"Three... two... one...! Ready or not, here I come!"
Liam took his hands off from over his eyes and looked around the back yard for his little sister. The 7-year-old's eyes quickly scanned over the trees, the swing set, his father's tool shed, and the berry bushes at the back of the yard. The wooden fence surrounding the yard limited the number of places that Emma could be hiding – the fence towered over Liam, but his parents were always able to look over it into the woods and fields nearby.
His father wasn't around right now, though, and was probably on his way home from work. As Liam turned and looked back towards the white-painted, two-story house his family lived in, he saw his mother through the open door to the kitchen, watching the small TV set in there while cutting vegetables at a leisurely pace. He didn't know why his mother kept watching the boring man in the suit talking so much, when there were perfectly good cartoons she could have turned to instead.
"...continue to puzzle over the deeper meanings of the aliens' broadcast yesterday. We go now to our correspondent at Harvard for one professor's take on..."
Liam quickly lost what little interest he had in the news report and went back to looking for his sister. "Come out, come out, wherever you are..." he called out as he started walking towards the cardboard boxes stacked up next to the outside of the house. He lunged around them, but his sister wasn't there.
He heard a giggling from behind him and quickly turned around, catching sight of his sister as she tried to duck down behind the big apple tree in the back yard. Liam ran over towards her with a laugh, arms outstretched, and she ran off just as he got closer, making him chase after her. The 5-year-old couldn't outrun him very well, though, and he caught up to her when she tried to run behind the shed, grabbing onto her arm.
"Got you, got you, got you!" Liam taunted in a sing-song voice. His sister giggled as she tried to get out of his grip, but he kept hold of her arm, which was bare on account of her red and white dress being sleeveless. She had a red bow tied at the top of her short brown hair that had gotten more crooked as the two of them had run around playing, and was wearing little red shoes with white socks to match – all picked out by her mother, of course.
Liam, in contrast, was wearing a pair of jean overalls over a long-sleeved white shirt, with some white socks and colorful sneakers. His father made him go to the barber frequently to keep his blonde hair very short, in addition to picking out his clothes – though it was his mother who was likely going to be mad about the grass stains on his knees when they finished playing for dinner.
In the background, he could hear his father's truck pulling into the driveway. That meant they only had a bit more time left to play before dinner, but his dad would probably come out back to see them after saying hi to mom anyway.
Emma pouted a bit and looked up at Liam; the brown eyes staring at him matched those of him and his father. "Let me go! It's your turn to hide now!" she told him.
Liam kept a firm hold on her arm. "Nuh-uh, you didn't say please!"
She tried to pull free, but failed again, twisting and flailing about. "Let go! You're hurting my back! How do you like it?" she yelled back at him, reaching out and grabbing onto his upper arm.
Liam let out a cry and released his hold on her, stumbling away and holding onto his arm where she had just held it. His arm hurt where she had touched it; the fabric had rubbed against it in a weird way, and it felt like it had pulled on his skin.
"There, see!" Emma taunted him.
"That hurt!" he exclaimed, holding his arm more tightly. As Emma laughed, he shook his head. "No, really! It really hurts! Ow!"
Emma's grin turned to a frown, and she looked downward. "I wasn't trying to hurt you," she mumbled.
After a moment, Liam let go of his arm. "I think it's okay. It's still sore." He looked over at Emma, who was still pouting. "I'll be fine. I'll go hide, so start counting!"
Emma brightened up quickly and put her hands over her eyes. "Ten..." she began counting, back to her normal self.
Liam turned and looked for a hiding spot, deciding to go to the boxes where he had thought Emma was earlier. As he crouched down behind them, he could hear his parents talking in the kitchen quite clearly.
"...first day of unemployment?" Liam's father asked.
"About as well as I could hope," he heard his mother reply. "I took care of a few chores I've been putting off for a while. All the knives are sharpened – we might need them soon if you have to go hunting for food."
