For once, Idriseth woke before Caldor did. He couldn't help but wonder why, since it had never happened before, and he had exhausted himself flying as far away as he could without a break, but he supposed he felt rested enough at least. Perhaps it was his excitement and trepidation about everything that was about to happen.

He wanted to explore the human world without risking causing panic or being attacked, but he couldn't help but worry about it. He had thought he would only look like a human, but it seemed the spell he had designed was more effective than he thought it would be. He wasn't sure if he'd done something wrong, but it seemed he couldn't have as convincing an illusion as this without drawbacks, which in this case was vulnerability.

Idriseth didn't look forward to exploring his new limitations much, but he would have to. Only then would he be able to properly estimate how well he could protect his mate without removing the illusion.

He swallowed down the shame that immediately crawled its way into his heart at that thought. Caldor was just a human. He was so much weaker than Idriseth, and therefore, as his mate, protecting Caldor was Idriseth's main duty. So what good was he if he wasn't strong anymore?

Idriseth was sure that if he brought this up to Caldor, the human would tell him something about how he could protect himself just fine. But Zarleth's mate had almost killed Caldor yesterday. If Idriseth hadn't been strong enough to challenge him, they probably would have both been killed. Idriseth was sure Caldor could protect himself against humans, but what about dragons?

Now that the clan leaders would learn about him taking a human for a mate, the situation was unlikely to get better. At least most dragons in the area were dead, Idriseth thought to himself, and he couldn't help but feel somewhat comforted by that, despite how depressing the thought was.

The chances of anyone finding them, especially with Idriseth glamoured to look like a human, were very slim, but if they did, they would make an example of Caldor, and that was awful to even imagine.

Idriseth found himself brushing his fingers over his mate's dark brown hair, scowling in determination. He would find a way to defend Caldor, even as, for all intents and purposes, a human. He could perhaps get himself a sword. And learn how to use one. He had read about sword fighting, but that was very different from actually using one.

Next to him, Caldor yawned, bringing Idriseth out of his thoughts. He turned his full attention to his mate as he saw him yawn and smile. Caldor looked a little sleep-addled, but also in a very good mood.

"Morning," Caldor said, sitting up, and prompting Idriseth to do the same, which meant he had to put his hands and wings away. He immediately missed the physical contact, which was always a very peculiar sensation.

"It is noon, actually," Idriseth corrected him, looking up through the trees at the sun. They'd spent the night at the edge of a forest this time, using moss as their mattress, which had been much more comfortable than sleeping in a cave, or even on the grass. Idriseth still wasn't sure if being out in the open like this was safe, though. He needed to procure a bed for them as soon as possible.

"Right," Caldor replied, his easygoing smile disappearing. Idriseth almost sighed at that. He knew his mate must have had many questions by now, and Caldor wasn't usually one to keep them to himself. And while Idriseth was hesitant to share things about dragons and their culture, he supposed it was only fair since he expected Caldor to tell him about humans.

Still, his mate telling him about his people wouldn't make think Idriseth less of him. He wasn't so sure that would be the case when he told Caldor about dragons.

"I think we need to talk, Idri," Caldor said, his tone kind but firm as he raised an eyebrow at him. At least Caldor wasn't angry.

"Yes. Of course." Idriseth found himself pulling his robes tighter around his body as Caldor stayed silent for a moment, probably thinking about what to ask first.

"It's bad for dragons to be with humans, huh?"

That wasn't what Idriseth had thought would be the first question, but nevertheless, he answered. "It is seen as...not ideal to take one as a mate, yes. There are very few dragons these days. And we can't have offspring with humans."

His mate nodded slowly, frowning, while Idriseth sighed.

"I apologize for not telling you sooner. But as long as we avoid other dragons—"

"I'm not mad at you, Idri," Caldor interrupted him, taking Idriseth's hand into his. "Honestly, with how sure you were no human would want to be with you, I had a feeling there might be more to it than just you thinking we'd be too prejudiced."

