Mom watches the news with an unnatural seriousness, the papers she was grading forgotten on the coffee table. The TV plays the footage from last night repeatedly, from a dozen different angles people captured on their phones. A giant skeletal dragon flying from the museum, followed by that snake Zhran. The town buzzes as it tries to figure out what any of it means. Mom zaps to a talk show, ‘experts’ explaining the sight. “Was this an attack?” the hosts asks. “I think so,” the man across from him says, “a final warning to stop messing with nature.”

I want to believe, against everything, that Kiera’s still with me. But even just thinking the words makes them sound like lies. I have my life, my magic, but I’ve lost half my soul. And if Zhran has it his way, I’ll never be whole again.

Mom shuts off the TV, reaching for the paper on the table. She promised her students she’d have the results tomorrow, despite it being a dozen-page long Astroparticle Physics quiz. “You went there yesterday, didn’t you?” she asks, “with Izaak?”

“And Sofia.”

“Right.” She swipes a red line through one of the answers. Her hand pauses, and she looks at me over the top of her reading glasses. “You didn’t do anything?”

“No,” I lie. Mom doesn’t know I’m a dragon. Why I haven’t told her, I don’t know. I should’ve, but every time I open my mouth the doubt sneaks in. She’ll hate you. She’ll be afraid of you. What if she throws you out? What if she’s an undercover RISE agent, waiting for proof so she can arrest you?

Thank the stars she figured out I was gay before I did, or I’d still be deep in the closet.

“No lie?” she asks.

“No lie.”

My phone rings, showing Izaak’s profile picture. I cringe every time I see it, us from years back, wearing matching onesies at a sleepover. Me a glittery unicorn, him a shiny dragon. There’s a joke there somewhere. ‘Now you’ll always answer,’ he’d said after stealing my phone to set the image. ‘Just so you can swipe your own face away.’ I didn’t bother telling him it would take the same amount of time to hang up.

“That your mans?” Mom asks, not looking up from her paper.

I cringe. “Yes. No, he’s not—I’m taking this in my room.”

“Say hi from me!” she yells.

Normally, I love phone calls with Izaak. He lives on the other side of town, so we usually split ways the moment we leave school grounds. If we hang out, it’s at his house, since his parents don’t want him to walk home at night. But his walls are thin and he shares his room with his sister, leaving little privacy. And on the weekend Sofia’s free from work, always tagging along. Phone calls are just us.

I glance at the clock. It’s already early in the afternoon, giving Sable Thomas more than enough time to tell her son all about what happened last night. This conversation’s going to suck. But at the same time, I want to tell him everything.

He’s the only one I want to tell.

My phone hits its tenth ring. If I don’t pick up now, it’ll go to voicemail, so I finally swipe towards the green button and press the screen against my ear.

Izaak starts talking before I can take a breath. “Where’s Mum?”

“What?”

“Where is she!” he yells, his voice thick with emotion. “You know what? You suck. You suck so much. Why, why am I even bothering? Never mind.” he hangs up.

I stare down at my phone, cold dread reaching into my core. I call him back, but he doesn’t answer. So I try again. The fourth time it goes straight to voice mail, Izaak’s cheerful voice telling me to fuck off. Just one more time before I’ll go to his house. This time it rings, and miraculously, he picks up.

“Izaak, you have to listen to me, I—”

“Yeah, I’m gonna stop you right there.” It’s Phoebe, Izaak’s younger sister he shares his room with. She’s pretty cool, but she’s twelve, which is arguably the worst age for a human to have. “Whatever you did really pissed him off. He left his phone and went downstairs.”

“Please let me talk to him.”

Phoebe sighs through the phone. “Look, can you give him some time? We’re kinda in a crisis here. Your homoerotic bedroom problems don’t matter right now.”

“Your Mom, is she okay?”

Phoebe falls silent before she speaks again. “We don’t know. Dad’s trying to find out, but no one’s talking. I—I’m sorry, I just assumed like that. Of course you’d want to talk to him.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“No, it’s okay, you’re all stressed. I just, I think I can help. Can you please tell Izaak to call me back?”

“I will, but don’t hold your breath.”

“Thanks, gremlin.”

“No problem, hobgoblin.” Like I said, Phoebe rules for a twelve-year-old.

A breeze hits my face and I frown, turning towards my window. A griffin the size of a fox blinks back at me, a mix of fluffy tabby cat and robin. It has stubby orange wings and feline ears poking from its bird-shaped skull. I’m pretty sure my window was closed, but then again, I’m pretty sure griffins don’t have opposable thumbs.

Things continue to get weirder when it speaks. “I didn’t know humans were friendly with gremlins. Times sure do change.” Most griffins are beasts the size of horses, popular to be trained as familiars by the military. This one must be a pet. It jumps down from the window, landing on my bed. “You’re hard to find for a dragon. You and Kiera left behind quite the mess, though I can’t really be mad at you. I’ve done a lot worse.”

