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Chapter 8

08:02, Friday, the 27th of April, 2028.

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My alarm did not go off.

I woke up sweating through my shirt with my phone jammed beneath my ribs and sunlight drilling directly into my skull.

Everything hurt.

My mouth tasted like chemicals. My stomach rolled every time I moved. Our downstairs neighbours were already arguing about custody and who'd gotten into the piggy bank. Very classy.

I grabbed my phone blearily.

Discord notifs. The boys group chat.

William Afton.

> @jamedoe do you live?

Jame Doe.

> maybe.

Then beneath it, from an account that’d never texted me.

Neirin Unben

> 🤨

I stared at the message for a solid five seconds before memory came flooding back all at once.

Facebook.

Brown scales.

you so cool.

“Oh no.” I opened the chat fully. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered into my pillow.

The profile picture was obviously Neirin now that I was sober enough to actually look at it properly. Brown scales without so much as a blemish. Those creepy ringed blue eyes and… hooped earrings?

None of that mattered. All that mattered was that she wasn’t Alys.

James Morris.

> Sorry.

> Meant to message Alys.

Neirin Unben.

> how?? 😭

> we do NOT look alike LMAO

I ran a hand down my face, groaning at the idiocy of it all.

> Alcohol.

> Don’t ever touch it,

> i wanna touch it tho 🥺

*> 18 two months. will be fire. *

> Bad Neirin. Go to school or whatever.

> lol.

> i’m in college man.

> Then you know what you’ve-

My phone nearly slipped from my hold as my eyes drifted shut.

> Then you know what you’ve must be do.

Close enough. I locked my phone, slapped it on my desk and rolled over onto my back, still dressed, bleary eyes unable to focus on the shitty popcorn ceiling.

I’d forgotten about Neirin as soon as I’d left the birthday party and gotten the bus back. But I guessed it made sense she’d like the post.

I sat up, forced myself to open the blinds so the light would wake me up and stumbled out of bed, still fully dressed.

Vertigo hit and I nearly threw up right onto… Good God, I needed to clean my room.

Needed to peel off the sweaty clothes I’d been wearing all day and night and-

No thoughts. Only walking time.

I picked clean jeans, a shirt I’d owned long enough that the yajuta print had faded, and fresh socks before stumbling into the wet room we’d had installed for Sarah and setting it to max power. Temperature didn’t matter, only that it wasn’t freezing.

Shower done.

Clothes on and hair dried with our wheezing hairdryer.

Clean, finally.

The sweaty and mussed-up clothes were thrown into the wash basket, my hand in the sink drawer, fishing for painkillers. Somehow my headache had only gotten worse after the shower.

Phone-

Was in my room. Ten seconds later it was in my hands and…

Still no Brie? I double-checked. Still no Brie. I checked when I’d sent it and realised it’d been close to a day. This didn’t sit right, so, holding back my moodiness after how tense even I, as hammered as I’d been last night, could remember it being.

James Morris.

>

I froze.

How to do it, I wondered, jaw tight.

Because if I asked whether something was wrong, it'd sound accusatory.

If I asked whether she was mad at me, it'd sound insecure.

And if I said nothing, we'd probably just keep drifting like this forever.

Because that’s how it was with us. I’d ask what she was doing; she’d reply eight hours later, apologising for school or falling asleep, and by then I’d already be irritated enough to take just as long answering back.

James Morris.

> You alive?

I stared at it for another few seconds, took a breath, then typed again.

> Sorry if I was weird yesterday.

Chewed my lip, wondered if it was okay, and sent it regardless.

Instant.

Brie Bednarz.

> Alive lol.

I exhaled slightly from my nose and sat back.

> Sorry.

> I passed out after a party I went to and have placement today.

Some of the tightness in my chest eased at that. Not all of it, but enough I didn’t feel quite so inane anymore.

> And you were a little weird yeah. 😭

> My bad.

> Was tired.

> Then drinks with friends.

> Did you seriously get drunk at midday?

Despite everything, I snorted.

> Weren't you doing the same?

> Yes but my friends are cool. And it's uni so it's different. Less tragic.

> You're tragic.

A long pause, one that felt final, before, unable to help myself…

> Weird how btw?

> Can’t even remember what I said lol.

> Defensive.

> Defensive?

> Alys.

My stomach rolled.

> Like idk.

> You never mention anyone ever and then you’re saying how cool she is and sending pics.

> True.

> But that’s because work sucks.

> I’m just-

I thought back to what Will had said.

> I'm not trying to start an argument, I just don’t get why you ask so many questions about her when I've only known her like a month.

> Kinda felt like I was being interrogated over having a friend.

> You never mention any of your friends.

The bubbles appeared instantly and then lingered like a plague. Suddenly, I felt like I’d overstepped and considered apologising before steeling myself. Nothing I’d said, I told myself, was untrue.

> Okay.

> Imagine we’ve not spoken.

> And I’m at a guy’s brother’s birthday and sending pics.

> And you ask about him and I get defensive and say how cool she is and even her favourite fucking food.

> You’d be asking questions too.

> I wasn’t being defensive. I was just answering your fifty questions.

> I’ve hung out with her TWICE and one of those times was with her brother too. I barely know her.

> She’s literally an animal. It would be disgusting.

> All we do is chat when work is slow.

> I ask questions because unless I DRAG IT OUT OF YOU, you won’t tell me anything about your life.

> You talk more to this random chick about your life than you do with ME.

> Anytime I ask if someone’s up, you say nothing and then act all pissed off for three days.

My hands were shaking.

> Because it doesn’t take her twelve hours to respond to me.

> Because she doesn’t-

I stopped myself.

> I;m sorry.

