The dining room didn’t impose, press in, or really stand out⁠ ⁠—⁠ nothing like the meeting room from last night. But it felt drab and serious as it did none of those things. The tiles on the floor alternated black and brown, the dining slab looked deep and black and shiny, and scratched with white. Obsidian? How much had that cost?

I peered closer at the slab. It rose low enough that you could eat from it standing high or low, or sitting on the thick mats around it⁠ ⁠—⁠ those mats rose to above my knee height, but that was just me.

At the other end of the slab, the dark-jade dragon lay with Oleuni shining bright behind them, drinking from a teacup and smiling at me. A closer look at their current garb showed a white halfrobe covering her haunches, inlaid with black schizon seams. The black whiff of the schizon stabbed my tongue, and it almost hid the cloying aroma that clung to her⁠ ⁠—⁠ not unlike Ushra’s, but also not like it. A sash sat over her breast, reading ‘Gären vor Gronte’ in Drachenzunge⁠ ⁠—Gronte, Hinte’s grandmother.

Smiling back at her, I granted a small bow. I looked up to meet her eyes, and pretended that was just her sitting on an elevated mat.

Were they the one to called out for Ushra to let me in?

I started, “Thank you for⁠ ⁠—⁠ ah! There’s another one!” I whipped my wing at the purple bird, standing on the slab beside the dark-green dragon. It had been doing something with its wings spread, but I had interrupted.

“Another what?” Gronte said. Hinte was still watching me as she lay down on a mat, expression something complex.

“The talking bird things… that one talks too, doesn’t it?”

Before the dragon could respond, the purple bird squawked and spoke in a strange voice. “Gah! There’s another one!” It brought its wings up beside its head, then said in a saccharine voice that almost sounded like Gronte, “Another what?” It paused, looking around, then spoke, again in that unfamiliar, stuttering, whining voice, “Those talking lizard things.”

Wait, that was my voice! I bared my fangs at the bird.

Gronte snapped her tongue at the bird, but smiled at me, saying, “It’s fine, Kinri. He’s a parrot, they can mimic voices.”

“…And make frilly jokes.” I huffed and turned away from the parrot.

She held out her wing, and the purple bird hopped onto her alula. When she looked back to me, the wiver said, “We haven’t made introductions. You know Hinte. They,”⁠ ⁠—⁠ she pointed to the doorway on the other side of the room⁠ ⁠— “are Ushra and Staune. This,”⁠ ⁠—⁠ she bounced her alula⁠ ⁠—⁠ “is Versta, and I am Gronte.”

“Oh, I’m Kinri,” I said, “and, um, that’s it.”

Gronte hissed a short laugh before flicking her tongue and looking down to my breast. “That is a beautiful cloak you wear. Is it silk?” Hinte narrowed her brow at Gronte.

I smiled. “Kinda. Medusa fibers. It’s, uh, like silk. Smoother, and more durable, and other things.” Hinte snapped her tongue⁠ ⁠—⁠ so soft only I heard it⁠ ⁠—⁠ and looked away from both of us, staring out the window.

Gronte waved her tongue. “Who made it?”

“Um. It’s from the sky.” I scratched my cheek. “You’ll never meet or hear of them…” …And I had forgotten.

“Oh well.” Her frills folded, and she asked, “I imagine you won’t part with it, then?”

“Not until I add a missing piece. And it’ll be very, very expensive.”

“That’s just fine. Pray light by me when you get that missing piece, if you would.”

I nodded, looked around the room. Another door stood opposite the first, where Ushra must have gone. Another spiky, spherical plant sat by this room’s window, and a cute flower pot sat in the center of the slab, orbited by the plates and cups. On closer inspection, the flowers looked shiny and off-color. Metal? I’d never seen anything like that.

Gaze still drifting, I counted the mats. Six. Should I sit? Gronte-sofran never gave me permission.

The parrot’s squawk interrupted my thoughts. “Pray light by me if you pluck any manners!”

Turning back to the bird with writhing frills, I said, unthinking, “I’ll pluck your manners!” I took a step forward.

Gronte shook her wing, and the purple parrot turned to her. Scratching its neck, she whispered, “She didn’t mean anything by it, dear. She’s never seen a dragon-tongued parrot before.”

“Sorry,” I murmured. I glanced over at Hinte. She stared out the window, eyes roaming and seeming to hunt for something, brilles never more than half-clear, as if she were shrouded in thought.

“It is accepted.” Gronte took a sip from her teacup. “You are taking this a lot better than most of the townsfolk. To them, an ‘animal’ talking is a perversion, they take religious objection to it.”

