“I will explain in a moment, but we need to act quickly before our guest wakes up.” Dad’s saying as I’m trying to distract myself with finding my mother.

            “Guest?” Comes an innocent echo from the back, Torre probably considering that his mouth seems to run a few steps ahead of his brain at times. At the question, Cazhene whipped his head back in the younger’s direction, silencing him with a low hiss. That, I actually got.

            “Be quiet.”

            “Sorry.” Torre was chattering back, firmly chastised, as Dad started barking orders.

            “Cazhene, Gaotail, I’ll need you to help me get him out of here. Runeon, Torre, start bringing in the meat.”

            “Alright.” Gaotail answered, Cazhene only giving an affirming grunt as he followed my dad out. Gaotail took longer, flashing me a look of concern as he headed out. My pseudo-older brother everyone, and right now I can’t even look him in the eye properly even though it’s kind of hard to say why. Though it’s because of this avoidance game that I catch sight of my mother in the other doorway, the one that leads upstairs and to the back rooms. It’s only for a minute, but I see glimpses of a pair of smaller silhouettes, one with gold eyes and the other with red, standing in the relative darkness of the landing. Even though Mom’s talking in an undertone, it’s clear she’s wanting both to go back to bed. Guess I did wake my siblings up after all, even if we’re one short. Though Torre tries to make something of an awkward wave, he and Runeon disappear from the room pretty quickly too.

            Kind of wishing I could hightail it out of here right now. Just kind of do what the others do when they’re playing hide-and-seek with the lot of us. It’s pretty weird, they can change the color of their scales, and blend perfectly in with rocks, dirt, trees, the side of the house. Pretty much anything. After a few times of this, we, we meaning my siblings and I, finally caught on and called it cheating seeing as we couldn’t do it too. That put a stop to that, though no matter how many times I tried to get Gaotail to teach me the trick he kept saying it would happen when I was ready, whatever that meant.

            And why was I thinking about this now? Well, it was certainly easier than thinking about what was happening at the moment, surely, but also because it would be very, very nice if I could become invisible right now. Even though I don’t think the invisibility would cover my hair. Not a lot, but a black swatch partially hanging in my eyes and going to about mid-back level. Why am I even thinking about this again?

            Oh right, I find myself thinking as Mom seems to have finished with the task of pacifying my brother and sister into going back to bed. Keep the attention away from this confusing mess that I’ve gotten myself into.

            Drawing in even more seems like a good idea as she comes back in, though as she comes near there’s the sound of footsteps in the hall. That keeps the conversation back for a few moments, as Mom’s trying to both hear and see what’s going on by standing closer to the kitchen door.

            And then suddenly there’s Dad opening it from the other side. Great. Tonight’s just wonderful, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure the Spirits are having a ‘let’s see exactly how bad we can make this for Kal’ day in wherever it is they are.

            “Kal. I would like to speak with you outside.”

            I’m pretty sure my wings just became one with the rest of me in their attempts to make me look smaller. Also, the term ‘tail between your legs’ is something I’m now intimately understanding at the moment. Still, if I stall, this is going to just get worse. Better to go with it and accept the lecture now, and the punishment later…

It could just be me starting to see things, but I could swear Dad gives Mom a look as he follows me out. Could have been some kind of covert message, could have been nothing. Why do parents have to be so weird?

***

            Something you need to know about Dad is how much he likes the great outdoors. It’s not surprising, given the fact that he’s a dragon, but it’s definitely where he’s the most relaxed. It’s something you can tell with him, and it’s really, really clear when he changes if you know how to look for it.

