They’d been walking for awhile. The day was cool, breezy, the sun bright overhead and shining through the thick canopy of leaves they walked under. They were dappled in sunlight and in shade, their feet crunching branches and dried leaves underfoot.

“Glas and I used to come back here.”

“She’s too big now, huh?”

“Yeah. She’d have problems getting through the trees. They grow so close together.”

Akin nodded.

“It’s down here.”

There was a ravine in front of them and they skidded down, reaching for slender tree trunks, moving as slowly as possible so as not to lose control and fall head over heels down the ravine and into the smooth bouldered creek at the bottom. Akin started drifting to the left when he was about ten feet from the bottom. He fetched up by a wild bramble of tangleberries. Serai lost her footing and skidded a bit, took a few stumbling steps, and then righted herself. She was glad for her tall boots. She leaned forward, grasped the slender trunk of an ash tree, and made her way back up the cliff side to Akin, who was standing in front of the thorny bush.

“It’s behind there?”

“Yeah.”

“Well… well, shit. We should of brought a machete or something.”

“You think so?” He smirked at her.

“You have a better solution, Akin?”

He reached up one of his sleeves and removed a slim, mostly straight wand the length of his forearm. He tapped the bush with it and gestured to the right and it slowly… crawled… out of the way. Serai shivered. Akin looked over at her and saw her response.

“It’s… it’s just an illusion. The bush isn’t really real. It doesn’t really exist.”

It looked real enough, however.

So did the dark hole gaping where it had been.

302 words

Serai woke up with the taste of book dust in her nose and on her tongue. It faded as she turned the light on, was soon nothing but the memory of a memory. She run her sharp, thick claws through her hair, scratched the horns and bumps on her forehead, and tried to remember the dream. Something about flickering light, cold stone, old books. Something underground. Something secret. She couldn’t remember any more than that, although it teased her, kept almost being called to mind. She punched her pillow and settled back down, eventually drifting off to sleep again.

Akin found her in the chocolate lounge the next day as she nursed a cup of steaming cinnamon and chipotle cocoa, and a headache. He slid into the seat across from her, something frothy in his cup. His cheerfulness offended her.

“Hallo, Ser. How’d you sleep?”

“Eh, alright, I guess.”

His face fell a bit.

“Just alright? You guess?”

“Well… yeah. I mean… yeah.”

“No weird dreams? Or… or anything?”

He fiddled with his drink, stirred the frothy mass with a tiny silver spoon and then licked the spoon clean.

“Akin, what’s this about?”

“I, ah. I sent you a dream last night. Or… I tried to. I guess… I guess it didn’t work.”

His shoulders slumped and he raised his low, wide mug to his lips, the saucer held in his other hand just beneath it. His training as a Warlock had improved his table manners, if not his impetuousness.

“What was it a dream of, Akin?” Serai set her silver and crystal pint glass down on the table, frowning at him.

“Oh… I found a Hidden Library. I thought you might like to explore it with me. I didn’t get past the first door, but… I sent you what I thought we might find. Kind of as… something to entice you.”

She blinked at him.

“A Hidden Library? You’re joking.”

He looked up at her, setting saucer on table and cup on saucer. He dabbed his lips with his napkin.

“I assure you, I’m not.”

One thick eyebrow quirked up at her.

“Shall we visit it?”

How could she resist an offer like that?

365 Words

Ennis sprawled across Serai’s bed, one leg hanging off, foot on the floor. She leafed through a magazine half heartedly, listening to the tick and rattle of Serai’s fingers on the keyboard, before finally letting the glossy rag drop onto her chest.

 

“Anything interesting?”

 

Serai shook her head.

 

“No. Well. If by “interesting” you mean potions guaranteed to make my penis extra large or give me a full head of hair or make thousands and thousands of kronor appear out of nowhere, then… well, no, those claims are so common they aren’t really interesting also.”

 

Ennis snorted.

 

“I don’t see why you waste so much time in alterspace.”

 

Serai shrugged.

 

“It lets me keep in touch with people. Pass messages. Read things.”

 

She ran a hand across the smooth bronze and onyx of her keyboard. It had cost her a fair amount, but then, she was girlish enough to favor the pretty models with their chasing of flowering vines along the keyboard and around the display screen.

 

“It lets you keep up on royal gossip, you mean.”

 

Serai laughed.

 

“It’s certainly more current than your magazines, and I don’t have to pay four shillings sixpence every time I’m interested in the latest news.”

 

“Well, that is a plus.”

 

Ennis sat up in bed.

 

“Do they have altengines in Underwave?”

 

“I don’t see why not.”

 

“Well, they’re electric, right?”

 

“I think they’ve figured out some way of containing them and keeping them safe. I mean, there’s electric lights.”

 

“Will you teach me how to use yours?”

Serai nodded.

 

“Sure. Pull up the other chair.”

 

 263 Words

Ennis and Serai looked at Akin sideways, with the disbelieving look they would give to someone who claimed he intended to learn to walk on water or fart fire or produce gold coins out of thin air.

“You want to… what?” Ennis asked, shaking thick black hair out of her eyes. It was windy, and her hair and the long, delicate feelers around her mouth were both being blown around. Serai snorted behind her hand and then rubbed her fingertips along the tender bulges on the top of her head. Two horns had already sprouted and it felt like two more were ready to erupt through the bare skin. Akin rubbed the side of his nose.

“I’m going to stand at the next hatching. Maybe I’ll be selected.”

“You’re mad. You must be mad, because the alternative is that you’re stupid, and I’ve known you for too long to think you’re stupid.”

Akin shrugged at Ennis’ stinging words.

“I can hope, right?”

Serai turned away from him.

“I don’t know why you want this so badly, Akin. There’s more to being Dragon Kin then just flitting through the air, you know. It’s hard work, it’s hard physically and emotionally. And the changes we go through?”

Ennis held up her hands, fingers splayed, displaying the translucent webbing newly grown between her fingers. She shoved him, and he stumbled back.

“It’s hard. Stop romanticizing it. That’s disgusting.”

Akin recovered, managed to avoid falling into the dust.

“I’m not romanticizing it.”

Serai interrupted them.

“Akin, why do you want to be Dragon Kin so badly? You could make Warlock easily. I know you could. Why… this sounds disloyal, but why would you want to limit yourself to Dragon Kin?”

Akin shook his head at her, not knowing how to answer.

297 words

Serai ran her hand down Glas’s neck. The nymphet responded gleefully, arching that swan-like neck and then turning to butt Serai’s shoulder with her smoothly scaled forehead. Serai laughed and ran her fingers along Glas’s thick eye ridges. Her fingers were already lightly scaled, her nails thicker, longer, harder. She kissed Glas’s nose and rubbed her cheek along Glas’s cheek.

“My sweet dragon girl. I love you so.”

Glas swept a tongue along Serai’s face, from chin to forehead, sending a swath of her thick black bangs on end. Serai’s eyes watered at the rasp of the young dragon’s tongue across her soft skin.

“I love you too, my rider.”

Serai hauled herself onto Glas’s neck, and the pair lept up and up and up into the air, ground vanishing beneath them, flying.

133 words