> I’m sorry (edited)

> I didn’t mean to make you seem like you’re being replaced. You’re not.

> I'm not lying when I say I barely know her. I just thought you'd like the pics.

She didn’t reply immediately, and that made it so I almost took it back.

> I get it.

> I know things have been hard since your mum passed.

*> I’m not stupid, I know that’s why you dropped out even if you never said. *

> But we do need to get better at talking. We can’t keep doing this.

I waited.

And waited.

For her to dump me. For her to say we weren’t healthy, for her to say it had to end but we could still be friends, and that she’d still be there for more.

But she didn’t, and I couldn’t do it, so I swiped away, exhaling sharply.

She was right, I thought, crossing one leg over the other. It wasn't sustainable.

Sarah eventually got up, stumbled into the bathroom and came out a half hour later smelling less like NEET gunk and sin. When dressed, she flopped down besides me.

I tried not to look as miserable as I felt.

“What time we leaving?” She asked, head lolling so she could stare.

I ignored it and sat up, only just realising the time. Shoes, raincoat, cig- cigs weren't in my coat pocket. “Now,” I said loudly enough for it to reach her. “I'm ready, I just need to find something.”

“Right.”

She sounded off.

And then… “Hey, how's that game coming along, by the way?”

Not in the drawer beneath the sink. Not on top of the fridge. “Uhh. Alright. Someone went off about dialogue in the prologue mountains” Or the TV unit. “You seen my fags anywhere?”

“No.” She got up on both crutches rather than just the one. “You take them to Will's?”

“Might've. But, yeah, game's good.” I rubbed at one eye, still tired. “I'm also running into a bug. I don't want it to be like literally every other 'Oh my god, the game’s a metaphor for depression!’ RPGMaker game, so I'm trying to make the combat deeper and failing. Poison bricks the UI for some reason.”

“Hah…” She shifted. I checked my pockets in case the cigs had learnt teleportation. “And the critique?”

Giving up, I instead turned the lights off in preparation to head out. “Bugged me a little, and I lurked the server more than I should've, but, like, I made the game for me. I wrote it how I liked it. Those characters have bad Common speech. That make sense?”

“Kinda.” She reached up to rub at her head. A long, quiet pause, broken up only by the sound of Sarah brushing her hair before, sounding pained, “I messed up a gift com and feel really bad about it.”

“Hah.”

I didn't know jack about art beyond the rough sprites I'd managed to cobble together, and the rest were donated by an online friend of a friend.

“How much did they pay?” I asked, knowing what little spending money she had come from Discord commissions. Her disability only paid for her share of the rent.

Still, her being upset aside, we were on a time limit, so I moved to the front door and watched as she followed me out into the walkway.

Door locked. Sorted.

“They got me Undertale, but I took ages on it and didn't realise until I'd sent it how bad the perspective was.”

Down the hallway into the lift that always smelled like an alley.

“Did they say anything about it?”

“Oh. No.” She shook her head and adjusted her posture so there was less pressure on her legs. When she was little I’d carry her, but we weren’t little anymore. “I just felt bad that-”

My phone began to vibrate just as the lift rattled downwards. I checked, saw it was Alys and answered it, sparing my sister an apologetic look.

“I’ve dropped Jarys off at school,” she said. “So I’m not doing anything. Where are we going?”

The doors opened up, and I made sure Sarah got out okay. ”Uhh. Not sure. You just wanted to go to town, right? Could do cafe first. Starbucks has nicer coffee, but Costa’s way cheaper, and their hot chocolate is better.” I switched which hand was holding the phone. “I’d go-”

“I can’t have lactose. No hot chocolate."

Sharp enough I paused.

“Starbucks then.”

“Very nice,” she said, the wind through the call distorting what she said, so I guessed. “Where is it?”

“Albion Street in town, near the, uh, the pharmacy and mini-supermarket. By the crystal shop?” We exited the building and waited in the car park as taxis went past. “You know where that is?”

Mumbles, overtaken by the sound of roaring wind and then the beep of a hung-up call. I stared at my phone, then back over to my sister. We made it five feet before I remembered something. “Jesus Christ, I’ve still not told her you’re coming.”

“Genius.”

We reached the bus stop, and I used the time to send her that little factoid, and she in turn told me Rhys had cancelled too.

The bus was due in five minutes.

“So it would’ve just been you two, and she was fine with that?”

It took me a second to get it. “Yeah?” I said, a bit too quick. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Dunno,” she said, shrugging, turning away slightly. “Just-” bus was due in four minutes now. “-how long have you two known each other again?”

From my bag I took out the first Daniel Faust book – I'd been meaning to read it for months but had lacked any will to start. “Uhh. Like a month?” Or was it a fortnight? Co-worker friendships were funny like that. “Why?”

It was hard to tell if the book was fictional or based on a real story, especially with the 'new modern'. Magic could be real, and I'd have no clue.

“Nothing,” Sarah said, taking out her phone, balancing against the seat as she did. “Just thinking out loud.”

“Mmm.” I flipped a page, finding where I'd last been through memory alone, as I didn't believe in bookmarks, much to my sister’s agony. I was at the sewer part of the book, with the magic cards – the part I normally quit at. “Thinking… Thinking bad.” The back of my eyes flared. “Hey, you don't have any aspirin, do you? Head’s killing.”

She fished around lopsidedly in her yellow handbag. “Uhh. I have ibuprofen. My pregabalin, that you're not having. Codeine-”

“Yoink.” She had a full strip, so I popped one of the tiny, circular pills out and dropped the rest back into her bag, taking her days old bottle of water as I did. “I've been asleep like ten years. Sue me.” She grabbed the water bottle from me, wiped the rim with the sleeve of her hoodie and finished off the lukewarm remainder.

