“My mind is racing over all the terrible possibilities your Vasilisa left us with,” I said, moving quickly back up the hill.<\/p>\n
“Terrible possibilities?” Artur asked.\u00a0 He didn’t have to catch up so much as hold himself back well enough to hear me.\u00a0 He didn’t quite have a full seven-league stride (not like the Water Prince) but with legs like tree trunks you do manage to eat up a lot of ground.\u00a0 Only not literally.<\/p>\n
“I was thinking about how Dragons reproduce, if they don’t… make with the squishy.”<\/p>\n
“Parthenogenesis?” Artur suggested.<\/p>\n
“That’s a word you don’t expect to come out of the mouth of a eight foot something tree guy.\u00a0 Um.”<\/p>\n
“What, too high-falutin’ for ya?\u00a0 Mister `make with the squishy’?”<\/p>\n
“If you imagine any word coming out of–yeah.”\u00a0 I sighed.\u00a0 “I was actually thinking things like, `It’s too late, she’s already expelled an embryo into Doloise somewhere, probably the esophagus for the pop culture reference.'”<\/p>\n
Artur chewed on that for a moment, only not literally.\u00a0 “Pleasant,” he decided.<\/p>\n
“Or maybe a magical technique like that.\u00a0\u00a0 Dragons laying eggs in the Realm’s aura,” I shrugged.<\/p>\n
“Naul has the talons of an eagle, not the features of a cuckoo,” Artur suggested.<\/p>\n
“So eggs are a possibility.\u00a0 I thought the scales made them pretty reptilian, but I guess Nellie looked kind of cuddly.\u00a0 What is a Dragon?”<\/p>\n
“Not ovoviviparous?” Artur asked, casually.<\/p>\n
I broke down the word in my head, pretending I wasn’t talking to him.\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, fine, I wasn’t pretending.\u00a0 “How old are you again?”<\/p>\n
“Just because I look about thirteen doesn’t mean I don’t read.”<\/p>\n
“I gave you the benefit of fifteen at least,” I retorted.\u00a0 “You have the sullen kid thing down pat.”<\/p>\n
“To the people of my father’s kind I will probably never be anything but,” he admitted.\u00a0 “I would argue sullen, though.\u00a0 I’m young enough, mortal enough to be a kid.\u00a0 I like to think it gives me the excuse to have some of the exuberance of youth.\u00a0 There’s a lot to be said for the freedom to make mistakes.\u00a0 I hate to blame things on not knowing any better, but having my enthusiasm run away with me in trying to do the right thing is worth a heck of a lot.”<\/p>\n
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission and all that?”\u00a0 I shrugged, trying not to trip over Nikolai as he sped up past me.\u00a0 He acted as if this were a great game and he was out taking a run with me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Better than the being victorious or coming home on your shield part, I think,” Artur suggested.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“How mortal are you?”<\/p>\n
He laughed.\u00a0 “Mortal enough not to kill you for your rudeness.”<\/p>\n
“Hey, that’s why I asked you,” I teased.\u00a0 “Seriously, though, is it every practitioner who likes to hedge the extent of their abilities?”<\/p>\n
“If you hear someone say, `I can’t do that,’ it’d better be a moral stance,” he agreed.<\/p>\n
“Huh.\u00a0 I am so glad I’m small potatoes.”<\/p>\n
“Not if it’s a hashbrown world.”<\/p>\n
“I have never heard it put that way.”<\/p>\n
“I eat a lot of fast food.”<\/p>\n
“Can you do that?”\u00a0 My curiosity will get the better of me, I’m sure.<\/p>\n
“A lot of my kind have moral stances against all sorts of food, but I’m not that picky.\u00a0 I digest some things better than others, but who doesn’t?\u00a0\u00a0 I try not to eat anything sentient, but I also don’t administer any kind of\u00a0IQ tests.”<\/p>\n
“You’re not hungry, are you?” I was kidding.<\/p>\n
“After the smell of burning Ivan?\u00a0 Nah, that put me off my appetite for another hour or two I think.”\u00a0 He winked.<\/p>\n
“So, no photosynthesis?\u00a0 If I cut you you won’t bleed sap?”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Artur looked down at his legs, as if suddenly noting he was part tree.\u00a0 “Separation of kingdoms is a tough one, but life and magic have a common source.\u00a0 And if you cut me, I will bleed a sap,” he threatened.<\/p>\n
“So did your folks make with the squishy?”<\/p>\n
The half-lesiye started laughing.\u00a0 “Did yours?”<\/p>\n
“Are you implying –”<\/p>\n
“Hey, what does the spelldog have?” Artur interrupted me.<\/p>\n
“Spell dog?\u00a0 Sorcepup?\u00a0 Spelluppy?\u00a0 Spound of Spell?\u00a0 Nevermind.”\u00a0 I looked over to where Artur was pointing.\u00a0 Nikolai was crouched down on the ridge.\u00a0 Artur was going to have a better look, but it suggested a good time to be quiet and get down.<\/p>\n
Good thing, too, because that’s when things started exploding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Only not literally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-five"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}