Now it was Idriseth's turn to frown. "Why would you think that?"

His mate chuckled, grinning at him, which immediately made familiar warmth spread through him. Idriseth was still not used to feeling like this, but by the stars, he wanted to happen more often.

"Have you seen yourself?" Caldor leaned in closer, amusement sparkling in his eyes. "You're really good-looking, Idri."

Oh. Well, when trying to perfect his shapeshifting into a human form, he had as reference used illustrations from his books. Perhaps that had influenced it. He hadn't had the chance to see many humans up close, but even if he had, he wasn't sure he would be able to tell who a human would consider attractive.

Not that it mattered much since he already had a mate. Whether Caldor would be seen as generally attractive or not was irrelevant because Idriseth found him pleasing in both appearance and personality, and that was where the issue began and ended.

Though this might be an interesting topic to explore from a scholarly perspective. Perhaps once he was among humans, he would develop at least a theoretical understanding.

"You need to tell me things, all right?" Caldor looked so earnest it made Idriseth feel ashamed of keeping things from his mate in the first place. He supposed it had been a foolish endeavor from the start. He couldn't conceivably not tell Caldor anything without damage to their relationship.

Idriseth lowered his gaze. "Yes, I apologize."

Hearing Caldor sigh, Idriseth expected him to get irritated, but instead, his eyes widened as his mate pressed his lips to his in a short, sweet kiss.

Pulling away, Caldor grinned, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "You're really hard to stay annoyed with, you know."

Idriseth frowned. Was that good or bad? At least Caldor wasn't angry with him, even though he would have been justified in feeling that way.

"Okay, how about we go find ourselves a tavern now, huh?" Caldor suggested, patting the dragon's shoulder and getting up. Idriseth rose to his feet as well, a sudden rush of excitement running through his body. A human tavern. How novel. "Serious talks always make me thirsty."

"Is that some kind of ailment?"

As Caldor immediately started laughing, Idriseth assumed meant that the answer was no. And he couldn't help but feel foolish. Of course, his mate hadn't meant that literally.

"Will we drink rum?" he asked, suddenly feeling concerned as the memory of his first experience with alcohol came to him.

"I was thinking beer," Caldor replied, and Idriseth nodded. Right, he'd read about that and had wondered about how it tasted before, so he didn't have many reservations. At least not until he saw Caldor frown.

"Is something wrong?"

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His mate scratched the back of his neck. "Well, we have no money to pay for anything. And we still need to get you some new clothes. I'm just thinking about our options."

Idriseth smiled, relieved that for once the issue was one he could easily fix. "Fear not, beloved. I can turn anything into gold with the transmutation stone."

Caldor stared at him for a second, his eyes wide and his cheeks pink. "Transmutation stone?"

Idriseth gave a nod, smiling again. "Yes, you have it in your pocket."

A frown on his face once more, Caldor reached into his pocket and pulled out the transmutation stone. "What, this thing?" He studied it closely, his expression turning into one of disbelief. "This can create gold?" Caldor shook his head. "My guild should have just gotten one of these, and we'd have been set."

"It requires magical incantation to work," Idriseth explained, though he was sure Caldor already suspected as much. But after seeing his mate's eyes darken at the mention of his guild, Idriseth hoped his words might distract him somewhat. "It can change practically anything into anything else. That is why I needed it to complete the spell."

That was a gross oversimplification, but Idriseth didn't think he needed to bore his mate with a deep explanation of how magic worked. Even trying to explain how he'd transformed the stone's power using his spell and then imbued that power into the pebble seemed like unnecessary information.

"But if you can do this, why do dragons even steal gold, then?" Caldor asked as he looked up at Idriseth again, playing with the stone absently.

Idriseth sighed, grimacing. Things like this were exactly why he hadn't wanted to talk about his people much, but he wouldn't go back on his promise. "For dragons, gold and jewels have no worth unless they were taken by force."

