I yawned from under the heat lamp as Taureen exited his room. “Good morning.”

I stretched my wings as I replied, “Good morning.”

Now that he figured out I could talk, he was probably going to talk to me more now than he had in the past. Although come to think of it, he did talk a fair bit to me before he realized that I understood him. I just never responded in words he could understand.

He left the back door open as he went out into the garden. After a bit more stretching to warm up my muscles, I flew out to the garden. He was unlocking the back gate, and I could already see Aeria coming down the street.

I took my usual perch as I waited for the sun to grace us with its light. With a trill of joy, I sprang into the air. I loved the feeling that the Morning Song created; there was so much joy and delight in the new day that my heart simply couldn’t hold it all and let it spill out in song and dance for all to enjoy.

Once the Song ended, I glided over to land on Taureen’s shoulder. I nuzzled his chin while humming, and he gently stroked my wings. Aeria watched the two of us interact with a faint look that reminded me of envy.

He moved the bowl of fruit beside his leg and uncovered it. To my delight, the pieces were a bit larger today. He held one in his hand, although I noticed that the bowl was in a spot where I could eat from it if I wanted.

I jumped down to his lap and gently took the piece from his hand. It was still small enough that I didn’t need to use my hands to eat it. I decided to ignore the bowl that he was leaving open as per his promise.

Part of it was to keep up appearances with Aeria here, and part of it was because it didn’t really bother me at this point. I was going to eat my fill of a variety of fruits that were otherwise unavailable to me if I had been in the wild. Had I still been human, it would have been a bit degrading, but as a dragonet, it really didn’t matter.

Aeria and Taureen kept offering me pieces until I was full. Taureen brought out the cleaning kit, and this time he did the cleaning himself while Aeria watched.

I murmured sleepily as Taureen picked me up off of his lap and cradled me in his arms. I had fallen asleep during the oiling and blinked sleepily at the world around me. Taureen escorted Aeria to the back door and let her out before heading inside.

He sat down on the couch and placed me on his lap once more. I stretched, although I remained lying on his lap as I looked at him with still-drowsy eyes.

It seemed to amuse him, and in good humor, he inquired, “Does the oiling really affect you so, or is it partly an act?”

I contemplated the heavenly feeling of the muscles being massaged and skin being hydrated before pushing the feelings into his mind without words. He blinked slowly, somewhat stunned as the foreign emotions entered his mind. It had caught him off guard since he hadn’t been expecting it. He still wasn’t used to my words in his head, and I hadn’t yet used plain emotions as an answer.

I apologized, “Sorry, I forgot that you might not be used to such a method of communication.”

He refocused on me. “No worries. It was interesting.”

Curiosity ate at me, and I tilted my head in inquiry. “How do my emotions compare to yours? I know in theory that our races can somewhat feel the same emotions, but how they are felt must be different.”

He thought for a moment before replying, “Yours seem more simplistic and primal. Mine are almost always tempered by other thoughts and emotions, quite analytical and evaluating. We see things from every angle and have a hard time focusing on just one emotion. Perhaps my race thinks too much, or that is what several other races claim at any rate.”

I nodded; that kind of reminded me of life as a human when I had been super busy studying and trying to get good grades, although I knew that Kymari didn’t think the same way humans did. Back then, I had simply been too busy to slow down and just enjoy life.

My dragonet instincts influenced me enough that I didn’t exactly think like a human anymore either. At this point, I probably do have more in common with cats than with my old human self.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why exactly do you fly and sing like that every morning?”

“It’s the Morning Song. It calls to us in a way that I can’t put words to. It raises joyous emotions within us to the point that almost nothing can distract us from it. It... makes us feel complete.” I regarded him for a moment. “Do you think you are up to another glimpse of my emotions?”

He nodded and waited as I closed my eyes to pull up the memory of today’s Morning Song. The feeling of the sun conducting my very voice and wings. How the joy and elation overflowed my heart and spurred me to greater efforts. The sense that all was right with the world simply because another day had begun.

I gathered them up like a handful of precious gems and gently pushed them into Taureen’s mind. I opened my eyes to look at him. His eyes were closed, and he had tilted his head a bit as he tried to absorb and make sense of what had appeared in his mind.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It was quite some time before he opened his eyes. “I have never felt or heard of anything like that. Most just find it fascinating to watch and listen to the fire lizards. I had no idea that you were actually feeling something like that. I see why you were unable to put words to it.”

I nodded my understanding. Taureen glanced at the clock and said, “I should get ready. Tran and Vick will be here shortly.”

I stepped off of his lap and went under the heat lamp to wait, although it wasn’t long before he was ready. He held up the harness and looked at me. “I still remember the first time I put this on you.”

I chuckled at the distant memory. “So do I. For some odd reason, Soranto never really tried to pet me after seeing me flame it. At the time, I was upset at your forethought of making it fireproof. You wouldn’t have wanted to hear my mindvoice at that particular moment.”

He found that amusing and examined the harness. “Does wearing it bother you now?”

I shook my head. “No more than the shoulder pads likely bother you. It is odd how one can get used to something over time.”

