When eventually my Edith poked her head out from beneath my wing, it was with a summons.

  “Stick yer head under here my Sanguine. It’s bloody cold and I really wasn’t done talking to ye.”

  I did as requested. My Edith was indeed shivering, even in the insulated pocket provided by my wing. I wrapped my tail around her a bit tighter and laid my head down in her lap. That drew forth another unsolicited giggle.

  Edith had worked my brooch into her hair just over her right temple. Her skilled fingers had her hair delicately threaded so that the brooch was firmly in place, but showed off the intricate design.

  “Oh gods,” she whispered. “That really is so much better. I was freezing my t- uhm, bits off, standing there giving ye a talking to… I’m gonna need to sort things out with dear Cassia.” She seemed suddenly very confident about being able to handle it without upsetting anyone. “I figure the both of us can fit in here, no trouble aye?”

  She was correct, more or less. It would be tight, but both women wouldn’t have an issue fitting underneath my wing like this. If she could handle Cassia’s jealousy, that was.

  “But chatting about sleeping arrangements can keep just a bit, my Sanguine,” She continued. I rumbled happily. Her calling me by that term brought me great joy. ‘My’ Sanguine. “T’laanga beat me to the punch, but he was right. Yer magic is… dangerous, Sanguine. Let me explain before you go huffy-dragon on me, okay?”

  I most certainly never went ‘huffy’, but I nodded my assent.

  “I wasn’t born with a lot of magic. Most humans don’t have any. Those born without any at all can’t really ‘see’ magic. It's like they’re blind to it, except for the effect it has afterwards. Anyone would notice something getting set on fire, for example.”

  That seemed strange, but I supposed it was possible. The few humans I’d seen that didn’t smell strongly of vitality seemed less perceptive than people like my Cassia or T’laanga.

  “I was born with just a little magic, so I’ve always been able to see it, but not do much of anything with it. It’s part of why I became an alchemist. Potions are… kind of cheating at magic, in a way. But that’s not the important part. What is-” She scritched my head, earning a pleased rumble. “-is that ye have more magic in one claw than most humans will ever have, my Sanguine. Even if they trained all their lives, they’d be like a little candle next to a roaring fire.”

  “T’laanga is… more skilled than most. He’s what ye’d call a ‘Sorcerer’. That’s humans born with a lot of natural magic, usually due to some big magic critter messing with their lineage. I don’t know what T’laanga’s is. It’s a… very personal thing, to a Sorcerer.”

  “What that means for ye, my big beautiful beasty, is that even when ye aren’t full grown ye just about knocked over one of the strongest human Sorcerers I’ve ever met. Ye didn’t do it with any real control either. It was like watching an avalanche coming and praying we didn’t get smooshed.”

  I remembered vividly the feeling of being small, afraid, and in the middle of an avalanche. I regretted making my Edith go through something like that.

  “But don’t go getting a big head. Ye may have caught T’laanga off guard, but he won’t make that same mistake twice. No one knows what a dragon is capable of, really. If he challenges ye again, it’ll be because he’s pulled out all his nastiest tricks from the bag. He doesn’t start fights he thinks he can’t win.”

  “The problem is, beasty, that magic doesn’t ‘behave’ nice and neat. Just because ye tell it to do one thing, doesn’t mean it won’t go off on its own later. Human practitioners learn early on to corral any spare magic back into themselves. The best mages don’t waste a drop. For a human, that’s just conserving all the strength ye have til ye need it. For someone like ye…”

  “Firing off big ‘waves’ of magic like ye’ve done may have side effects ye never intended. I don’t know exactly what they’ll be, but ye can bet they’ll be trouble. At the very least, anyone who's even remotely attuned to magic will feel what ye’ve been doing from miles off. Maybe leagues away. Imagine… like that big beastly roar of yours carried across the horizon and just kept going.”

  That… would be bad. Really bad. I’d never considered that other people could ‘feel’ me using magic. It's not like I’d ever felt it coming from anyone else before T’laanga. Most concerning was that my siblings might be able to feel what I’d been doing. If they hadn’t known I’d existed before, it was possible that they were tracking my location each time I used magic.

  But how was I supposed to restrain it? My magic was in my blood, a part of both my physical body and my identity. A cursory attempt to mute it only produced a vaguely uncomfortable sensation down in my bones.

