Already Gone
By Aris Merquoni

--=_=--

	o/~ And I'm aaaallllready gone / And I'm feeeeeeeelin' 
	strong / I will siiiiiing this victory song / 'Cause I'm 
	aaaallllready gone! o/~
                      -- Already Gone, the Eagles
--=_=--

	I stretched out on my bunk, staring at the words on the 
page of Sun-Runner's Fire.
	"Sioned, I've said this time and again and you never seem 
to hear it. Ianthe had the bearing of him, but he's your son, not 
hers."
	She said nothing, merely stared down at her hands.
	"If you didn't believe that, you never would have taken 
him from Feruche that night."
	I set the book down. The words were starting to swim 
again, and I was still stuck on page 261. I pinched the bridge of 
my nose, then looked up.
	There was a cat sitting on the end of my bed.
	I blinked. The cat blinked back. It was completely black, 
except that when it raised a foreleg to clean it, the fur 
covering the paw was blood-red. Like blood.
	Or Fire...
	"Tangaloor Firefoot," I said gravely.
	The cat grinned at me, then leaped off the bed and 
twitched his tail. I frowned. He reached up with a paw and batted 
my hand.
	I looked down. Three circles of gold glittered up at me 
from my fingers.
	Suddenly I felt like an idiot. "Oh, *duh,* I said out 
loud, and took the rings off to tap them together.
	8-1-8, the Kzinti version of SOS. Well, not really. I 
tapped it in quickly, remembering the time Tee and I had spent 
learning the rather useless code during training. There was a 
flash, and I felt fire run through my veins. "Thank you, 
Firefoot!" I said heartily.
	I heard a murmured "You're welcome," but I was out the 
door first. There was a cliff not too far away that I could 
easily catch some air from. Riding a dragon in flight is fun, 
yes... but it's *nothing* next to *being* one.
--=_END_=--