There wasn’t really anything to do about Themrys’s problems until Senkovar and Cymryn returned; while Serenity could have taken the ship to the area he identified, there had to be a reason they were off the ship. All Rissa knew was that they left soon after she showed them the relevant part of the planet, along with a printout of the best map they could manage. Serenity suspected they were trying to get a better map and probably an idea of what, if any, settlements were in the area.
Serenity checked on Blaze first, only to find out that the healer was asleep with Ita resting at the foot of his bed in a nest of pillows and blankets. Ita woke when Serenity entered but Blaze did not and Serenity left immediately. The last thing he wanted to do was wake Blaze up when he couldn’t have had much sleep.
Serenity didn’t understand the relationship between Blaze and Ita, but that wasn’t really a surprise. He didn’t entirely understand the relationship he had with Ita either. The important thing was that both Blaze and Ita were happy with whatever they had; it wasn’t Serenity’s business beyond that.
After that, there was no reason not to check on Jenna. Serenity knew her nurses were taking good care of her, but he also knew that she needed him around. If nothing else, she needed the example of another dragon. Not that he was a particularly good example of a dragon; he spent far too much time in his human form. He also didn’t really know how to … well, be a dragon.
Maybe he should talk to Althyr about that? He really needed to give Jenna the chance to interact with her peers, and young dragons were definitely people she should have experience with.
No, on second thought, that was a terrible idea. There were two problems with trying to get a hatchling or wyrmling dragon as a playmate for Jenna. Maybe even three problems. First, Jenna seemed to be aging at roughly the normal rate for humans, even though she was probably a half-dragon. That meant that any child dragon she met would quickly not be the same mental or physical age.
Second, any young dragon would out-Tier her quickly. Jenna wasn’t simply aging like a human, she was still a Tier Zero child even though her dragon form was nearly the same size and development as Serenity’s wyrmling shape. Any dragon that was about the same size as her would be at least a Tier or two higher, possibly more. Playing with a child of a significantly different Tier was a recipe to have someone get hurt, probably Jenna. It wouldn’t be deliberate but it might well be tragic.
The third reason was tied to the second: the Tier of any other young dragon. Serenity still had a Quest from Althyr about young dragons, after all.
[Mentor Quest: Restore the Lost]
[Goal: Find out a way for dragons to have lower-Tier eggs and hatchlings to allow their minds and bodies to grow together and prevent them from becoming Lost]
[Optional Goal: Find a way to restore those who have been Lost from their spirit form, physical form, or both]
[Optional Goal: Learn about other species with this issue. Generalize the solution]
[Reward: Unknown]
[Failure Consequences: None]
[Message begins: I don’t really expect you to be able to do anything about the Lost any time soon, but you have the best chance I’ve seen in millenia. If you can’t, maybe a descendant of yours will be able to. Message ends.]
It was really more of a request than a Quest, since there were no real clues on how to do it and no listed rewards, but Serenity knew he was lucky. If he’d been a little less lucky, Jenna might have the problem other young dragons had. She was more than half dragon, after all, since Rissa had some dragon in her ancestry; Serenity couldn’t be certain that Jenna wasn’t a dragon rather than a half-dragon.
If nothing else, what if he had more children? They planned to, even if they weren’t quite sure when, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if some were counted as full dragons while others were counted as half dragons by the Voice.
No, the real reward was peace of mind.
Even so, Serenity was certain that Althyr would arrange a reward if he succeeded. Serenity had no idea what it would be or even what he’d want, but he was certain there would be one.
If only he had a clue. He still hadn’t found another species with the problem the dragons had, much less a solution. There was nothing in the Broken Mirror about it and there also wasn’t anything in the rather odd library under London about it. He’d expected to find something in the Broken Mirror, since it dealt with biology, but Honoria had no luck at all.
Serenity planned to visit once the World Eater issue was dealt with; the problem was important and the sooner he solved it the better, but he had far more of a chance to deal with the World Eaters than the dragons’ problem at this point.
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If dragons weren’t the solution, maybe the better choice would be to enroll Jenna in a daycare? She was almost four, so she was old enough for some early childhood education programs, too; maybe that would be an even better choice. As long as she stayed in her human shape, she was no stronger than a healthy child her age, or at least not that much stronger. It ought to be safe enough. The problem was that if he did that, he couldn’t travel with her.
That was a sacrifice he might have to make. Or perhaps he simply wouldn’t travel so much?
It would be better if there were the people and facilities on the Death’s Wings, but there simply weren’t enough young children. Her nurses could teach her but they couldn’t play with her as other children and that was important.
