Chapter Forty-Nine – The Dragon’s Favorite Strays
Chapter Forty-Nine
DAKOTA
“She looks so good, doesn’t she?” Aggie straightens the little hat she’s put atop Stella’s head and beams at the dog as if she’s cured cancer. “Such a smart girl.”
The smart girl has twin strings of drool hanging from her jowls. Her tail thumps on the ground and she settles herself at Aggie’s feet, placid and fat with puppies. She’s also insanely enormous, easily the biggest dog I’ve ever seen. No wonder Curtis was so fired up to get her. He could sell mutant guard dog puppies to people in forts and make a fortune. “She’s huge,” I point out to Aggie, who might be smaller than Stella in size. “Is there a breed of dog bigger than a Great Dane?”
“Pfft, she’s not that big,” Aggie says dismissively. “And she eats less than Dottie.”
Dottie just makes a face at her friend. Rabbit giggles, the sound as happy as ever, and she pulls Kermit into her lap as we all sit near the fire and warm up dinner.
I’m glad they can relax after the day we’ve had. Me, I’m going to be hearing the words of the nomad in my nightmares. He’s told the fort about us. It doesn’t matter if Murr dumps him five hundred miles from here — if he really told someone at the fort that we have solar panels, they’ll come looking. And with every fort I’ve had experience with, they don’t appreciate people that do their own thing.
We’re in danger, but we can hide easily. I’m more concerned about Murr, because if a fort gets their hands on a dragon, who knows what they’ll do to him? And Murr is good and kind and sweet….and innocent. They could abuse that easily and the thought terrifies me.
I’m going to have to convince him that he’s better off on his own, somehow.
We sit around the fire until it’s late, and Dottie pulls out knitting and a blanket she’s working on. “It’s going to be a cold winter,” she tells us. “We’re going to need to prepare as much as we can.”
“Can you show me how to knit?” Rabbit asks.
“If we can find more yarn, of course.”
My daughter looks over at me, her eyes bright.
“There’s bound to be a craft store somewhere in the area. We can look around when we get some free time.”
“I bet if you asked Murr to lift you in the air, you could see a lot more, Mom,” Rabbit says.
She’s not wrong, but I’m also planning on telling Murr to leave when he gets back. It’s for his own safety. “We’ll see.”
When Murr returns, it’s well past sunset and I’m nervous that he’s been gone so long. Hell, I seem to be nervous about everything lately. I’m just one big bundle of anxiety when it comes to him. The only reason I know it’s Murr is that the breeze he causes as he sails overhead nearly puts our fire out. I expect him to pop up a moment later, but he shifts to his human form at the far end of the parking lot and approaches our fire. The cats rush towards him with a chorus of meows, and he meows back at them.
It takes everything I have not to jump to my feet and throw my arms around him. I manage to keep it cool, noticing that he’s wrapped his loins before coming to sit at the fire. “Hi there,” I say, offering him a plastic bottle full of freshly-boiled water. “All good?”
“Good,” he agrees. He takes the water from me but doesn’t drink. Instead, he reaches out and touches my face, turning it slightly so he can examine the scrapes along my chin. He frowns at the sight, but strokes it gently before releasing me.
“Enough flirting,” Dottie says. She nudges Aggie with her knitting needle, and Aggie awakens with a snort. “What did you do with Curtis?”
“Curtss,” he says, repeating. “Bad…man. Yes?”
“That’s right,” Rabbit says. “Very bad.”
“Murr fly.” He raises a hand, gesturing at the horizon. “Fly, fly, fly. Big water. Bad man…” He clenches a fist and then releases it, flattening, as if to mimic that he dropped him over the water.
Aggie chuckles. “I hope that was the ocean.”
Murr moves to Stella’s side and crouches near her. The dog immediately goes to him, licking his cheeks and covering him with slobbery kisses. He submits to this, grimacing as it continues. “Stella…good.”
“She’s very good. That’s enough, Stella. Let someone else love on him for a while. Like, say, Dakota.” She gives me the most obvious wink possible.
Oh brother. I take the water bottle from Murr and wet a towel, offering it to him so he can wash his face clean of dog slobber. “Why don’t we let Murr and Stella get acquainted tomorrow morning? It’s late and we could all use some sleep.”
And I personally need to talk to a dragon about plans for the future.