The bus pulled in with a long hiss of brakes, doors folding open, and we got on without saying anything else, Sarah by the window, me by the walkway. To get more on her nerves, I tried rifling through her bag again, and she twatted me upside the head.

And after that, the ride passed in silence.

Until I got a ding.

Alys Coslett.

> I’m ready.

I closed my book, slung my backpack so it was on my lap, and slotted it back in.

James Morris.

> You mean you’re there?

> I’m on the bus.

> Also how can someone (me) breathe fire like you?

Bubbles bounced.

> If I don’t expel it as gas, and concentrate it, it becomes a liquid. I can drool it into your mouth and you can spit it out and light it.

> And get sick.

> Lol.

> Lowkey Tempting.

> If you’re good then I might.

> Could find a secret booth. Brave political statement.

> Themes and such.

Pause.

> Fr fr.

She laugh-reacted and started typing again, and I would have seen what she said had my sister not half-shoved me from my seat. “It’s our stop,” she shouted, pushing again even as I hurried down the bus and out onto the walkway, nearly knocking into a woman and her pram as I did.

Sarah followed, and on reflex, I helped her get down as the dickhead driver had parked a solid two feet from the curb. One foot on the bus, I held her as she shambled down. “It’s like a minute long ride,” she whinged, fixing me with a look. “Too busy talking to your boyfriends?”

“Nah, they’re all at work,” I answered, double-checking I still had my phone, wallet, and keys. I’d already lost a phone once to public transport and was determined not to have it happen a second time. “Uhh. Shit. Where’s the…” Starbucks, I remembered, along with its spot near the pharmacy. “This way.”

Sarah, crutches clacking against the path, followed. “Trippy a dragon actually drinks coffee,” she said as we swerved between swaths of people on their way to work. “Lactose is really bad for their stomachs.”

“Well-” I tapped the button for the first traffic light and stood back, hands in the pocket of my raincoat. “-I can't eat shit, but, like, I still go to the toilets, you know…?”

“What?” We crossed the street. “James, what- what did y- James, what the fuck does that even mean?!"

“Just because it's bad for them doesn't mean they can't… uh. Doesn't mean they have to avoid everything around it. There’s lactose-free stuff.” On the other side, a group of kids in the uniform of the high school we’d gone to turned to stare and laugh under their breath. I slung an arm around my sister's shoulder and dragged her further forward, away from them. “You see my point?”

“Yeah.” With a shrug she freed herself, mouth straightening into a tight line. “But you sounded like an actual tweaker getting it out.” She glanced back at the kids. “Pricks.”

“They're jealous they have to pay for buses,” I kidded, ignoring the ugly heat building around my ribs. Distant embarrassment, maybe, I reasoned, keeping my focus on the cafe ahead. “Oh! Your art gift. Just remembered I cut you off.”

Another crossing, one that put us close to Dead Ink. I wondered what Rhys was up to if he wasn't joining his sister and us.

Sarah interrupted that Eric-flavored train of thought, however. “Uhh. Yeah, I couldn't get her eyes right, but I think you're probably right that they're not mad.”

“Nice.”

Meandering silence. I checked my phone again, sent some more emojis to Alys, and got a few back in return. It was weird; it wasn't like she was laugh-out-loud funny or had a billion stories; she was just appallingly easy to talk to. No weird questions, no complaints about me being lazy or late; she just talked.

And phoned. Again.

“We're so close I can see the cafe, by the way.” I slowed my steps. “Also, I just saw Dead Ink and it reminded me that I was gonna ask why your brothers don’t have wings.” I brushed my hair back into place. “Unless that’s, like, personal.”

“I know. I can smell your shampoo.” She sniffed, which I was starting to figure out might've meant something else. “Male Archons don't have wings, but they're bigger and have stronger ignition bladders.”

“Aren't you a lot taller than your brothers?”

“Yes.”

I could actually see her by then, mainly because she was basically impossible to miss, being the large blur of blue and black standing in the middle of a busy street with a tablet pressed to her floppy ears. “I see you,” she said into the device, still without moving.

My lips moved faster than my brain. “Must be hard with only one eye.” My mouth snapped shut as soon as I’d said it, teeth clicking painfully together with the realization.

But she laughed. Louder than I’d ever heard her, to the point I didn’t need my phone to catch it. I watched her step back, flutter her wings once, and then step forward. “One and a half. I’ve still got two; one simply doesn’t work very well.” Another flutter, another weird step forward-and-back. “Get over here.”

I listened to the dragon lady and hung up, stuffing my phone in my breast-pocket, and half-jogged over. My sister followed as best as she could. Alys placed her absurdly chunky tablet into the bandolier she wore around her chest and approached, her long tail swishing, clearing a path through the pedestrians.

And Sarah… Sarah froze at the sight of her, which was odd.

She was someone whose online friends were mostly nerdy gryphons, so to see that made me pause, before I brushed past it – just nerves, I guessed. Just Alys’ impressive size and first-time nerves.

“Hey,” I began, feeling idiotic for being unable to not smile. "You been waiting long?”

Her wings fluttered as her split tongue escaped the mask and lapped at her chops. “Only a little bit,” she said, sitting back, wings folding tight. “But that’s because I’m fast and you’re slow. You can’t help it.” Her eyes sharpened like they had at the party, when she’d relaxed, a glint in her eyes. “You’re a lesser creature.”

I motioned to my sister, reaching over and rubbing at her hair. “Aww, don’t say that. Her legs are just a bit gimpy.” She smacked me away, and I smacked her back.

