Caltyr and T’allyandria stepped into the dining hall together. It was filled with scales of every color in the rainbow; hungry dragons were lining up to get their fill of what was being served. Mostly, they were being served the meat of the local wildlife, but there were some varied offerings such as full dishes with vegetables included. Common themes were extremely spicy dishes and huge chunks of meat fit to satisfy a beast.
There were also some peculiar selections, like rocks and gems. Some of their people thought a dragon could draw the supposed mana from a gem, and others just liked the crunch a rock or mineral could offer.
The science around how much one of their kind needed to eat was varied and incomplete, and always changing. So Caltyr just ate whatever he wanted whenever he was hungry, which wasn’t often. Some dragons visited everyday, multiple times a day, and he did too– but he only actually ate a meal once a week or so. The other times, he just showed up for the sake of his daily routine, and - secretly - for the general communal feel, even when nobody actually spoke to him.
The smell of food with far too much salt packed in wafted past his nostrils. Caltyr adjusted the flap of his pack for the third time. The child was tucked safely away. He had removed his books so the thing wouldn’t get crushed and his study materials wouldn’t continue to get globs of mud all over them.
T’allyandria nudged him in the side of his arm. “Vermonysis is over there.” She gestured toward one of the tables with pillows tied to it, which held Vermonysis’ butt, Sara’s butt, and the butts of a bunch of dragons he didn’t know the names of.
“Do we just go up to him and tell him we want to talk to him?” Caltyr asked dubiously. He was hesitant to join T’ally, given his reputation.
“I’ll go and do the talking. You go and get a meal,” T’ally said, leaned in, and lowered her voice considerably, “for the thing in your bag. I think it needs to eat more often than we do, and I don’t think it can handle our level of heat, so get something bland. We may as well fill its belly before its judgment. We’ll regroup in your room.”
“Got it,” replied Caltyr in an equally hushed tone.
He headed over to the serving area while T’ally closed in on the table seating Sara, her cronies, and their target.
The serving area and kitchen were tucked into the back of the room, against the scraggly, rocky inner wall. Smoke billowed out through the roof from the crackling fires, each one sitting below a sputtering cauldron filled with food.
He grabbed metal dish with several compartments and shlorped some bubbling liquid from each cauldron onto the plate, grateful for the dividers. Some of the offerings looked truly dastardly, flaked with black and red and simmering with cruel intent.
Just to be safe, he grabbed a bag of rocks and a bag of peanuts. Both were aggressively salted, but neither was burning with the intensity of 1000 suns, so he considered that a win.
Caltyr carefully balanced the tray between his teeth and strode quickly to his room, where he allowed the human out of its cramped enclosure.
The kid unfurled from a protective fetal position and rolled out of the bag and onto the floor dizzily. “It’s woozy in there,” it complained in a wavering voice.
It flopped around on the floor in a fish-like manner until it found its hands and knees, and then it was up again.
“I hath thome thood fthor you.” Caltyr said around the tray, and placed it gently on the ground. Seeing it next to the child was almost comical; it was half the size of the thing!
The tiny orphan looked at the blazing, gooey reds settled into the divots in the tray and knitted its brows. “That looks yucky,” it decided before pushing it away with the dirty underside of its foot. Or, it tried to, but the weight of the plate made it only able to knock it a few inches away.
“How do you know it’s yucky if you haven’t even tried it?” Caltyr sighed.
“I have eyes, draggy!”
“How many times have you eaten with them?”
The youngling crossed its arms stubbornly.
“You’re starving. Just look at you.” He jutted the sharp tip of his nose toward the human’s ribs, which were showing against the white shirt. “You can’t afford to be picky like this, especially since you’re probably going to be shunted back out into the woods after this. Take what you can get.”
Caltyr used a clawtip to nudge the tray closer, spinning it so the white sludge was facing in the human’s direction. “This section doesn’t look spicy.”
The human let out a frustrated breath through its nostrils. It hesitated and looked like it was about to slip back into a crying fit, but it did begin to approach the tray wordlessly. With its tiny fingers, it scooped up what looked to be an entire carrot and began to tentatively take a bite out of it.
“See? It’s not that bad, is it?” Caltyr found himself speaking in that high-pitched, sing-songy tone he used on pets and younger dragons, and groaned inwardly at himself. He reminded himself to not get attached to this flesh-being, born from the creatures who consumed his people.
“It’s a little bit yucky.” But then the kid took another bite.
