'Are we going to your home for the break?' Zen asked a week later, as the end of the academy year drew nearer and nearer. He lay sprawled across her lawn, twisting to rub his back spines against the ground.

Other students made plans, some to go home, some to visit family briefly, others would stay at the academy, or arrange for their dragons to be boarded here while they went home alone.

Alisa had no intention of leaving Zen behind - who knew what trouble he could get up to without her to keep him in check? He barely qualified as tamed. Leaving him to his own devices for three weeks sounded like a recipe for disaster.

But when she actually tried to consider the logistics of it, bringing a dragon to their little village - a dragon who could eat his way through a cow or two every few days - she had a hard time justifying the inevitable cost. "I don't know yet," she admitted. "I'd like to. I want you to meet my mother and our friends. But..."

'I do not have to eat,' Zen said, picking up the tenor of her thoughts. 'I can wait for a few weeks if I eat well before we leave. I have not done so before, but I could do it. I can feel that I could.'

It was true that he generally preferred a large meal every week to smaller ones daily, but three weeks was a long time to go without food, especially since he was officially still growing. She wasn’t sure how much longer he’d end up, he could already wrap himself comfortably around her house with plenty of length to spare.

"Are you sure you want to?"

'I want to meet your people.'

"I'm sure you'll be bored of them in a day or two."

'I will not. Besides, you say they make bricks. I want to see.'

"There's nothing interesting about it. Perhaps if you were watching brick-layers, putting together a building, that might be interesting. But we're just making clay into rectangles. And then, the next day… more rectangles."

'You will have to show me brick laying as well if it is so interesting.'

Alisa sighed. "That wasn't what I meant."

'You should not try to deceive me. I have interest in your life even when it doesn't seem to you like I should.'

Alisa laughed softly. "Right. I forgot who I was talking to."

'I did not think it was possible for you to forget who I am. Are you becoming senile already? I know you claim you'll grow old faster than I will, but I didn't know it would happen so soon.'

He said it with such a tone of serious inquiry that, had Alisa known him any less well, she might not have realized he was making mockery of her.

"Ho ho, Zen," she replied with a very fake laugh. "You're such a brilliant maker of humor."

'I am only slightly above average,' he preened, clearly believing otherwise.

"So, that's a yes to visiting my mother? You're sure you can last three weeks without going crazy and eating all our herds or anything?"

'I am perfectly capable of self control. Even if I have not had occasion to show it off.'

"Okay. And if you were to demonstrate this self-control in, say, not chasing down Adrena every time she appears in the sky?"

'That is different. Adrena is a beacon of perfection the likes of which I shall never again witness. If she cannot be mine, then I must at least bask in her glow for these few short months in which we share the same skies, that I can remember them for the rest of time.'

Alisa blinked at the depth of Zen's infatuation. He didn't usually wax poetic, and this was the most symbolic and eloquent speech she'd ever heard from him. "Are you going to be okay leaving her for so long?" she asked. "If we're away for three whole weeks..."

'I know she will be gone and not return.' She heard the sulk in his mental voice, and immediately knew that if given the choice he'd trade her brick-making town for Enna’s in a wingbeat. 'Not that I have any reason not to want to see your family,' he said, sensing her suppressed disappointment. 'I cannot help but adorn the bloom of fiery glory. But you are important too.'

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"I don't think 'adorn' is the word you're looking for."

Zen shrugged and flapped into the air, reshaping his coils into a long snaky squiggle behind him. She couldn't help but be impressed - his body was so long, and to hold it so steady in midair must require incredible control. Every time she saw him, slipping through the sky with such power and grace, she couldn't help but marvel. The other aelaniri were equally impressive, of course, but Zen was just breathtaking.

"Shall we get going?" Alisa asked, frowning at the sky. "It's nearly time for our practice sessions."

'Do I really have to practice spellcasting again? I wish to stop. Are you sure we can't live in the wild and only attend the classes that we want to?'

"Don't be such a baby. Spellcasting is a good thing to learn."

Zen hissed, flicking his tongue with his mouth open as though spitting out something disgusting. 'I don't think it's worth it.'

"Won't you be happy to breathe fire and acid and everything?" Alisa asked. "You'll be a mighty and powerful dragon then."