The dragon hen straightened in an instant, however, seeming to realize Sarah was there with us. “Hello,” she began, her voice tight. “I’m Alys.” And when she lowered her head, she bowed it low. “...You are…” Her eyes followed my sister’s legs, the way they crumpled and bent, and the crutches she held anytime she left the house. “ddim... iawn.” She blinked twice, sniffed again, then met my gaze. “Drinks. Yes. I will pay for you and…” Over to Sarah. “You.”

“Sorry.” Sarah shuffled forward. “I-I’m Sarah – James' sister. Alys said you’re cool.” She coughed. “Sorry. James said you’re cool. Jesus.”

I snorted, unable to help it, and brushed past them to open up the door to the cafe. I stood to the side, foot against the bottom to prop it open as they entered – as Sarah entered and Alys struggled. She banged both wings against the entryway, wincing and pulling back, folding them tight to her sides before having to angle herself harshly simply to enter.

“They’re, uh, supposed to be built wider,” I commented. “New laws and all.” I made sure to glance back at the poor server who probably had less say in the construction of the place than me. “Sarah, grab us a booth, please.”

“Yeah, sure. Get me a hot chocolate.” I watched her take the large booth at the far side of the shop, the one close to a window, whilst Alys and I joined the line. I kept to the front, trying to squint at the menu on the wall, barely able to make out anything besides the store's patronizing quote without my glasses on.

And then I felt someone staring at me.

Almost physically, were that possible.

I glanced over my shoulder and found Alys’ snout a half inch from my forehead, her sharp eyes focused on my hair.

She pulled back, blinking. “S-Sorry.” I saw, out of the corner of my eye, her lower a forelimb. “Hair.” When she looked at me, finally meeting my gaze, I was reminded of how lazy her right eye was, how the dull pupil seemed to swim through the cloud of off-white at a pace slower than the left.

“Hair?” I repeated, turning to face her as the line moved.

“Soft,” she said, reaching up again. “And it’s… not right.”

She didn't ask; she just reached over and set about correcting whatever crime my hair had apparently committed against her, working through it with the calm, unhurried focus of someone doing something totally reasonable in a Starbucks queue at half nine on a Friday.

I stood very still, mostly out of confusion, partly because her claws, even sheathed, against my scalp made it feel like I was being handled by something that could, if it wanted to, remove my whole head with very little effort.

"You know this is really weird, right?" I said.

“No. I’m helping you. You need helping.”

“Maybe spiritual, but-"

“Hold still.”

I held very still. Which, in hindsight, was the part that should've bothered me. Not that she was doing it, but that I let her, easy as anything, like it was no stranger than someone straightening your collar.

Across the shop, Sarah was very obviously watching.

Head tilted. One crutch was propped against the booth seat, the other forgotten in her lap, entirely unbothered with pretending she wasn't staring. When I caught her eye, she didn't even have the decency to look away – she just raised both eyebrows, slow and concerned.

I mouthed what.

She mouthed something back. Possibly weird. Possibly creepy. Hard to tell from that distance and astigmatism, but she went back to her phone before I could ask more.

I pulled back from Alys, reaching for my hair on reflex before leaving it, turning instead to the counter, which was free now, given the empty line and the wide berth people were giving us. "Oat milk," I told the barista before Alys could open her muzzle. "Whatever she's having, lactose-free. And two hot chocolates."

Alys' head turned toward me, slow, her ears tilting.

"You did mention that," I added, before she could ask. "Kind of hard to hear over the hurricane, but still."

"Mm." She considered this for a second, unreadable behind the mask, then: "Be careful about being so considerate."

"...You sound terrifying."

“And croissants!” My sister all but screamed, not at all bothered by the sudden stares. I relayed this to the suddenly tense-seeming barista.

Alys chirped out a quick laugh, then grinned and said, "I am terrifying. Flat white, please, server.” Entirely serious, moving forward to pay before I could argue about it, sliding a sleek black card across.

After sitting down and waiting for our food in a silence so awkward it made me chew on my lip and check the settings on my phone, Sarah spoke up first. "So," she began, tapping the table with her too-long nails, her phone finally away. "How'd you two actually meet? James tells it different every time."

"I’ve told you literally once,” I defended. “I just said-”

"You said she just kind of appeared. Like a ghost."

"That's..." I thought about it. “...Pretty close, actually." I gestured with a wooden drink stirrer. "You did just appear out of nowhere. Genuinely no clue how I didn’t see you first."

"I was assigned there," Alys said, looking up. "Not haunting it. Though you did make a noise like something being murdered."

"I coughed."

"You made a prey noise and jumped."

Sarah let out a wheezy laugh loud enough that the woman two tables over glanced up, and I felt my ears go hot, whilst Alys looked, for just a second, unreasonably proud of herself, the corner of her mask shifting like there was a grin working underneath it she wasn't bothering to hide.

"She's funny," Sarah said to me, like she wasn't sitting right there. "You said chill and quiet."

"She is chill and quiet."

“I am chill and quiet,” Alys cut in, body swaying from side to side, long tail swishing behind her. She’d had to sit at the head of the table, in the aisle, give the booth seats were simply too small for her bulk.

"Uh huh, prey. Prey-pilled.” She snatched up the croissant as soon as the waitress placed the warm plate down, raising it up to point at me.

“You’re such a tard,” I grumbled.

Alys watched the exchange with wide, curious eyes, her long ears swivelling between us, clearly enjoying it far more than she should have. "He turns red easily," she offered, unhelpfully, to my sister, like the two of them were already old friends.

"Oh, yeah, I know," Sarah said. "It's literally his one hobby."

"I have hobbies."

"Name two."

"The game, drinks, and-" I gestured vaguely, "being tired all the time."

"Amazing," Sarah said flatly. Alys made a low sound in her throat, something between a chuckle and a purr, rough at the edges, and I filed the noise away somewhere I didn't want to give too much thought to.