"Now why would I have to do that? Look, I know everyone's all up in arms over what happened yesterday, but it's fine, everything will be back to normal soon. Besides, people still have to eat, so the plant's not shutting down any time soon! And, I got paid today – maybe we can get Mastercard off our backs for a little bit."
"...one!" Liam heard Emma call out, "Ready or not, here I come!"
"That would be nice," his mother said in agreement. "But look, we might need to be prepared if-"
"If what? You worry too much, Gloria. It'll be fine. We'll just have to cut back a bit, that's all. I've been wanting to drink less anyway."
Liam's attention was drawn away from his parents as he heard Emma's footsteps. He crouched down further behind the boxes, wondering what was inside. It was probably a lot more interesting than the grown-ups' talk.
Emma was getting too close, so Liam quickly darted out from behind the boxes and ran away. "I knew it!" Emma called out after him as she gave chase across the yard.
But she stopped partway with a cry, stumbling over to the swingset and putting a hand on it. Liam turned back, gleeful at first to have outrun her, but then came back when she stayed leant against the slanted metal pole.
"Are you okay?" he asked her as he got close, half expecting her to turn around and grab him. But she didn't.
"It hurts," Emma grumbled, remaining leant against the swingset.
"Where?"
She gestured vaguely towards her back with her free arm, giving a small pained groan. Liam walked around behind her, reaching out and poking at her lower back. "Here?"
"No, higher," she mumbled, and he lightly poked somewhere between her shoulders, making her give a small cry in response, pulling away from him.
Liam took hold of her arm, but more gently this time. "Let's go get mom," he told her, and she didn't resist as he pulled her away and headed for the house, stepping into the kitchen with his sister in tow.
His father stood in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt, a pair of jeans, and black sneakers. His short brown hair was combed to one side, his face clean-shaven, his shirt doing little to hide the slight beer gut.
His mother, meanwhile, had turned away from the TV, where a different man in a suit was talking now. Her brown hair was tied back in a bun, and she wore a dark green blouse and a knee-length skirt. Her lower legs revealed she was wearing pantyhose and was wearing a pair of sandals.
His father noticed the two of them entering and beamed towards them. "Hey, kids!" he said in greeting. "I was just telling your mother that we should go on a trip this weekend – maybe go camping! Liam, you want to go hunting with me?"
"He's far too young to go hunting!" Gloria interjected before Liam could answer.
"Ah, nonsense, my father took me out hunting the first time when I was about his age!" He chuckled heartily, but only for a brief moment when he noticed the kids weren't playing along, and his expression fell. "You two all right? You didn't get hurt roughhousing out there, did you?"
"It hurts," Emma mumbled, awkwardly trying to point to her back while looking down at the linoleum floor, hunched over a bit.
"And my arms hurt," Liam chimed in, stepping forward.
Gloria put down the vegetable knife and stepped over to the sink, rinsing her hands quickly. "Let me take a look," she said softly as she came over to him and knelt down in front of him, still much taller than he was. She frowned as she saw the grass stains on his pants, and looked him in the eyes. "Did you fall and hurt yourself?" she asked, reaching out for his right arm, starting to roll up the sleeve. "I've told you time and time again, you-"
She abruptly stopped talking and froze, staring at Liam's arm. Whatever she saw, his father saw it too, and he walked over behind Gloria for a closer look with a wide-eyed stare. Puzzled, Liam turned his head to take a look for himself.
On his upper arm was a patch of sleek, black scales, in exactly the part of his arm that was sore. A strand of white thread was caught on one of them, probably from when his sister had grabbed his arm earlier. The scales were each quite small, and the patch was barely an inch across and a few long in an approximate oval shape.
His mother silently reached over and rolled up Liam's other sleeve; a glance confirmed that there was an identical patch of scales in a slightly different spot on his left arm. Liam shuffled from foot to foot, not understanding what was happening, but aware that whatever it was, it was something bad.
