After her frantic flight and fall from the rooftop, Aja had stirred from unconsciousness a couple of times, but never for long enough to fully process what was going on. The pain and dizziness dragged her right back under every time.

When she finally did begin to regain consciousness, she had a pounding headache behind her eyes and it stole a whimper from her lips. As she opened her eyes, she was greeted by a blue-gray haze. Her vision was fuzzy and no matter how rapidly she blinked or how hard she focused. She groaned and her eyes slipped shut once more. She was in so much pain and so sluggish that she just wanted to sleep it all off.

But as she closed her eyes, she was slammed with the emotions and visions of last night and of all her previous nightmares of dogs with threads of drool swinging from maws full of gnashing teeth. Her heart began to race and her head jerked upright as she tensed with another whimper. Her head spun and she felt her throat close as she was overcome by a powerful wave of nausea, though there was nothing in her belly to purge.

Her head was still throbbing, but her vision was beginning to clear, so she forced herself to focus on her surroundings. She was lying on a towel. She had never touched one herself before, but Lanna had, and Aja remembered them and the sensation of the fabric on Lanna’s fingertips.

She poked her claws into it. It wasn’t the most comfortable, and it was filled with a bunch of stagnant scents that were only partially buried beneath the chemical smell of soap. But she supposed it was better than lying on the cold metal beneath it. Aja shuddered at the sight of the steel bars closing her in. She squeezed her eyes closed and whined. It had been a long time since she had last been in a physical cage and she had hoped she would never have to see one again, much less be looking out from one. It made her want to curl into a ball, but she knew that she could not.

There was enough room in the confines for her to stand, so she climbed shakily to her paws, only to lean against those same bars for support when her vision spun. Her head hurt so badly she could not imagine how hard she must have hit it. But then a vision of her plummet from the rooftop flashed in front of her eyes and she shuddered. Maybe she could imagine after all.

That was right. She needed to focus on her own immediate limitations. Lanna had lived for them both for so long now and had always protected her, so now she wasn’t so sure how to handle herself in a crisis any longer. She had hit her head – hard enough to scramble her senses – and her wing was mangled. She grimaced at the reminder and glanced down at her side. Her wing was secured to her body and wrapped in tight white bandages.

For a moment, she foolishly forgot how injured it was as she instinctively tried to test the strength of the bindings holding it down. As soon as she moved the bound wing, agony poured through her body powerful enough to slump her to the ground. She gritted her teeth to keep from shrieking and attracting attention. She would not be flying anytime soon.

She leaned against the cage bars bodily and allowed them to support her weight as she took a few breaths and rode out the pain radiating from her wing. Her head hurt, her wing was bad…she took a breath and tested the restraint around her maw, but it didn’t yield. Aja could normally see quite well in the dark, but her vision was still hazy and she couldn’t focus in on her own snout well enough to see what was holding it shut. So she sat back on her haunches and raised a paw up to her nose to get a feel for whatever it was. Her claws sunk into the leather, but no matter how hard she tugged at it, it wouldn’t budge. The strap was looped around the back of her skull and would not fit over her horns.

With a quiet growl of frustration, Aja lowered her paw to the ground and twisted in a circle. Her tail twitched and she ground her teeth together as she tried to think. It was so hard when her head felt like it was full of sand. Painful sand that someone was beating with a big rock. She sighed. Whenever she was buried, Aja longed to be free, to spread her wings and take to the skies where she belonged. But now, she wished desperately for Lanna. Lanna would know what to do, or at least she would have a better idea. She was more dexterous than Aja too; she could have gotten the leather strap off her face. Though Lanna didn’t even have a snout to secure it to, so she wouldn’t have had that problem anyway.

Aja paused. She could not shift due to her injuries, but just because they could not swap places did not mean she couldn’t still get Lanna’s help.

Aja closed her eyes and settled down on the floor of the cage as she directed her attention inwards. She and Lanna were permanently linked, so she reached for the consciousness of her other half. But Lanna kept slipping away from her. She tried again. They couldn’t shift, but Aja could still call Lanna to the surface of their consciousness.

The glittery manifest of their consciousness finally revealed why she couldn’t reach her other half. Lanna was unconscious. It was strange to see the human girl limp and unresponsive. Usually, whenever one of them was inactive, they slept a lot, watched the world through the other’s eyes while time seemed to flow differently, but they were always vaguely aware of one another. But Lanna was completely drained. Aja didn’t understand why at first. They shared many things, including an energy reservoir. If Lanna was this weak, Aja should be just poorly. She was hurt, but they had been injured before and this had never happened.