Something Alys focused on that grew with each day.

Almost like a bird.

In fact, she—

"You're staring again," Alys said, head tilting, talons tapping against the mug of her flat white. “You did it at the party.”

"I'm listening." My stomach flipped because, Christ, that was too long of a look.

"With your eyes." She blinked twice, as if to show what she meant.

"That's...." I placed my chin in my palm and stirred my drink even more, just so my hands had some task.. “You’re just slightly more interesting to look at than the table, so I… picked?”

"Mm," she said, and there it was again – that glint, sharp and knowing, the same one from the party, like she'd caught me doing something interesting and had decided she liked it. “You too.”

I turned to my drink, taking a long sip at last, unable to not notice my sister’s staring or the flush still in my ears. Sarah did not look at her hot chocolate. Sarah looked at me, then at Alys, then back at me, doing some kind of math in her head and clearly not liking the result.

"Sarah," Alys said, breaking off a strip of pastry with careful claws. It was fascinating how well she was able to manipulate them, even the fake ones. "The legs. Is it rude to ask?"

Sarah blinked. "The-? Oh. No, it's fine. Palsy. Had it since I was a kid. It makes it hard to draw, but life is like that.”

Alys nodded, slow and careful, before continuing her dissection. There was no pity in the expression on her muzzle. No fifteen follow-ups, no careful softening of her voice the way most people did the second Sarah's legs came up.

Just, "Okay," and back to the croissant.

I watched something complicated cross my sister's face. "Huh," she said, mostly to herself.

It was maybe ten minutes later, croissants nearly gone and drinks drained, when a pale fleck of pastry caught right where the black mask met dark blue scales, stark against the fabric.

She didn't seem to notice. Kept talking — Jarys, some science project involving a battery and, apparently, a small fire — wings loose, posture easy in a way I’d only see among her family.

"Alys, you've got-" I gestured at my own face.

She stopped mid-sentence.

And then, instead of reaching up to check it herself, she went still. Properly still, wings settling, ears totally flat to her scalp, and leaned forward across the table. Chin tilted up. Throat bared openly, pure trust, the black underplating catching the light.

Waiting.

It wasn't an obvious thing. Wasn't even a request, really, not in any way I could've recognise. Just a second of stillness that didn't need to be there if all she'd wanted was to know where the crumb was.

"Uhh," I said intelligently, and reached over to wipe it off with my thumb. Quick. Easy. The kind of thing I'd do without thinking if it were Sarah or Brie.

Alys' nostrils flared. One sharp breath in, ears flicking hard, and a flush of color—real color, a darker slate blue blooming up through scales on her ears and throat before dimming as she looked away, smiling just faintly, the scars twisting as she did.

"Thank you," she said. A register higher than usual.

"... Yeah, no worries."

She didn't say anything else for a moment. Neither did I, mostly because I was too busy congratulating myself on a job well done. It wouldn't have crossed my mind as anything else.

She was a dragon. Just instincts.

But Sarah, dear Sarah, across the table, had gone very, very quiet.

I looked up. She was watching Alys with the fixed, unblinking focus of someone observing wildlife through glass, trying very hard not to make any sudden movements.

"What?" I said, trying not to let the chuckle seep into my voice too hard.

"Nothing," Sarah said, far too fast, eyes flicking to me and then very deliberately back to her hot chocolate. "Just… tired."

“Then sleep more,” I grumbled, pretending I believed her for even a moment. But then I glanced over at Alys, who was fiddling with her mask, the tugging exposing flickers of deep scars. The edges of her claws, I noticed, where the prosthetics met scale, were also marred.

I wondered what had happened, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you asked someone so early, I reasoned, beginning to tidy the table up for the staff. “Where do you get your masks, Alys?”

“The doctor,” she said immediately. “And then a store in my district that has clothing for dragons…” Her face twitched. “And gryphons… but it's run by a drake, so that’s alright.”

I ignored the fantasy racism, though Sarah didn’t. Her eyes widened subtly, and she focused more on her phone, sparing me only the scantest glances.

Distantly, from one of the few times I’d scrolled social media, I remembered a Twitter spat over non-human clothing and how it fetishized unicorns or some other slop. But with one in front of me, Alys, an actual dragon hen, I could ask, "You wear clothes?”

"Sometimes," she said it slowly, as if weighing out exactly how much of an answer to give. "Aside from this–" a pause, her forked tongue flicking once, bulging the mask as she hunted for the word "--chest piece." She gestured to the odd harness she was always wearing, the thing I’d never looked too closely at. “I only own masks. Money is essential and not to be wasted.”

Or was it bandolier? It had small pockets, and that was all I’d seen her use it for.

As I pondered the ability to see, Alys stopped completely, jaw still half open around whatever she'd been about to add, like someone had reached in and yanked the plug clean out the wall.

"There's money now," she said, sounding stunned by the fact of her own sentence. "Good money. From the job."

"Uh. Yeah. You’re biweekly, same as me," I said, not sure where she was going with it.

"I don't spend it. There's nothing I need, so it just-" she hunted again, "-waits. Jarys calls this hoarding. Says it like it’s bad. " Her chin came up a fraction, ears flicking. "He’s right, and I will fix it. Today."

"That's… not really a problem you need to fix; you literally can just leave it in the-"

"Shopping center," she said, already turning, her tail catching the back of my knee on the way in such a way I couldn't believe was accidental. "You're coming."

She said it more like it were a fact about the next hour of my life that she was simply informing me of it, and I soon found myself pulling my coat back on before I'd agreed to even a single part of it.

Sarah, over the top of the iPhone she couldn’t afford, gave me a look that I decided, for the sake of my hangover, not to examine too closely.

