"All right. Let me know if you need me- I mean, if youwantme to do anything."
"So that you cannotdo them? I’m onto you, Morgan. All my kind commands go unheeded. All my gentle admonishments ignored. Question after endless question is asked. Now, sit where you are. Do not interfere."
I can't even argue with that one. The rain continues hammering the island while the river churns around us. Somewhere downstream lightning flashes across the sky, illuminating the floodwaters in brief white bursts.
During one of those flashes I notice movement. The monster. It's still there. Only a section of its back breaks the surface now. Occasionally I glimpse the ridges along its spine. Once I catch sight of its eyes before it slips beneath the muddy water again. The thing isn't attacking. It's watching. For some reason that feels worse. The creature knows exactly what happened during its first attempt. It knows what Vyrathion can do. And despite that knowledge, it hasn't left.
When I look back toward the dragon, he's wrestling a particularly stubborn branch into place while muttering darkly about standards. For the first time, I notice something else. He's completely miserable. Rainwater runs down his face. Mud clings to his clothes and boots. Every few minutes he pauses to glare at the sky as though the storm has personally insulted him.
Meanwhile I'm sitting beneath the largest tree on the island. Relatively dry and relatively comfortable while I watch.
The realization arrives so quietly that I almost miss it: This shelter isn't for him. He doesn't need it. If anything, Vyrathion seems like the sort of person who would rather stand in the storm and complain about it than admit he requires protection from it.
Yet he keeps working. He keeps dragging branches through the mud and layering leaves across the roof and reinforcing supports that look perfectly adequate already.
He's doing it because I'm human. He’s building it forme.
The thought settles somewhere deep inside me and refuses to leave. For a while I simply watch him. The dragon finally places what appears to be the last major section of roof. He steps back, folds his arms and studies the structure with obvious pride. A large section immediately slides off the side and lands in the mud.
Neither of us speaks. The fallen section lies there accusingly.
Vyrathion points at it. "That was intentional."
"Obviously." I put a hand in front of my mouth to hide a smile.
He looks at me with suspicion. "It’s a mechanism that improves ventilation. It’s beyond your understanding."
I nod. "Definitely."
His eyes narrow more. I have the distinct impression that he knows I'm teasing him. Fortunately, he seems too invested in maintaining his dignity to acknowledge it.
The shelter is eventually finished. Or perhaps abandoned. It's difficult to tell the difference. The roof sags in two places. One wall leans slightly outward. The entire structure appears uncertain about its long-term prospects. It looks most of all like a pile of random wood that someone has assembled as a bonfire.
Yet when I step closer and look inside, I discover that it accomplishes the one thing it was built to do: It's dry. Well, mostly.
Three people could fit inside, though only if they developed a very close relationship with one another. If one of them is an eight-foot-tall dragon with muscles like old Greek statues, only one other person will fit. If that person is a girl who tends tocurviness and who won’t have much against physical contact with that dragon. Say, someone like me.
I glance back at Vyrathion. He stands with his arms folded, rain dripping from his hair and a satisfied smile on his face.
"Well?" he demands. “Can you at least try to appreciatesomeof the ingenuity in this structure? Or is all of it truly too advanced to grasp?”
I look at the shelter. Then at him. Then back at the shelter. "Only some of it, but even I can see it’s wonderful."
He nods indulgently. "Precisely. I shall make a decent servant out of you yet."
The answer should sound arrogant. Instead it sounds pleased. And somehow that affects me far more than it should.
Before I can examine that fact too closely, lightning flashes over the river again. Far beyond the curtain of rain, two dark eyes break the surface of the floodwaters.
The monster is still there. Watching the island. Watching the shelter.
Waiting to see what happens next.
The shelter proves to be better than it looks.
That isn't saying much. From the outside it resembles a pile of branches that lost an argument with a storm. Several supports lean at angles that seem optimistic rather than structural, and one side of the roof sags low enough that I keep expecting it to surrender entirely.
Yet when I duck through the entrance and settle onto the thick layer of leaves covering the floor, I discover that most of the rain remains outside.
