Dragon in the Dark (Kindred Tales)

“Very good!” The attendant smiled brightly and her eye stalks, which had been rigid with uncertainty, got looser and began to wave in all different directions again. “Please follow me to the front of the shuttle—I’m certain you’ll be pleased with your accommodations.”

She led them from the gate down a long narrow folding tunnel, not unlike the kind Iyanna was used to at regular Earth airports except it was painted bright gold for some reason. Their luggage was stowed in the cargo areas at the back of the shuttle before they proceeded foreword.

The shuttle itself was a long, sleek white ship with wide, fin-like wings that looked like the old Challenger spaceship to Iyanna, except it was about ten times bigger. After stowing the luggage, the attendant led them down a long aisle with double sets of seats on either side.

Iyanna wished they could have walked a bit slower because there were all kinds of interesting looking people getting settled in their seats and she wanted to get a better look. Most were bipedal humanoids like herself as far as she could see, but often that was where their similarities to humans ended.

She saw all different shades of skin from blue to green to brilliant pink to neon yellow like the flight attendant. There were people who had fur covering their bodies and one man—Iyanna thought he was a man—was covered in long white feathers and looked remarkably like a chicken. He was roosting peacefully on his aisle seat, his legs tucked beneath him so that only his skinny, yellow, three-toed feet stuck out from under his feathery bulk.

She was getting a bit anxious when they got near the front of the shuttle. None of the seats they were passing looked like they would accommodate two people—especially if one of them was as big as Dra’vik, who was already having to duck his head and hunch his broad shoulders to move through the cabin. How exactly was this going to work?

Then the flight attendant touched a button on the front wall—or what Iyanna had thought was the front wall of the shuttle—and it slid noiselessly to one side, revealing another compartment.

“Please come this way,” she said, two of her eyes swiveling backwards to look at them. “This is our Premium compartment, reserved only for our largest guests.”

Iyanna looked around the front compartment of the shuttle in awe. The section of the shuttle they had just been walking through held passengers that were about normal human size. This section was clearly built for passengers that were more on Dra’vik’s scale. The seats were much larger and more luxurious. They appeared to be made of some kind of tan leather and were capable of reclining fully. There were only about ten of them that she could see and all were occupied by humanoids that Iyanna estimated were anywhere from nine to twelve feet tall.

As before, none of the passengers looked very human and not just because of their size. One of them looked very like a purple rhinoceros to Iyanna, complete with a horn on his snout.

Walking through the extra-large Premium compartment made her feel like a kid in an adult’s only section, but Dra’vik looked right at home. He no longer had to duck his head and was walking upright, looking watchfully from side to side as though assessing the situation and looking for any possible threats.

Was he expecting trouble or was this just his personality, Iyanna wondered? After all, though he was a physician by trade, she knew all the Kindred Monstrum were also warriors—every one of them had served in the wars they had fought against the ravenous Darklings—the evil beings that had eventually conquered their universe. It was probably hard to drop that defensive mentality just because you were no longer fighting a war.

They finally reached the end of the aisle and the front of the cabin simultaneously. There was a sloping clear window that looked like it was made of glass, but was probably a much stronger material, which showed the night sky outside, glimmering with stars.

The window covered the entire front of the cabin and wrapped around the sides, making the seats on either side of the front of the aisle feel like they were surrounded by inky darkness. Once the overhead lights went off, it was going to be like floating in space, Iyanna thought, a bubble of excitement filling her chest.

She had always loved adventures—going someplace she’d never been before and trying something new. It was hitting her now that this might be the most exciting adventure of her life!

Only two things put a dent in her joy. One was that the pleasure poisoning from the pleasure blooms’ secretions seemed to be coming back. She had first noticed it back in Dra’vik’s ship—an increased sensitivity and swelling that seemed to coincide with the two of them being in close quarters together.