Once again, Serenity realized just how unprepared he was to be a father. He had other priorities and when the fate of the world was literally at stake, it was hard to choose what to do.
There was one thing he could do, though. He could go look in on her and see what she was doing; she ought to be awake now.
The answer, as it turned out, was fingerpainting. She was decorating a wall at least as much as she was the paper her nurses provided. She was concentrating so hard on her painting of a round something that was probably a planet that she didn’t even notice her father as he entered the room.
It was amusing until the moment Serenity saw her frown at the wall, glare at it, and the paint moved to form a much more accurate impression of the face of Themrys they’d seen during landing. It still wasn’t completely accurate, but it was close enough that Serenity had no doubt which planet she was trying to depict.
It clearly wasn’t just fingerpainting. If Serenity had to guess, Blaze was probably responsible for the obvious Intent-based magical reactivity of the paint; it seemed like the kind of thing he’d do as a fun training exercise.
Serenity moved forward to catch his daughter’s attention. Maybe she’d share her paint; it looked like fun and he wanted to do something fun with her. He didn’t have enough time with his daughter and this was the perfect time to do something about that.
----------------------------------------
“I don’t wanna nap,” Jenna objected with a wild headshake. “Wanna paint.”
“I know,” Diane told Jenna with a grin. “But if you nap now, you can paint when you wake up before dinner. Does that sound good?”
“Mmmm.” Jenna screwed her face up in a frown as she thought. “Don’t wanna nap.”
“Then how about the phoenix story?” Diane offered. “If you pick up your paints, I’ll read it to you instead of a nap.”
“The phoenix story?” Jenna clapped and spattered wet paint across her clothing, the floor, and her father. “Ok!”
While Jenna picked up her paints and did her best to cap them and stick them in the box they belonged in, Diane looked up at Serenity with a smile. “Unless you want to hear the phoenix story, you might want to go change. The paint will wash out, but I’m afraid you’re a bit covered. She’ll probably fall asleep during the story, she usually does.”
“What’s the phoenix story?” Serenity felt like he was missing something important. It almost felt like he was failing as a father if he didn’t know a story that was clearly one of Jenna’s favorites.
“David and the Phoenix by Edward Ormondroyd. My mother read it to me as a child, I’m passing it along to her. She loves it when I do the different characters’ voices.” Diane looked down at Jenna’s efforts and quietly closed the cap on two of the small jars of paint that Jenna had missed. They were in the box and so were the lids, but they weren’t together.
Serenity couldn’t remember if he’d ever read that particular story or not. He was just about to ask if he could listen while she read the story to Jenna when a tap on the door was followed by the door opening to reveal Senkovar.
Senkovar paused just outside the room. “You’re covered in paint.”
Serenity sighed. He clearly didn’t have the time to sit with Diane and Jenna right now. He looked at Diane. “Let me know when you’re next reading her a story, text me maybe?”
Once Diane nodded, Serenity turned to Senkovar. “Yes, I’ve been painting with Jenna. She decided to paint me as well as the wall. I assume you need me now?”
Senkovar nodded. “In the conference room; Lord Cymryn is setting out a map there. I, uh, we’ll see you there shortly?”
Serenity quickly detoured by his room to change clothes and wash his hands; it didn’t get the paint off his face or hair but at least he wouldn’t be getting paint on anything else. From there, the conference room was just a few doors down the hall anyway. Lord Cymryn, World Shaman Senkovar, Rissa, Blaze, and Ita were already there when Serenity arrived. Legion was not, but Legion didn’t always choose to show up to the planning meetings.
“There’s still paint in your hair,” Senkovar greeted Serenity.
Serenity shrugged. “Jenna wanted to see what I’d look like if my hair was red. I don’t think she liked the result. She liked the rainbow look a lot more.” The fact that she’d managed the rainbow effect with concentration and Intent rather than more paint wasn’t quite enough to convince Serenity to leave it in once he had the time to get a shower, but he was going to let Rissa get a picture. If nothing else, Jenna’s grandparents would appreciate it.
Senkovar shook his head. “You indulge her too much.”
Serenity shrugged again. The accusation didn’t seem at all correct to him; if anything, the problem he had with raising his daughter was that he wasn’t around enough. When he was around, he wanted to have fun with her. “Because I let her put paint in my hair? I don’t think so. She was already painting; I simply let her use me as a canvas as well. I try not to override Rissa or Diane; they’re the stable presences in Jenna’s life. I’m just her father.”