“Oh,” I say, because yeah, sure, let’s lounge in the grass with seven wyverns breathing down our necks. No problem. But as soon as I’m beside Farren everyone seems to lose interest in us. She’s so trusted, it’s astonishing. These creatures were tortured in one of the most brutal ways possible.They should despise humankind. I despise humankind just thinking of a fellow man doing this to them. Yet, her presence relaxes them even in the company of a stranger.
Farren somehow gets Deb to turn and lay her tail before us, and for the next hour we review the entire operation from initial assessment of infection, treatment, and reconstruction.
Then we go over how the entire Walsh family helped craft the Skidder’s tin when it regrew over scars too painfully. Months of rehab and work.
“And that’s why our Skidders shed more frequently than average,” Farren declares before snapping the journal closed. “I know the storm scared them. So, help me collect the metal?”
I stare at the vast fields around us. It’s a sea of flowing reeds, swaying in the wind. “Wait, out here?”
Farren stretches out her arms, closes her eyes, and concentrates. Two seconds later tin shoots through the grass and into her palm. “First to fifty, wins.”
My mouth breaks into a smile. She’s so damn impressive. “Wins what?” I press.
“I don’t know. Just wins.” She shrugs. “Bragging rights? If we make another deal, I’m going to start to lose count.”
“Fair enough.”
When I center myself and reach out to feel for tin, it takes a second to connect. All my training revolves around silver since I first crafted it at eleven. Which doesn’t mean this task is impossible. I’m just a little rusty at pinpointing the smooth pull of tin. Most every test involving iron, tin, and copper consists of the metal sitting in front of me to shape to my command. Mastery comes in how much and how precisely you can bend the substance to your will. Crafting classes at school hardly preach location or sensing tactics, which I thought logical with the limitations of the classroom and the value in strengthening our control.
But as blue-tinted gray metal flies through the air around me and into Farren’s open hands, I rethink that notion. Is it elitism that assumes this wondrous resource of dragons will always be supplied to those who canafford it? To most of my classmates they couldn’t imagine collecting scales, facing the dragons who produced it. They see a hunk of iron, tin, copper, bronze, or silver and never question if this piece was sourced ethically like Farren’s doing, selectively descaled like my father does, or painfully stolen like the wyvern poachers.
Halfway through our race I watch her, calling to metal like she’s a gravitational force, the lustrous gray orbiting her like moons. This crush thing would be so much simpler if Farren wasn’t so awe-inspiring.
I lose, naturally. She’s got fifty-three pieces to my measly thirty-eight. When she begins to brag, I let her have her winnings.
Hours later as I lay down in the warm grass, a wyvern feet away sunbathing, and Farren quizzing me on the difference between wyvern and dragon anatomy, I realize how much I was deprived in my old life. I don’t think I ever truly appreciated how good sunlight can feel against your skin. The sun was but another obstacle in a race, blinding you, dehydrating and exhausting you. Wind was a troubling inevitability experts calculated to determine if it was safe enough to compete. Time couldn’t be wasted on anything, especially enjoying a peaceful afternoon.
So, when Farren flops down beside me and we simply breathe together in the grass all I can think is this is everything I want for the future. I could pretend and scheme and never speak of my feelings if we still had moments like this.
Then Farren rolls to her side, head propped in her hand. “Do you have a type?” Her voice is soaked in curiosity.
“Type? Favorite type of dragon?”
She laughs. “No, like the type of person you find attractive.”
I jerk upward, needing to be vertical for these kinds of questions. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Because I thought it would help with the pretending to hate one another. When my mom talked to me yesterday, the conversation became this whole thing about attraction because I said you weren’t my type andI wasn’t yours.” She stops. “But then I realized I couldn’t exactly follow up with any specifics and I think it could help if I knew those.”
“I don’t know,” I lie.
“Really?” She sounds both unconvinced and surprised. “You don’t even have like, deal-breakers?”
I’m panicking, trying to erase Farren’s picture from my head, especially her bathed in sunlight and her pretty blue cotton dress on the ground next to me. I have to give her something or she’s not going to let this go. “It would be nice to be with someone who knew how to ride. But not despising dragons is the minimum.” There are too many people out there who use dragon metal, but when faced with a real-life dragon would run or try to kill them out of fear. One of my nightmares is dating someone who hated Hort, who could even fathom hurting him.
I think that’s a part of why my father forcing me to descale Hort broke something inside of me. My arm and the last thread of trust between us, yes, but something else too. I didn’t bond with my dad much growing up, but we always had dragons,always. In one single moment, he tarnished all those memories. Mom was apathetic toward the creatures, dismissing our conversations about flight maneuvers, training advice, and temperament. I don’t want a relationship like theirs, forged from money instead of any common interest. Some say metals shouldn’t mix, but I think the same goes for certain personality types.
“So true. I couldn’t like someone who was mean to dragons,” Farren says.
I take a deep breath and return to looking at Dr. Walsh’s medical notes, hoping she’s done. Because listening to how we could be great together is too agonizing.
“But you don’t even have a preference on body type or hair color? I thought all guys had preferences.”
I flip a page in the journal, act busy. “Did you and your dad operate on a broken keel here?” The keel is the boney extension of the sternum, which allows dragons and birds flight. I’ve heard normally dragons have to be put down if the keel becomes too damaged. It’s why dragons’ chests are the most vulnerable. The case sounds fascinating.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me your type.”
I look Farren in the eyes. My crush started because of who she is. When you’re surrounded by beginner dragon riders, who, like you, are afraid of even touching a dragon, a girl brave enough to help brace a broken leg does something to you. My initial fascination turned to admiration not long after and has stayed steadfast ever since. To tell Farren about my type would be to describe her.
