Parker could hardly believe what his life had become. He took monster biology classes to avoid danger. It was one of the few courses the academy offered that didn’t at least involve combat. There was alchemy, but he was never any good at that. And he’d only taken that orcish language class to fill the credits he was missing for skipping the combat classes!

Yet here he was, sitting in an orc holding cell, only alive because of a class he’d taken on a whim, after tracking what he once thought to be a baby dragon but was actually one of his ex-classmates, with an enchanted tracking map, he figured out how to make as a side project.

He was surprised to retrospect like that with two massive orcs wielding their menacing-looking axes, seeming just a bit too eager to score a kill today. Luckily for him, when he’d blindly stumbled into their village while following his map, he wasn’t instantly shot on sight with as many arrows and bolts the troops could launch at him.

He was surprised to see Lasair at the door to his cell, but glad to finally see a friendly face. At least, he’d hoped she would be friendly.

“What the hell are you doing here? I-I thought you were dead or something!” She stammered.

“Well, it was kind of an accident. I was just looking for Alex; I didn’t expect to find your whole village here!”

Lasair gave him a shocked look.

“Alex?! You mean the human that stole all the enchanted clan rings, tried to kill us, chased us through the woods, then somehow stole Sparky from you, and then tried to kill me again when I went to go rescue him? And you’re saying you ended up here while looking for him?”

Parker looked off to the side, scratching the back of his neck.

“Well… Yeah, I guess so. But not really! You’re not gonna believe me if I tell you!”

“Try me.”

Parker turned back to Lasair and put on his serious face.

“Okay, you remember how Sparky knew a bunch of things that a dragon definitely should not know, especially one as young as him?”

“Like that no smoke fire? And how to smoke meat?”

Parker raised an eyebrow.

“Smoke meat?”

He shook his head and waved his hand.

“Yeah, sure. That too, whatever.” He said while waving his hands.

“Well, the reason he knew all that, and why “Alex” was chasing us, is because Sparky is Alex!”

Lasair stood there, staring back at him for a few moments.

“If Sparky is Alex, then who is Alex?”

Parker gave her a dumbfounded look.

“That’s it? That’s the only question you have?”

“No, I just thought I’d be nice and ask them one at a time. Would you rather me ask them all at once?”

“No, no, sorry, this is better. His body was stolen by this thing called a whiddsoul. Now that you ask, I really don’t know that much about what happened. Any other questions?”

Lasair scratched her chin, thinking.

“If the whiddsoul already has his body, why is he trying to catch him? And once he did catch him, why didn’t he just kill him?”

“You know what, I have no idea. Just bring him here! He can write just fine in English. Ask him instead, and I’ll translate. Where is he, anyway?”

The young dragon sat on the top of the highest shelf he could find and glared back down at the orc that seemed hellbent on catching him. This one was small compared to the rest of the orcs he’d seen while following the first one to her home. Much larger than him still, but he still had no fear over it. This orc was also small in demeanor.

“Come on; please come down here, I swear I’m not-No, no, please put that down!”

The young dragon found a nice solid object to use as a projectile. A sealed glass jar full of some vegetable sitting in a fluid. Something I’m his head told him it was a jar of pickles. Whatever it was didn’t matter. It was big enough to hurt and small enough for him to push off the shelf, so off it went. He put on a mischievous grin and launched it off the table.

Ciethel caught the pickle jar, along with a couple of other easily pushed objects, placing them carefully on the counter behind him. It was enough that Lasair placed the responsibility of hiding a wild animal onto him for the foreseeable future, but the fact that it had to stay at his house was almost too much.

“Alright, fine. Stay up there. Just please stop throwing things at me!”

Securing a future for himself. That’s what he was doing. Get in with the future chieftain, and the rest of your life will be easy. But now, he was questioning if it was really worth it.

“It’ll be easy; he’s fine as long as you feed him. He’s not too wild, you don’t need a cage! Just let an infantile version of one of the most powerful creatures in the world roam free in your house!” He grumbled to himself.

