Strachana by Judy Colella (i like reading books .txt) 📕

that the sound was coming from her own movement. She looked down again, this time bending her neck to see her own front, and instead of a pretty blue gown, she saw scales. Gleaming, perfectly-pointed, silver scales. She raised her head and found the magnificent true-form version of I’gra-Nar standing in majesty before her, his wide mouth in a dragon-smile.

“Yesss! Oh, Vorel, yesss!!”

She swallowed hard. “I – I…shshsiffftttedd?!”

He nodded.

At this juncture, speech was going to be rough, she discovered, and for a while could only speak the gutturals and rasps of the draconic tongue with which she’d been raised with harsh gratings. But after a while she adapted, and began to sound like other dragons when in conversation with one another. She flapped her wings a little, afraid to move them too much for fear of finding herself aloft, and took a step closer to I’gra-Nar. “This is right, then?”

“It is, my wonderful Vorel. I never thought I would meet anyone like you, but now that I have, I am in awe. I – I also believe I am…in love.” He ducked his head.

She smiled at his back-curved horns, finding them adorable, not that she’d ever call them that to his face. “Would I be expecting too much, then, to consider the possibility of taking you as my consort?”

His head snapped up. “Would you? Oh, Vorel, I’ve never known another like you – even the full-bloods are not as desirable as you! I’ve met many, and enjoyed many a dalliance, but never with any that display the integrity, good-will, and virtuous nature you have in such vast abundance without even realizing it…I’m babbling.” He chuckled. “Forgive me. You asked a simple question and I carried on at length – my simple answer is yes. I would, in fact, languish without you.”

She came closer still and nuzzled against his throat, her sensitive nostrils inhaling his rain-scent with unabashed delight. “I do believe I am in love also, dear I’gra-Nar.”

As his joyful sigh echoed throughout the cave, Neri and Zela watched the young couple with satisfaction from the other side.

“Looks like we did well, husband.”

He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her close. “Looks like we did.  I am content.”

Zela nodded, but a moment later her expression changed. “But now,” she said, frowning, “I really think you need to go take care of your son, who I have a feeling is outside practicing his own shifting. And if what he showed us before is any indication, there’s a good chance he’ll explode unless you guide him.”

He gave her a suspicious look – was that a gleam of amusement he was detecting in her eyes? “I, er, suppose helping him would indeed be wise.” He looked at his daughter again, who had tucked her head completely under I’gra-Nar’s and was rubbing it gently against his throat. “In the meantime, wife, we’d better see about getting those two their own cave – and quickly!” He contained a laugh, kissed his wife on the head, and went out to the meadow.

If J’nah wasn’t actually going to blow himself up, he was certainly doing an alarming imitation of it. When Neri found the boy, he was at the purple-faced stage, his body swelling in a most bizarre way, but before his father reached him, the shift became complete. Giving himself a full-body shake, he expelled a blast of icy air and rested back on his haunches.

“Very good,” said Neri, relieved. “But I think we should work on the first part a little, don’t you think?”

J’nah nodded, tucking his wings in more tightly. “I’m trying too hard, aren’t I.”

“You are, and if you keep it up, you might rupture something.”

“So how do I shift – blessed showers of snow! Is that Vorel?” He’d turned at the familiar thunder of dragon-tread behind him and stared in shock at the two huge silvers emerging from the mouth of the cave.

“And I’gra-Nar.”

“But – but how did she – I mean, she’s never even tried to shift before, as far as I know!”

“Her consort helped her,” said Neri, noticing how beautiful the two of them looked together in the sunlight. “Besides, she’s a bit older than you.”

“So?”

“So her abilities have been developing even though she’s mainly ignored them until now. That made it very easy for her to shift. She was ready.”

“Huh. Bet she didn’t feel like her head was about to fly off without the rest of her.”

Neri burst out laughing, eliciting a glare from his son. “Is that how you felt?”

“Oh, you can laugh, Father! After all, you don’t have to do anything more than…wait. What, exactly, do you do when you shift? What thoughts do you have? Because honestly, all you ever told me was to picture this, stand a certain way, breathe like that, but never said how you do it.”

“That’s because I don’t have to do much at all. Dragons have a lot of magic in them, a magic that increases with age.” He came to sit beside J’nah, and both continued watching the happy new couple.

“Does that mean you don’t have to think about it?”

“Not much. I simply imagine what shape I wish to take, and I change.”

“Nice. Will I ever be able to do that?”

“Perhaps.”

They sighed in tandem, but then further conversation was swallowed by an involuntary rush of wonder as Vorel stepped away from I’gra-Nar, opened her silver-blue wings that displayed an unusual, lovely opalescence, and with a graceful downward sweep, winged herself into the sky. A moment later, her consort followed, and they sped off across the mountains.

J’nah was speechless, Neri filled with pride, and at the cave’s opening, the relatively tiny figure of Zela looked upward, one hand shading her eyes. Without realizing it, they were wondering at the same time if they’d see those two again any time soon.

 

****

 

Scritchity. Scritch. Scritchscratchscritchscritch…

“Fleck!”

“Master Welan?”

The scribe forced a friendly smile. “I have a very important job for you!”