For a moment the kitchen was silent until Emma piped up. "What are you staring at?" she asked, coming over and standing next to Liam to see what all the fuss was about.
Gloria gently put a hand on Emma's shoulder. "Not now, sweetie, I-..." but she trailed off again, looking at the two siblings standing next to each other. Despite the two years of age difference between them, they were almost exactly the same height.
And that hadn't been the case two days ago.
"Daniel," Gloria said to her husband, "do you see this?"
"Yeah," he answered quietly, all mirth gone from his voice, "she's gotten taller all of a sudden."
Emma peered at the scales on Liam's arm, oblivious to her parents' growing concern. "Is he gonna be okay?" she asked, looking up at her mother.
She reached out, but Gloria took hold of her wrist and gently pulled it away from Liam. "Don't touch, sweetie," she chided gently. Looking back at Liam, she took a breath and put on a smile for Emma and Liam, who couldn't tell it was forced. "Yes, he'll be fine. You know, I think I have something for this in the medicine cabinet. Wait right here, and I'll be right back."
She stood up and pushed past her husband to leave the kitchen, and Daniel watched her go. "Be good and wait here like your mother said," he told them before following after her.
Liam listened to the two pairs of footsteps going up the stairs. He almost wanted to cry, but his mother had told him several times that boys weren't supposed to cry. And Emma wasn't crying, instead, she was staring at the scales on his arms, poking them with one curious finger despite what her mother had just told her.
"It's all smooth," she observed, sliding a finger downward. Liam gasped out as she rubbed the scales the wrong way when she moved her finger back up, and pulled away from her.
"That hurts!" he told her, "Stop it!"
"Oh, sorry," she murmured, stepping back a little. "Is that how I hurt you earlier?"
"I think so," Liam replied with a nod. "Let's just wait for mom."
It took a surprising amount of time for their parents to come back down the stairs, but when they did, Gloria was wearing rubber gloves, and held a little tube in one hand – kind of like a toothpaste tube, Liam could tell, but smaller. She came over to Liam and knelt back down in front of him as she unscrewed the cap, looking at his face.
"I'm sorry, dear, I didn't mean to make you worry," she told him as she squeezed out a bit of white cream onto her right index finger. Giving him another smile, she crouched down in front of him and reached out, hesitating a little when her hand got closer to his arm. But it was only briefly, and soon she cautiously started rubbing the cream against the scales on his right arm, being slow and gentle, avoiding rubbing them the wrong way. "You'll be fine, just don't touch it after I'm done, okay?"
Liam felt reassured as his mother touched his arm, even though the rubber glove was cold and had a weird texture. Whatever the cream was, it was cool to the touch, and had a pleasant smell. Once she had done one arm, she squeezed out a little more and put it on the other arm with an equal amount of care.
"What about me?" Emma demanded as Gloria screwed the cap back onto the tube.
"You just need to rest," her mother told her as she stood up. "I need to make dinner soon. You two go play, but be gentle. And if you finish all your veggies, I'll give you some ice cream for dessert, how does that sound?"
"Ice cream!" Emma repeated enthusiastically, her complaint forgotten immediately.
"Ooh, ooh, I want the strawberry one!" Liam said, bouncing on his feet.
"I want chocolate!" Emma insisted.
Daniel chuckled and folded his arms. "You can each get what you want, don't worry. Now run along, your mother needs the kitchen to herself so she can finish cooking."
He watched as his kids ran back out the open door into the yard, heading for the swings. Gloria watched them too, then let out a sigh and bowed her head as her mask of confidence vanished.
"They definitely felt like scales," she said quietly as she handed Daniel the tube, and began stripping off the rubber gloves. "But you were right, he seems to be feeling better now. I'm sorry for getting upset with you."
