Caltyr stayed at his desk while all of his classmates participated in their daily ritual of trying to extrude themselves through the doorway all at the same time.

T’allyandria had been hiding it well, but all throughout her class her eyes had been flitting in his direction. They had agreed to speak afterward about Emily, so he wondered if this meant she had something of note to tell him.

After all, they had been left alone in the showers together. Caltyr wondered if the shadow dragon had taken the opportunity to interrogate the human further, this time about whether she was harboring secret powers.

His curiosity had made sitting through the lecture difficult. T’allyandria wasn’t a terrible teacher, and in fact she made it near impossible to zone out in her class, because she would zero in on the students who were nodding off with laser precision.

If you were caught doodling, she would have you exclusively answering the next 10 questions, until she was satisfied.

It was annoying, but T’allyandria was a dragon who hated to be ignored.

Caltyr would have thought that would make her a poor nurturer and professor, but her aversion to being passed over also made her unlikely to not give others their time in the limelight.

Anyway, while he hadn’t been bored to tears, everything he was hearing was so decidedly not an update on the human child.

And with the assembly taking place midday, he didn’t have long to conspire before he would have to be there to watch Sara announce to the whole school that they were allowing the kid to stay.

He simply had to be there. Seeing her face sink in on itself as she was made to inform her peers of their new classmate, and even defend her, would be too priceless to miss.

Finally, the last straggler passed through the threshold of the doorway.

Caltyr and T’allyandria were the only ones remaining in the classroom. He roused from his desk and closed the distance between them, not even bothering to act coy.

“So how’s Emily?” he asked in a whisper, looking to the exit in paranoia. They weren’t supposed to cause a stir before the assembly. He wanted to be sure they were alone.

T’allyandria rose her brow ridges conspiratorially and swished over to the door to close it entirely.

“The question isn’t how Emily is,” she began cryptically, “but what.”

“What?”

“I saw it when she was getting undressed to shower before her slumber last night. When she was standing beneath the stream, I saw scales running down her spine shining through the water.”

“What?” Caltyr half-blinked-half-gulped in utter bewilderment. “Scales? So what, you think she’s—”

“Part dragon, yes,” T’ally interrupted with a sagely nod. “But she seemed clueless when I asked her. I even manipulated the answers out of her, but she didn’t have a measly inkling that she might be anything more than a human.”

“I don’t know if this makes things more or less complicated,” Caltyr mulled, and stood up to start pacing through the aisles.

Obviously, the dragons in his school were pro-dragon. A sprinkling of them were even pro-human. But the mixing of the two species tended to cause an uproar. It was a rare union even hundreds of years ago, the union between the two-legged man and the four-legged reptile, and it was even rarer now that the humans had succeeded in eradicating them almost completely. They saw each other under the context of killing and being killed more than any other, so that put one hell of a wrench in forming a relationship.

“More,” T’allyandria hissed. “I don’t know how somebody goes all this time without noticing scales on their own body. Has she never looked at her own backside before?”

“Their necks aren’t as long as ours.” Caltyr shrugged, but he too was trying to understand. “Are they only on her back? What color are they?”

“Yes, they are localized to her back. And they are the same color as her skin, with a purple sheen. She kept insisting to me that they were dry skin. She said her parents put lotion on the area when she was living with them.”

“And you’re sure it’s not just dry skin?”

“I think I know what dragon scales look like, Caltyr.” The shadow dragon huffed, insulted.

“Alright, alright. Well, what do we even do with this information? Does Vermonysis know?”

“No, he does not. Vermonysis was tasked with watching over Emily for the morning. I was planning to go take over for him when I was done here, teaching this class. And as for what we do…” T’allyandria trailed off and squinted into the distance, contemplating.

“Are we going to have to tell the council?” Caltyr didn’t sound excited as he asked, wincing at the thought of what the elders would have to say.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The plum-colored dragon frowned. “That would be prudent. They should act knowing all of the information, especially considering the speech Sara is going to give. As much as I do not enjoy it, this news may change things for them, including how many are in support of Emily remaining here.”

***

“Part dragon,” Kraven repeated, for the fifth time. Emily wasn’t present, so he hovered a scaled hand a few feet off of the air for demonstration purposes. “This thing. The thing that was sitting next to me yesterday and barely stood as tall as my pinky claw.”

Delphine looked like she was having trouble not rolling her eyes. “Enough, Kraven.”

The crimson dragon returned to his seat.

“So, you say that you saw scales on the human when you were about to shower her.”

“Yes,” T’allyandria confirmed.

Caltyr stood back and let the council members speak. He hadn’t wanted to callously continue on to his next lesson without at least trying to accompany T’allyandria, and there was still some time before Sara’s speech.

“Well, I think it goes without saying that I will need the human brought to me so that I can confirm this for myself. However, if this happens to be the case and the girl is part-dragon, I see no reason for the determination made last night to change. The elements have spoken, and I doubt they were fooled in the same way you and I were.” Delphine glanced over to the door that marked the exit to the council chambers, where they were having their impromptu meeting.

