Alisa’s room was on fire.

She woke to a frantic-looking Azendandor pouncing on her face, saw the flames, and jumped out of bed with a scream, toppling him onto the floor.

"Zen! What did you do?"

He hunched in on himself, his middle loop bunching up tight in fear, hissing and backing away. Alisa shook her head.

"Not the time. We'll deal with that once we—"

She grabbed the blankets off the bed and lunged for the flaming curtains. She'd been taught how to deal with accidental dragon fires, they'd had several sessions on what to do, but it still felt counter-intuitive to grab hold of whatever was on fire.

She felt the heat as she wrapped the blankets tight. A wisp of smoke rose from the thick fabrics. Then she dropped the whole bundle atop the growing flame on the floor beneath it. She stomped on the carpet to smother it, then once the room was dark and no longer alight she rounded on Zen with her hands on her hips.

"Be careful!" she shrieked, more harshly than she'd intended.

Zen retreated a few more steps, shrinking in on himself, and she immediately felt ashamed.

"It'll be alright. I'm sure it was an accident."

Zen didn't seem reassured, but hunched tighter into his coil.

"No one was hurt, and the blankets and curtain are replaceable," Alisa said, deliberately lowering her voice, reassuring herself as much as Zen. "We'll be fine."

Someone tapped timidly on her door, and Alisa quickly grabbed Zen before he could make a run for hiding. "Just a minute!" She strapped his harness on, clipped the lead to it, then opened the door. "Yes?"

"You screamed," muttered a sleepy-looking Gwen. Alisa’s nearest neighbor on this floor, Gwen was one of Sadie’s friends who Alisa didn’t know very well herself. Friendly acquaintance and neighbor, but they had little in common. "Are you alright?" Gwen asked, peering into the darkened room.

"Oh, yes. Zen just sneezed on the curtains. Or the carpet. I'm not sure where it started, but ..."

"Okay." Gwen nodded sleepily. "So it's all dealt with now? Everything's safe?"

"Yep."

"I hope they hurry up with our new housing." Gwen yawned. "This place wasn't built with dragons in mind. It's only a matter of time before something worse happens."

"Everyone knows what to do," Alisa said, her heart starting to slow from its frantic racing. "It'll be fine."

"I hope so. Well, um, do you need help with anything, or can I go back to sleep?"

"I'll be fine. Sorry I woke you. I'll just need to find replacement bedding."

"Downstairs, there's a closet by the washing room. Goodnight."

Alisa gathered the smoky bundle of fabric and trudged downstairs with it, Zen tangling himself or his lead around her feet every few steps as he re-explored the familiar hall, his former tension completely gone. At least he was consistent. Nothing would keep him down for long. Even if his unintentional attempts to trip her were frustrating.

“Zen, please, just stay out of—”

She stepped on his tail and he snarled as she hastily hopped to avoid crushing him, falling against the wall.

“How about you stay behind me while I can’t see where I’m going?” Alisa snapped. She felt the lead brush her leg as he retreated behind her, and stepped carefully over it before continuing to the stairs. “Maybe I should have left you in the room.”

Zen whined and sneezed. Alisa dropped the bundle and spun hastily to see if there was another fire, ready to throw the blankets over it, but no. Apparently he wasn’t quite to the accidental-conflagrations stage except on rare occasion.

He stared back at her, lavender eyes wide and gleaming apologetically.

Alisa sighed and leaned over to retrieve the pile of cloth. "Good job," she said, trying to hide the irritation in her voice. Being awakened in the middle of the night to put out a fire was not her idea of a good time, but it wasn't entirely Zen's fault. He was a dragon. Fire was what they did. It was her fault for putting him in an enclosed room without any way out or anyplace to safely sneeze.

Zen didn't resume his antics, pacing back and forth behind her but careful not to get in front of her. Apparently being stepped on had gotten the message through to him better than words.

She sighed again, more deeply, and dropped off the bedding at the laundry room.

Then she sat down on the floor and held out a hand to Zen. He slunk forward, watching her cautiously, then bumped his nose against it.