Fleck glanced down at the unfinished page, then back at his mentor, this behavior wordlessly demanding, “More important that this?”

“I need some scrolls delivered that are of great importance to His Lordship, and I dare not entrust them to just anybody.” There, thought Welan, that sounds plausible. At this point, and in addition to his need to speak privately with Kavin, he’d say almost anything to get the young apprentice to stop dragging his quill across the parchment. Kavin had been right –

“Of course, Master Welan.” Fleck put his pen down, blew gently on the page to make sure the ink wasn’t going to run, and stood up. He shot a smug look at Kavin, who hadn’t bothered to look up at all and was biting the middle knuckle of his free hand for some reason.

Welan had gone to the other side of the room where he was gathering scrolls from a low shelf. He opened them, laying one upon the other, and then re-rolled the lot, secured it with a deep red ribbon, and sealed it with his ring pressed into the wax he dripped on them at the knot. “Hand me that case, will you?” he said over his shoulder, extending a hand without turning around.

Fleck grabbed the black and silver scroll case on Welan’s desk, and quickly handed it over.

The scribe slid the scrolls inside, capped it, draped another ribbon over the top, sealed it on two sides, and passed it with a flourish to the acne-faced boy. “Stop nowhere along the way, Fleck. This must be put into the hands of Lord Gravnel’s Chief Steward without delay. No one else, you hear me? Not one of the pages, only Steward Bagnor. And I want my case back. I’m trusting you, boy. Don’t let me down.” He looked very grave.

“Yes, Master Welan!” The boy bowed deeply, cast another look – a snide one this time – at his fellow apprentice (who was looking back now), and went out. Welan’s cottage wasn’t that far from the center of the town, but he hurried nonetheless, his entire being overflowing with self-importance.

Welan watched Fleck bustle down the path, Kavin having joined him at the window. As soon as the boy disappeared around the hedge at the end of the property, the two looked at each other in silence for a split second, then burst out laughing.

“My God!” Welan exclaimed, leaning back weakly against the sill and wiping his eyes. “I honestly didn’t think I could keep a straight face!”

Kavin continued to guffaw for a few more moments, then drew in a long, shaky breath. “I had to bite my finger so hard it almost bled!” He grinned and went back to his desk. “By the way, what were those scrolls you gave him?”

“What? Oh, that.” He waved a dismissive hand.  “Bagnor has been pestering me for some writings about inventory organization I told him I had. Friend of mine got them from his father’s steward. They’re actually pretty helpful. Hardly state secrets, though.”

Chuckling, Kavin shook his head. “Did you see the look on his face when you told him you couldn’t entrust them to, er, ‘just anybody,’ I think you said? Ha! I thought he was going to burst out of his shirt!”

“Indeed. I have to say, though, that another minute of his infernal scratching and I’d have thrown my inkwell at his head!”

“Told you.”

“You did. Of course, you’re normally working in the castle in another room, so I had no idea how bad it was.”

“Hmm.” Kavin stretched. “I told him to try writing more smoothly, and at first he seemed to be doing it well, but then…” He shrugged. “Guess he forgot or something, or couldn’t change his habits that soon.” He picked up his quill and bent over the page, preparing to continue his work.

“Hold on, my boy. There’s another reason I tossed the young boil out like that.”

Kavin frowned. “Is everything all right, sir?”

“Fine. It involves the man who visited us yesterday at the castle.”

“Seemed nice enough – weird name, though.”

“Yes. It means ‘father’.”

“In what tongue?”

Welan hesitated only for a second. “Draconic.”

“Dra…wait, what? But that’s – I mean, only, uh, never mind.” He looked away. “What about him?”

“He’s my son-in-law.”

Kavin turned back, the utter confusion on his face nearly as comical as Fleck’s pomposity. “Then why did you speak to him as if he was merely an acquaintance?”

“He was actually there to see you. Wanted to know if you were really as good a friend as his son said you were.”

“His son?”

“J’nah.”

Kavin gaped. He gulped. He did a little extra thinking and put a few things together. “He’s a – a – a – ”

“Silver dragons can shape-shift at will. His wife – my daughter – is human, of course, and their two children, J’nah and Vorel, seem to think you’re a wonderful person. Said you spent the night in their cave before coming into town. Apparently my grandchildren were quite impressed with you, Kavin.”

Kavin had gone pale. Before continuing, Welan gently guided him to a chair and told him to please sit. “And before you ask,” said the scribe, going to the other side of the room to scoop a tankard of water from the half-full rain barrel he’d brought in earlier, “I had no idea you’d met them when I took you on. Neri told me at the castle, after you’d gone back to work.” He handed the young man the tankard and told him to drink.

“N-Neri?”

“Yes. That’s Opsola’s real name. Now if you’re wondering how he knew you’d been there, it wasn’t because the kids told him; dragons have extraordinarily acute senses, and we humans smell very…distinct, he tells me. So he knew that way, and of course when he asked them about it, they didn’t lie. Are you feeling any better?”

Kavin nodded and handed back the tankard. “Thank you. Yes. So why did he – you say his actual name is Neri?”

“That’s part of it. The rest is long and difficult to pronounce.”

“Ah. So why did he want to meet me?”

“To make sure you could be