew away from the wedding. Gyovanth caught up with her in seven flaps, fouled her wings with a quick twist of his tail, and by the strength of his body and power of his levitation spells dragged her back towards the grounds. "How many public humiliations are you eager to provide for yourself, Roroku? In this party you could be an obscure married acquaintance of the families — or you could be the center of attention due to the puerility and rudeness of your behavior. In the latter case, I should be ashamed to be associated with you. Yet again." Roroku struggled and mumbled something that my informants did not catch. "Now, will you come quietly and behave decently?"
  
  "I will, Gyovanth," moaned Roroku, sounding defeated.
  
  Addendum: Roroku was perfectly civil to everyone at the actual wedding. She was obviously treating it as a situation be endured rather than enjoyed — which is how many of the guests were treating her presence there. Gyovanth was polite and elegant and glittery, and quite friendly with Csirnis.
  
  Roroku had come in a very definitive last place in her mating flight. This is no great surprise: the dragonesses of Chiriact get the same sort of intense tutoring that the drakes do. She had sprung into competition with two female versions of Csirnis — or, rather, two such who had no particular reason to be conciliatory or in any way kind to her. She did have her choice of four males at the end, of course, and picked the one of highest status because that is what one does when one does not know any better. Gyovanth was perhaps somewhat pleased to be married — he did get a huge estate from his parents — but he did take it upon himself to mold his new wife into a dragoness suitable for Chiriact. He has not yet succeeded, it seems.