Caldor let out a very dry laugh. "Right, of course." Then he shook his head and looked down at the transmutation stone in his hand again. "But that's great news." He looked up with a grin. "That means there's nothing left to worry about. What do you say we finally go have some fun?"

While Idriseth's heart longed for them to get closer to his fort, he knew that it wasn't safe to be anywhere near Redreach right now, and so he agreed, eager to see what a human town was like. His only experience with them was seeing them from above, and even then, he'd tried to avoid flying too close and drawing attention to himself.

And so once again he transformed into his true form and took flight, looking for a town or a village they could visit. Even though he couldn't see it now, he was sure he'd seen lights in the east when they'd flown here, and so he started heading that way. And indeed, once they traveled for a while, Idriseth managed to spot tiny houses in the distance.

His heart stuttering, Idriseth had to force himself not to fly faster. He would just tire himself out, but it was difficult to not get excited over this. And that was a feeling he truly wasn't used to. He even felt a little silly over it, but he couldn't help it—he was just eager to explore the human world. And with his new mate, no less.

This wasn't exactly how he'd imagined he'd do this for the first time, but he was certainly not complaining. This was much better.

Just to be safe, he landed near a forest about an hour's walk away from the town, afraid of someone seeing him. Perhaps he was being overly cautious, but he truly didn't want to ruin this. At least his mate didn't seem to have anything against it as he jumped off Idriseth's back without comment and waited for him to turn back into his more human form. Soon to look fully human.

As he got dressed, he couldn't help but think about how he would turn the enchanted stone into a necklace. He would have tried to make a hole in it with his claw, but he didn't want to risk breaking it. Perhaps he could simply hold it in his hand for now. That was risky, too, though, because if at any point it fell out of his hand, everyone would see he wasn't human.

"I'm sure there's going to be a blacksmith in town," Caldor said, a pensive frown on his face. "To make a setting for the pebble."

Oh, so they were thinking about the same thing. Idriseth hadn't thought to consider that, though he supposed that was a good solution. He would have to wait outside of town for Caldor to have a setting made, though, as this would no doubt require the stone to be given to the blacksmith.

Caldor hummed, looking around on the ground as if searching for something. "You said this," he said, gesturing with the transmutation stone without looking up, "can turn anything into anything."

"For the most part, when it comes to materials, yes."

"So, can it make wood into gold?"

Idriseth had little idea as to where his mate was going with this, but once again he confirmed it.

"Great, then we need a saw, ideally," Caldor said as he bent down, putting the transmutation stone into his pocket and instead picking up a thin, broken tree branch off the grassy ground and inspecting it.

Seeing that made Idriseth a little guilty for making Caldor practically permanently carry the spellbook, but that thought was almost immediately drowned out by his confusion about what his mate was doing.

"Why?"

Caldor smiled. "Well, people might get suspicious of this, and carrying around gold in nuggets will just make it worse." He waved the branch around. "We could slice this up into something that at least resembles coins. I know they won't have the king's seal on them, but all the tools to fake that are back in Redreach." Caldor grimaced. "Assuming they even survived the fire."

Idriseth wanted to say something to console his mate, but he couldn't think of anything that would help. Thankfully Caldor continued talking, though, saving them both from an uncomfortable silence. "In any case, it will be more convenient to have coins in general."

Idriseth supposed that was true, although he was still somewhat confused why this mattered. He'd been under the assumption that humans liked precious metals and wouldn't care about what shape they were in, but since Caldor had much more experience with humans, the dragon decided to just go along with this.

Transforming one of his fingers into a claw, he stretched out his other hand towards his mate. "Give me the branch. I can cut it up."

Caldor frowned for just a second before his eyes widened, staring down at Idriseth's claw. "I didn't know you could do that."

Idriseth smiled. "Of course I can. I have near-perfect control over my physical form. How else would I have given you your mating bite?"