"Nothing wrong with a placebo if it stops them from panicking, yeah?" Daniel replied, holding up the tube of sunscreen and idly looking over the label. "But unless 'SPF' secretly stands for 'Scale Prevention Factor', we've still got a big problem on our hands. Do you think it has anything to do with that strange broadcast yesterday?"
Shaking her head, she returned to the vegetables. "I don't want to think about it right now."
"Suit yourself," he responded, reaching into his pocket and extracting his cell phone. But he only gave it a frown of disappointment before putting it away. "Still no signal. Haven't had any since yesterday. Guess it's a good thing we got a landline from that package deal."
"Who are you going to call?"
"Dr. Cooper's office. He's a lot closer than the hospital, but he'll still be open at this hour. I'll be right back."
Gloria busied herself with preparing for dinner, casting an occasional glance out the back door at her children as they ran around the yard. She heard nothing from the front hall, and when her husband returned, she could tell from his expression that he had had no luck.
Shaking his head, he explained, "Just got a busy signal for Dr. Cooper's. I tried the hospital anyway and only got an automated message. But it said that any patients with 'scale rash' should be kept at home and not brought to the hospital."
There were a few moments of silence in the kitchen. Liam's call of "Got you, got you!" from outside could be heard, breaking the silence.
With a sigh, Gloria dumped the cut-up vegetables into a pot of hot water. "Set the table for me, please," she asked her husband, "I want us to have a meal together like a normal family while we still can."
—-----------------
Emma grumbled as she felt herself being shaken awake by her mother. "Wake up, sleepyhead," Gloria told her, "time to get up and go to school."
Opening her eyes just a bit, Emma tried to curl up more, but her mother pulled her blankets off of her, so Emma reluctantly rolled onto her back and sat up, wearing a set of pink pajamas with pictures of strawberries printed on them.
"Okay, mom," she mumbled, reaching up to brush hair out of her eyes. But she felt a sudden pain on her forehead and cried out, getting her mother's attention as she was just about to go wake Liam.
"What is it, sweetie?" her mother asked, and Emma pointed to where she felt her head hurt. "You've cut yourself!" Gloria exclaimed, "How did...?"
Trailing off, Emma's mother went still for a moment, then took hold of Emma's wrist and pulled her hand closer to get a better look at it. Emma could see what she was looking at: she didn't have fingernails any more. Instead, both her fingernails and the tips of her fingers had been replaced with claws, a dark gray in color, placed at the very tips of her fingers. At the base of them, where she used to have skin, she instead had scales, just like the ones Liam had had on his arms yesterday.
Emma stared at the claws, not sure what to make of them. They looked so... strange. They looked like an animal's claws. Would she still be able to paint them when she grew up, like her mother painted her nails sometimes? And what would the other kids at school say? Would they think she was a freak for having them? Emma bit her lip, worrying; was it going to keep changing? If it kept spreading, what would happen next?
Gloria was silent for a moment, then let go of Emma's hand. "Stay right here," she told Emma firmly. Confused, Emma watched her mother go over to Liam's bed, shaking him gently to wake him up as well. Normally, Gloria took Emma off to her parents' room to get her dressed, though she didn't know why her mother insisted on her not changing in the same room as Liam.
Liam was similarly resistant to get out of bed, wearing a set of blue pajamas with pictures of airplanes and clouds decorating the fabric. But Gloria shook him awake and got him to sit up, stretching and yawning.
"How do your arms feel?" she asked him.
"Huh?" he replied at first, still sleepy. "Um... sore," he told her after a moment.
Emma watched her mother hesitate for a moment before carefully taking hold of the cuff of his right sleeve, rolling it up his arm. "Am I gonna get a shot?" he asked suddenly. "I don't like needles!"
"No, sweetie, I just need to look at your arm," Gloria told him in a calming tone as she pushed his sleeve up further. Leaning closer to try and get a better look, Emma saw that the patch of scales on Liam's arm had gotten bigger since the day before. Her mother took great care not to touch it herself, and just gave it a long, quiet look.