Outside, the wind had picked up, the kind of April cold that got under coats and jumpers. I zipped mine to the throat. Alys didn't so much as shiver, because she was a gigantic lizard that probably weighed more than three of me. Four based on just how… broad… she was.

Christ, her forelimbs alone. I was suddenly surprised she hadn’t accidentally snapped my neck when fixing my hair.

A man walking his dog did a full double-take crossing the road, lead going tight as the dog noticed too. Alys quickly gave him a small, sharp look that had him hurrying.

Sarah kept pace between us at first, crutches finding their rhythm against the pavement, that steady clack that I had stopped hearing years ago. Then, gradually, she wasn't quite keeping pace anymore. She started drifting half a step behind, then two and then three.

"So," she said eventually, aimed more at the back of Alys' tail than either of us directly, in the overly casual voice of someone who'd been building up to a question for several streets. "Do you have, like, a boyfriend, Alys? Courting partner?”

I did not react to that. Didn't blink, didn't slow my step, didn't do a single visible thing, which I was very proud of.

"No," Alys said, flat and unbothered at first. At first, for then, a moment later, not quite as ‘totally unbothered, she continued, "There are more of us born female. Biology.” A beat. her tail lashing behind her. "Worse now. Since the scarcity fights back at home. It isn't strange. Nobody back home thinks it’s weird.”

A sharp, frayed edge snuck into her words, one everyone, even she, based on the flicker of her blood-red eyes meeting mine, noticed.

So I did the one thing I actually had any skill in and elbowed her.

She made a sudden chirp, then huffed out of her nose, head tilting. "What was that?"

"Helping you," I said, shrugging.

"I did not need helping." She elbowed back harder, obviously, subtlety not being a language she spoke, and given that the limbs in question belonged to something built like an armored car, I nearly folded clean in half on a public pavement at ten-to-ten on a Friday. "...You're very delicate." Her head tilted again, like a curious, amused dog. “Very cute.”

"I'm human."

Ignoring the last part – just dragon nonsense.

"Hmm."

Obviously, this went on. Elbow, shove, elbow, a shove that nearly pushed me into a bus, and me retaliating with something that achieved absolutely nothing but a huffing laugh. And then she came at me properly, leaning down fast, jaw cracking open, long, sharp teeth very much on show, close enough I felt warm air against my collar.

And then she just stopped.

Straightened up instantly, reached for her mask with her right forepaw, and tugged it back into place, unhurried, like the whole thing had been totally intentional from the start.

I realized I'd been staring. Again. Something I was starting to think might just be a permanent setting. Only this time I had a reason to, seeing as she tried to tear my throat out.

She caught it, the way she’d caught it every other time, only this time she didn't do the flustered ear-lap or make a wry comment. Just held it steadily, both eyes, even the lazy one dragging its way over half a beat behind the good one.

"It's not the scars," she said before I'd asked. “The mask. I wear it because I look like my father." A pause, precise, like she was picking the words off a shelf and checking them before handing them across. "People always assume the scars..” Her wings fluttered. “We have the same teeth, and I don’t like that.”

"...Okay."

"You believe me?"

"Yeah." And I did, actually. There was nothing in the way she'd said it that read like a lie, and I could relate to shitty parents. "I get it. More than you'd think." Hands in my pockets, eyes anywhere but on her as I continued onward to the shopping center. "Left mine the second I legally could. Haven't looked back once."

Something shifted in her face at that. "G-Good," she said, simple as anything. "Fathers are optional."

Sarah, several paces back, continued to remain silent.

#

The shopping center smelled the way they all did: fried onions somewhere near the food court, hand sanitizer, and the ambient despair of a Greggs running at full capacity.

People milling about. People staring at us as we walked. Sarah and Alys didn’t exactly make quiet company, but the dragon did her best to ‘fix’ that with some nasty glares

We found the place inside three minutes. One of the big clothing chains I bought boxers and shirt multi-packs from. Four floors, the elevator still broken, and never any size mediums, the same as every branch of every big chain ever built.

But tucked into the back corner past the school uniforms was a section that hadn't existed the last time I'd been dragged around one of these with Sarah – two racks, a small table and one of those spinning shelves I’d never learned the name of.

XENO FRIENDLY, read a laminated sign taped above it, in a font that screamed we added this eight months ago and are still corporately working out our feelings about it. Unicorn barding. Wings and spines slits stitched into everything from jumpers to raincoats. One slightly sad rail, right at the back, of dragon sized hoodies.

"Oh," Alys said, and there was real weight in it.

"Good Oh or bad Oh?" I risked.

"There wasn't this. Before. They even carry Hrodvitnir’s stock." She reached out, her prosthetic claw testing the seam of a hoodie sized to a torso roughly hers, and when she spoke again, the confidence had gone out of it, the sentence breaking halfway through. "My father would have called this-" She stopped. Started again, faltered, muttered something indecipherable, and then failed again.

I didn't have anything ready for that, so I said nothing, and she didn't seem to need me to; she just held the hoodie a second longer, then let it go and moved on, searching for something only she knew of.

It took us both a moment, almost in sync, to clock that neither of us had said a word to Sarah in what had to have been ten minutes.

I found her by the till, arms crossed as best one can manage while also holding two crutches, one eyebrow up in the universal expression of Oh, you two.

"Sorry," I said, cringing. "Got-"

"Distracted. Yeah, I noticed.”

I bit my tongue. "My bad. You good?"

"I'm fine," she said after far too long and in the precise tone people use when they were the opposite of fantastic, before drifting off toward a rack of unicorn leg warmers in total silence.

Suddenly uncomfortable and distantly guilty for something I didn’t understand, I resisted the urge to ask again and instead turned to Alys because that was easier.