            We don’t go that far away from the house, but enough that the lights are only just illuminating the area. Not that it really matters. The moon’s close to being full and that’s all the light Dad and I need to see each other by. It’s quiet for a few minutes before he actually changes, and out of habit I back up to give him a little room. His tail and wings are the first things to push out of their respective spots on his shoulders and spine, and he goes from a tall human to a much larger figure, almost reminding me of a bear for a moment as he thumps down on all fours. His neck extends, the skin suddenly spotted with black and gold scales, the brightness of the gold focused in a strip that runs from nose to tail, both now much longer and running to at least half the length of the house. Horns start to poke out of his skull, the hair retracting only to allow more room for the scales and spines. By the time he’s done, I have to crane my head a bit in order to look right up into his face.

            And he’s looking back. It could just be me, but he doesn’t entirely seem too sure of what he’s doing right now either. Again with because of the ‘tells’, as Mom calls them. His wings are held completely still and almost rigid, almost looking more like wood or stone than anything flight-worthy. His ears—which Mom says look like seashells, though I’ve never seen one so I can’t say if she’s right or not—are slightly downturned, and he’s hunching down more than he does ordinarily. I wonder if he realizes…

            “Kal.” He rumbles, making me jump a bit and snapping me out of my thoughts. No fair, I was distracting myself from the upcoming lecture pretty well there…

            “Y-Yeah?”

            Surprisingly, he settled down into a sort of lying down position, on his side and curled sort of like the crescent moon. It was something I recognized; a game we had played when I was really little. He’d bring me out here and I’d sit on his front forelimb, pointing out various landmarks and he would have to name them, and I’d get to make up a story about how things were in that forest over the next hill, or that tall foothill off to the west of our house. I remember some pretty good ones, like when I said that the squirrel lords owned the foothills and were fighting over nuts with the mole-people of the forest. Dad tried to get me to hurry through peace talks because it was late and starting to get dark out, but even with the rushing at the end I think it was one of the best nights I’d ever had out.

            And I definitely know he’s picked this sort of a position on purpose, as I’ve automatically clambered up onto his forelimb like the good old days, and now I’m kind of at one heck of a standstill seeing as you know what, I have next to no idea of what to do now that I’m pretty much falling back into being a kid again. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

            A gusty sigh stops that line of thought, and though I don’t look up I know exactly where it came from. Dad. Maybe he’s even angrier than Mom about this…

            “Am I in trouble?” I blurt out before I can stop panicking. Immediately that puts the anxiety on hold, thankfully, but really only so that sheer embarrassment can take its place instead. Tell me I didn’t just say that out loud…

            Another sigh. Great, now I’m definitely going to get yelled at…

            “Yes, and no.”

            ….What? Turning my head to look him in the face proper and now very confused, I’m actually sort of relieved to see that he doesn’t look actively angry. ‘Course, that doesn’t mean I’m out of the woods yet, but hey, it’s better than worrying.

            I swear he looks slightly amused at how I’m staring at him right now, but there’s still a bit of…something, dragging it down. Deciding to cut to the chase it seems, Dad launches into his talk.

            “You are right to want to know more about the world you were born into. I could only keep you occupied with stories and games for so long, you know.” There’s definitely more humor in there, and I can’t help the quick, almost reflexive grin flashing through when remembering the games of pretend we had, the ‘find and make up stories about things you could see from our hill’ game being only one of them. Gaotail would always play games with me too, and back when my sisters Krael and Ayran, and brother Boron were born, well it just meant in some ways that there would be others to play with. But after a while…

            “It’s all different Dad.” I find myself saying, pulling my knees up to my chest like I did when I was younger. Today’s just a great day for that kind of thing. “It’s all small and tight and their roofs have ice. And there aren’t any dragons down there. Just a lot of horses and cows…and people. Lots of them.”

            I take a huge sigh of my own. I had been told, here and there, that the people down in the village didn’t like dragons and that’s why I couldn’t go with Mom when she went to sell vegetables. I looked too dragony, but that was fine, because there were dragons here and Mom never let me feel strange, saying that no matter what, I was always her baby. Sappy as it was, I kind of wished I could go back to it right now, even though I didn’t really understand why.

