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The Starting Island
Tavi had swallowed their starting number. Not the number itself, which was painted on his saddle, but the little paper slip that told them where to stand. "It looked like the biscuit," he said. Mira looked at the actual biscuit in her hand. "It had corners." "So does that biscuit." This was true, and a poor beginning to her first Cloud Race.
Mira was twelve, with a long dark braid that kept catching under the collar of her coral flight jacket. She pushed her cream goggles onto her forehead and scratched Tavi between his rounded purple horns. His teal scales shone; his amber wings were folded almost tidily. Almost, because one tip was in somebody else's breakfast. Above them, the green islands of Luma Reach hung in white clouds, and enormous brass windgates turned between the gardens.
"Number seven!" Ivo hurried over, orange vest flapping. Her eleven-year-old friend had dark-brown skin, round glasses and the expression of someone entrusted with an extremely important secret. "I've memorised the starting order. Also, Pella is letting me use the commentary horn." "Briefly," called Pella, the race announcer. "She keeps adding that," Ivo whispered.
At the next space stood Vela, thirteen, in a cobalt jacket. Her short dark curls barely moved when her silver-grey dragon shook out his violet wings. "Kest only eats the numbers of racers he intends to beat," she said. Mira couldn't decide whether to laugh. Tavi solved that by saying, "I've started with myself. Very ambitious." Vela grinned, then turned towards the gates. She was not waiting to be liked. She was waiting to win.