'I'm mighty and powerful now. I don't need magic to prove it. I can breathe fire just fine on my own.' His spine ridges rippled upward, straightening the curved spikes that ran along it.

“Yes, you are mighty and beautiful.”

The horny spikes between and on either side of his pairs of wings had been removed when he first hatched, as they sometimes interfered with particularly sharp maneuvers when flying, but the rest had grown thicker and sharper as he grew. It was a hazard when hugging him, but they were far enough spaced that she could fit her arms between them without being in danger of slicing herself on them as long as they were careful.

They’d need to remove more to make room for her to sit if he ever grew large enough to handle a rider, but for the moment that would be pointless. Even as an above-average sized aelanir, Zen wouldn’t be able to support her weight for decades - if even then. Aelaniri were not known as riding dragons. But the thought brought her conversation with Tay back to mind.

“So what’s this burning question Tay tells me about?” Alisa asked as the silence stretched. “You wanted to ask something?”

Zen’s emotions went through a flurry of fear and anxiety and hope and eagerness and uncertainty, so roiling and so strong that Alisa felt momentarily dizzied with the onslaught. ’I… I’m not ready.’

“You sure? Tay seemed convinced that you’d explode if you kept holding it in.”

Zen’s wings fluttered and he rose into a half hover, his lower body still coiled across the ground, his neck and upper body curved into a tight squiggle. ’You’ll laugh.’

“I won’t. If this is important to you, it’s important.”

Zen coiled into first one pattern, then another, drifting back and forth across the yard as he deliberated, his mind churning with thoughts and emotions too fast for Alisa to catch. Then, ’I want to bond you.’

“We’re already bonded.” Alisa frowned. “Right? There isn’t a third part to the link.”

Zen coiled and uncoiled before answering. ’No. I’m bonded to you, but you are not bonded to me.’

“Yeah I am. It goes both ways.”

’Not like others. I’ve seen. The teachers. Even Tay. They bear the mark of their bondmate. You do not.’

“None of the students do. The bond marks you’re thinking of are for battle mage pairs. They double to increase their power. But with you and me, we’re already plenty strong.” She didn’t want to imagine what adding an even bigger influx of dragon magic would do to her poor sludgy power.

’I want to bond you.’ Zen repeated. ’I want to be your partner truly and completely.’

He dove at the ground, spitting a stream of fire into it, then clawed up a section of grass and earth. He continued to breathe flame across it until it was dry and crumbly, then made a gargling sound and spat out a glob of hot saliva. Alisa backed away as he swiftly formed the clod of earth into a steaming ball of mud roughly the size of her thigh.

Zen landed, coiled himself up, and reached out with one foreclaw to carefully draw the complicated bonding circles onto the conjured mud. Alisa leaned closer, watching the careful precision of his lines, impressed that he had such control. For someone who’d always hated reading or writing, he did an amazing job. She didn’t see a single flaw large enough to cause a problem, only a few slight wobbles when he hesitated at transitions.

But there was more to spellwriting than drawing the patterns.

“It won’t work,” she said gently. She hated to have to crush his dreams. “You need to channel magic through your hand or a stylus when imprinting. Dragon claws won’t work.”

She wasn’t sure exactly how it worked. Something about the keratin interfering, like how you had to draw spells with the pad of your finger and not the fingernail. There were reasons dragons only ever cast with their mouths and not any other part of their bodies.

Zen wilted in disappointment.

“I’m so sorry, Zen. It’s just not possible.” Then she remembered her old school stylus, from before Tay gave her the ruby one. “Wait, maybe…” She still had it somewhere…

After a few minutes searching, she dug it out from a forgotten corner of the desk drawer.

Alisa held it out to him. “Here, I’ll make you a deal. If you can learn to draw the circles properly, with the stylus, channeling the magic through it, then we’ll give it a try. But you’ll need to bring Tay to supervise. Since he’s already bonded, he’d know the risks.”

’Yes! Yes yes, I’ll do it, it’ll be perfect, you’ll see!’ Zen practically bounced in midair as he gently took the stylus in his mouth, circled in excited loops for half a minute, then flew away. ‘It’ll be perfect! You’ll see!’

There was so little chance he could actually pull this off, she felt a little guilty for encouraging him. But she couldn’t bring herself to deny him.

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