“I mean, it is kinda weird. Are they, um, like dragons? Can they think?”

“I’m right here, you minnow!” The parrot’s voice warbled. It sounded discordant and it drove stakes into my frills. The parrot lunged from Gronte’ wing, and flew at me! But Gronte stopped it with her other wing.

“Minnow? What is that supposed to mean?” My frills were already writhing, so I bared my fangs instead.

“I’m saying you’re a wee little minnow, you minnow,” the parrot said from behind Gronte’s wing.

“Versta, go check on Monsun.” Her voice had a forced levelness that bled the excitement from the parrot.

“Don’t wanna,” he said; but when Gronte lowered her wing and shook his perch, the bird fluttered to the ground instead of flying at me. The purple parrot walked out of the room, scratching its way to the hall.

“He is…” Gronte paused a bit to find the words. “…excitable. He is not as offended as he looks.”

I nodded. “I’d just call it hatchly, but I guess excitable works too.”

She tossed her head. “To answer you question, yes. Parrots think and feel as much as dragon’s do. They have trouble picking up our language fully, and their emotional lives are a bit more… lopsided⁠ ⁠—⁠ you may say ‘hatchly’⁠ ⁠—⁠ but its a matter of parrots being very different from dragons, and so they don’t take the same things seriously that we do, and don’t understand every aspect of our culture.”

“It could still be polite, at least.”

Hinte folded a frill. “He, not it.”

“I’m Sorry?” I scratched a foreleg with another, looking around the room.

Suddenly Gronte said, “Kinri!” with a start of her wings. “Sit down, sit down. Anywhere you like. You don’t need permission.”

----------------------------------------

“Kinri-ychy,” came Ushra’s voice from beyond the other door; he emerged, and continued, “show me your forelegs. My Enkelin asked me to take a look at them.”

Still perched on his wing, his parrot, Staune, fluttered down onto the mat beside Gronte, where the older wiver scratched the bird. I slinked over to Ushra, and extended my forelegs.

He looked over them for but a moment before turning them over. He furrowed at the gash, and prodded it, and kept up the pressure until I hissed in pain.

“I see you have been using my glazeward recipe,” he said, but not to me.

“Yes,” said Hinte, staring at the slab.

Ushra hummed, and didn’t reply. He finished looking at my forefeet after a few more beats.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“For now, of course. My granddaughter did a serviceable enough job. None of it is urgent.”

“Do you need to look at my side?”

Ushra said, “My granddaughter asked me to look at your legs.”

“But —”

“Keep your modesty.” Ushra was already turning toward the kitchen, and a burnt orange eyes was almost glaring at him.

“Okay then. But about the uh, glazeward salve…”

“What?”

“Well um… Should the glass stick to my forelegs like this?” I waved a foreleg.

“It varies with the formula. The mixture I employ is somewhat… primitive, I would suppose, compared to what the sifting companies utilize currently. I am a pharmacist, not an engineer, and so I have little time to investigate the trivialities of vitrification… And so my salve may indeed have such practical deficiencies.”

“Well… how do I get the stuff off? It’s a painful to scrape this all off by foot!”

The dark-jade wiver cleared her throat. “Well, there are scrapers in the east market trained for just this⁠ ⁠—⁠ they do a better job.”

“Nonsense. Some of my patients come to me after having fallen in the lake — I have unguents for exactly this.”

“I imagine Kinri-ychy would prefer to keep her scales,” Gronte said.

“Hmm.”

“Yeah… I do like my scales.”

Ushra looked at me. “They are blue,” he said. Slow and deliberate, as if it may cause offense.

“I like blue?”

“Hmmm.”

I waved my tongue, confused; but Ushra turned and disappeared into the kitchen again. So I tossed my head and lay beside Hinte, an empty mat away from her grandmother. On the other side of the old wiver, Staune was preening her feathers.

After a few beats, Ushra returned, carrying a plate of hot food in his wings. He moved around the slab, letting everyone get food, and poured tea from a kettle.

The main course was a peep of tidbit chickens, a dozen of them, each about the size of your foot. Beside them are various plant- and fungi-based dishes I didn’t know on sight. One of them looked some kind of root, and others faded into the gallimaufry of greens and browns.

I looked around the slab. I didn’t like eating with others. It was rude and vulgar, and base, animal action. But it would read more rude to refuse, wouldn’t it? A Specter–a nice dragon compromises. I took a little bit of each dish and two tidbit chickens.

Staune was grabbing pieces with beak and talon, taking a whole plateful. I flicked my tongue at that. Was the bird planning to eat all of it?