It was puzzling and took Aja a moment to realize. She remembered so little about what actually happened to bring them here. She could recall a few hazy memories of waking up, being moved, and being in pain, but all of it was rather dulled, as though they weren’t actually her experiences.

Even though they couldn’t shift, Lanna had still tried to shield her from what was happening. She didn’t remember hitting the ground after they fell from that roof because Lanna had dragged her down into their subconsciousness. She had acted like a blanket, muffling events Aja should have been conscious for. And now that she had burned out all of her mental reserves, Aja had finally been allowed to wake up.

Aja whimpered as she opened her eyes and kneaded anxiously at the towel. She hoped Lanna would be alright with a little rest, but there was no way to know for sure. She hadn’t even known that was something they could do.

She supposed there was a lot that she and Lanna did not know. They had been so young when they had been ripped away from their home. Too young to learn a lot of the things they needed to, and after that, it hadn’t been much longer before they were completely alone. There were no other dragons to ask questions to, no way to learn except by trial and error. It was part of why Lanna tried to remain so hidden, so discrete, and never stayed in one place too long. They never knew what sorts of things might change or happen as they aged. Especially now. But this frightened Aja. She needed Lanna to be alright. Regardless of which of them was in control, Aja always found comfort in Lanna’s presence. She couldn’t handle the idea of being entirely alone and Lanna was her friend. The closest one that she had. They needed one another.

Aja took a breath. Lanna needed to rest for now and she could only hope that her human counterpart would recover from the strain she had put upon herself. For now, Aja needed to focus on getting them out of their predicament so that Lanna had a safer environment to wake back up to. And that started with taking proper stock of their injuries.

The pain in her head was starting to subside. She knew she had swelling, but it would fade in a day or two and wouldn’t impede them beyond that. Her wing was the problem.

Aja glanced at her side which was still tightly wrapped in bandages. They were keeping her wing pinned to her body and she grimaced. It would hurt to move the torn appendage, but she needed to know the extent of the damage. She had never hurt a wing before or seen the healing results on any other dragon. She didn’t know if this would stop her flying ever again, though she hoped not with all her heart or she would be no better than a grounded snack for larger predators. She also hoped it wouldn’t prevent them from shifting permanently, regardless of how it healed. She didn’t think she could get them home on her own and she hated the idea that Lanna might be trapped permanently after all she had done for them both.

She shook her head. Lanna had the better focus, but as much as Aja wanted to hide away from her pain and problems, she needed to focus. She knew the bindings were helping keep her wing still so that it didn’t get damaged more – at least, she assumed that was why they had only pinned her injured wing – but she needed to see for herself.

She couldn’t part her jaws, but she still had her claws, so she lifted one paw and began to tug and saw at the wrappings from the underside until they snapped one by one and began to fall away. She shook herself to toss them from her back and then twisted to examine her wing. It was slumped to the floor of the cage now that there was nothing holding it to her, and it throbbed steadily, warning her that folding it herself would be a mistake. The membrane had a sticky patch over it in two separate places where she had been shot, and around the edges was a green residue that smelled unpleasant and had a glossy sheen to it.

She assumed it was medicine, but she wasn’t sure what kind. Though she wanted to get a better look at the damage, she didn’t want to risk tearing the delicate membrane further by trying to peel the patch off. For now, she just had to hope that whoever had locked her in this cage wanted her to still be able to fly and had treated her wing properly.

It wasn’t what she wanted, but she knew she risked making it worse if she messed with it.

She wasn’t keen on finding out if her captors had her well-being in mind or not; she needed to get out of the cage. While trying not to allow her wing to drag, she crept towards the front of her confinement. The door to the cage was just a swing hinge of crisscrossing metal wire with a slide-bolt lock holding it closed. Aja slumped with relief. That should be easy enough to open. Whoever had done this either thought she was stupid or had tried to make do. Either way, it made her goal easier to achieve.

Or rather, it would have if the bars of the cage were not quite so close together. Her claws were dexterous, but they were nothing like fingers, and she couldn’t fit the entirety of her paw through the gap so that she could bend her talons enough to grab the bolt. She hissed in frustration and gave up after a few tries.

She lashed her tail twice and then huffed and sat back to study her situation a little bit more closely. The tufted tip of her tail twitched as she puzzled over what should have been an easy escape.