With the child successfully tamed and eating its food, Caltyr’s muscles relaxed. He leaned back against the wall and peered more closely at its scaleless, undefended form. He didn’t know much about what made such creatures female or male, or their lifespans, or how often they ate.
He found himself wondering if it was in need of more flesh-coverings. On the stone cold floor of the mountain school, with its skin-legs pressed against the floor, it was likely to be uncomfortable. And an outfit like this wouldn’t be winning any favors with the council, if they ended up taking it to see the elders– which was a possibility he couldn’t ignore.
Even dragons adorned themselves in sashes with jewels on them, or some sort of vest, before meeting with the council– and they weren’t known to dress in clothes at all outside of battle.
But where would he find clothing fit for a tiny human body?
Just as he was ruminating on how to properly adorn the intruder, his door swung open and Vermonysis stepped through, followed by T’allyandria. Or, it was more like Vermonysis half-tumbled in, with T’allyandria pecking at him like a chicken, urging him to hurry along.
They shut the door quickly behind them, the latch thudding closed.
“Vermon!” Screeched the kid, its already huge eyes widening in recognition, giving it the appearance of a wild animal. It dropped its carrot and lunged for Vermonysis, smearing its gooey hands all over the red and yellow dragon’s scales.
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Their new guest stood there in shock, his face paling, making Caltyr wonder if T’ally had even explained why she was calling him over. Evidently not.
“Hi, Emily.” Vermonysis said slowly, carefully. He glanced conspicuously between the current occupants of the room and gulped. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m gonna see if I can live here with the other draggies like you! Blue draggy brought me in in his bag and then he got me yummy food just like you did!” The kid sprinted happily toward the plate of food and held up the partially eaten carrot triumphantly.
“I thought you said it was a little bit yucky.” Caltyr grumbled, mostly to himself.
“It is a little bit yucky,” the kid stated with a shrug. “But it’s also yummy.”
“She says that to me all the time too.” Vermonysis said, nodding in understanding in Caltyr’s direction.
“Yes, aren’t human children adorable?” T’ally asked flatly, cutting into the idle chatter. “Especially when they chew through our flesh with their tiny little child-teeth. That’s my favorite part. Vermonysis, the thing said you had been feeding it while it lived out in the forest. Is that true?”
The fire dragon’s brow ridges pinched together. “Yeahhh… it’s true. What can I say? I’m a softie when it comes to kids. Of any species. But I’m not stupid; I didn’t start feeding it until I had followed it for several days, and until I was sure it had no arm marks. And it doesn’t.”
“So this has been going on for quite a while, this arrangement between the two of you.” T’ally rose to her back haunches and crossed her arms over one another, staring sourly at Vermonysis. “Tell me more about what you know about this thing, and I might consider not killing it. But even if I don’t kill it, we will need to bring it to the council now that we’ve discovered it.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, slow down here. The council? They’re just a bunch of old guys, man. They might just kill her on principle because she’s a human, and I’m not about to be responsible for getting a kid killed.” He gawked at T’allyandria’s nerve and peered mournfully at the child, who had given them and their arrangement away.
If only she had stayed tucked away in the woods like he’d told her to.
“We’re going to need to take her to the council regardless, now that she’s here and I know about her. I am a member of the council, and a rather esteemed one at that. I will not sully my standing with them on account of this thing– the only difference will be what I say to them, and whose side I favor.” T’allyandria’s stern violet orbs fell upon the intruder, the orphan.
“So you had best get talking.” She placed an onyx, dagger-like claw to her temple.
“Vermon brought me food and played with me,” confirmed the child around a nervous mouthful of potato.
“We played ‘dodge the fireball’. She’s pretty good.” Vermonysis grinned over in the kid’s direction, eliciting a gremlin-like giggle from her that shot a piece of potato from her mouth. Which she picked up from the floor and shoved back into her mouth.
Well, she had just been living in the woods for who knows how long.
T’allyandria glared so hard at the duo that Caltyr wondered if her eyeballs might detach from her retinas.
The seriousness the moment called for suddenly dawned on the sunrise-coloured dragon. “Alright, I get it,” he muttered. “I’d been trying to avoid this kind of conversation and tell her to just stay out there, but it looks like we’re going to have to do things the hard way.”
The intruder dropped her hands sorrowfully and smushed potatoes between them, simply because they were there. And then she ate the mashed potato worms that extruded through her fingers, because she was too starved to waste it now that she knew it didn’t taste bad. “Sorry, Vermon. I… dunno how to explain it, but I couldn’t do the forest living anymore. I just couldn’t. I was too scared. There are lots of those monsters out now and I don’t wanna– go where mommy and daddy went.”