            “I never…thought you were lying, but…” I’m stopping, faltering, but there’s a thought banging around that I need to get out, but that’s where all the difficult to feel bits come from, and it’s hard to pull them apart. “I kind of needed to see. And I did.

            “We’re…the only ones, aren’t we?”

            “Yes.” Dad replies somewhat quiet now, which is a mean feat for something with a roar that can send half a forest running on a good day.

            “Why can’t they be like you and Mom?”

            “Well…” He started, and I looked back up to see him briefly pause, grinning slightly as he answered. “…You mother is special, not to mention very strong and brave. Also a bit hard-headed, much like a certain girl—.”

            “Hey!” I bleat back, incited and somewhat elated by the lighter tone. “You’re stubborn too, Dad! Mom says so!”

            “She very likely does. Ergo you have both our stubbornness. Whatever shall we do with you?” If you could see a dragon look so teasingly belittling right now, but I can’t help it because it’s making me giggle and its way better than thinking about the differences between here and the village. But even so, I guess this wasn’t something you could just get away from forever, especially given when I looked down at my hands. Just a chance, but after tonight things looked different. Maybe a bit warped, ‘cause mine were bigger than Mom’s and the boy I’d seen. They were covered in greyish scaly ‘skin’, with the nails a darker, sort of stunted looking claw than any kind of fingernail. They weren’t really big fingers, like the kind of sausage hands that Torre told me about once, but they definitely didn’t look that much like Mom’s. And the effort to get the matter out of my immediate view by fisting it and resting my head on it just brought that to mind. I have a snout, not as big as Dad’s, but pretty much like his in any other sense of the word. I’ve also got horns, and a fringe too. It flushes if I get embarrassed, kind of an even darker grey. My teeth are also much sharper too. Not forgetting the wings and tail, or the fact that people walk on their whole foot, and not just the toes. If everyone out there looked like Mom…

            I don’t realize it right away, but said wings are hitching up again, and Dad breaks his silence.

            “Kal?”

            “…Yeah?”

            That’s a slightly tense pause there, and I feel my wings sort of rising up again like that’s going to keep the quiet out.

            “Kal”, Dad finally says, sounding like a thunderclap in the silence and making me jump a little from the contrast. “, look at me for a moment, please.”

It wasn’t hard earlier, but it sure took a lot of effort to do it now. Dad’s not exactly looking encouraging, eyes almost glowing, unreadable, and more than a little intense. Then again, I don’t feel like the paragon of self-confidence right now, so I’m not really making direct eye contact.

            “It is true that many of the people you meet will not be like your mother and I, or any of the clan. But this makes you no less special in our eyes. No matter what happens, or what anyone tells you, you are my beautiful, wonderful daughter and I could be no less proud to call you such.”

            It might not make all of the worries go away, but it did a pretty good job of making things feel less…wrong, at the moment. I could probably be saying thank-you, or I know, or something along those lines. What comes out is…

            “…Does this mean I’m not in trouble?”

            He outright blinks at that, looking surprised and then rumbling with mild laughter as what I said sunk in. Meanwhile, I’m giving my most placating grin as though that will somehow affect my sentence.

            “Unfortunately, I think your mother would be very upset if I let you off without a punishment. After all, you did break the rules, regardless of the reasons behind it.”

            “So, what am I going to have to do?” I reply, resigned. Might as well get this part out of the way…

            “I believe your mother has a few things around the house you can do.”

            “Wha-?! But she’s gonna—”

            “—Keep you busy enough to stay out of trouble. Something you may be needing.”

            “But, come on, it was only once.” A glare. “Okay, maybe more than once…But just a couple times, I swear! I didn’t try to go that often.”

            “Thank the Spirits for small miracles.” Dad said in Drakkish, quietly shifting just enough to let me know I had to get off. “Let’s go inside. I think your mother will be wanting to know that you have been suitably punished.”

            “Great.” I mutter, following along.