Just after he found a new, creature-free home for his things, he heard a knock on his door.

He opened it, and found Lasair on the other side.

“Ah, Lasair, what a pleasant surprise. Please tell me you’re here for your… Friend.”

“Yes. I am.”

She peeked her head through the door and scanned his house. The first room from the door was the kitchen, and Sparky was nowhere to be found.

“Where is he?” she shot to Ciethel.

“He’s up on one of my shelves! He was tearing up one of my blankets, and when I tried to pull him off, he jumped up there and started knocking everything down! He’s still up on that one!”

He pointed over to the shelf above his counter, and Lasair saw Sparky’s head peeking out from behind. After they made eye contact, he pulled it back, yet again out of sight.

“Hey buddy, come on down from there. I have some more meat for you if you listen.” She beckoned to him.

Meat. That was one of the words the young dragon was able to pick up on during his stay with the orcs. He sniffed the air, and there it was. The faint scent of meat hung in the air. He peered down from the shelf and saw Lasair waving a tantalizing piece of what smelled like deer up at him. He didn’t want to stay at this orc’s house anymore, so going with her seemed like the obvious choice. He jumped down, snatching the meat in the process, but before he could land, he, in turn, was snatched out of the air by Lasair.

“Sorry about this, but we can’t have anyone seeing you.”

She quickly pushed him into her bag and closed it before he could escape.

The young dragon should have known better to trust anything, even vaguely human-shaped. Now he was trapped, floating in some dark void. It was strange. He could still breathe fine, but he felt no air pushing back when he beat his wings. He remembered a trick his brother would use in the cave when it got too dark for even their eyes to see. He built up a small amount of lightning, allowing the charge to arc between his horns enough to illuminate his surroundings. Floating around him, just far enough away where no matter how far he stretched he just barely couldn’t reach, were a bunch of camping supplies. The worst part was that right next to him, as if to taunt him, was the meat he was promised. He flapped his wings and stretched as hard as he could, but it didn’t matter. Nothing he did moved him any closer to his prize.

Just as he was about to lose all hope, a hand reached in and wrapped itself around his torso, freeing him from his cruel and very unusual punishment.

The first thing he saw when his eyes readjusted made his blood boil. It was a human! He would deal with the orc later.

Humans were what attacked his family relentlessly! Humans were what stole him from them! Humans were what held him captive and used their strange magic on him!

“Alright, I brought him. Now what?” Lasair said as she placed him lightly on the ground.

The instant he was free from her grasp, he lunged, claws-first at the human’s neck. To his dismay, it blocked his charge with its arm, although it didn’t really matter much. He quickly sank his teeth into the human’s arm.

Parker screamed out in pain.

“Alex! Stop! Come on, please!”

The human reached forward with his other arm and grabbed his bottom jaw, trying to pull out his teeth, but he only dug them in harder.

Parker groaned and pulled harder.

“Lasair! Come on, help me!” He plead.

The force of two orc arms were too much for his jaws to withstand, and Lasair was able to pry him free of his target.

Even with no hope of escaping her grasp, the young dragon still thrashed and growled in her grip. After giving him some time to calm down, he stopped thrashing, but didn’t stop growling and staring the human down.

“Wh-what the hell was that for Alex?! I came here to rescue you!”

It infuriated him that he could understand the human language and not the orc one. And there was that name again, Alex.

“I-I understand why you’re mad at me,” he snapped, his breath quick and ragged, “But that is too far! There was nothing else I could do! That thing would have slaughtered me if I’d tried to fight it!”

Suddenly, the young dragon was hit by a spell of dizziness. He stopped growling, his mind swirling with thoughts. He stopped growling, his thoughts growing slower and slower, until they stopped entirely, his body going limp in Lasair’s hands.