"I'm tired," she said softly, gathering him up in her arms. He squirmed at first, but settled when she shushed him. "I know it's not going to be easy for either of us, but we can do this."

Zen watched her, tongue flicking.

"Come on, let's get back to bed." She set him down and got to her feet, searched the closet until she found the spare blankets, then headed upstairs with her considerably less unwieldy burden.

Josephiin's Quetzlen was finally released from medical care and allowed to attend classes with her. It was fascinating to see the differences between dragon types, now that Alisa had largely gotten over her instinctive hatred. She'd never studied dragons much before coming here. You mainly saw them in large cities, squabbling on rooftops or fighting in alleys over scraps. The regal breeds, like Grandus or Quetzlen, you'd never see in the wild. They were the type who had hordes and caverns and slept for years at a time then emerged like a whisper of shadow in the night to snatch half a herd of sheep before disappearing again without a trace.

Josephiin's particular Quetzlen was long bodied, red-feathered and sinuous, but looked fat and stubby compared to Azendandor. He was older than Zen, his body easily as thick as Alisa's thigh, while only being about as long as she was tall. Zen wasn't much longer, but so much thinner he could fly circles around the bigger dragon.

The Quetzlen also had feathered wings, a rarity among dragons, and only one set of legs. Or arms, rather, as he never used them to stand on and only to grab things. He perched like a particularly elongated bird, clinging to branches or the back of Josephiin's shirt, but more often sat upright on his coiled body.

Alisa wanted Zen to get to know him, encouraged him to try, but Zen had no interest. She supposed some of the obvious animosity Josephiin had shown towards Alisa might have something to do with it, but everyone else had split along dragon lines. Why not Zen? He didn't have any other Aelaniri in the class, and the twins only came around every week or two. They had busier lives in the higher grades, a lot more to catch up on if they were to be ready by the deadline.

Would it be too much to hope that Zen could have a friend?

Apparently so.

All the flockling dragons were already tightly grouped up. Mirva was probably the closest thing to a dragon friend Zen had.

Sadie was just as busy as Alisa and they didn't have as much time for each other as they once had. No more could they lurk together conspiring and giggling, with each busy caring for their own little scaled menace. Not to say they never found time for each other. They still spoke, visited, and conspired whenever the possibility presented itself, but it wasn't the same. There was a shift, an underlying sense of responsibility.

It felt, Alisa thought, like she'd imagine having a child would. The sudden reorientation of your life around something small and helpless and yours, the things which had once felt so important slipping away in the cracks between months.

Even Francine seemed to feel it. Alisa could count on one hand the number of sly jibes she'd worked in over the past weeks. Lately she seemed content to let her lackeys handle it for her.

Josephiin in particular seemed to have taken up the mantle eagerly. Perhaps as a way of venting her concern over her dragon, or possibly just to prove she was worth being part of Francine's inner circle, she was perfectly happy to fill in as primary antagonist. Less so now that her Quetzlen was back, but in the prior months she’d been a proper terror.

So ... maybe it had been wishful thinking that Zen would be willing to hang around her for no other reason than that her dragon was similarly shaped.

"I'm proud of you, Zen," Alisa said aloud, and he puffed up his chest scales and looked around haughtily, before realizing she hadn't said what she was proud of him for and turning to stare at her. "You're a clever and discerning young man," she answered the silent question. "Not compromising your morals. I appreciate that."

Zen nodded and returned to his attempts to fly. He'd almost gotten it, too. She feared for the day when he accomplished it. Freedom of the skies was the one thing lacking from her half-baked plans for escape, and the nearer they came to it the more she wished to put it off.

His four wings flapped in ungainly asynchronization, the front ones twisting and the back ones pumping madly. He could steer a descent from a glide, if he started off on her head as a launch point, he could make it halfway around the orbit allowed by the leash before reaching the ground, soaring and flapping by turns. But he was determined to do as he'd seen the other dragons do, and take off from the ground. He first raised himself up, standing on his rear legs, long sinuous middle stretched up rigidly like when he climbed onto the windowsill, head raised, wings flared to their full extent.

