“I can’t believe you pulled off that boomerang!” Ola says, reaching her arms up for what I presume will be yet another unwarranted hug.
But before Basileios can rush to his mother, I tell him in our language. “You have failed. Return to my hand, so that we may try again.”
Basileios instantly reverses course to fly to me instead of Ola.
“Wait, you’re not going to—” she starts to say.
I once more launch him into the ocean before she can finish that sentence.
And Ola once again screams. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asks, even though Basileios pops back up out of the water even faster than the last time.
However, when he rises into the air, he is once again still shelled.
“We must drill this over and over again until he acquires this much-needed skill,” I inform Ola.
I am hoping this warning will calm her outsized reactions to this exercise. However, she steps in front of me before I can call Basileios back.
“Wait!” she says, waving her arms above her head. “I can’t take watching you throw him into the ocean again.”
The command to call Basileios back bangs against my capped tongue, which I really should have taken off before this lesson. The only reason it remains on is to make conversation with Ola easier.
But ironically the decision not to uncap my tongue is making his lesson all that much harder. And this is not the first time the she-wolf has made what I must do much more difficult than it should be.
“If this necessary training disturbs you, perhaps you should retire to your room,” I say, gritting my shaved teeth.
She suddenly stops waving her arms and her head flame flares with what must be a significant thought. The light of it is as bright as Ao Quong’s head flame had been a few months ago when he appeared on my smart wall with the news that he and his team had finally decompiled the Betrayer King’s code for using objects to make backward portal trips—or as some of the more whimsical anthros on his team referred to it, time travel into the past.
Whatever could have made her mind flare so?
“Maybe you should let me talk to him?” she says. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll leave you to it, okay?”
Her hesitant tone doesn’t match the brightness of her head flame, I note. Nor is it like her to offer such a conciliatory option. I nod my assent, nonetheless, curious about this apparent idea of hers.
“Okay, he doesn’t speak English yet like he does your language, but it feels like he understands me when I talk to him. Is that right?”
“That is correct,” I answer. “It will most likely take another few months or so before he develops the tongue and voice control required to speak human languages. But he understands you well enough.”
“Great.” She holds out her arms to the hatchling still hovering above us. “Okay, Bazzi-Baz, come down for a talk with your mama.”
Basileios does not hesitate to race into his mother’s arms and he immediately starts telling her about how he’s trying his best but can’t figure out how to unshell.
Ola couldn’t possibly understand his words. Yet she makes several soothing sounds as he laments his poor performance.
Then she says, “You know, our Auntie Fensa once told me the original Ice Age werewolves didn’t know how to shift outside of a full moon. That was something we had to learn as a new species apparently. You’re a new species too, so there’s a lot of stuff you’re going to have to figure out that your dad and me won’t necessarily be able to help you with because neither of us are exactly what you are. But do this for me. Close your eyes and don’t just try to take off your human suit. Find your dragon like I find my wolf. It’s a spirit inside of you, and I know it’s there. But you don’t go looking for it, you go feeling for it. I hope that makes sense.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Wolf Mother,” Basileios answers her in our language, his tone quite sober. “But I’ll try.”
“I have no idea what you’re saying, but I believe in you!” she tells him. “Now, I’m going to throw you up above my head and when you come back down, I want you to be a dragon. That’s a game your grandfathers used to play with me when they were teaching me to control my wolf as well as they can control theirs.”
With that explanation given, she heaves him up into the air.
I watch Basileios go up, very much doubting this plan of hers will work….only to let out a surprised hiss when a golden dragon drops down to hover above us.
Ola responds in an even more dramatic way. She jumps up and down then runs around in circles, yelling out to an imaginary audience, “That’s what’s up, Greece! Check out your boy, the Prince of Drakkon G-O-A-T, baby! Insert all the party popper emojis here with praise hands on top.”