She turned towards a rickety, spinning stand covered in cheap scarves and a shelf of what I think were meant to be glasses, only designed for various kinds of snouts, which she inspected like they were precious items and not bargain-bin dreck.

“No masks,” she said eventually.

"Oh. It’s not really that sort of place,” I admitted, shuffling closer and joining her, spinning the stand once and picking up a cyan scarf, holding it up to her. “This is kinda cute.”

“Maybe.” She moved away and looked at the rest of the area. It really was barren; second thought inclusivity, and you could feel it. The kind of performative action both sides hated. “Not like the place at home.” She raised a wing and gestured, wholly unimpressed. “This is… lesser.”

“You’re really not going to try anything on?” I asked, placing a pair of oversized glasses on my nose and trying to balance it. “Isn’t that the whole point of not hoarding money?"

The blue hen looked back at the rack of dragon hoodies, suddenly uncertain. “I could try. Hoarding is bad on this world.”

“Ehh.” I made the universal gesture for uncertainty with my hand. “Saving’s good. Hoarding’s bad.” The glasses slipped from my face, but at the last second I caught them and quickly slipped them back onto the stand.

She took the first hoodie that was large enough for her bulk and lifted it up. The dragon even didn't bother dealing with the small changing room at the aisle – too small for her regardless, so she ‘hid’ as best she could behind a railing full of coats and changed.

But when she came out the other side, something in her had gone stiff in a way I recognized, though it took me a second to place where it was from.

Haunches too tight. Wings not settling anywhere, lifting, folding, lifting again, before finally pinning flat like she'd run out of places to put them. Eyes landing everywhere except the mirror.

The till, the fire exit sign, somewhere over my shoulder – the exact same look she'd had the day of her brother’s birthday, when I'd needed one more photo for Rhys and she'd have rather been anywhere else on the planet.

"Well?" I said, because someone had to.

She didn't answer straight away. She turned side-on to the mirror instead of facing it properly, as if there were a correct angle to find if she just kept adjusting.

"It's warm," she said, reaching a paw up to rub at the thing. Not an answer to the actual question. A dodge, plain as anything, and I let it go because pushing felt, in that moment, like it would've been unkind in a way I couldn't have explained if asked.

Her previous harness laid discarded atop a clothes rail, and I was suddenly very, very glad that the place was as dead as it was, which tracked given it was so early.

"It looks-" I started, actually, really, giving her a proper look and concluding with, "really good on you." Slate grey against dull blue.

Almost like a ghost.

But what I said was too warm. I heard it hit too hard in real time, same as before, and this time I watched it actually do something to her: a small flinch, barely there, wings twitching once like they wanted to fold in further than they already had.

She didn't say anything for a second and just went still, the same stillness as the crumb at the cafe, except that one had had some calm about it, and this one had none.

"T-Thank you," she said finally. Quietly. She was smiling through the mask, her tail swishing and ears warm. “I don’t… like…” She swallowed, eyes flicking about everywhere but the mirror. She never finished the sentence, but I could guess, and it tugged at my chest in ways someone hadn’t in… too long.

“Well, I think you look-”

I didn’t know what the rest of the sentence was going to be, so I stopped it.

Sarah, over by the leg warmers, didn't turn around, but her shoulders, faintly as it was, bunched tightly together.

Alys just looked at me, lost, utterly blank, before she smiled such a shy, dopey thing that it snuck its way into me. Made me rub the back of my neck and fix my hair anxiously. But, honestly, I told myself, I was just helping her out with her confidence.

She tried three more after that. A darker one with the hood cut oddly high to clear her horns. One with fur along the hems and a third purely, I think, to watch me run out of ways to say nice things.

And then, further down the line, a set of proper quadruped-cut stockings – fitted to the actual shape of her broad, wide legs, not the human kind stretched sideways and stapled with the word adaptive. She turned in front of the mirror, checking the fit at the knee with real focus, her tail swishing once, entirely absorbed in them and how they made her look.

"Wellllll?" I said, because apparently I'd appointed myself to be the fashion show judge.

She didn't even bother with a deflection. She just held my eyes in the mirror, waiting, the same waiting she'd done over the crumb, and I felt my ears go hot and my mouth say something enthusiastic and useless that I’d already blocked out of memory as she smiled at the floor like she'd gotten exactly the answer she was fishing for.

Sarah, still over by the leg warmers, had gone quiet in a specific way – not sulking, not bored, just watching the two of us with the fixed, slightly ill look of someone realizing, in real time, that they've wandered into the middle of something they weren't supposed to be a witness to.

"Ohh," she said, too brightly, the phone already in her hand like she'd been holding it in reserve for the cue. "I completely forgot I'm meant to be playing a game with Sera today. Sorry- I should head off."

I blinked, tearing my eyes away from the dragon’s stocking-clad limbs.

"Wait, now?"

"Yeah. Now, now." She was already angling for the escalators, crutches finding their rhythm fast, faster than her usual pace allowed her. "Scheduling thing. Time zones. You know how it is. Completely forgot. That’s my bad.”

Sera lived twenty minutes away by bus and existed, as far as I was aware, in the exact same time zone Sarah did, so it took me a genuinely embarrassing three seconds to clock that this was a lie doing very little work to disguise itself as one.

"Are you good getting the bus on your own?"

"Yep. Fine." She did not look fine. "Have fun. Buy the hoodie." A pause, brief, aimed with real precision. "_It does look **_good** on her, right?”

The way she spoke made my stomach flip.

And then she was gone, crutches clacking off toward the escalator quicker than I'd seen her manage all morning while I stood there holding a basket I didn't remember picking up, watching the space where she'd been.

I gave it four minutes. Just long enough that it didn't look like panic, which it absolutely was, before I got my phone out.

James Morris.