My heart speeds up when I hear Kiera’s name. Does this creature know something about last night? She looks like the cutsie toys elementary school kids murder for. The griffin opens her beak and coughs, barfing cotton all over my bed. She looks at it, then at me, like she would’ve eaten it if I wasn’t looking. “Excuse me. This arrangement is far from ideal.” She shoves her front paw down her throat, pulling out even more cotton to show me. “Shoddy workmanship, but it was this, half a bear or twenty individual pieces of manticore.”

“Who are you?” I click the lock on my door, making sure Mom won’t walk in on us. She usually doesn’t, but this would be one hell of a time.

“You’re going to want to sit down for this.” She curls up on my pillow, tapping her paw on the sheets next to her. I sit down.

“My name’s Halley and I guess I came here to thank you.”

This is Halley? This stupid cat is why Kiera is gone, why everything tumbled down? I traded half my heart for a… a pet?

Halley studies me, her tail slowly swishing against my bed. “I can go, but I’m not sure you understand what Kiera did for you. I owe it to them to make sure you live.”

I stand up abruptly, my fists clench at my side without my consent. What does this thing know about what Kiera did for me? “You should go,” I say, “before I do something I’ll regret.”

“Look, you’ll really want to hear this. Like, you could drop dead next Tuesday if you’re not careful. Let me explain and I’ll never bother you again.” She jumps up to the windowsill, taking perch just outside my window. “If I were you, I wouldn’t want to see me either. I came here knowing that.”

I don’t want her to stay, but obviously, I want to die even less. I grab the old swivel chair I stole from Mom’s office, driving it towards the window. This feels too serious to be sitting on my bed. “You have five minutes.”

“So we unicorns, we’re born to make miracles, right? Find something amazing, turn it into a legend. But do you know what happens after we find our miracle?”

I shake my head.

“We die. You can understand why we don’t like that. And you’re probably thinking, why do it then? Why choose to perform a miracle?” She’s silent for a moment. “Well, are you thinking?”

“Yes,” I say, rubbing my temple. “Get to the point already.”

“Here’s the trick. If we don’t perform a miracle, we still die. Our magic is so powerful it leaks, so to say, and as creatures made from pure magic, we die when our well runs dry. The only thing we can do is set our magic free, thus creating a miracle. But then you’re thinking, Halley, you’re like seven hundred years old, that story doesn’t hold up at all. And you’re right. That’s what you’re thinking, right?”

“No. I’m thinking your five minutes are almost up.”

Unfazed, Halley continues. “Well, we found this amazing loophole. We bless creatures whose whole lives become miracles. Suddenly, we don’t use all our magic at once, plus we get this nice flesh fortress, so to speak, to keep our magic from leaking. We give you power, you give us life. That is why unicorns create dragons.”

I didn’t know this. And any other time, it would’ve been fascinating, but I really want to talk to Izaak or Sofia, or search for Izaak’s Mom I won’t forgive myself if she died last night, after I left her and Poppy with that Chimera. “One minute left,” I say. If Halley doesn’t get to the point soon, she’ll cut straight through my patience.

“This symbiosis goes two ways, of course. Just as much as we inherit the restraints of your flesh, you creatures cannot live without magic once we turn you into dragons. So what do you think happens when a dragon’s stripped of their unicorn, their source of magic?”

“They die?”

Halley nods. “They die. Now tell me, boy, are you dead?”

It slowly begins to dawn, what Kiera did to save me last night. After all their warnings and harsh words, they still protected me.

Halley lets the silence linger before she continues. “They left you most of their magic, enough to last 200 years if you live conservatively. If you decide to, say, perform a miracle, you’ll burn out in a week, though. That’s what I came to warn you about. You might feel powerful, more so than you did before, but it’s only an illusion.”

I wondered about that, why my magic still worked with Kiera gone. Though my insides still blaze, the superficial burn wounds already healed, aided by magic, and my transformations still work. “Then what happens to Kiera if I have their magic?” I think I know the answer, but I’m hoping to be proven wrong.

Halley looks down. “Why, they’ll die. It’ll take that brute Comet only a week or two to burn them out completely.”

Figures. It figures Kiera would do such a thing. They sacrificed themselves with no regard for how it would make me feel. And if anyone deserved to live, it was them. Kiera saved me, not just last night, but countless times. Now they’re in trouble and I have no way to return the favor.

“No,” I say, noticing my hands have started to tremble. “That’s not fair.”

“Life usually isn’t,” Halley replies, staring at the clouds outside my window, “though I’ve heard it’s fairer than death.”

Halley was stuck inside Comet too, I realize. Kiera saved both of us—there’s no real reason to stay mad at the griffin, not when she had no hand in what happened yesterday.

Finally it begins to pour, the sky almost sighing with relief. Nature doesn’t like to be managed. I move to close the window, Halley still rooted to the ledge. She stands and stretches her tiny robin wings, calculating the quickest way down to the alley behind my house. She turns to say her goodbyes, but I don’t let her.

“Come inside,” I say.