I frowned. I had gotten it backwards. She had told Peredur that I was under protection, and he thought it was some chick thing that I took to mean Doloise. So, in a way, she had stood up to a Dragon for me.<\/p>\n
It didn’t mitigate the fact that she was still a bloodsucking mind-controlled creature of the night, but I guess I could spare a little bit of sympathy. “Hey, look, it’s none of my business,” I said, trying to brush it off lightly. “Man, this thing got messed up since Ed and I went drinking after the nymph business,” I said, shrugging.<\/p>\n
“Nymph business?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed, as if she was suspicious.<\/p>\n
“Uh,yeah. You know. Nymphs, related to goblins, premise of the horticulture `but you can’t make her think’ joke?” I shrugged. They weren’t any biggie – except that I seemed to be allergic to some of them. It was probably something to do with pollen.<\/p>\n
“Aren’t they related to your cube-eye?” Ed’s mom asked, and Matana’s eyes went wide.<\/p>\n
“No, they’re plant creatures,” I started, and Matana cut me off.<\/p>\n
“Perhaps they’re what grows in the -cubi dimension,” she said, slowly. We pronounced it with less “you” in the word.<\/p>\n
I didn’t understand why it was important. The nymph I ran into had been sown of wild 80’s magazines, which would be more Hall & Oates than regular oats. Yeah, yeah, I didn’t mention the joke aloud because it wasn’t funny. I shook my head. “There wasn’t any connection.”<\/p>\n
“Law of magic,” Matana snapped at me.<\/p>\n
“Coincidence still exists,” I said, wounded. Of course, it had been the third opening of the night of dubious portent. I still remembered the one in the bathroom of the bar. Huh. I wasn’t a rain god’s portal-causing cousin. Portals don’t love me and follow me and drown me in places unknown.<\/p>\n
But, as I had just been schooled, I had a case of tunnel vision. If all you can do is close doors, everything looks like it has a frame. Or some such metaphor. That it’s knockable? Probably, but that wasn’t it. Doorknob? Hinges? Everything looks like it has hinges. That’s works.<\/p>\n
Maybe someone had been trying to tell me something.<\/p>\n
I was tired. Things were either making too much or not enough sense. Either way, I needed rest. I wasn’t going to leave Ed’s mom alone with Matana, though, and I’d promised Hawk I’d pin her down (although a little less literally) until after lunch.<\/p>\n
I knew. I’d sic my sister on her.<\/p>\n
With one thing and another, I didn’t get a great nap, but I got a nap, which was as important as anything. Ed woke me up for pot pies, Matana got a ride from my sister and the special of the day, and Ed was happy to report that Matana was rightfully disturbed by my family.<\/p>\n
He was taking me home in fairly companionable silence. “So, what do you think about Matana leaving?” he finally asked.<\/p>\n
“Do you think I believe her or did you have something else in mind?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Well, she could still withdraw from her classes. And what was with that? Werewolf physiology? Was that a,” he grinned, “shaggy dog story or something?”<\/p>\n
“I thought it was an oblique reference about exercising her demons,” I offered.<\/p>\n
He groaned, as if wounded. “Is that how werewolves work, too? Demons inside them?”<\/p>\n
“I’m scared to speculate right now,” I said, yawning. “I think it’s similar, but a bit more magical. But it’s like the sixteen million different kinds of vampires, there are a lot of different kinds of werewolves, and reasons to mix the two.”<\/p>\n
“I asked Matana about were-… you know, iguanas, and stuff like that.”<\/p>\n
“What did she say?”<\/p>\n
“She was quiet and then said that shapeshifting is not the manner of men.” He shrugged. “It sounded like half a quote, really.” He glanced over at me.<\/p>\n
I shifted in my seat, thinking. “Huh. Maybe I do get the physiology bit, because in a way, we’re shapeshifting constantly. It’s just that except for what we term cancer, we only follow the map of our genetics.”<\/p>\n
“So shapeshifting is magical cancer?”<\/p>\n
“Or magical gene therapy,” I countered, grinning.<\/p>\n
He gave another shrug. “Thanks for showing up.” He meant, “I didn’t mean to freak out on you.”<\/p>\n
“Of course,” I said. It meant, “You’re welcome, bro.” It was quiet for a while. “So, a unicorn?” I asked, finally.<\/p>\n
“Dude, it’s not the virgin thing,” he said quickly.<\/p>\n
“So, there is a virgin thing?” I teased.<\/p>\n
“You’re twisting my words, jerk.” He grinned a little, though. “We’re walking back to the house after drinks, and she’s not leaning on me anymore. She’s kind of spooking me out, and I see fangs like she’s Venom or something, mouth wide,” he shuddered. “It gets pretty bad, and we’re tussling, and then I look up, and bright as freakin’ day, except that it was after midnight, comes trotting up this mean looking beast like a Cadillac cruising down the street, and then it blurs and smacks into her with a powder-blue horn. This perfect hit, and it snorts your name.” He gripped the steering wheel a little harder. “There’s blood exploded everywhere, Matana is down, and I’m trying to find my phone. The thing lowers its head with this bloody horn, and then just stares at me.”<\/p>\n
Ed wasn’t looking at me, or the traffic, just memory for a moment. He shook it off.<\/p>\n
“Anyway, I called you. You were right, okay?”<\/p>\n
“Can’t give you an `I told you so.'” I said. “It didn’t say anything else? Give you a riddle or something?”<\/p>\n
“No, it was kind of unambiguous with a big splat.” He was quiet, though.<\/p>\n
“There something else?”<\/p>\n
“Dude, it was a unicorn.”<\/p>\n
“I’ve never seen one,” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t have known they existed.”<\/p>\n
“You’ve been talking Dragons. Dragon-this, Dragon-that, and they’re big in my mind. Huge. They’ve got the whole aura of shadowy awesome the Balrog has. Why can’t there be anything so beautiful? And it was. And it wasn’t. It was savage, and yet, refined. A sense of power. I can’t…”<\/p>\n
“Can I trade in my ‘I told you so,’ for envy?” I asked.<\/p>\n
He grinned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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