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Frem and Talo wandered around Cielo Aerie on Catena Isle and hoped they would be taken seriously. As men, for one thing, they were already looked upon as almost second-class people. The females of the Aerie were always considered more important. Well, no one told them otherwise, either.

Then, at long last, Forest Myrice's clutch began to hatch. Up in the nest area, they shivered and clutched their hands around their arms. It was quite cold, and very windy. Both of them knew that this would be best for the hatchlings - they needed to know their element, and their element was the wind.

A pretty little rust colored hatchling bonded first, and then one big egg broke with force. A golden hatchling showed off his beak and talons, and swept out into the nest area. He stepped with pride and a great sense of surety that Talo was going to be his bond. But then - his paw landed right on a sharp shell! He yelped and whined, tumbling to his side until Talobantariel came up to him. He took the shard from the kitten's little paw, and helped him stand back up.

With love, and a great puffing of his now dry feathers, the gold announced, "I'm Magnaurux! The gold and the great!"

"I'm Talobantariel, you can call me Talo." He said with gleaming black eyes. Right then, a speckled egg broke up and showed off a splay of blue feathers. The kitten climbed out of his shell, and continued to preen his feathers until he spotted the candidates for the nest.

It was with the gusting winds that the pair of fledgling gryphons and their bonds were to make their first flight. Neither young man nor pair of gryphs were really looking forward to this. But every gryph has to leave the nest sometime.

"It will give us the freedom to check out the others, see how they're doing," Frem reminded Talobantariel. The gryph's wings had grown considerably, and Talo's golden Magnaurux had also begun to show that he was a spotted variety.

Plumaex spread his wings, and his nest brother did likewise. They were challenging each other, while the rest of the small nest looked on. Magnaurux was the first into the air, but Plumaex seemed to have a better grasp of how to fly. It might have been the fact that hidden among his talents was the air magic that some gryphs performed. Mag's water magic wasn't going to help him up here, now was it?

"Did you see that? He looked great!" Frem laughed. "Mag's got a long way to go before he's as graceful as Plumaex in the air."

"Ahh, whatever," Talo laughed. "He'll always be bigger and stronger."

"Big and strong doesn't always win a female's heart," one of the Nest mothers reminded him, but the young pair of men didn't think it mattered all that much. Right at the moment, both their fledges were losing their balance on a particularly big wind gust, and would be needing some dusting off when they landed. If they came in to land, that is.

"Your spots are all grown in," Talobantariel said to his beautiful spotted-gold. "Magnaurux."

You sound so wistful, or something. The gryphon purred.

"I am. Sometime soon we're going to have to find our friends."

Does that make you sad?

"No - no, not sad, it's just that I think we're all going to have to figure out what we're going to do with ourselves."

"Ah, Tal, it's nothing," Frem said, placing his hand on his friend's shoulder. His big blue Plumeax nipped at Mag's wingtip and they took off into the sky to play.

"We'll find them easily," Frem added, while watching their gryphons. "Then, maybe, we'll head back to Paniya and see if they need a gryphon-seadragon-dragon team. Somewhere."

Talo laughed, and eventually, they set off to locate their friends - the Black Eyed Five Minus One.