Unlike Dusty!
Since Goldie seemed like she was where she wanted to be, Zina turned her attention back to Dusty, who was still hanging upside-down from the car roof, letting out strangely cat-likebrrrs andyowls as he clawed his way over the vinyl.
“Dusty, honey, how about you come down from there?” Zina implored, reaching out for him. She was glad both the baby dragons seemed lively – but they’d definitely been a lot less trouble while they’d been asleep!
It was clear Dusty wasn’t even slightly interested in listening to her: he gazed at her with his yellow eyes a moment, before letting out a loudyowland skittering off to the far side of the car, his tiny claws tearing holes in the vinyl as he went. When he got to the left-side back door, he dropped onto it and began scratching at the glass of the window, leaving tiny scratch marks, andyowlingall the while.
“Do you need me to stop the car?” Trent asked, glancing around as Zina wedged herself between the two front seats of the car, trying to grab at Dusty before he figured out how to open the car window.
“N-no,” Zina said, trying to wiggle into the backseat. “Honestly, I have really no confidence in this car’s ability to start again if you stop it now. And we should try to make as good time as we can.”
“That’s probably true,” Trent muttered, looking back at the road.
“Hey, sweetheart, it’s okay,” Zina said in as soothing a voice as she could muster, once she’d – somehow – managed to maneuver herself into the backseat. “We’re here, and I promise this weird contraption isn’t going to hurt you! It’s actually kind of helping you!”
Dusty paused in his frantic scratching at the window for a moment and turned to look at her, blinking slowly.
“Brrrrrup?”
Maybe it was just her imagination, but Zina thought she could hear a definite tone of inquiry in the little growl Dusty made.
“Yeah – that’s right,” Zina said, nodding encouragingly. “It’s friendly! I promise. I know it must seem a bit weird and frightening, but you won’t have to be in here for long.”
Dusty blinked at her again, cocking his head. He made a few more token efforts at scratching at the window, but either he was responding to her soothing tone, or he’d decided it was a hopeless cause.
“Brrrrrup. Brrp!”
His little growls sounded closer to thecheeping sounds he’d made when he first hatched now, which Zina decided to take as a good sign. Slowly, she reached out to him. Maybe he’d recognize her hands as the place he’d been peacefully sleeping up until a few minutes ago.
“That’s right, darling. No need to be worried. I wouldn’t ever let you get hurt.”
He took a moment to look slightly warily at them – but then apparently made up his mind to trust her, and, pushing himself away from the window, he unfurled his wings and made a small, stuttering flight to perch on the heel of her hand.
Oh, wow,Zina thought, as he slowly revolved in her cupped palms, just like a cat readying itself for sleep.Flying already. We’re gonna have to keep a close eye on this one.
It might have been only a short, jerky flight, but Dusty had only hatched a few hours ago. What would he be able to do by the end of the week? By the end of theday, even?
“Everything all right back there?” Trent asked.
“Taken care of, I think,” Zina said softly, as Dusty settled himself in her hands. She could feel the rapidtap tap tapof his tiny heartbeat against her palm, and it was clear that he was far from calm – but he trusted her. He was willing to let her protect him from the horrible metal contraption he was, for now at least, trapped inside.
“Brrrp. Brrup!”
Dusty seemed to be insistent on something, but for now, Zina wasn’t sure what it could be. He looked up at her expectantly.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, Dusty,” she told him, in the most solemn voice she could – she didn’t want him to think she wasn’t taking his concerns seriously, after all. “But I’ll do my best to learn how to understand you better, okay? And I promise that nothing will hurt you as long as I’m here.”
Dusty rested his head on her thumb, seeming, for now, to be relatively placid. Perhaps he hadn’t understood her words, but hehadunderstood her soothing tone.
“I think he’s okay now,” Zina said, glancing at the front seat – all she could see of Trent, however, was the top of his head… and Goldie still perched on top of it, curled up now as if she was nesting in his hair. Somehow, despite the situation, she couldn’t help but giggle. “Nice hat, by the way.”
“Well, thank you. You wouldn’t believe where I got it,” Trent shot back, but she could hear the humor in his voice.
Sighing, Zina leaned back against the back of the seat. She didn’t really want to risk trying to crawl back into the front now, not with Dusty finally having calmed down. Instead, she looked out the window at the passing desert – red, hot and sandy, and dotted only with the sparsest of trees and pale green grasses. In her hands, Dusty seemed to finally be settling himself a little more calmly, but when she glanced down at him, she found him awake and alert, watching the scenery just as intently as she was.
He certainly seems very curious about everything,Zina thought, with a surge of affection.I guess when I set out on this… well, thisthing, I didn’t really take into account the fact the eggs might hatch while I still had them. They’d been dormant for so long, I didn’t really think it was possible.
“I wonder why they hatched right now,” Zina said, frowning a little. “There was no sign of them doing it the whole time Hargreaves had them, and who knows how long they’d been sitting around before that. Decades, at least.”