> Sarah?

> You good?

> Didn't have to bail, you know. I'd have come with.

The reply came fast, faster than the excuse deserved.

Sarah Morris.

> lol im fine

> tell alys sorry

> game just started earlier than i thought that's all and i forgot

I looked at it for too long, emotions too complex to word swirling around in my chest, before locking the phone and pocketing it, the weight heavy in my coat. Again, that feeling of an unknown sin weighed upon me.

"James?" Alys said, still watching me from the mirror, wings half-lowered, head dipped, looking smaller than she actually was.

"Y-Yeah?"

"Did I do something wrong?" Not really a question. "She left fast. "A small, uncharacteristic pause, ears drooping half an inch, "I don't always know what I do wrong with people."

It took an effort not to say me neither.

"It's not you." And it wasn't, not really, and I felt like the worst kind of coward saying it that plainly and leaving it there. "She gets like this sometimes. Not your or my fault."

She studied me a second, willing to let it go for now, filing it away next to the father thing and the money thing and everything else she seemed to be quietly cataloguing about the world.

Everything unfroze.

The dragon turned back to the pile of xeno styled clothing, wings settling to their normal height, as she reached for the last thing on the rail: a tangle of grey straps and buckles that looked like it had been designed more for torture than fashion.

"What on God's green flat earth is that?"

"Flight harness." She held it up like a trophy. "For altitude. Cargo. Emergencies."

"When do you fly cargo?"

"I don't fly at all. My wings are for show, like Lindwurm arms, for attracting a mate." Entirely flat-faced, clearly a joke, but it took me an actual second to clock she was joking, because I genuinely couldn’t always tell with her.

She wrestled her way into the harness regardless, straps looping wrong twice, one buckle ending up somewhere near her tail before she huffed at it like it had personally offended her and yanked the whole thing off over her head. "You do it."

"I don't have wings."

"For the experience." She was already looping it over my shoulders before I could object, cinching a strap under my arm hard enough that I made a noise dangerously close to a squeak before standing back to survey the result. "No. You need wings."

"Yeah, that’s my bad. I’ll do better next time, babe,” I deadpanned, already undoing the horrible contraption. She could only grin, sniff again and brush my side as she moved.

The rest of the trip went on being, on the surface, exactly what it looked like; easy, warm, the kind of afternoon you'd catch on someone's phone captioned shopping with the girls without a flicker of self-consciousness, and it was only somewhere underneath that, in the part of me I wasn't currently taking questions from, that I registered Sarah’s expressions or Brie’s existence and messages I’d read but not replied to.

I didn't think about that. Thinking about it would've required stopping, and neither of us, it turned out, had the slightest interest in stopping what was going on, nor slowing down.

For once I just wanted to relax without stress or melodrama. I just wanted to chill with Alys, who was funny and confident and seemed to like me.

#

By the time we left, I was carrying three bags – the hoodie, the leggings, and the flight harness, which she'd bought anyway, on principle and in the interest of reducing her dangerously high hoard, which consisted of two weeks of part-time fast food pay. Really, it was like I was carrying bags for a girlfriend.

Except the girlfriend in question was a tall, muscular dragon who’d tried to bite me and had run the whole afternoon like she'd been doing it her entire life, and the actual girlfriend was forty minutes away.

We stood under the awning outside, wind cutting straight back through my coat, when Alys turned to face me with that particular stillness she got right before saying something she'd clearly been sitting on for a while, deciding exactly when to let it out.

Her speech had gotten better scarily fast, at least when she planned it.

"Do you want to go to another world?"

…

…

"...Sorry, what?" I coughed, taken entirely off guard.

She tilted her head toward the far end of the high street, past the bookies and the boarded-up unit that used to be a pet shop, to where the transit station sat, squat and grey, humming faintly even from here. The great complex that contained the county’s rift.

"Oh. " I looked at the bags. At her. At the station. "Sorry, really? I thought you wouldn’t want to go near it.”

Her head tilted. “I want to know what you think.”

My phone buzzed twice in my pocket, but I, with both hands full of cheap paper bags, managed to hit the volume slider to silence it. “I think it’s insane,” I said honestly. “How- Like. How would I even be allowed to go?”

"There is a travel permit," she said. "For humans. Not long – a day, maybe less, and someone has to sign for you at the other end." A beat. "I can sign for you."

"...Okay, but why? You don't exactly seem like you miss it." I hesitated. “No offense.”

She went very still, differently than it had for the money, or the hoodie, or even her father outside the shop.

"There is a ledge," she said, eventually. "On the coast, where the rift opens. High up, where he could not reach, as he is lindwurm and I am Archon. " Flat again, but she was forcing it. "I went there when there was no food. And when there was. And when I didn't want to be found. Grey rock. Cold water. Nothing else on it. " Her tail gave one slow, controlled sweep. "It's mine. I decided it was, and no one has ever taken it from me. Not even him."

“That’s…” I swallowed, finally suddenly very out of depth. “That sounds nice.” Was the best I could manage.

"I want to see what it's like," she said, "with something else on it. Someone else." A pause, searching for the rest of it, then giving up on finding a better version. “Someone who I like.”

I couldn’t speak. The earnesty was scorching, so I did the only thing I seemed to be reliably good at around her and said nothing.

"Sandwiches. Blanket. The whole bit, properly done. I want to be able to tell people I had a picnic in another world, Alys; that's genuinely not optional for me,” I said, trying to sound very official.

Something in her face did the thing it did when she was trying hard not to look pleased about something and losing.

"Deal," she said, and turned, already walking, entirely certain I'd follow. “And if you’re very good, I can finally take this mask off.”

I almost stumbled as I hurried after her, bags rustling in my grasp.

“Deal.”