“Every few months, there’s a pile of coins left somewhere on my property,” she said.“Since I rarely see anyone but dragons, I can only imagine that it’s the dragons repaying me from their hoard.”
“Dragon hoards are real?”Darian asked in disbelief.
“I guess,” she said with a shrug.Since neither of them actually knew anything about dragon lore except for the childhood stories they’d been told, his guess was as good as hers.“I can’t imagine anyone else sneaking out here to give me more than a month’s wages at a time.I have more stored under my bed than I could use in the next three years.I’m saving it to find a good cause for it, I just haven’t figured out what that is yet.Do you need to see it to believe me?”
“I believe you,” he said, reaching out to snag her hand and pull her into a walk again.“Come on, let’s go deal with that nest.”
He led the way toward the nesting grounds without letting go of her hand, and Celia smiled at his back.Where other men might have insisted on seeing the pile of gold or demanded that she pay for shovels after finding out she had the means, Darian simply believed her, and that meant more than he knew.
They made their way to the nesting grounds in a comfortable silence, the grounding presence of his hand holding hers in a different kind of communication.
Since they’d met each other, he spoke less and she spoke more.The times that they were quiet, the silence was like a warm blanket.She didn’t worry that he was silent because he felt he needed to for her sake or worry that her silence was confusing him.She just felt understood.
She felt safe.
When they reached the nesting grounds, their four baby dragons following behind them, Celia knelt next to Darian at the edge of the air dragon nest and grinned as a baby air dragon’s nose popped through the dirt.
“We made it just in time,” she said, a thrill shooting through her.
The white dragon dug through and began preening its wings on the edge of the nest, while the other dragons began chittering at it.
“What are they telling him?”she asked Darian, who was watching the conversation with a grin.
“They’re telling him that if he has any injuries, you will help him, and if he wants to stay with us, life is wonderful here.And he said no, he’s going to the mountains.He just has to get all the dirt off his wings first,” Darian interpreted as the dragon continued to preen its wings.
Another baby dragon poked through, followed by two more noses on either side.
“They’re in a hurry,” Celia said.
“Good,” Darian grunted, settling down to watch.
Celia sat down next to him, her pinky finger brushing against his on the ground.
He shifted slightly closer, so she did the same, and before she knew it, she was leaning against him as they watched their babies frolic and play and talk to the new babies.
In less than an hour, the nest had hatched nearly twenty baby air dragons.
Celia wished it could last longer.
She’d never felt so relaxed.
“How are we not overrun by dragons?”Darian asked, watching the light glint off all the little white and gray and light blue bodies scattered around them, all busily cleaning their wings.“How are there not so many of them that people know they exist?”
“I don’t know,” Celia said with a halfhearted shrug.“I don’t know what the survival rate is, or how far the Gloaming Mountains stretch, or how old they grow.All I know is we get one to three nests per dragon type every year, and this was the only air dragon nest I saw this year, so perhaps not all of them will make it to adulthood.”
After waiting a little longer to make sure there were no stragglers, Darian and Celia began digging into the nest.
“Are you sure we can use these shovels?”Celia said, looking at the small hand shovel he gave her.
“I’m sure,” he said.
“And you don’t think it would hurt a baby dragon if there’s one?”she asked.
“We could just use them for the top layer,” he said, “and stop once we hit the eggs, but I don’t think it will hurt them.Can you come here please, Spark?”he called.
Spark hopped over obligingly, and Darian carefully tapped the edge of the shovel against his scales.Spark squawked, but not in pain.
“See,” he said.“He told me to hit him harder.”
