Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

and screamed in surprise. “Aaagh!”
    She leaped backwards as I sat up, my heart beating madly, a faint, lingering pain leaving me with the sensation that my brain itself was bruised.
    “Who are you? Are you part of the dream? You are, aren’t you? You’re just a dream,” I said, my voice a croak. I touched my lips. They were dry and cracked. “Except those people were in some sort of medieval clothing, and you’re wearing pants. Still, it’s incredibly vivid, this dream. It’s not as interesting as the last one, but still interesting and vivid. Very vivid. Enough that I’m lying here babbling to myself during it.”
    “I’m not a dream, actually,” the in- my-face dream woman said. “And you’re not alone, so if you’re babbling, it’s to me.”
    I knew better than to leap off the bed, not with the sort of headache I had. Slowly, I slid my legs off the edge of the bed, and wondered if I stood up, if I’d stop dreaming and wake up to real life.
    As I tried to stand, the dream lady seized my arm, holding on to me as I wobbled on my unsteady feet.
    Her grip was anything but dreamlike. “You’re real,” I said with surprise.
    “Yes.”
    “You’re a real person, not part of the dream?”
    “I think we’ve established that fact.”
    I felt an irritated expression crawl across my face—crawl because my brain hadn’t yet woken up with the rest of me. “If you’re real, would you mind me asking why you were bent over me, nose-to-nose, in the worst sort of Japanese-horror-movie way, one that guaranteed I’d just about wet myself the minute I woke up?”
    “I was checking your breathing. You were moaning and making noises like you were going to wake up.”
    “I was dreaming,” I said, as if that explained everything.
    “So you’ve said. Repeatedly.” The woman, her skin the color of oiled mahogany, nodded. “It’s good. You are beginning to remember. I wondered if the dragon within would not speak to you in such a manner.”
    Dim little warning bells went off in my mind, the sort that are set off when you’re trapped in a small room with someone who is obviously a few weenies short of a cookout. “Well, isn’t this just lovely. I feel like something a cat crapped, and I’m trapped in a room with a crazy lady.” I clapped a hand over my mouth, appalled that I spoke the words rather than just thought them. “Did you hear that?” I asked around my fingers.
    She nodded.
    I let my hand fall. “Sorry. I meant no offense. It’s just that . . . well . . . you know. Dragons? That’s kind of out there.”
    A slight frown settled between her brows. “You look a bit confused.”
    “You get the understatement- of-the-year tiara. Would it be rude to ask who you are?” I gently rubbed my forehead, letting my gaze wander around the room.
    “My name is Kaawa. My son is Gabriel Tauhou, the silver wyvern.”
    “A silver what?”
    She was silent, her eyes shrewd as they assessed me. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”
    “That I ask questions or rub my head? It doesn’t matter—both are, yes. I always ask questions because I’m a naturally curious person. Ask anyone; they’ll tell you. And I rub my head when it feels like it’s been stomped on, which it does.”
    Another silence followed that statement. “You are not what I expected.”
    My eyebrows were working well enough to rise at that statement. “You scared the crap out of me by staring at me from an inch away, and I’m not what you expected? I don’t know what to say to that since I don’t have the slightest idea who you are, other than your name is Kaawa and you sound like you’re Australian, or where I am, or what I’m doing here beyond napping. How long have I been sleeping?”
    She glanced at the clock. “Five weeks.”
    I gave her a look that told her she should know better than to try to fool me. “Do I look like I just rolled off the gullible wagon? Wait—Gareth put you up to this, didn’t he? He’s trying to pull my leg.”
    “I don’t know a Gareth,” she said, moving toward the end of the bed.
    “No . . .” I frowned as my mind, still groggy from the aftereffects of a long sleep, slowly chugged to life. “You’re right. Gareth wouldn’t do that—he has absolutely no sense of humor.”
    “You fell into a stupor five weeks and two days ago. You have been asleep ever since.”
    A chill rolled down my spine as I read the truth in her eyes. “That can’t be.”
    “But it is.”
    “No.”