“That’s a big ‘if’,” Diana muttered, though she didn’t mean it in a discouraging way – she just didn’t trust the vagaries of thin cloud cover to keep them protected from view. What would she say to the PTA if they found out she was flying wyverns all around the place?
“Oh, and Caleb is having his movie screening at the town hall today,” Kieran added. “A lot of people will probably be there so that they can enjoy the air conditioning, rather than traipsing around in the woods. So you should be okay.”
“I guess that’s one piece of good luck,” Diana said. She’d forgotten about the movie screening – some sort of obscure Eastern European piece of cinema from the 1960s. She wouldn’t have minded going herself, but she felt confident in saying that she preferred the way her day had turned out.
Caleb, who ran the local movie screenings and arts festivals, was yet another tall, handsome, solidly-built guy who’d moved to Girdwood Springs in the past few years, and Diana wondered with an internal laugh what kind of creatureheturned into.
Oh, like he turns into anything. I need to stop assuming everyone is a shifter!
“Well, then. Should we go?” she asked.
“No time like the present,” Calvin said. “Thanks for your help, Kieran – we’ll let you know how it goes.”
“No problem! Say hi to Sieval for me,” said Kieran with a friendly wave.
The two of them headed down the path that Kieran had indicated, conversation kept to a minimum as they traversed theincreasingly rugged terrain. Kieran hadn’t been lying when he’d said his take-off point was well hidden.
Diana’s excitement grew as she scrambled over a rocky outcrop. Calvin was going to turn into a wyvern, and he was going to fly her to meet a sprite in order to lift a curse.
And to think that this morning, the main thing on my mind was deciding which shirt to wear and what waffles to order!
Eventually they found the spot: a small clearing surrounded by some rocks and thorny bushes, the trees scraggly and not particularly photogenic. It wasn’t the kind of place a lot of hikers would choose to come.
“I can definitely take off from here,” Calvin said, glancing around. “It’ll be a little tight, but it’s doable.”
“Right,” Diana said uncertainly. “Um. So. We’re actually doing this, then?”
It still seemed a little unreal to her. Sure, she’d seen Calvin in his wyvern form just a couple of hours ago, but riding him?
Okay, I need to find another way of phrasing that,Diana thought with an internal grimace.
“I promise it’ll be perfectly safe,” Calvin said soothingly. “But if you really don’t want to –”
“No! No, I didn’t say that,” Diana jumped in quickly. “I just, uh, might need a moment to get used to the idea. And… I haven’t ridden so much as a horse in my life. I don’t know if I have the right… um…”How to put this?“… the right technique.”
This time, her grimace was very much external.
Why did I say that?!
But either Calvin didn’t notice her unintentional double entendre or he was too much of a gentleman to guffaw out loud or even point it out.
“It’s no problem – like I said, I would never let you fall,” he assured her. “I don’t think it’ll be that long of a flight, either, butif youdowant to land at any point, just let me know and I’ll take us down as soon as I see a suitable place.”
“Oh – no, no, I’m sure it’ll be okay.” Diana felt a strange jab of disappointment that they’d only be flying together for a short time, apparently – before reminding herself that they had the rest of their lives to go flying, and perhaps keeping this one short was for the best, until she became a little more accomplished.
“If you stand back a little, I’ll shift,” Calvin told her, taking a few paces into the clearing. “Take your time, though – there’s no rush.”
Diana swallowed. Calvin was being very considerate – but now that her initial trepidation had worn off, she found anticipation was tingling through her veins.
I want to ride a wyvern!
Still, she stepped back, giving Calvin all the space he needed. She’d already seen how big he was in his wyvern form – he was right when he said that the clearing would be a little tight.
She held her breath, her eyes going wide as Calvin’s body seemed to shimmer a little – and then began to grow.
The sheen of green scales covered his expanding body, and the two beautiful, dark green wings he’d protected her with when the tree branch had fallen sprouted from his back, rising up toward the tree tops. A massive scaled tail swept out behind him.
Diana found she couldn’t watch all of the transformation at once – there was just too much going on, too much change taking place. And for such a drastic change, from a very tall and extremely handsome but otherwise regular man into a huge mythical creature, it seemed to happen very quickly.