  “Oh, are ye trying to quiet it already, my big beasty?” My Edith said with a pleased tone. She rewarded me with more scratches to my head ridges. “It weren’t much, but the… ahm… ‘loud’ sound of yer magic did soften just a smidge. Enough where I could tell the difference. Of course…” She reached up and touched my brooch in her hair.

  “I’m going to need to be careful myself. I’ve never had this much magic at my finger tips before. Our Cassia probably doesn’t even know she’s using it either. One more thing to chat with her about.”

  Wait, my Cassia was using magic? ‘Our’ had… a nice ring to it. I’d have to try it out later. I cracked open my eye to stare at Edith quizzically.

  “... You didn’t know she was using yer magic?” Edith said in mild puzzlement before pausing. “... Oh. Oooooh. Hmm. Yes, well, she is. Our lass has some magic of her own. It doesn’t feel like sorcery to me. My best guess is it’s from living in the Cursed Forest. ‘Normal’ folk can’t live there. If a human without magic eats too many critters or plants from the Cursed Forest, they die. There’s too much uncontrolled magic lying around.”

  “A lot of the villagers blame the Forest for the Wasting Plague, like what took Magnus. It’s a disease that seems almost… Alive. Evil. Malicious. It’ll lie in wait for years, only to spring out and devour ye when ye least expect it.”

  “Yer magic is… I think adding to Cassia’s own. She’s far stronger than a normal lass her age. Hells, she's stronger and faster than most men. It’s not just anyone that can climb on a dragon when it takes off into the sky and not fall back to earth.”

  That wasn’t a fun memory, especially a fresh one. I rumbled unhappily.

  “Aye don’t think I’ve forgotten about that, my Sanguine. In spite of… everything, this wonderful gift and the… the snuggling and… ahem. Anyhow. Ye are still in trouble. I expect you to work double-extra-hard on mastering yer control of magic. And whatever made ye go nuts when T’laanga got bit. I think I’ve got a pretty good idea, but it’s going to be up to ye to control yourself better.” She smiled softly.

  “We really need ye to work hard for us, my lovely big beasty. Promise me?”

  Looking up into my Edith’s eyes, I could gladly have promised her the world (so long as it included my Cassia).

  “Promise,” I rumbled up at her, tail flicking happily in her lap. I meant it. Learning to control my own abilities would only help keep that which was Mine safe and could have many outside benefits.

  “Good. Now there’s just one last thing,” Edith said. She hesitated far more about this than the rest of what she’d said before. Given all that had happened, it made me worried. When she finally spoke, it was slowly and carefully.

  “I think… when we healed Magnus… we might’ve gone a little too far.” That… Really didn’t make any sense. My confusion was more than evident. “I don’t mean that what we did was wrong, per say… probably. But you remember how when we tried to feed him the potion, he was almost dead?”

  Yes I remembered. That was up there on the list of ‘Sanguine’s All Time Least Favorite Experiences’. It wasn’t a long list, but it had the Vile Tree and Falling Down an Avalanche on it.

  Edith chewed her lip before continuing.

  “I think Magnus might’ve been… really almost dead.” My neutral expression bid her to continue. “This is… uhm… Metaphysical and I really don’t know much about it. So please understand that I might be wrong. Best as I understand, it goes something like this:-”

  “All things have magic in them. Rocks, trees, creatures, people, everything. It may be a little tiny bit, but there’s still some. What separates creatures and people from rocks and plants is that animals and folk have a ‘spirit’. It kind of… sits on top, like a layer in a cake.”

  I didn’t know what a cake was, but she was on a roll so I didn’t interrupt.

  “Some folk say that plants have a little bit of spirit, but that’s not important. Lastly, what separates animals from thinking beings like humans or… uhm, dragons I guess, is that they have a ‘soul’. There’s… ah… a lot of…” She waggled her hands. “- really smart folk who argue about this a lot.”

  “One thing they agree on is that when people die, their spirit and magic leave the body. Supposedly the soul sticks around for a bit, but that’s more a question for priests. That’s… how we found Magnus. Almost all of the spirit and magic, such as a young boy with no magical talent could have, were gone.”

  “I wasn’t too sure at first. I had my suspicions, based on some of his… changes in appearance and personality.” I waited patiently for my Edith to make her point. “When we gave him the potion, I think it replaced the magic his body had lost, but it didn’t restore his spirit. Then you stepped in and uhm…” Edith seemed very uncomfortable. Still, I waited.

  “I think ye might’ve dumped a bunch of yer own spirit into him. Kind of like how ye probably made our Cassia’s gemstone, or my brooch. There was so little of Magnus’s own spirit left, that ye essentially replaced it with some of yours.”

