More awake now, I shake myself out of bed and stretch. Coughing sparks is a perfectly normal thing for fire dragons to do. But why do I still feel so odd? It's almost as if...

OH NO.

I dash out of my bedroom, fly down the stone staircase, and run out of the back arch of my family's lair. I skid to a halt by the crystal mountain lake... and immediately vomit out several mouthfuls of lava. It burns in my throat, and when I'm finally finished, I slump down by a rock, and catch sight of my mom, staring at me through the stone archway. She quickly hurries out with a thermometer and a glass of fresh spring water. I glance at her, then at the boiling waters of our crystal lake, and all the charred fish in it. Whoops.

I look at Mom again, and I shrug. "Uhh... fresh cooked fish for breakfast?

Mom sighs. She pops the thermometer in my mouth, takes it out, looks at the reading, and then hands me the glass of water. I gulp it down gratefully, enjoying the cool, refreshing taste as an opposite to the burning lava I just felt in my mouth a moment ago.

Mom looks at me for a while, and finally speaks. 

"Scarlet, honey, do you feel okay?"

"Yeah!" I reply. "I feel fine, Mom. I don't know where that lava-up came from, but I don't think I'm ill or anything? Bad piece of meat or something?"

"Maybe," Mom replies. "You don't have a chill, and if you feel okay, I see no reason to not let you go to school. Diseases don't spread much amongst dragons, anyway. It's probably just a bad piece of meat, like you said. Or maybe..." She trails off. 

"What, Mom?" I ask.

"Nothing," she responds. "Come in for breakfast, hon. Flicker and Blaze are already up, and I'm sure I can make use of this fish."

I head in to the dining table, wondering what else Mom was thinking about.