Adelie

Adelie leaned forward between the front seats as Phoebe turned the car into the driveway. Cratered old tarmac bounced the Subaru on its suspension, and Adelie had to hang on tightly to avoid getting thrown too hard against her seatbelt. The sky was hard, wet-concrete grey, bleak as the temperature, and all the colour seemed drained out of the world. The hillside was a sheet of drab green pastures, only a couple of forlorn trees half-way to the foreshortened horizon to break its monotony.

The barn that Phoebe had 'found' – it obviously wasn't that simple but Adelie trusted Phoebe to explain if it came to matter – hunched miserably against the winter, stone damply grey-black, wooden door looking oddly fresh but wide enough to form a square, grumpy mouth on the building's face. Beyond it was a similarly dreary farmhouse with what looked like brand-new plastic-framed windows. What was this place?

She put the worry aside as Phoebe parked and said, "Okay, here we are." Despite her thick hoodie, scarf and coat, Adelie shivered, letting the nerves run through her. She'd done every bit of reading she could, but this was not what she was trained for. Phoebe turned to look at her passengers. "Ready?"

"Mh-hm!" In the front passenger seat, Petunia tucked her seatbelt away and popped her door open. The temperature in the car immediately dropped, and Adelie shrank back inside herself. Phoebe was already moving as well.

Fingers unsteady, Adelie released her seatbelt and turned to her door. It took a couple of deep breaths before she was ready to open the catch. The wind bit at her the second her head was outside the car, but at least it had stopped raining.

Phoebe and Petunia were already halfway to the barn. Adelie scurried to follow them, stumbling on the uneven ground. Where there was mud rather than tarmac, there were trackmarks from some heavy vehicle, and they looked recent. And, there, right in front of the door, one large, heavy, three-clawed footprint with a deep gouge for the heel talon.

For a moment, Adelie thought Phoebe was waiting for her, but she was just fiddling with some complicated locking mechanism. It gave a hefty clunk as Adelie caught up, and then the door started to slide aside. There was no creaking or grinding. Inside, the barn was full of a warm, gentle light, as if it had its own miniature sun.

Despite the cold, Adelie hesitated on the threshold. The floor inside was bare concrete near the door but covered in a thick layer of sand further in and there, at the far corner-

"Come on, Adelie, it's expensive enough heating this place without leaving the door open." Phoebe said it with a laugh in her voice, but Adelie knew that wasn't a laugh to be argued with.

She stepped inside, letting the heat steady her nerves a little. Phoebe heaved the door closed in a single smooth motion, and it slammed loud enough that Adelie jumped, looking immediately at the indigo heap in the corner. Why was he so large? Wasn't he supposed to be young? And on the small side?

Soot stirred sleepily and a long curve of black separated itself from his curled body and rose. Adelie thought it had to be his tail at first, but instead of tapering to a fin, what appeared at the end was a blunt wedge-snout, smoothly curved, not that much wider than the neck. It looked more like a snake's head than anything she'd been expecting. Crests came in slowly as drakes passed from immaturity to full adulthood, she knew, but she hadn't thought about them starting with no crests at all.

Phoebe was already walking over to the dragon, slowly but confidently, with her head high and her crownfeathers spread. Petunia scuttled along at her heels, and Soot was pushing up from his repose to greet them. The lack of crests did make him less intimidating, but the way he towered over the girls…

Adelie dragged a deep breath through her nose and set off towards them. Her gut felt tense, there was a fizzing in her chest. She folded her arms, pulling her coat tighter despite the warmth – now she was inside, she could see the vents of at least four large space heaters on the walls. The lighting wasn't conventional fluorescent strips, either, but sun bulbs. Where had Phoebe found the money for all of this? She'd been cagey, but it couldn't have come from her family after everything, could it?

"Hey, Soot," Phoebe spoke with more than her usual grin in her voice. She was going to be insufferable for days, Adelie could see it in her. It had been a long time since she'd seen her friend so happy. "I brought some important friends for you to meet, how are you doing?"

She reached up a hand and Soot bowed his head to flick his tongue at it. Then he straight-up nuzzled Phoebe's palm, a gesture so unmistakably pet-like that Adelie could almost forget the tongue had been the length of Phoebe's forearm. The dragon let out a sound that was halfway between a dog's snort and a cough, nothing like Adelie had ever heard a reptile make before.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

That wasn't right, of course – true dragons weren't much closer in the evolutionary tree to the pets Adelie usually treated than they were to humans – but he looked so much like a snake. And thinking of him that way made it easier to stand close to him. Well, not as close as Petunia.

Soot turned his attention to the pink-headed girl, the great dark cheese-block of a head swinging over to her. Phoebe made a gentle gesture round the back of Petunia's shoulder, "This is Petunia, Soot, you have to be nice to her, ok, she's going to make sure we can afford your food. Petunia, hold up your hand, don't touch him, just let him get your scent, ok?"