Aja leaned forward until her snout bumped against the bars of the cage. The metal was cool against her face and she shivered. For a moment, she had to close her eyes and she curled her talons into the towel lining the floor of the crate as she was swept over by a wave of bad memories that left an acrid taste on her tongue. The smells of blood and filth lingered in her nostrils while cries of pain and fury assaulted her ears. She could feel the way the rusted shackles bit into her skin. They had been so tight and rough that they had rubbed her scales away and scraped at the skin around her wrists. She remembered how the thick brace along her back had kept her wings pinned to her sides. She hadn’t always worn it while in captivity, but it was wrestled onto her anytime she was taken into the field so that she couldn’t fly away.

Aja had been too young to fight, but she was bait. They used her and the few other infant dragons to force the adults to fight. More than once, she had been pricked in the belly with a knife or pinned harshly beneath a soldier’s boot. They would do anything to make her cry because her cries spurred the adults forward.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and shook her head. It had been a long time now since then, but the wounds still felt fresh and Aja wished she could forget. She wished her memory was not so long and that the pain and fear and horrors would fade and dull until she could no longer recall them.

This cage only brought them to the surface all the more crisply and she knew the longer they stayed, the worse off she and Lanna would be. She had to get out of the confinement and away from whoever had put her there.

The gaps in the bars were too small for her paws, but perhaps…

She strained her jaws against the belt holding them shut and managed to poke her tongue out between her lips. She couldn’t get her mouth open any further, but at least she could manage this. Her pink tongue was long and forked at the tips, and she stretched it out past the bars to fumble with the latch. The muscle wasn’t designed to grab things though, so all she really managed was to lap at the metal and fill her mouth with the terrible taste. It made her want to retreat, but she knew that was not an option, so she pressed on and continued trying. The bolt moved just a little each time she licked at it and if she could just get it to slowly slide, then eventually, the door would pop free. It would just take time.

Unfortunately, time was a luxury that Aja did not really have. The latch tasted awful and made her want to gag, but it was also noisy. Each time she tried to move it, it clanked back against the bars and rattled the entire cage. It was not silent and so while it was dismaying, it was not truly a surprise when it attracted attention.

Aja froze for a moment when she heard someone groan. Her entire body tensed and she remained still, her tongue still hanging from her lips as she listened for any further noise. After a few minutes of silence, she took a deep breath and resumed her task.

Though Aja tried to move more slowly to attract less attention, the rattling noises resumed with her efforts and so did the grumbling.

It morphed from groaning into a groggy voice. “Tobin…I think your dragon is awake.”

“Clearly,” complained a second voice.

Aja shivered and backed up a step. There was more than one person in the room and neither sounded thrilled at having been woken. It made her feel all the more vulnerable this way.

She cringed when there was a sharp clapping sound, twice, and then overhead lights surged to life.

“Ack! A little warning next time!” the first voice protested as the lights came on.

Aja whined and ducked low as she peered through the bars of the cage. She shifted her weight and resumed kneading at the blankets as she got to see who her two captors were. She wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that she knew them, though they wouldn’t recognize her. They only knew Lanna and had no idea that she and Aja shared a life force. Perhaps it was a good thing that Lanna had no conscious presence at the moment because Aja assumed she would probably be pretty crushed. Though she had been hurt by their words and avoiding them, Tobin and Lescelli were the first individuals in a long time – the Hallowins aside – that Lanna had ever considered her friends. That they were the ones responsible for putting Aja in a cage would probably shatter any possibility for Lanna to trust again.

Lescelli was sitting up in a large bed and rubbing her eyes. Her hair was sticking out in all directions and she looked like she had only just fallen asleep after being up all night, though Aja had no way of confirming that.

Meanwhile, Tobin was rising from a lounge couch against a perpendicular wall. He was still wearing rumpled day clothes and yawned widely as he stretched his arms above his head and then began walking towards the cage.

Aja whimpered again and sunk lower to the floor. Her tail twitched nervously between her legs and her rump pressed against the back of the cage. She was trapped with nowhere to go and no idea about how they were going to react. Her heart was racing in her chest and her nostrils flared as she struggled to breathe properly.

She wanted to have faith in the two. They had seemed so kind and funny and pleasant for Lanna to be around, but Aja couldn’t forget their very vocal opinions about dragons. They were like most other humans nowadays and only viewed her people as monsters that they never wanted to run into. They could just as easily plan to kill her or keep her locked up wherever they perceived safe to keep her from hurting anyone. She just wanted to get away from this place and yet, as Tobin loomed closer, she knew that whatever was about to happen, escape would not be one of the possibilities.