Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly

like it.”
    He glanced thoughtfully over his shoulder. “It’s nice. Doesn’t have pointy things on it like the pictures Nico and I saw in a museum. He said mortals don’t understand dragon form at all, and that they were always giving them wings and horse heads and things like that.” He was silent for a few moments. “Your head isn’t like a horse.”
    “Of course not.” I took a deep breath, enjoying the sensation of power that seemed to flow through me.
    “You’ve got small front arms, though, compared to your back ones,” he continued, then frowned. “Or are they all legs, like on a dog?”
    I held out my free arm. It was perfectly normal in length. I stopped and bent over to look at my legs. They were dragon legs, true dragon legs, not at all human looking, strong and powerful, and covered in white scales that shimmered in the morning sun. I looked back at my arm. “Oh, great, I have tiny little ineffectual T. rex arms!”
    “I don’t think they’re that bad-” Brom started to say, but I cut him off by bellowing Baltic’s name as we approached the stairs to the curtain wall.
    “What is it?” came his answer.
    I stomped up the stairs, taking a perverse satisfaction in the little tremor shocks that accompanied each step. “You never told me I was going to be a mutant dragon!”
    He and Pavel both had their backs to us, the curtain walk around them covered in metal bodies interspersed with blood and gore and the remains of negrets that had been dispatched when they were conserving their dragon fire.
    “What are you talking about?” Baltic asked, turning around to ask, an irritated look on his face that only grew more irritated when I gestured toward myself.
    “I have tiny little arms! They aren’t at all like yours! They’re minuscule! They’re like baby arms or something! I cannot tell you how disconcerting this is!”
    Pavel, who had also turned to look, took a step back in surprise, tripped over a negret corpse, and fell off the wall to the ground below.
    “You see?” I gestured toward Pavel as he picked himself up off the ground. “Pavel is so horrified by my puny little arms that he would rather leap off the wall than stay on it with them,” I declared, knowing it was untrue, but unable to keep from expressing my unhappiness.
    “You choose now to find your dragon form?” Baltic snarled, backhanding a couple of negrets off the wall down onto their brethren. “You couldn’t wait for a time where I might guide you? You had to do it now? I am busy , mate!”
    “It just happened! I thought I was going to explode, and instead, this happened.” I stared at him for a moment, unable to put into words what I most feared.
    “You don’t know how to change back, do you?” he asked.
    I slumped a little, relief filling me that he was there with me. “No. Behind you.”
    He spat fire over his shoulder, sighing heavily as he walked over to us, pausing at the sight of Brom’s bloody face. “You are hurt?”
    “Just my hair.”
    “Ah. Good. Mate, look at me.”
    “I don’t like my arms,” I said, releasing my death grip on Brom to wave them at him. “They’re really, really disappointing. I thought I was going to be big and beefy like you. You have powerful arms. You have arms that make people respect you. You don’t have widdle runty arms like me.”
    His mouth twitched, but he managed to keep his expression sober as he pulled me against him, shifting as he did so back into human form. “You are female. Your arms are suited to your form. Nothing more, nothing less.”
    “I don’t like them,” I repeated petulantly, letting a little of my fire caress his chest.
    “Then change your form. It is simply a matter of controlling your will, chérie . Will yourself to your other form, and it will be so.”
    I kissed his neck, breathing deeply of his scent, now overlaid with the metallic smell of blood. I thought of myself as I normally appeared, of how my body fit so well against his, of the pleasure I took in our embraces, of my true inner self, of who and what I was, and when I reached up to pull his head down to mine, it was a normal human hand that brushed back a strand of his hair. “I love you,” I told him.
    “I know,” he answered, kissed me swiftly, gave my butt a squeeze, and released me to take care of the next batch of negrets that forced themselves through the window. Pavel limped past us, giving me a crooked smile as he picked up his sword.
    “Will you be mad