  That… was troubling. If I understood Edith right, that was kind of like killing the child and puppeteering him around with my willpower. She clearly caught on to my distress, because she started patting on my neck.

  “Now now, I think ye did save him. Truly. He still remembers everything from before he got sick. There’s a bit of a gap in his memory right before we gave him the potion, but that’s probably for the best. It was an awful thing for anyone to suffer, let alone a child.”

  “I’m confident Magnus is, ultimately, the same person. He’s not a… puppet. That’s part of why T’laanga got so angry. He really is glad that we saved the boy I think, but he views the side effect as… very irresponsible.”

  That sounded like there was more to it than merely swapping out Magnus’s spirit. I squinted at my Edith.

  “You’ve noticed Magnus’s eyes right?” I nodded. “And how he’s attached to our Cassia?” Another nod. “And how he can probably set things on fire without touching them?”

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

  I didn’t like where this was going.

  “I think whatever ye did, my sweet well meaning Sanguine, turned the boy into something like your son.”

  “Please explain to me,” my Cassia said softly. “How we ended up like this.”

  Both my Cassia and my Edith were tucked against my body. A tarp had been hung between the cart and T’laanga’s hut. With some extra pitons and rope, a tent that could fit a dragon was made. A ground cloth was spread on the ground beneath the tent.

  Blankets, some sacks stuffed with straw, and the insulating heat of a dragon body made the space comfortable even in the early-Thaw night. I wasn’t in the mood to let either woman out of my sight for the moment. Was I acting like a big broody dragon sulking about difficult news? Yes. I was tired and just wanted to snuggle.

  “So, he gave me a brooch,” Edith replied quietly. “Ye know. One like ye gemstone necklace.”

  “Yes Edith, I noticed,” Cassia whispered a bit more urgently. “How did that happen, exactly?”

  “I may have… ah… said a little too much,” the older woman replied, twisting a finger through her hair.

  “So you tried to lecture him and he turned it around on you, is that it?” the younger woman hissed. “Batted his big dragon eyelashes at you and made you swoon?”

  “Cassia please! It wasn’t like that,” Edith replied, shifting over closer to Cassia so they could speak more quietly. “Not the second part anyways. I’m… I won’t say I’m sorry, because I’m not. Not about this. But I don’t want it to be trouble between us.”

  Cassia breathed in through her nose and out through her lips. She then smirked.

  “I’m messing with you, Edith,” she said impishly. “I told you back at your house that he’d do something big and silly. That you’d get swept up in it. Yanking one of his scales off and making a brooch after fighting a sorcerer is probably going to be the norm for us.”

  “So you aren’t mad?” Edith asked, her voice sounding a little damp.

  “About this?” Cassia returned. “Mmm… No. Jealous, right this second, that you had a big romantic moment in the moonlight? Yeah, kind of. When he gave me this, he spit it into my hands.” My Cassia traced her fingers across my gemstone.

  “I’m mad about other things. Like not knowing what the hells is going on with you and the bleeding goat sorcerer in the shack next to us… I just… I’m trying to learn to trust that you’ll explain it to me when you can… yeah?”

  “Aye lass,” Edith replied. “I’m not sure about… romance. Our Sanguine is a dragon, after all. There’s uhm… difficulties with that, that I don’t want to talk about when he’s probably listening to us. But I plan to explain everything, even the bits that haven’t come up yet, as soon as you and I have a minute when the boys aren’t trying to kill each other or themselves.”

  “That’d be nice,” Cassia said sleepily with a yawn. “A full day without someone almost dying or having a magic tantrum. And yeah, he’s definitely listening. You’ll say something offhand one day and a week later he’ll pop out of nowhere with exactly what you asked for, even if you didn’t expect him to pull it off somehow.”

  “A girl can dream about romance a bit. I know life’s not like a story book. It’s a lot of mess and hard work, rather than princesses and knights in shining armor. If it happens some day… well won’t that… be a nice… surprise… for us both?”

  By the time Cassia finished speaking, she was asleep. I could feel that Edith was lingering awake for a bit. My tail shifted over to her and settled across her torso. She gingerly wrapped her arms around it before she pulled it tight against her body. Soon enough, she relaxed and fell asleep as well.

  In the dark, I could see T’laanga had stepped out of his hut. He was looking over at the makeshift tent. My amber eyes glared at him from the tent’s confines. If he disturbed either woman's sleep, I didn’t care about alerting my siblings just then.