Petunia did as bidden, head craned back and doing her best to meet Soot's eyes. That was one way he wasn't quite like a snake, Adelie realised, the eye position was different, a little wider and further back. And of course his eyes themselves were glowing amethyst gems.

That tongue flicked out again, and Adelie heard it slap against Petunia's palm, but she barely flinched, just a slight narrowing of her eyes. Adelie tensed as she watched her friend decide whether or not to scold the drake. Then Soot seemed to make the same calculation. He blinked, slowly, and lowered his head, pushing gently past Petunia's hand to touch the tip of his lower jaw to her forehead.

Phoebe laughed, "Oh, he likes you, you're gonna get on great."

Petunia didn't break her focus on the drake. Voice as clipped and proper as when she got an out-of-hours call from her boss, she said, "Hi Soot, it's nice to meet you." Then she let out a little giggle of her own. "You're very handsome."

Soot pulled back, huffing enough through his nostrils to flutter Petunia's bangs. Fighting with herself, Adelie managed to shuffle another step closer, her feet crunching in the sand. The dragon noticed the movement immediately. Phoebe hadn't been kidding about his intelligence.

"And this is Adelie," Selen said. "She's going to be making sure you stay fit, ok?"

Suddenly Soot's face was inches from Adelie's, the hot draught of his breath washing over her. She stumbled back a step, shoulders jerking tight to grab for more balance. The dragon didn't let her keep the distance, closing in again and-

His tongue was hot and slimy and sandpapery and slithering over half her face. She could feel her hair pulling gently as it stuck to the tongue, the fork splitting with one side all the way up to her ear and the other across her lips and nose. He had the breath of… well, an obligate carnivore, but one who weighed a quarter-tonne and had a core body temperature closer to one-twenty than a hundred.

Adelie found herself staggering, hands up over her face, while Phoebe laughed. "Chill out, Adelie, he's just being friendly. Don't you deal with this stuff every day?"

Wiping her face with her sleeve, with Soot's snout still looming over her, Adelie found her eyes were watering. "Not from anything this big! Maybe like a big snake, that might weigh twenty-five pounds. Nothing like… him."

Soot huffed, and Phoebe chuckled again. "Relax, just think of him like a really big dog or a lizard, he's just a bit mischievous."

"You don't believe that!" Adelie realised she was shouting and stumbled, cringing in case Soot took offence, but Phoebe was still laughing. "If I said that about a dragon you'd yell at me!"

"Yeah, ok, that's true, actually, don't call my partner a lizard."

Above her, the drake had pulled back a few feet, but his eyes bore down on her unblinking all the same. It felt like there was some more tension in his pose, but how could she know? She'd never tended to any animal this big, never mind one as smart as Soot.

To Phoebe, she said, "Stop laughing at me, I don't know what to do!"

"I mean, talk to him, not me," Phoebe laughed again. "Isn't that the first thing you're supposed to do? You're here to get to know Soot, you already know me."

Adelie looked up at the dragon again. Whether or not he was tense, she could feel her own fear tightening around her still-sticky eyebrows and cheeks. She set her feet, feeling them shift unsteadily on the sand, and started to reach up a trembling hand. Her voice rattled as she said, "Hello, Soot."

This time when his tongue flickered over her palm, the touch was so gentle it tingled. Adelie took another tight, long breath as he leaned down and pressed the tip of his nose to her hand. His scales, at least, were familiarly reptilian, warm and dry and soft. Tentatively, Adelie brushed her thumb over the curve of his nostril.

Soot let out a gentle, pleased whuff of air, and pressed down with his head. The movement had more force than he'd used on Petunia, and again Adelie stumbled, then she was reeling backwards, balance completely gone because he wouldn't stop pushing and she was going to end up flat on her backside in the sand and-

"Soot!" Phoebe caught Adelie with two quick steps forward and an arm around her back. Her strength was surprising, she barely seemed to bend as she bore Adelie back up again. Her eyes were fixed on the dragon, and her crownfeathers were raised as full as they'd go. She wasn't shouting, but she also wasn't laughing, and her voice was sharp. "Play nice, okay? Adelie's only small, you've gotta be gentle."

Soot's neck arched as he pulled his head back, tongue flickering between his lips. Phoebe let go of Adelie and turned to face her. "You ok?"

Adelie couldn't help glancing up at the night-purple head above them before answering. "I just… I don't know if I can do this."

"I can't do it without you, Adelie, you promised you'd be up to it."

"I said I'd try! I'm not trained for this, this is way out of my league."

"Come on, how bad can it be? You just gotta do your thing, but bigger. You have all the reference books, right?" And then the constant chuckle that underlay Phoebe's speech stuttered out, and for a second Adelie saw an expression on her friend's face that she couldn't recognise at all. "Please?"

Adelie took a breath and looked up at Soot again. "Okay, I'll try."