Beverly had been to several dinners with a tense atmosphere, and she had expected a meal shared between two dragons to be similar. Instead, it was a surprisingly laid back affair. Mistress Lipei sat at the low table with them, her back ramrod straight and ate with chopsticks, taking dainty little bites. Jydrenth, her host, and Maun, Silli’s husband, shoveled food in their mouths with little thought for propriety. It made an odd contrast.
Beverly followed Silli’s lead, taking a slow measured pace, scooping rice and the fish stew in equal parts. She hadn’t been much for rice in her old life, and it was rare that she’d had fish that wasn’t breaded and fried. But the stew was good and the rice was filling. Desert was slices of a sweet bread with a honey butter spread, savored as Mistress Lipei and Maun shared gossip and news from the town.
The names meant nothing to her, so she tuned out most of the conversation, taking the time to study the unknown pair.
Maun was a lot like his wife. A halfling, although maybe an inch or two taller. A similar tattoo covered the side of his face, the same color and the same basic design. Silli’s was perhaps a bit softer, where Maun’s was more harsh and angular. The same symbols, but perhaps drawn by different hands. She had heard his full name twice so far, but it hadn’t stuck. She could handle a name like Maun. It was unusual, but it was close enough to Juan to stick in her head. She had known some Juans, back home, she had always associated the name with a hard worker.
From the little she had seen of him, he sure seemed to be a hard worker. He had entered the grounds at a run, sprinted over to where Jydrenth had been showing her the orchard, hissed something in dragon tongue then ran back to the house. When her host had guided her through the preparation area, the halfling was rolling a barrel as big as he was to the low table, with no sign of having slowed down. The barrel had some sort of beer in it. Nutty and rich, Beverly had just had a single glass, marking her as the slowest drinker by far. Even Lipei had her paced by several pints. None of them seemed to be affected by any signs of alcohol, but Beverly took it slow, just in case.
Mistress Lipei confused her a little bit. She was obviously someone of great importance. With how Jydrenth treated her as an equal, she could certainly be a dragon, but that was hard to believe without having seen it. She seemed to be a woman, tall and slender, with jet black hair. Her skin where it could be seen, was pale, with a slight asian tint. Her face was fully painted, a pure white foundation, lips painted a vibrant red and eyebrows penciled into a thin firm line. All of this brought focus to her sapphire eyes, an unnatural blue that looked like the finest gemstones. A color that Beverly could easily picture forming scales and coating claws. And, for a second, her eyes unfocused and the full form of Mistress Lipei appeared like a ghostly visage, wings thin enough to see light shining through their sapphire membrane, spines jutting out along her ridgeline and a tail that looked more fitting on a porcupine then a dragon. The dragon’s blue eyes turned to her and Beverly blinked and coughed on her mouthful of rice. When she looked up again, the draconic shape was gone, and only Mistress Lipei’s human guise remained.
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After dinner, Beverly assisted with the chores, reveling in the boundless energy her new body seemed to have. She hadn’t put it through anything particularly strenuous, to be fair, but a week ago, the idea of quickly gathering the plates, scraping them clean, and taking the bucket of scraps to the pond would have felt like a Herculean task, but now, it felt just like a common courtesy, a small favor to easily repay her hosts for a bit of the dinner.
The skies were beginning to darken and stars were beginning to sprinkle themselves across the sky. It was not the same stars as on Earth, even on the Southern hemisphere. Such a small difference and yet, of her whole day, it was the first thing that made her feel so far from home.
The sound of flapping from the front of the building drew Beverly’s attention. She could just make out the shape of two dragons lifting above the treeline and into the air, their blue and purple colorations fading as they moved out of the lamplight and into the sky, obscuring the stars as they rose. Their movements were beautiful, but as their identity faded to shadow, memories of black shapes seen through the rectangular windows of the bus began to creep in and suddenly Beverly felt uneasy.
She hurried to the pond with the bucket, and on the center island, poured the scraps into the water. Immediately, the water began to churn as the winged fish fought for the remnants of dinner.
A dark shape in the water caught Beverly’s eye and she froze, watching as a dragon’s head breached the surface. It’s yellow eyes glittered in the torchlight as it looked at her. Unsure of what else to do, Beverly sketched a shaky bow and ran for the house.