  I’d crush T’laanga like a bug.

  He held up both hands in front of him at his chest, forming a small pyramid, and shook his head. He adjusted how the shepherd’s crook sat in his arm and turned to walk around the back of the house. From what I could tell by following his scent and the few sounds he made, he was checking on the goats.

  That was fine, he could live. For now.

  Now I just needed to figure out what to do about Magnus.

  I still didn’t have an answer when the morning sun rose.

  My dreams had been like a slow whirlpool. Small fictions that I would not remember when I woke up were common. Every once in a while, I caught the scent of my Edith or my Cassia. They were close by but caught in their own tides. If I had reached out I might have been able to catch hold of them. Doing so without invitation felt wrong in some undefined fashion.

  The one dream I had shared with my Cassia had been a special moment. If my recent conversation with my Edith had taught me anything, casually throwing around such magic could hurt those closest to me. Perhaps one day I would gain enough control to attempt such things again.

  A hand patting on my head roused me from my thoughts. It had been soft and affectionate at first. By the time I was fully awake, the two hands were continually smacking my head ridges.

  “-Guine! Sanguine! SANGUINE!” my Cassia’s voice came into focus. “Wake UP. I really need you to let me out this instant you silly dragon!” The intensity of her request set me on edge instantly. Were we being attacked?

  My head pulled out from under my wing and looked around us. I kept my wing tucked, but my Cassia took the opportunity to surge for the gap. With both hands she pried herself out from under me and took off running awkwardly around the end of T’laanga’s hut. I went to rise and follow her, but my Edith’s hand snaked out from beneath my wing. She grabbed onto my head by a nub along my lower jaw.

  “Nnnnope! Bad dragon,” Edith grumbled sleepily. “Lay ye arse back down. Tha’s… youn’ lady business…” I really didn’t understand. Reluctantly I settled back down. Edith gave a small soft sound and let go of my head.

  “Mhmm… Good beasty,” She murmured. I could feel her speaking with her head pressed against the barrel of my chest. “Ye’ll be letting me out later… M’go back… t’sleep now.”

  My Edith slumped back against my side and was asleep again in short order. That was a bit unusual. She was usually the first to rise in the morning. Perhaps last night had taken a lot out of her. I didn’t necessarily mind this change, but it was mildly inconvenient.

  All I could do was knead my front claws into the soil and wait.

  Eventually my Cassia came back from whatever her business was. She had a bit of a hollow look on her face. What could have been such a harrowing experience first thing in the morning? As she approached, she looked away from me. Had I done something?

  “Sanguine, can you wake up Edith?” she asked me carefully. “I need to talk to her about some things.”

  I squinted at my Cassia but pulled back my wing. Edith protested sleepily, batting at my side with her head. My Cassia was able to wake her up by shaking her shoulder. A short whispered conversation took place. With great reluctance, my Edith hauled herself to her feet. Her long hair was falling out of its intricate braid. She dragged her cloak tight around her shoulders.

  “M’Sanguine, go talk to… mrmm, T’laanga,” Edith muttered while rubbing her face with the butt of her hand. “He should be… in the fields by now. He’ll have Magnus with him. No fighting!” She said the last bit while shaking her finger at me.

  Both women turned to go walk inside. My Cassia hesitantly scratched me on my jaw on the way past.

  My confusion could not have been more profound.

  When I stood up, one of my horns caught on the top of the tent. Had I gotten larger again? I helped set the tarp last night. I’d fit underneath it before I went to sleep. Checking over my body occupied my attention for a little while.

  As I’d suspected, I had indeed grown. Bronston was still larger than me, but I was approaching his height at the shoulder. More noticeable was how my scales and horns had developed. I now had prominent ridges that ran from the end of my snout to the back of my head. A series of nodules had formed along my jawline.The beginning of a crest ran from the center of my forehead all the way to just in front of my shoulders.

  The soft rounded features that defined many infant creatures were almost gone. My gut told me that I was approaching an important stage in my development. I was far from an adult, but I was probably not a ‘child’ any longer. Just how much larger would I become?

  It was an interesting question, but there were matters that I needed to attend to.

  Spreading my wings, I pulled myself up into the air. I kept low to the ground but let the small gusts of wind carry me up and across the hills. As my Edith had suggested, T’laanga was in the middle of his flock a few fields over from his hut.

