Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly
done talking about this.” I yanked the frittata off the burner again and ran after him as he left the house and started for the car. “If you won’t lift the curse, then what about the light dragons joining the weyr? Then you can formally apologize to everyone for the events of the past, and maybe even, I don’t know, set up some sort of a fund for needy dragons whose families were decimated by the war. I think that might placate the First Dragon.”
“We do not need to join the weyr. They have nothing to do with us.”
“Because you won’t let them. Baltic, I really would like for us to be a part of the weyr.”
He stopped at the car, gave me a swift, hard kiss, and yet another pat on the behind, and said simply, “We do not need them,” before hopping in the car and leaving.
“Gah!” I yelled, wishing for a moment that I knew some sort of spell to make dragons less stubborn.
“Are you going to yell at me because it’s been six minutes instead of five?” a voice asked behind me.
I gave my own little sigh and turned to usher Brom into the house. “No, as long as you washed your hands.”
“I did.”
I looked at his hands. “They don’t look any too clean to me. What did you do-hold them near water but not actually in it?”
He sighed the put-upon sigh common to those under the age of ten. “I found some owl pellets out back and had to collect them so I can dissect them later. You can’t do that without getting a little dirty, but I washed off most of it at the faucet outside.”
I stared in horror at the child I had borne. “You did ... No, Brom, just no! It’s bad enough that you make mummies from whatever dead things you can find. That, I suppose, has some sort of scientific value, although just what escapes me at the moment. But I draw the line at your collecting owl poop!”
“Owl pellets, not poop,” Brom said, and with blithe disregard to my reaction, he took his plate and started shoveling eggs into his mouth before nodding toward the two men who entered the kitchen. “Nico, Sullivan thinks an owl pellet is poop. It’s not, though.”
“No, it’s not,” Nico said with a bright smile. He accepted the plate of food I handed him with an appreciative sniff. “Owl pellets contain the undigested food that owls regurgitate once they are done consuming their prey. Brom has long wished to study them, but I wanted to wait until we were settled to find a local source for them.”
“Uh-huh.” I gave Holland a swift, assessing glance, but he appeared to be wholly healed. He thanked me as I gave him a plate, taking his place at the table with the others.
“I assure you, Ysolde, they’re fascinating objects, and there are several companies who make pellet dissection kits available to children. Am I to take it that Brom found one on his own?”
“Yeah. It’s a big one, too. I bet it used to be a cat or something.”
“You are an unnatural child,” I told Brom, and took my own plate to the far side of the kitchen table, where I proceeded to ignore the discussion of just what gruesome things one might find in owl barf.
Pavel arrived soon after that, driving a large moving truck that I greeted with cries of happiness. It took a few hours to unload and put away our things, but by the time that had been done, and the day’s squad of cleaning women had worked their way through the remainder of the house that previously had been left uncleaned, I was beginning to feel more at home.
“Well, it’s certainly not anywhere I’d like to spend the rest of my life, but at least it’s habitable,” I said aloud to no one as I stood in the empty front hall, looking around for traces of cobwebs or dust that had been missed. The cleaning ladies knew their stuff, however, and if the house wasn’t attractive, at least it was no longer caked in dirt and grime.
“Was that a moving truck I saw leaving the road?”
I turned at the voice and smiled. Maura’s color was very high as she and Savian entered the house, while his hair was tousled, and his shirt buttoned up incorrectly.
“Yes, Pavel got here with our things. Including ... ” I pulled a small jeweler’s box from my pocket. “Ta da! The spare key to your handcuffs that your landlady allowed Pavel to retrieve.”
“Ergh,” Savian said, looking sideways at Maura. “My ... uh ... landlady. Yes. Just so.”
“I’m sure you two will be delighted to finally have them off,” I said, my expression innocent as I handed over
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