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“Mom, you’re beautiful,” Ethan countered.
“I’m a twilight dragon, Ethan,” she snapped. “I can’t transform, I can’t take human form.”
“You have some human parts, Mom.”
“Yes, my farcical body has human legs and arms, and then I have a tail and… scales, and I keep setting fire to furnishings at social gatherings if I get too animated. It’s so embarrassing.”
A puff of smoke swirled out of one of Ethan’s nostrils. “See, Mom? I suffer the same problem.”
“Of course you do, you’re my son!” Cressida wailed. “And… and my eyelids…” She burst into paroxysms of tears, sobbing into the heatproof handkerchief.
Ethan sought to find the right words. “It’s just a matter of perspective, Mom. Your eyes are beautiful.” He gentled. His mother was beautiful. She was just… dragon. A non-shifting dragon. And you couldn’t get away from that fact.
None of them could.
It was said that centuries ago, dragons could shift with ease, from dragon into human form. But something had gone wrong before The Great War. Maybe dragons exhausted their shifting capacity while fighting the humans. Maybe a malicious spell had been cast by a mage. Whatever the cause, their shifting had weakened and finally ground to a halt, leaving dragons in a kind of limbo state. Not fully dragon, but not able to take on human form either.
Stuck. With dragon skin and scales, smaller wings than the original dragons and a forked tail. They had legs and arms like humans, a curved spine like a human, but then there were those small scales running up and down their vertebra, remnants of their dragon heritage.
They had hands and feet very similar to humans, but with sharp claws on their fingers and toes.
And eyelids that blinked sideways.
And nostrils that breathed fire.
Modern dragons were a bit of a mishmash, to be honest.
But other species had gotten used to them this way.
Except humans. Humans found them kind of… off-putting. Scary even.
And that was a major stumbling block. Being stuck in half-shift mode had limited their capacity for success as a species. Twilight dragons, they’d been nicknamed. Some of their kind had fallen into petty theft, living in dens on the tip and in the Wasteland to the north of the city with loot they’d pilfered on night flights.
Thankfully, that had not been the Blade family’s fate. They’d poured their skills and intelligence into aviation. Powering the skies.
The Blade clan dragons had helped Atholrose Motham—their mothman leader after The Great War—to build Motham City. Later, Ethan’s grandfather had invented the first airplanes. His father took that further, adding hover crafts and building the airport in the east quarter of Motham, and now—well, Ethan liked to think the Blades ruled the skies like kraken ruled the seas.
And they’d made money. Copious amounts of money. His father had capitalized on the changes happening in Motham these past few decades, grabbed the opportunities.
But then he’d died, four years ago in a freak accident.
The love of Mom’s life. Gone.
Cressida had never been emotionally stable. She was beautiful, vivacious, and charming, but also very highly strung, an offspring from the only other well-to-do clan of dragons in Motham, the Delawares. She’d borne her husband only two dragonlings, distraught that she’d laid eggs instead of birthing her children like a mammal. She’d never let her sons forget how few of her eggs had resulted in hatchlings, telling them how she’d nurtured them, sat on those eggs at risk of her pelvic girdle collapsing. Breastfed them until they were a few years old.
Dad had shielded the two Blade boys from her anxious nature. But as the eldest of her sons, it was Ethan’s job to look after her now that their father was dead.
So he sat down on the edge of the bed, took her hand, and held it, and waited, trying not to let his own anxiety peak. That was the problem. He had some of Mom’s issues. He tried to keep it under wraps, but at times like this he could feel his breathing growing fast and shallow. Had to fight the urge to set things alight, just to ease the tension inside his chest.
Ye gods, as head of an aviation corporation, you couldn’t do that.
Mom was hiccupping now, her tears and swirls of smoke slowing. “Do you know how much I paid for that therapy, Ethan?” she whispered.
“Mom, it’s okay, don’t worry about the money, it’s just… I wish you’d stop putting your faith in quackery.”
“They promised results,” Cressida whispered hoarsely.
“Lots of folks promise lots of things, Mom. Promising is the easy part. It’s delivering that’s hard.”