  Magnus was with him, attempting to feed a stalk of grass to a goat. No matter how long Magnus watched the goat, it wouldn’t go for the grass. As soon as the child turned his attention away, the creature snagged the treat right out of his hands.

  I cupped my wings against the wind and slowed myself to a halt a dozen meters away from the herd. My claws dug into the earth, bringing me to a halt after a short slide. A shake of my body later and my wings settled onto my back. T’laanga turned to look at me, but Magnus seemed to find the goats more fascinating than a dragon. I couldn’t exactly blame him. They were so ugly that you couldn’t easily look away.

  “Edith?” T’laanga asked as I approached.

  It took some less than gentle nudging to make my way through the goats. The obstinate creatures seemed to regard anything that wasn’t T’laanga or another goat with a calculated disrespect. One of them tried to head butt my leg, but only ended up with a concussion for its struggles. Dragonscales beat goat horns.

  “Awake,” I responded to T’laanga. I mulled over my next words a bit. “Doing… lady ‘things’.” My head turned towards Magnus, who was trying to unsuccessfully pet a goat. The creature kept backing just far enough away that the child could not quite lay a hand on it. “Magnus… Is a Sorcerer?”

  T’laanga clicked his tongue at me, rubbing his palms together with his crook between them.

  “... Yes,” T’laanga said. “Your blood. Your responsibility.”

  The words were accusatory. I couldn’t exactly say he was wrong. The Truth would ring false on my tongue. My eyes tracked up and down T’laanga’s body. He didn’t appear any different from when I’d first met him. Last night he had an entirely different aura to him. Perhaps that was a result of suppressing his magic, like Edith had warned me about.

  “Responsibility…,” I rolled the word on my tongue. It had a lot of complicated syllables. “Yes. Is too…” I looked up at the sky. The clouds were a thin haze clinging to the horizon. The Thaw was here. Summershore winds had crossed in the night. “- dangerous.”

  “From you?” T’laanga challenged me. There was a subtle hint of magic in his tone. I shook my head at him.

  “Yes, No,” I responded. The Truth was a complicated thing to express. “Need… training, learn my magic. There are…” Expressing vague ‘instincts’ was like chewing rocks. “... others.”

  “Other dragons?” T’laanga said sharply, glancing towards the sky.

  “Siblings,” I confirmed hesitantly.

  Telling that information to a human gave me an uneasy feeling. My Cassia and my Edith had ‘gone with the flow’. Magnus had either been on the verge of death or was so changed by his experiences that he’d not reacted to my presence. T’laanga was the first human I’d met who showed a negative reaction to my existence.

  Based on the stories humans wrote in my Cassia’s story books and how they’d hunted my Edith for being a ‘witch’, T’laanga seemed to be displaying a more ‘normal’ attitude towards me. Even now he was wary of me. The knowledge that other dragons existed only made his expression harden.

  “Others also,” I continued. “Witch hunters. Knights. Humans… will hunt dragons, yes?”

  T’laanga seemed to consider his words carefully before answering.

  “Yes, they will. Eventually,” he said tersely. “Humans hunt things they don’t understand.” That was a bit more than he usually said. I wondered why.

  “I will learn,” I said to T’laanga. “Hunt. Train. Grow strong. Some day… I will return, for what is Mine.” I raised my head, the sunlight glinting off my ruby scales. “You… teach Magnus. About sorcery. How to survive. How to… be human.”

  T’laanga and I both looked over at Magnus. He was totally oblivious to our conversation. The only thing that seemed to matter to him right now was that the goat was finally letting him pet its head.

  “... Fine,” T’laanga said with another click of his teeth. “Go, now. Do not linger.”

  I stayed a moment longer, trying to cement the memory in my mind. The Truth was that I didn’t know Magnus. I had saved his life, changed him forever, and then lingered around him like a shadow. We’d never spoken to each other, even while riding in the same cart. He seemed to regard my existence as entirely unremarkable.

  When I left, it would be without saying goodbye. The boy was my responsibility. I’d promised that one day I would return for him, but I didn’t know when that would be. The least I could do was remember his face.

  I turned to leave. T’laanga watched me go. He did not call me back or say anything else. With a flap of my wings I caught the wind and rose into the air. The rolling hills surrounding T’laanga’s house dropped away beneath me.

  Magnus turned his gaze to the dragon receding in the distance. A sensation in the boy’s gut told him that one day, he’d see those ruby scales again. His amber eyes grew wet, but he said nothing.