“Caltyr, I request that you go acquire the girl for me. Kraven, my apologies for calling you in on such short notice. You will not be needed after all.” The earth dragon bowed her head apologetically, swiping her hand outward in a polite dismissal.

“That’s it?” Kraven asked with a tilt of his brow as he looked at the council leader like she had ten heads. “Are you sure?”

“The elements have spoken,” Delphine reiterated, this time more forcefully. “The child will be given a place here, regardless of exactly what percentage of her is human. But no, that is not ‘it’. Sara will need to be informed so that she can amend her speech to convey the newest information, and the security on Emily’s room will need to be heightened to around-the-clock surveillance. This is no longer a job for three mere apprentices, no matter how skilled they are.”

The earth dragon’s gaze drifted downward and landed on Caltyr. “I seem to be seeing a lot of you lately, Caltyr. Why have you not heeded my words to go collect the girl?”

Caltyr had, admittedly, been staying to listen in on the meeting. He jolted as soon as he heard his name, realizing he hadn’t yet started making his limbs move.

“Sorry,” the blue dragon apologized as he half-sprinted away to make up for his time spent lagging.

He knocked once on the door to Emily’s room once he had slithered his way in front of it, and waited to hear her scurrying over to answer.

He heard small, human steps approaching, slapping against the rocky floor.

When she opened the giant door, which she struggled to move, she was alone. Caltyr squinted down at the tiny form that appeared through the crack in disbelief. She looked so different he almost thought he had the wrong room, but there were no other tiny humans around. Her feet were enclosed in shoes, and she was wearing long white socks and a lavender dress with frills on the edges. Her hair was bronze and shiny and floated away from her face. There weren’t even any stray leaves sticking out of it.

“Where is Vermonysis?” Caltyr asked, craning his neck through the doorway to confirm his absence.

“Oh. Hi, draggy! He left to go to a class! He said he went to find you and the purple lady but you were both in a meeting he wasn’t allowed to go to. I asked if I should use my cool necklace but he said no, because the meeting was important or something. So he just told me to stay here and play.” Emily gestured to her bed, whose covers were unmade and sagging to the floor. A notebook and pencil were sitting atop it, along with some lumps of folded paper made to look like animals.

“Ah. Well, the Council Leader asked me to bring you to see her. She wants to look at your back to see if you’re part-dragon.”

Emily nodded and placed the pen in her hand on the nearest piece of furniture, which happened to be her dresser. It rolled off the edge and clattered to the floor, but Emily didn’t even notice. She was already running over to him with wide, sparkling eyes. “So you heard I might be a draggy too! I was so surprised, like WOW!”

Caltyr nodded at the sentiment. He would have thought a half-dragon would be… taller.

He ushered the kid out of the room and out into the hallway. “Come on, we need to hurry.”

He beelined back toward where they were being waited on. Emily ran beside him, her small legs struggling to keep pace - but after her month-long stay in the woods, the kid wasn’t out of shape. She full-on sprinted into the council chambers, her hair fluttering as the two of them pushed through the double doors.

Kraven’s massive form was no longer present, and T’allyandria was gone too, leaving them alone with the council leader.

“Hello, nice lady. Caltyr said you wanted to look at my back! Look, look!”

Without letting Delphine speak, Emily got straight to the point and whirled around. She lifted the back of her dress and sure enough, a thin line of raised scales were embedded into the skin along her spine. They shone with a faint purple.

“They’re like my dress color, right?” She beamed. “Do you think this makes me part draggy?”

“Draggy?” Delphine asked with a laughter trapped behind her words. She leaned in and the frills on either of her head fanned in wonder and recognition. “Yes, it appears that you do in fact have dragon scales there. Hmmm… I wonder what the elements would want for me to do. It’s a shame that I cannot ask them in situations like this.”

The elegantly shaped dragon returned her neck to its tall posture. “I suppose all we can do is follow through with what your win suggests, Caltyr. To me, it says that we should accept this child, regardless of the complications that might arise during her stay.”

Talking to herself now, she continued, “I will have to assign Emily with a bodyguard or two for each class, once the initial commotion has settled. I will also have to provide each teacher with a lesson plan for informing you all about how humans and dragons used to live, and how this kind of union used to not be so uncommon– though the children rarely survived childbirth. I will have to assure them we will not be accepting any other humans as well…”

“So this means I AM a part-dragon-person?” Emily asked with her mouth hanging open, still processing.

Delphine’s scaled lips twitched into a soft smile at the barely-restrained joy the kid was exuding, but the rest of her expression could only be described as troubled. “Yes, I believe it does.”

The part-dragon girl’s roaring screams of joy echoed off the council chamber’s walls.

Hearing them now, it almost seemed as if her dragon-ness had been obvious all along.