Gronte spoke before I could ask anything, saying, “Hinte has refused to any details of whatever happened last night until you were here. Now that you are, there are⁠ ⁠—⁠ aspects of it that concern us.” Her alula touched the locket at her breast, and it lingered there for a beat.

“You mean the, uh, incident in the cliffs?” I asked.

She nodded while Hinte looked up from getting her breakfast, spooning bits of the mixed fruits and nuts into her mouth. She’d taken none of the leafy green stuff; but it didn’t taste that bad!

I chewed more of the soft and stringy greens. They had a hint of salt or some spice that gave them a nice flavor. No accounting for taste.

Hinte spoke up between bites of chicken, “I knew the topic would come up. I won’t repeat myself. Digrif will be here soon.”

I tried the root; it tasted spicy sweet, a flavor I never expected from a root.

“How do you know what happened?” I asked. Ushra had looped around the slab, and now gave Gronte her meal. I tried taking another root. Ushra snipped at me, taking it back. My frills deflated, and I settled for starting on the tidbit chicken.

Beside Gronte, Ushra muttered something to Staune. The bird flew up onto the slab and stood there. Ushra sat where she’d been, leaving two empty spots. One was on the other side of Hinte⁠ ⁠—⁠ for Digrif, maybe⁠ ⁠—⁠ and another right beside me that would sadly stay probably unfilled. As Ushra pulled out a leaf of fernpaper from his robes and started scratching ink on it with a feather, the red and blue parrot hopped over in front of my plate, upturning its head so that one eye watched me.

I drifted my gaze from the bird to the master alchemist, watching the furrowed look morph as he wrote. Then my eyes flashed clear, and I licked them, but I hadn’t mistaken.

Ushra’s eyes were black. What had they been in the painting? I don’t think it was black.

Gronte had spoken. She’d said, “We know because the papers reported it in some detail.”

I’d almost forgotten what I’d asked, and spend a moment to taste her meaning. I glanced between the light-green drake to the dark-jade wiver.

“Oh?” I said, and felt some hope tingle in my glands. Would I get recognition? Fame? “What do they say?”

Gronte held up a leafy page on the slab. It looked greenish, made from some fern. Various headlines and articles sprawled across its surface, titles clawed in the large pictographic glyphs of y Draig, while the articles in its smaller, flowing script.

The newspaper was only a few folded pages, more sprawled and haphazard than the newspapers of Tädet/Pimeys, which were like small booklets. I scanned the page she held up, looking for the article she meant.

The old wiver slid the page across the slab to me. The red parrot then grabbed it in one talon and offered it with a trill.

“Thanks.”

The parrot peered intensely at me as I began to read the article.

I couldn’t help a giggly click at the title: ‘Fierce hatchling slays monster in the fires,’ it read.

My breakfast sat there untended as I read. My eyes moved across the page in slow and backtracking sweeps. In the sky my clawed y Draig had gone unused, even apart from the weird dialect of the backward Gwymri. It was getting better every day I had to work as Mawrion-sofran’s scribe, but I couldn’t help reading judgment or maybe scorn into the glances at me.

My frills deflated as I read, and by the time fourth short ring trilled, I had finished.

The article mentioned me by name no more than once. If it hadn’t spoken of two dragons in the Berwem near the beginning, wouldn’t have even known I existed! At least the story didn’t seen very accurate otherwise. It read as though Hinte had fought four apes at once and won, unscathed.

“This is… not what happened.”

“It appeared so,” said Ushra. “But what truly happened?” He peered at me with those mysterious black eyes.

“Wait for Digrif, he will be here,” Hinte said.

At Hinte’s hindrance the conversation lulled. I focused on my food, but Ushra’s red parrot flapped and interrupted me.

I looked up at it. “What do you want?”

“Nut, yes?”

I glanced down at my plate. I had taken four of the large nuts but hadn’t touched them. I picked up two and passed them to the bird, who took one in a talons and one in its beak.

“Ceya,” it trilled as it fluttered back to Ushra, cracking and smashing one of its new nuts. I smiled. It was almost cute. Where Versta just passed my knees, Staune came almost up to my withers. Maybe Staune was older.

I had half-finished my first tidbit chicken when came the expected knock. Ushra left to answer it, and after a moment you heard talk from the front room, but couldn’t make out the words, save hearing that same interrogation tone Ushra’d inflicted on me. Soon the alchemist returned.

And from the door, in the companionable light of the loversuns, an familiar drake walked⁠ ⁠—⁠ but not Digrif. He stepped further into the room, and a bright glow lit his orange scales.

* * *