Parker tore the sleeve off his bloodied arm and wrapped it longways around his wounded forearm. First, Alex attacks him out of the blue, and then he just up and passes out cold? Something very strange must have been going on in his head.

Alex woke up with his dreams still clouding his mind. He squirmed on the cold stone floor, and when he didn’t instantly fall back asleep, resigned himself to waking up. When he opened his eyes, he expected to see cave walls, the idea still fresh in his memory. Instead, he saw Lasair, looking down at him worriedly, and was reminded with the fact that no, everything happening to him was not just some bad dream.

He turned his head and saw Parker, bleeding profusely from his left forearm. He raised his brow in worry and rushed over, only to be pinned to the ground by Lasair, who yelled at him in the orc language. He looked over to her, confused, and then back to Parker, catching his eye, Parker looked back with a mix of shock and betrayal.

“Really? You wake up, and the first thing you do is rush for me again?!”

Alex laid there, processing what he’d just heard. After brushing his dreams aside, the last thing he remembered, the whiddsoul was choking him, and then… He woke up here. His headache was gone, along with the pains from all his other injuries. He must have been out for a long time! He tried one more time to squirm free of Lasair’s grip, but couldn’t. He growled in frustration, and all that did was make Parker flinch, and Lasair apply even more pressure to his back. That was definitely not the right move.

Obviously, something had gone down while he was knocked out, Parker was injured, and it was his fault somehow. Alex really missed the ability to speak at that moment, even more so than he had for the last couple of weeks. He tried his best to mimic writing something with a pencil, but he wasn’t confident it would translate well.

Parker said something to Lasair, and she eased up on his back.

“Just calm down and promise you won’t bite me again, and she’ll let go, okay? Do you promise?”

Alex nodded. Parker was back to using that annoying tone of voice you use for a small child or animal. The one he used every time he’d talked at Alex before figuring out he wasn’t a combination of both of those things, and that annoyed him. He let it slide, as it seemed like any sound he made in protest would be taken as a threat.

Lasair let go of him, and he stood up, stretching all his limbs. He expected them to be stiff from lack of use, but to his surprise, they felt perfectly fine. They weren’t even fatigued from the leftover sleep hormones. He waltzed over to Parker, who pulled his injured arm away.

Alex would have walked over with his hands up if he could, but he couldn’t. Instead, he just motioned towards himself with one of his front claws, telling Paker to bring him his injured arm.

While it was awkward, he knew one thing he could do to help quickly heal Parker’s wounds. Besides, he’d done it before, so it wouldn’t be too bad.

“Is this your way of saying sorry or something?”

Parker slowly and reluctantly put his arm down, and unwrapped his shirt sleeve. The bleeding had slowed down, but not stopped completely.

Alex prepared himself mentally, and started licking the wounds. While he didn’t very much enjoy it, the only other method of saliva application would have been even worse. He didn’t imagine Parker was a big fan of open-mouthed kisses with animals. At least, he hoped not.

Besides, he didn’t like to admit it, but his dragon-palate was a much bigger fan of the taste of blood than his human one, so it wasn’t entirely unenjoyable.

He stopped when he could tell Parker was no longer bleeding, and the wounds had healed enough where they would no longer leave scars.

“Are you sure you guys were just friends before this?”

Parker Scoffed.

“What exactly is it you are insinuating with that statement?!”

Lasair raised her hands defensively.

“I’m not here to judge. Unlike in your society, we don’t care about that here,” she stated, a slight smirk escaping her lips.

Parker groaned, and Alex looked between the two, confused about their conversation.

“Whatever,” Parker scoffed again. “Just give him the pencil and paper.”

Parker looked down at Alex.

“I want to know what’s up with your bipolar behavior. I can’t believe you’d be so belligerent!”

Alex couldn’t help but laugh again. Alliteration didn’t only manifest itself in his name, it seemed.

Lasair reached into her bag and pulled out parchment and a charcoal pencil.

“Now explain yourself.”