“I’m right here,” I remind her.
She gets to her feet and unsteadily makes her way over to me with a strange look on her face.
For a moment I wonder if she’s about to attack me. Then she puts her thin arms around my chest and leans into me.
I stiffen. What witchcraft is this?
“Thank you for saving me,” she says into my chest, her thin voice raspy with muddy water. “I thought I was going to die.”
We stand there like that for a moment, me with my arms out from my body and she with hers around it. The awkwardness ofthat strikes me, and I do what she least expects - I embrace her right back. Two can play the magic game.
To my astonishment, instead of withdrawing and admitting defeat, her shoulders start shaking and remarkable sounds emanate from her.
I don’t know what to do. Her magic makes me want to put my face closer to her hair and mutter certain words that she must have implanted in my mind with her spells.
I’m able to resist, but only barely. She’s so small and thin and unguarded in my arms! And she’s both cold from the water and warm from the jungle.
I clear my throat. “Hmm. It would be a waste to have you taken by a simple river. Only I decide when you may leave my service.”
She sniffs. “Are you going to decide that?”
“Well… now… circumstances have changed somewhat,” is all I manage as her spells take hold of me again.
Across the river, lightning flashes through the clouds. The brief light illuminates the jungle for miles in every direction before darkness swallows everything again.
Morgan stays with her arms around me, but she turns her head to look at the rain. “This is terrible weather. I’ve never seen it like this.”
“Ah. You’ve never been to Carc. It rains just like this, except sulfuric acid. It’s refreshing, in its own way. Not for long, of course. But my scales have never been cleaner.”
“Where is that?” she asks. “On the other side of the jungle?”
“What?” I have to laugh. “No, of course not. It’s another planet.”
“Oh. Let’s not go there.”
“I’m not planning to. And in this form, I can’t go anywhere worth going.”
The storm continues raging around the island while Clyde busies himself arranging wet leaves into patterns only he understands.
Then movement catches my eye. Far downstream, something breaks the surface of the water.
At first I assume it's another fallen tree. Then lightning flashes again, and it becomes clear that the shape is moving against the current, slowly and deliberately.
I narrow my eyes. That’s not an innocent creature.
Morgan notices immediately. "What is it?"
"It would be smart of that thing to not make us find out,” I growl, annoyed at the disturbance.
The shape vanishes beneath the muddy water. Several seconds pass before it surfaces again, much closer this time.
It’s large, even larger than me in my true dragon form.
Morgan follows my gaze, then looks up at me, watching my reaction.
The thing disappears once more and the river keeps roaring around the island.
Eventually Morgan clears her throat. "That's probably nothing."
