Page 17 of Doran

I preened. My mate had just said my wings were more magnificent than a royal’s, despite their smaller size as being non-royal, mine were only made for gliding like the rest of the common Dragonii.

A few males I recognized and a couple more that I didn't came out of the house.

One of them was my brother Kaelor, and the rest of those I knew were space dock workers who’d probably had the day off.

“Ho, brother, mine!” Kaelor called out, beaming at us as I came around to Sarah's side of the flitter. “I gathered up a few males to help you unload all that and get everything set up.”

Sarah held out the canine to me. Sweetie. That was her name. I needed to remember it. I took Sweetie and held the leash in one hand as I held out my other to her.

Her cheeks turned pink once more, and she looked slightly past me as she took my hand and clambered down. Definitely shy, then. Could she be any more adorable?

“That was mighty nice of you,” she said, letting go of my hand and addressing my brother. Him, she had no problem meeting eyes with him. Her shyness was entirely with me, I quickly realized as the other males hurriedly introduced themselves.

Oh. That extra sweetness that I’d smelled suddenly made sense. Kaelor would tell me I was an idiot if he knew I’d not recognized that slightly musky scent for what it was. She’d felt a sense of definite attraction to me, and knowing I could probably tell, as could any Dragonii close enough, had made her feel embarrassed. My tail sprang up, and my wings fluttered with pride before I got my cocky display under control and folded them back out of the way.

“It’s entirely our pleasure,” one of the males I didn’t know but who’d given his name as Guriff replied.

Kaelor strode down the steps and began helping me undo the straps holding things down.

“There’s another load’s worth waiting for me to go pick it up still,” I told him. “She brought everything they owned.”

“I’ll get someone to drive it over. Where are the kits?”

I quickly explained about them coming later.

“That’s too bad, but by the time it was apparent everything would be ready, it was too late for her to change her mind anyway if she’d known,” he said.

I nodded. “True. And the first week is half over, so it won’t be that much longer.”

“Perhaps she can get Bob to speak to Xeranos and see about arranging an earlier flight,” he suggested.

“That’s a wonderful idea!” I felt like a double idiot for not having thought of this myself. “She wants to arrange a very small wedding as soon as possible. Just us and the kits and our sister and both of our parents. No priestess.”

“I’ll comm Johree and make the arrangements. You can be the one to comm our sister and parents, and Bob can try to get it so everyone arrives at the same time.”

“If they can’t make it the day after her parents and our kits arrive, they can watch it over a comm link,” I said firmly. It wasn’t that I didn't get along with our sister and parents per se, but rather that Kaelor and I had always come last the moment our sister had been born. Genuinely last, even after their jobs and social calendar with friends. It was as if we'd become an afterthought. They’d had a precious Dragonii female, which admittedly was far less common than a male, and we’d become, well, surplus. Or at least, it usually felt that way.

“They will come,” Kaelor reassured me. “Two of your kits are female.”

I glared at him. “That should not matter.”

He held his hands up placatingly. “As Jesse would say, you’re preaching to the choir. That means to someone who already knows.”

I filed the idiom away in case I was able to make use of it later, to sound more knowledgeable about humans.

“There, we can start unloading now. You should go in with her and find out what she wants where. I’ll comm Hrikit and get him to send a driver with the rest. I left him in charge to supervise the unloading, so he’ll know who’s there and which trailer is yours. We’re not expecting anyone else to arrive in-system today, so if someone shows up and he and Bob can’t handle it, he can just comm me.”

I nodded, hurrying up the steps to the porch, slipping in through the front door a few moments behind her.

11

SARAH

I didn’t recognize the species of a few of the males that came to help us move in, and knew I needed to find some kind of crash course in the members of the galactic community and their eating and sleeping habits if I was to make a proper go of things, personally and business-wise. They were all very kind, with lots of calling me ma’am, which I tried to put a stop to while wondering where they’d picked that up from, and not letting me lift a finger except to point where I wanted things. Doran and his brother Kaelor were fantastic, quickly memorizing which bedroom I’d said belonged to which child, immediately making sure the boxes labeled with their names went into the correct room without having to ask me. They could tell I was missing them something fierce, and the sight of the beds that had been offloaded first had caused tears I’d had to quickly wipe away, refusing to dissolve into a puddle.

Not for the first time, I was really glad that I’d accepted the vintage Ethan Allen bunk beds from Grammie once Lucy was out of her crib. They’d once belonged to Grammie’s sister’s kids and had ended up at hers for us grandchildren. She’d long since decided that any great grandchildren visiting could sleep on the pull out loveseat and blow up mattresses, as that didn’t happen very often, and it gave her space to store her Christmas decorations in the now spare room so she didn’t have to try to go up to the attic to fetch them.

The solid maple frames had a few dings, to be expected after being used for children, but nothing major, and the finish still gleamed when polished. The beds had certainly been made to last and were better quality than anything I could have afforded new, and had the benefit of being able to go from bunks to individual twin beds as they did now. An unexpected bonus was that the colonial spindle styling of the beds might be seen as dated back on Earth, but here, in Walnut Grove, they fit right in.