Rex’s life quickly fell into a new routine, he would accompany the duke’s son, Eric to his afternoon classes. This meant his constant companion had to be ready to go into the mansion. At the word of the fastidious Able, this meant Karla had to bathe and be properly dressed.

So the timing of things had become a little complicated, what ended up happening is that Eric would show up with Rex’s lunch and then Karla would be escorted over to the mansion to be washed and dressed by a maid, while Eric stayed with Rex for half an hour, and then the three of them would meet up in Leonard’s study. Eric had been given half an hour of free time to spend with Rex so that the newborn dragon could get used to the boy who would grow into the man who would ride him.

It was considered an important part of the bonding process that Eric should be the one who fed Rex his lunch. As Rex got older, Eric would become the person who provided Rex with his large single meal, and Karla would gradually be giving fewer “snacks” to Eric. At about a year old, dragons were expected to get used to one large meal a day, and from then forth, only their riders would be giving that meal. But for now, it was considered dangerous to be around a newborn, who’s appetite could flare up into a rage at any moment. For dragons, the term “newborn” was synonymous with feral and dangerous.

This is why, on that first day, Blake the stablemaster had no choice but to personally come supervise while Karla left the stable for the first time in years. No one wanted Eric left alone with a newborn dragon. That Blake had faith that Karla could handle Rex while Eric visited was mostly due to the fact that he had personally told her, in all seriousness, that if Eric was harmed, she’d be whipped to an inch of her life, and if Eric died, Karla would die quite painfully too.

That was the way of slavery; failure carried harsh punishments. Blake trusted that Karla would risk her own life rather than let Eric be harmed, because she knew the consequences if he was harmed. But with Karla gone on Able’s order, who could take the blame for any harm, but Blake himself? Oh he’d not be whipped of course, but he feared losing his job in the absence of a convenient scapegoat.

“Begging your pardon, your highness,” Blake said politely to Eric, as he stood nervously at Rex’s stable door and watched the boy showing off a picture book to the odd little dragon. Rex was so entranced at learning new words for the images that he’d actually forgotten about the large platter of raw meat Eric had brought. “I feel this is most dangerous, sir Eric, you should at least make sure the dragon eats before you play with it. The only safe dragon is a full one, as I always say,” He added in self engranding tones.

To Blake’s surprise, Rex turned to listen to him when he spoke. Though Rex only understood a fraction of what Blake had said, by knowing the key words “dragon eats,” Rex got what Blake wanted. Dutifully he turned to food and began efficiently and rather dainty eating the steaks in his peculiar way, by skewering them on his claws, then eating them carefully while sitting on his haunches, rather than ravenously putting his face into the plate as most dragons would do. Blake had seen Rex eat before for course, and he found it odd, but the way he’d listened to Blake then obediently started eating had almost convinced Blake of a sneaking suspicion he’d started harboring; Rex was learning human language.

Blake was not a good person nor a clean one. He was mean, petty, cowardly, and jealous. A born bully. He was a lot of very negative things, really, but he wasn’t stupid and he knew a lot about dragons. Blake recognized that Rex behaved nothing like other newborn dragons he’d seen, and listening to what Eric had been doing before he’d spoken, he’d understood that Eric had been showing pictures to Rex and telling Rex the words to match. Eric was trying to teach Rex to understand language. In truth, a grown dragon was smarter than a horse and in Blake’s experience, they tended to know a lot of words. Dogs understood a few words too, after all. But a newborn dragon? They were supposed to be stupid and barely able to recognize the people who fed them as “not food”.

Rex was already smarter than any other dragon in Blake’s stable, and it terrified him. What in the world was Rex? Blake asked himself nervously. There wasn’t a lock on the stable door, Blake realized, it was just a wooden lever that had to be lifted, Dragons rarely figured out how to open their stable doors, but he’d heard stories of those who had. Would Rex be able to escape when he got older? How difficult would it be to properly train a truly smart dragon who might one day decide it simply wanted to leave? Blake planned to speak his concerns to Able, who would relay them to the Duke.

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“Very well, stablemaster,” Eric agreed politely, sitting on a stool to wait while Rex finished his meal then in a repeat performance of his very first meal, took a long drink from a bucket, then washed his claws in them. Briefly Rex worried that Karla would forget to replace the water after he’d washed his claws, but he knew that he could remind her.

When Rex was done eating and washing, he turned back to Eric and looked up at him expectantly. “You know,” Eric said, opening up the picture book again. “Rex, I was thinking, as nice as it will be when you learn to understand me, how would I understand you?” Eric asked in a musing tone.

Rex’s vocabulary was limited, but he’d picked up pronouns such as “you”, “me”, and “I”, and he knew what the words “learn” and “understand” meant. So cutting out the words Rex didn’t know, Eric had said, “You Rex, I learn understand me, I understand you?” So the duo guessed what Eric was asking, but they didn’t realize Eric was being rhetorical. Thus Rex surprised both Eric, and the watch Blake, by coughing and pointing to himself.

“Yes?” Eric asked.

Rex nodded.

“Oh, right that’s you saying yes. And “no” is shaking your head.”

Rex nodded at the first sentence then shook his head at the second one.

“It’s not? Oh wait, I’m confusing myself,” Eric said with a laugh, “Ok, you talk, I guess what word you are trying to say, nod if I get it right, shake if I’m wrong,” he said playfully, not really sure how much Rex actually understood.

Rex understood the gist, though he did wish Eric would use less new words, he didn’t know what “confusing” meant but that was how he felt about it. He held up one claw, the rest of his fingers curled.

“One,” Eric said, laughing,

Rex nodded, and held up a second claw.

“Two,” Eric said, picking up on what Rex was doing.

It was a start. After numbers came simple stuff, “I’m hungry,” “I’m sleepy,” “I don’t understand,” and so forth. The “I’m sorry,” one, Eric had seen before, when Rex had placed an arm over his face like a sad puppy. Some Eric failed to guess, Rex was decent at pantomimes, but Eric was young. But those he could learn from Karla later. All in all, a few dozen gestures that Rex had already spent time teaching Karla, he taught to Eric and to Blake, who watched in amazement.

Idea had a complete library of things like sign language to assist in his study of native peoples and cultures, in the off chance that he encountered a non verbal culture, he’d been given a means to attempt to understand what they might be doing. Idea was in effect, an anthropologist as well as a xenobiologist. With no clue as to what the exploration automatons might encounter, they’d been given a lot of information, information that Idea was happy to share with Rex and any humans he might encounter. Idea Seven had at one point been given a directive not to share knowledge or interact with natives, but he didn’t have any such directive now, because while his databases might be intact, his behavioral programming was not.

This did not go unnoticed by the raven with black metallic feathers that had recently been tasked with finding and spying on the misplaced automaton. Idea Three’s colder, more rigid AI looked on with disapproval, but would wait for further orders before making itself known.

Another observer who didn’t like what he was seeing was Blake. Rex and Idea might be smart, but they were naive. It did not occur to them that they should be wary of revealing thier intelligence to anyone who cared to notice. Blake’s reaction to seeing this further proof of Rex’s intelligence was a growing unease.

He felt that a too smart dragon might require additional safety measures. Right now Rex was “only” a sharp toothed forty pound flightless lizard, but what in two years, when he started to fly short distances and weighed five times as much, the weight of a large man? What about in five years when he could be expected to start using dragonfire and was as heavy as a large horse? Blake wanted to make sure he wasn’t blamed if Rex decided to escape, what could he do to prevent that possibility? Additional steps needed to be taken.