Caldor snorted and grinned, though he still looked surprised. "Right, okay, no need to brag, Idri." Putting the spellbook under his arm, Caldor quickly broke off whatever bark was left on the dry foot-long branch before handing it to Idriseth.

The dragon put it on the ground, crouching down and running his hand over the pale wood. It did seem to have nearly the same diameter as a coin from his clan's hoard, so hopefully making the individual pieces around the same thickness as those would be accurate.

It didn't take long to cut up the entire branch, his claw slicing easily through the wood in a neat straight line over and over, and by the end, there were over fifty thin, round pieces of wood that did somewhat resemble coins in shape. They were not perfect circles in the least, but then neither were human coins most of the time.

"These are perfect," Caldor said as he helped Idriseth collect them all. "Now what?"

"I simply need to cast a spell using the transmutation stone," Idriseth explained, putting the wooden pieces he'd collected into Caldor's hands and taking the spellbook from him.

"Put the stone on top," Idriseth continued, grimacing when he saw his mate trying to hold onto all the pieces with one hand clutched to his chest as he fished around for the transmutation stone in his pocket. "If you can."

With a noise of triumph, Caldor finally managed to get the stone and put it on the pile, using both his hands to keep it all in place. "Oh, can you make it silver instead?"

"Yes?" Idriseth opened the spellbook, paging through it to find transmutation spells. He knew there weren't many, and he'd personally never tried them, but he was glad one of his ancestors had bothered to record them. In theory, he should be able to make up his own spell, but that would take a lot of time to research properly.

"That should help with how suspicious we come across, too," Caldor explained, clearly sensing Idriseth's confusion. "Silver is less rare."

"Humanity is complicated," Idriseth mused as he found the correct page. Transmutation into silver and gold were on the same page, as they seemed to be practically the same spell.

"This isn't going to make me silver, is it?" Despite Caldor's lighthearted tone, he did seem a bit worried.

"No, of course not," Idriseth assured him, though couldn't help but smile to himself. Idriseth certainly wouldn't mind adorning his mate in precious metals, but making him into them was a bit too extreme. "This spell only works on non-living matter."

Idriseth narrowed his eyes at the pile of wooden pieces in Caldor's hands, keeping the image in his mind as he lowered his eyes to the book and began to read the words. Immediately he felt power draining out of him, but compared to making his human disguise, it was barely noticeable.

As he finished reading, he looked at the wooden coins again, seeing their surface shimmer for just a second before turning silver, shining in what little sunlight hit them.

Idriseth let out a breath, closing the spellbook with a loud thump. With amusement he watched his mate struggle to hold onto the pile of silver with one arm as he picked one of the coins up and bit into it before inspecting it closely with a frown.

"Do you doubt my magic?" Idriseth asked, smiling as Caldor chuckled.

"No, I just...." He huffed, looking down at the coins. "I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that these are real. I expected it to, I don't know, not be so fast and easy."

He threw another incredulous look at the coin he was holding before grimacing as one of the other coins fell to the ground. "Uh, a little help, Idri?"

Smiling to himself, Idriseth put the spell book under one arm and took the transmutation stone and about half the coins from Caldor, putting them in his pocket while his mate did the same.

"You have pockets in that?" Caldor being surprised like this felt good. Idriseth enjoyed impressing him, of course, but it was with even the littlest things. Sometimes Idriseth himself didn't even realize that what he did or said could be impressive, as it was normal for dragons. And on top of that, he'd never been impressive to his peers in any way. Was it wrong that he secretly enjoyed it when his mate reacted like this?

"Oh, that reminds me," Caldor said as he finished putting the coins away. "What we need to get next is more standard clothes for you." He grinned at him. "All right. Ready to go?"

Idriseth smiled as his mate offered him his hand. This was all very complicated and confusing, but yes, he was very ready.

Idriseth took his hand. "Of course."