Considering it’s a Makepeace Cellars mug, he’s likely telling the truth.
They probably have those all over the place here.
“The dragons set you up,” Lavender announces.
I’ve heard the two of them moving around in the mornings, and I see them walking across the fields toward the house nearly every day.
So the ladies can watch Lavender while Heath goes to work.
That’s what I was told the first day.
When I was helpful.
I hope.
I could offer to walk her over, but I don’t yet trust myself to make it there without causing some kind of incident, so it’s probably best that Lavender and I both have a chaperone.
“How so?” I ask her as we all fall into step together.
“Those eggs you spilled were dragon eggs. They snuck in and replaced the chicken eggs with the bad dragon eggs, and the bad dragon eggs burned the bottom of the carton off when you lifted it.”
I manage to not wince at all or slow my pace or change my mind about going to the house at the reminder of the egg incident. “You’ve been studying dragons?”
“I’m a dragon slayer,” she announces.
“Are you still a cat too?”
“Cricket. I was never a cat. I could just talk to them.”
I used to offer to take my nieces and nephews for a day to give my sisters a break, or to watch them so they could have date nights with their husbands, but they rarely took me up on it.
Talking to Lavender about cats and dragons—it makes me wish they’d let me be Aunt Cricket back home more than on holidays and birthdays and special occasions.
One more way they didn’t accept who I am and how I’m different.
One more way that they made me feel like I was wrong. Unworthy.
“Can you talk to the dragons too?” I ask Lavender.
“Yes, but you can’t hear me when I do. It’s at subatomic frenemies.”
“Subhuman frequencies,” Heath murmurs.
Lav slides me a cheeky grin that makes me bark out a rusty laugh.
I’ve been reading. Mostly popular fiction that makes me cry.
I’ve also been watching documentaries. Mostly true crime that also makes me cry.
So laughing?
This is nice.
I like laughing.
Lavender tells me all about where she’s found dragons in the house and the garden while we stroll through a break in the grapevines.
“Different varieties,” Heath tells me when he notices me glancing at another wider break in the fields going a different direction.
