“Hey, little bro!” Kevin said, coming to stand next to me. “How goes it?”
“My life is so hard,” Zero moaned. “Everything is dark and dank, like the fetid recesses of my mind.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “That’s so… you. Come look at Gary’s horn.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice, even though everyone could clearly still hear him. “Make sure you tell him how nice it looks, because if you don’t, he might not let me have the Buttery Herb Cheese Muffin later.”
“What’s a Buttery Herb Cheese—”
“You keep your depravity to yourself,” I warned Kevin. “Zero doesn’t need to be corrupted.”
“Hey! I can take it!”
“So can Gary,” Kevin said. “That’s why we have a bakery to begin with.”
Two feathered dragons walked regally from the trees, their heads held high, their hardened feathers sparkling like ice in the sunlight. Pat’s eyes were narrowed, taking in every little thing around them, assessing for conceivable threats against her mate. Leslie was smiling at me, and I couldn’t help but grin back at her. She’d been kind to me in the Dark Woods and had spoken up more than once against GW when she thought I’d had enough for the day.
“Sam,” Pat said as I bowed low to them. I didn’t have to do it, but I could see she was pleased at the action.
“Oh, look at all of you,” Leslie tittered. “Like a band of merry heroes gathered together. So brave with your little faces. Kevin, come here and bring your young man so that I may gaze upon him. I hear that his horn is rather long, and if I weren’t a lesbian, I would surely be a size queen. Dimitri, you are looking fit.”
“Pat,” Dimitri said, nodding. “Leslie.”
“Tiny speck of dust,” Pat said, and I adored her.
And then the sun was blocked out.
I sighed as I looked at Randall. “Don’t make this weird.”
Everyone turned their faces skyward, excluding Randall. He had that grumpy look that he sometimes got when, say, for example, his old mentor happened to be flying around overhead. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Yes, you do. You’re going to be all stiff and snarly, and he’s going to be all growly and reticent, and then the walls will come crumbling down and you’ll both cry and hug each other. And then you’ll tell him you love him, and he’ll say the same, and then you guys can go do old people stuff like going for dinner at three in the afternoon or play chess in the park—and yes, I realize we don’t have a park right now, but you get what I mean—and then you’ll sit around and complain about the youth of today not knowing how good they have it and how back in your day, you had to work to get anything you wanted, not like the kids who get everything handed to them.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Tell that to Eduardo and Morely.”
“I’m going to regret asking this, but who are Eduardo and Morely?”
“Two elderly side characters in the seminal novel The Butler and the Manticore, which I never want to read again.”
Randall looked like he didn’t know whether to strangle me or walk away. I was used to that from him.
“Why is he just circling overhead?” Justin asked, sounding reverential.
“He’s showing off,” I explained. “He’s a dragon. It’s what they do.”
“Hey!” four dragons snapped at me.
I waited.
“Okay,” Kevin allowed. “That might be true.”
“I like it when people look at me,” Leslie said, preening her feathers.
“I have big teefs,” Zero slurred as his fangs dropped.
“We are dragons,” Pat said. “Everyone should be in awe of us.”
“I hate dragons,” I muttered.