It made him look rather silly, the look of complete concentration as he flapped like a maniac, standing so stiff and prim she wanted to put a tiny hat and monocle on him. The thought made her smile, but Zen took it so seriously.

Several times he managed to leap into a lurching glide, but never quite figured out how to gain height once he was in the air. He growled and grumbled to himself, pacing in circles, nibbling at the grass, and then tried again. And again and again.

Alisa probably stood for three hours in the field, watching Zen's experimentation on the possibility of flight, and when he finally slumped to the ground in failure she picked him up and gently deposited him on her shoulder where he belonged.

"Is it normal for him to have this much difficulty flying?" Alisa asked Reen next time they got together. The other two Aelaniri were flying in synchronized loops nearby, chasing each other through mesmerizing patterns that shifted and morphed with their flow. Alisa couldn't imagine the minute muscle control necessary to so perfectly contort such a long body, hold it in place, shift it perfectly. Aelaniri were incredibly impressive creatures.

"It's normal for them to live high in forests or jungles," Reen said in reply. "Most young Aelaniri would have more practice than ours do. We regularly toss Riss and Raxi out the window to help them get the hang of it, the closest thing we can get to replicating their natural learning process."

"Oh," Alisa said, glancing at the leash clipped to Zen's harness.

"Don't feel bad," Reen said, making her smile. "You made a promise to Azendandor and it's important that you keep it. Arguing over whether you should have made it in the first place isn't going to help anything, regardless of what Lia may say. It's done, live with it and move on."

"Do you think he regrets it?" Alisa asked, watching Zen try to launch himself with little hops. "Does he know that he could be flying now if he hadn't decided to delay?"

Zen paused to stare at her with that particular tilt of his head that meant he was judging her.

"I'm sorry, of course you know what you're doing. I apologize."

Zen huffed out a hot breath that shimmered in the air, then stretched himself up and flapped his wings again, watching the two Aelaniri dancing in midair and mimicking the flow of their wings. The tiny fingers along the back of his wing reached for each other and clasped together, turning each pair of wings into a single oddly shaped one. He turned his neck to regard the linked wings, tilting his head this way and that, then shook his head and unlinked them. He spent another several minutes staring at his own wings as he turned them this way and that, flexed them, reached different ways.

"He's a beautiful dragon," Reen said, his voice holding a hint of desire. "His markings came in nicely."

"What pattern is that, by the way?"

"Nahdno Wave. It’s pretty common, but the coloration varies. It’s most common on blues. I’ve never seen it on a grey before."

"Hear that, Zen? You're a rare grey Nahdno Wave."

Zen gave her a look as though to say ‘of course I am’ and went back to wing experiments.

“Raxi is a Silverstripe,” Reen added, “which you’ll see if she ever decides to hold still a moment.”

Alisa could make it out, a single wide silver line going down both sides of Raxi’s body. It was darker than Zen’s main colour, but stood out against her otherwise black scales and made the dizzying patterns she wove in the air even more dramatic.

Riss, Lia’s dragon, was pure pearl white. If he had any markings to speak of, they were so faint as to be undetectable from this distance.

Reen shook his head. “Too bad she’s already made her choice. She and Zen could have beautiful children.”

Alisa choked and blushed sudden and blazing hot. “W—what?”

“They both have darker pigments and distinct patterns. It would be very pretty. Imagine if we could get black Nahdno Wave. It’s even less common than the pure pearl.” He studied Zen, whose upright posture was making it very easy to admire his scale patterns. “Without knowing his lineage, he might have some mundane traits hiding in there. From what I’ve been able to ascertain, Raxi is purebred, but Riss was from undocumented lines. There’s almost no chance of the pearl breeding true. We’re going to end up with a bunch of blues and standard white, maybe a black or two if we get very lucky.”

Alisa nodded and smiled and tried very hard not to think anything too compromising but Reen was so enthusiastic and he was also adorable and he wanted to mate their dragons!!

Aaaah, she didn’t know what to do with herself!

Thankfully, Lia came to the rescue and changed the subject before Alisa could die of embarrassment.