Vermonysis cast his face downward in thought. His angular jaw, which matched the angular form of most lightning dragons, clenched. “Okay. So I’ve been helping Emily for… crap, almost two weeks now. I’ve been bringing her food and water and entertaining her when she’s bored, and we’re almost like proper friends now. I don’t know what she’s told you, but her parents were killed by ‘monsters’ with shiny purple skin while they were trying to find a new human city to live in. She says they moved a lot.”
“Then, if your goal is now to get the child to be accepted here, you must take her to see the council. There is simply no other way to do things. Their acceptance will be the only way to even begin to successfully integrate it into the school. That said, the entire council is not ‘just a bunch of old guys’; many are younger dragons, and several are quite reasonable. Are you unaware that Sara is on the council?” T’allyandria quirked a chitinous brow at Vermonysis.
Vermonysis cast an uncomfortable glance over to the side. “Yeah, I’m aware. But she’s not pro-Emily like I am; she hates humans, which was part of why I avoided bringing Emily in to see the council.”
Caltyr narrowly avoided sighing out loud. Of course Sara was on the council. Knowing her, she would find some way to paint his secret intentions as evil, like maybe the only reason he wanted to allow the kid a chance to get into their school was to raise it as his evil henchman. He kept quiet about his silent grudge, hoping the years had changed her.
“I have a suggestion, for if you wish to go that route.” Caltyr stepped forward and rose his clawed hand into the air. He formed a ball of ice, swirls of crystalizing water swirling around it in a glowing, dangerous pattern.
“You want me to ice ‘em?” Vermonysis asked wryly.
“No, I’m suggesting we challenge a representative of the council to a Battle of Wills, if you’re met with skepticism. No, when you’re met with skepticism. I know my track record isn’t the best, but I’ve been practicing and I think I’m getting pretty good.”
“Why doesn’t the girl draggy just use her big voice and make them talk and listen like she made me talk and listen? Yeah, lady, I figured you out.” Emily pointed an accusatory finger at T’allyandria.
T’ally burst out into laughter, the first bout of anything resembling happiness since laying eyes upon the filthy orphan when she was standing in the doorway. “You have quite the imagination, human child. But even if I could do so, why would I? I refuse to throw my standing with the council away for a half-formed plan we’ve not even talked about yet. I’m unsure if Vermonysis even intends to fight for you to stay, or what Caltyr is thinking, or if there’s even a possibility of this working out the way you hope it will.”
The mirth trickled out of her. “So you’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical.”
“We can’t just put her back out into the woods and forget this ever happened?” Vermonysis frowned.
Emily balled her hands into fists and put them up to her chest in shock, gasping at the suggestion. Vermonysis’ frown deepened.
“She has a track record of telling her secrets, so no, not now that she’s met me, T’allyandria Morriganha D’Llarkhen. It’s a great courtesy for me to even be discussing a plan with you before we take this thing to the elders, so remember your place and think fast.”
“Huh…” The sunset-coloured dragon squirmed in place. “I guess we’re really doing this now. Alright, T’allyandria, do you think we could just tell them the truth? And see what they think? Is there any chance at all that they just… let her in because she’s a child, and she’s scared, and she really needs somewhere to live?”
T’allyandria swished her onyx tail behind her in consideration. “The council is not without sympathy, but they are not fond of humans, to put it lightly. I doubt simply saying she’s in need would do anything.” She moved closer to the tiny human with the browning white shirt, splattered with mud and caked with what she was certain was blood. The fabric was stiff in some areas and smelled faintly of copper and capsaicin.
“But perhaps if you played upon it being an orphan with nowhere to go, and how much you want this human to stay and how much her being turned away may harm your healing– perhaps then, you may have a chance. They will be very concerned about the implications of this. Be very careful to only mention you wish to house this human, and not that you wish to pave the way for some kind of alliance. That will be negotiation suicide. Oh, and they’ll want to probe her for any and all information concerning the ‘monsters’ she and her parents encountered. Tell them they can have the information after she is sure she’s housed, not before.”
Vemonysis realized his jaw was hanging open. He closed it manually and flicked a glance over to Caltyr. “I thought it was weird you were gunning for making friends with her first, man, but I think I get it now. Damn.”
T’allyandria’s dark chest scales puffed. “He still needs to get me my flowers before that word can be used to describe us.”