Not Quite a Free Fall

Saddling a monkey was never a simple task, the beasts had been taken from the wild only eighty years prior, the blink of an eye in regards to domestication. Training was extensive in both use of saddle and command of the monkey, and each airmin was saddled with only her own monkey. Monkeys were wierd that way, they gave their trust over to only one she-elf, ever.

The squadron had begun with two wings of sixteen elves a piece. Joran was Wyng'Komandre and all took her orders. She had seen in the last three minutes the deaths of three of her airmin, with the previous seven losses that made her squadron at less than fifty percent. Her own death would doom the whole mission. That was not acceptable.

Only a handful of dragons remained but the sky was still full of firestreams and bombasts. She wasn't sure what had hit her monkey, but she had to regain control. She heaved at the left strap and yanked at the rear slip. She kept hearing a strange sound, but she ignored it, she had too much to think about, to much to act on or else she would perish. Pushing at the forward yar she tickled the right tee, but this still had little effect. The strange sound only increased but she pushed it out of her head. Three fingers were working the base tiff while her left hand had the bladder in full clasp. Then she was thwacked in the back of the head!

The monkey had hit her with one of its free tails. And that strange noise that Joran had been ignoring was the monkey itself...it had been screaming!

"Krap!" she said, even as she saw that her spit-spurting free-fall was taking her directly towards the open maw of a gold-ribbed skullcrusher, the species tyranus draconis amarilos.

1. Joran dies a horrible death (described in terrifying 3-D detail!)
2. The dragon is taken by surprise... (shades of deus ex machina?)
3. The monkey jettisons Joran to protect its own hide (no one was gonna make a banana outta this monkey, as the saying goes)

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