“He’ll come around,” Sam promised, watching his cat settle into a loaf position. “He’s just protective.”
“Brilliant, we’ve been officially tolerated,” Mabon announced. “This calls for celebration.”
“I made scones,” Rux said immediately. “Only two dozen this time.”
Sam laughed as Mabon pulled him closer, Urien grinned, and Basil watched them all from his perch withthe air of a king surveying questionable subjects.
Positive progress.
/~/~/~/~/
One of the things Sam enjoyed most about his dragons was their willingness to answer his questions.
“So, when you say ‘hoard,’ you mean actual piles of gold coins and pearls?” Sam speared a roasted potato, watching Rux serve himself a third helping of chicken. “Like, Smaug-style mountains of gold?”
“Smaug was a fictional disgrace to our species,” Mabon said immediately. “No self-respecting dragon sleeps directly on coins. That’s terrible for the scales.”
“Speak for yourself.” Urien reached for the green beans. “I knew a dragon in Cork who built a nest entirely from Spanish doubloons. He claimed it was therapeutic.”
“Did his spine survive?” Mabon sounded skeptical.
“No, actually. He was suffering from chronic inflammation by 1820.”
Sam laughed, feeling so much more relaxed at the estate. There was a normal amount of food on the table, and he was invited to serve himself a reasonable portion, instead of having someone fill his plate. Better still, Mabon, Urien, and Rux were all eating too, which made the atmosphere more comfortable for Sam.
“But you collect other things.” Sam gestured with his fork toward Mabon. “You said books and art?”
“Yes, first editions, mostly, or older manuscripts, some of which I bought when they were new. A Gutenberg Bible, for example, that I acquired in 1523.” Mabon’s eyes lit up the way they always did when discussing his collection. “I have an entire climate-controlled vault beneath the library.”
“Doesn’t everybody?” Sam said in a teasing tone.
“Rux hoards recipes,” Urien added, grinning. “He has handwritten notebooks dating back to the 1700s.”
“They’re culinary history,” Rux protested. “Do you know how difficult it was to make proper puff pastry before modern refrigeration? The technique alone…”
“Rux once spent six months in Lyon arguing with a pastry chef about the exact ratio of butter to flour in croissant dough,” Mabon interrupted. “Six months of daily visits.”
“He admitted I was right in the end.”
“You made the man cry.”
“He was using the wrong butter!”
I could get used to this.Sam had been at the estate since six, and they’d spent the first hour just talking - sitting in the library while Mabon showed him rare book catalogs, Urien described the meditation garden he was planning, and Rux debated out loud whether to serve chicken or salmon.
They’d settled on chicken - Rux’s lemon and herb recipe. It tasted a lot better the second time around.
“What about you, Urien?” Sam asked. “How do you hoard rare plants?”
“Very carefully.” Urien’s expression turned almost sheepish. “I currently have seventy-three species that officially died out centuries ago, growing in controlled environments in the greenhouse.”
“That’s incredible.”
“It’s obsessive hoarding,” Mabon corrected fondly.
“Says the dragon with sixteen Caravaggio paintings in his vault.”
“Fourteen. I sold two to fund Rux’s kitchen renovation.”