I left the warm sand and wandered over to allow him to buckle it on me. I stepped onto his wrist, and he lifted me to his shoulder before we left to check along the city walls.

~

I sniffed the air and got to my feet with a low growl. Taureen, Tran, and Vick glanced at me as their weapons appeared in their hands. They proceeded down the spaceship corridor cautiously with weapons at the ready.

When they came to a junction, I circled the area before returning to Taureen’s shoulder and staring at one passageway. They headed in that direction, and I whispered into Taureen’s mind, “Crawler. The scent is faint, but there is one on board somewhere.”

He gave no indication that he heard me, although I knew he had. He had an excellent poker face when others were around. I could easily talk to him without being overheard, but he wasn’t as fortunate unless we were alone. He had grown used to my mindvoice over the past week, and even my rare glimpses of pure emotion didn’t seem to faze him.

I circled another intersection, and they followed my pointed stare once more. I was getting more restless as the scent strengthened. We entered a room with numerous air vents passing through a purifier. I hissed as I glanced around, my claws digging into the shoulder pad as the desire to flame that creepy crawly grew.

“It may be in this room, but I am not entirely sure,” I said, eyeing up all of the air vents and potential hiding places that the mutant spider might be hiding behind.

Taureen crossed the room slowly and passed through the open door leading to the next room. I turned around on his shoulder and hissed back at the way we had come.

Tran examined me for a few moments. “She isn’t worked up enough for a sicora. Wait here while we check the room.” His deduction didn’t surprise me. Tran and Vick had been present every time we found something.

Taureen nodded and backed up a few steps before closing the door between us and the other two. He glanced at me and spoke quietly, “What is it about the sicora and crawlers that irritates you so?”

I spoke quietly, but he would surely feel how riled up I was getting. “I’m not sure. I can’t seem to control my reaction either.” I sent him a glimpse of the emotions I was feeling and felt his muscles tense slightly at my desire to see this thing dead. “A sicora is even worse. I can think straight with a crawler, but rational thought is very difficult around a sicora.”

He glanced at his wrist comm. “They found and killed the crawler. Do you want to see it?”

I nodded. “Seeing it dead makes it much easier for me to believe it’s gone and relax.”

He opened the door and went into the room where Tran was dropping the carcass into a bag they had brought along just in case we found any crawlers. It would be disposed of later. With a deep breath, I shook my scales hard before starting to once more relax.

We continued to inspect the ship in case more had stowed away. When we came to one room, I carefully sniffed the air and snorted. I spread my wings and circled the room before landing back on Taureen’s shoulder and shaking myself off in faint confusion.

When I didn’t do anything else, they started walking again. “I almost thought that I smelled something, but it was so faint that I couldn’t pick it up again. It might have just been an old scent trail from that crawler.”

Two rooms later, I circled the room again before dropping to the floor to sniff near an air vent. I sneezed, “Ktari.”

I snorted at the air vent before heading back to Taureen’s shoulder. Taureen glanced at Vick as he said, “She made that noise the last time we found a ktari. We will have to get them to fumigate before they land.”

Vick nodded and punched something into his wrist comm. I grinned internally as I commented, “Good job. I wasn’t sure you would catch that one. I have no idea why, but I have a very hard time picking up their scent. What on earth is a ktari anyways? You will have to explain that one later on.”

He glanced at me and nodded slightly when the other two had their backs to us. I lay back down on his shoulder while we checked the rest of the ship.

~

The rest of the day was uneventful. Taureen took me to one of the smaller parks that was close to our house. I nibbled some berries from a bush while Taureen leaned against a nearby tree.

“Ktari are a very distant relative to sicora. Small and annoying, but they aren’t dangerous. They have a bad habit of chewing on things and damaging cargo. Much like the rats that used to be around.”

I watched him with one bright eye as I continued to pull berries off of the bush. To the best of my knowledge, the Kymari had sent the rats into extinction, at least within the cities. “Do you want me to alert you to their presence?”

He nodded. “Yes. We don’t like such pest species getting loose on planets. So far, none have made it off of a ship, probably because it is pretty easy to fumigate and kill them if the crew can leave the ship for six hours.”

He watched me nibble on some grasses. “Why did one group of fire lizards go to another park, only to return? They were looking high and low for something before they left the new location. What was missing from that place?”

“They left to hopefully evade your kind. I happened to overhear a discussion about your suspicions of us needing something special in our diet. After they were discovered there, they decided to mess with the minds of the observers before returning.”

He looked somewhat confused. “So, there wasn’t anything really missing from their diet?”

I shook my head. “Not to the best of my knowledge. The Kymari invented that hypothesis; we merely played along.”

He seemed amused by that revelation and watched me sniff a flower. “So why is everyone in that one park?”

I glanced back over my shoulder. “Probably the same reason you build cities. Companionship and safety in numbers.”

“If they are so scared of the Kymari, then why are they in a city when there are huge stretches of untouched forests surrounding the city?”

I winced. “We tried that once. There are creatures out there that aren’t scared of us or intimidated by our flame. We hid in the city parks because it was too dangerous outside the walls.”

He was silent in thought as I continued to enjoy my freedom.