“I told your gal here you’re in the honeymoon suite,” the lady said, winking, seeming –thankfully– to be too caught up perving on Trent to think much about what his hat might be doing. Zina was pretty sure she wasn’t looking at or around his face, anyway.
“Oh, cheers,” Trent said. “Nice one. We better get upstairs and get unpacking, then.”
“Have fun, love,” the lady said, giving him one last lingering look. “Top floor – and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Which isn’t a lot!”
She gave one last booming laugh before settling back down behind the counter and lifting her magazine again.
Zina wasveryhappy to take her suggestion.
Dashing across the lobby, she grabbed one or two of the bags Trent was lugging, and together they hauled them up the three flights of stairs to the top floor, jamming the key in the door and making their way into the room.
“Oh – okay,” Zina said as she gazed around the room. “The lady at the desk said it was a special room, but, uh, not sure what I was expecting.”
The room looked pretty much the same as any other cheap hotel room that hadn’t been updated in a while – brown carpet, beige walls, worn sofa by the wall, a bedroom with some slightly peeling floral wallpaper visible through the open door. What was different about it, however, was a rug with garishly bright red roses on it leading from the door to the bedroom, and the swoops of slightly yellowing gauze that hung from the ceiling.
I guess it’s a little romantic?Zina thought.If you squint?
The idea, anyway, was nice.
Just as she was gazing around, however, she heard another very determinedgrrwllp!sound from within her bag.
“Dusty! I’m sorry! Let’s get you out of there,” Zina said, quickly unzipping her bag.
Dusty didn’t seem too upset, however – he scrambled up to the lip of the bag before looking around his new environs with wide eyes. He seemed curious, but not frightened.
Thank goodness for that! Not sure what we’d do if he decided kind of cheesy hotel rooms are as scary as cars apparently are.
“Come on – you get down too, Goldie,” Trent said coaxingly, as he put their bags down on the floor and lifted his hat off his head. Goldie was still sitting on his hair, but on finding herself no longer under a hat and no longer in a car, she seemed slightly happier than she had before – at the very least, Trent’s scalp didn’t appear to be bleeding anymore.
“Cheep cheep! Brrwwwl!”
Dusty, feeling brave, had crawled down from Zina’s bag and dropped onto the floor, scurrying across the old carpet before climbing onto the dining table in the middle of the room, his little claws making tapping sounds as he scrambled across its Formica surface.
“Do you think he’s hungry?” Trent asked, watching Dusty sniff at the table.
“He shouldn’t be – he just had a whole slice of bread. But I probably shouldn’t feed him that anymore. It might be filling, but it’s probably not all that nutritious.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Trent said. “He seemed happy enough with the banana, so we can get him some more fruit, and some meat that’s a little less processed than ham. I guess dragons are just born eating whatever they’d eat normally.” Looking up, he jabbed gently at Goldie, who was still nestled on his head. “Okay, little lady. Time to think about getting down, yeah?”
Either Goldie understood what he was saying or she was curious about what her brother was sniffing at on the table, but either way she jumped off Trent’s head with a softcheep!and, fluttering her wings clumsily, managed to fly herself to the table.
“Grrrp! Grrr!”
But as soon as she did, Dusty spun around, arching his back like a cat and letting out a little growl. Goldie, uncertain, backed off a little, looking up at Trent and Zina as if for guidance.
“Hey now, Dusty,” Zina said, wagging her finger. “We donotgrowl at our sister. There’s enough space on that table for the both of you!”
Dusty seemed to gaze at her skeptically for a moment, before shuffling his way over to where the table’s shiny Formica veneer was fastened to the wood beneath with silver metal studs. Looking defensive, he curled up around one of them as if he was protecting it. He gazed belligerently up at them, as if daring them to make him move.
Zina frowned, not sure she understood what Dusty was upset about – but then it hit her.
Shiny metal. Do dragons in the real world have a weakness for shiny things, just like they do in books?
It wasn’t like the studs in the table would be of any value – they definitely weren’t jewels or coins of gold, that was for sure – but maybe, to Dusty, the only thing that mattered was that they were shiny.
“Do you think he’s… trying to make a treasure hoard?” Zina asked uncertainly, still not sure if her theory actually made any sense whatsoever.
Trent blinked. “Oh. You know what? I think he might be.”