"Do I need a shot?" Liam asked again in a morose tone.
"No," Gloria responded. "In fact, you two can sleep in a bit if you want. I'm not letting you go to school like this."
Emma gasped excitedly. "No school!"
"Don't get too excited. Since I'm not working any more, I'll just have to home-school you instead."
"Awwwwwww," Liam complained as his mother rolled his sleeve back down.
Emma folded her arms grumpily, but her mother wasn't having any of it. "Get some more sleep. I... need to go tell your father."
Gloria tucked the two of them back into bed before she left the room. Emma could just about hear her mother talking to her father, but she couldn't make out what they were saying.
"Liam?" she asked.
"Em?" he responded.
"What do you think those things are on your arms?"
"I don't know. But I don't have to go to school any more!"
Emma hummed in thought. "Does it mean we're sick?"
"I dunno. I don't feel sick. Just sore."
Closing her eyes, Emma rolled onto her side under the blankets. "I guess so," she murmured, and left it at that as she tried to get some more sleep.
--------------------
Liam's tongue stuck out the side of his mouth as he slowly scrawled a large and wobbly '8' on the paper in front of him. Being home-schooled was pretty good, as far as he could tell. He got to sleep in, since they didn't have to be up early for the drive to school. The first day they'd started late since his mother had told them she had to "make a lesson plan" and had let them watch cartoons while she did. After breakfast, she had cleaned away the dishes and wiped the dining room table clean – and the stray orange juice off of Liam's face – and did her best to teach them. Since Liam was in first grade, and Emma was in kindergarten, they weren't too far apart in their ability.
The first day, she had taught them about reading. Emma had wanted to read yesterday's newspaper that Daniel had brought home, but Gloria insisted that it was too hard for them to read, and had brought down some children's books for them instead. But the second day, today, had been math; Gloria had left Liam with a page of exercises to do while she tried to teach Emma how to add numbers to more than 10.
Liam put down his pencil and rubbed idly at the back of his neck. It had been sore ever since the previous night, and when his mother had woken him up, there was another patch of scales there. Gloria had gone quiet, too, when she saw something else that hadn't been there the previous night: his ears had started to stretch out and change shape into a pair of fins, the cartilage and skin changing to small membranes spaced apart by tiny bones.
Liam didn't feel so bad about it, though, since Emma had scales just like his, and they were spreading too. The claws that her mother had found, as well as the scales around her fingertips, were making it much harder for her to hold the crayon she was writing with, and she had gotten frustrated when she kept dropping it.
As Liam looked down the page and pondered the answer to 14 - 5, he heard the front door opening. His father announced his arrival with his usual cheery "Honey, I'm home!" but Gloria's "Welcome home!" response lacked its normal enthusiasm.
Daniel walked into the dining room after hanging up his jacket. "Still got them at it? Let 'em take a break!"
Gloria got up from her seat. "They took a very long lunch break," she told him, and then turned back to the table. "Okay, you two. Once you're done, you can go play."
"Okay!" the kids said together, as their parents moved to the living room. Liam heard the TV come on, and more talking voices. Why did his parents always watch the boring talking people?
"You're home early," Gloria observed.
"Amazing how much shorter the trip is when the traffic isn't backed up," Daniel told her. "The milk plant's still operating, thankfully. But we're under-staffed. A bunch of my coworkers just stopped showing up." He sighed and continued, "I asked around as subtly as I could, made it sound like it was a rumor I'd heard, but nobody else around here has heard of anyone growing scales. At least, nobody local, they've all seen the news, of course. They're all too busy panicking, prepping... or just sticking their heads in the sand."
"I was afraid of that," Gloria replied. "But thank you for checking anyway. I called my parents and my sister, but neither of them answered. I called your parents too, even though we've never gotten along, but it just went to their answering machine." There was a pause, and Liam started to slowly write an uneven '7' on the paper. "Even my uncle... that call didn't go through at all. I don't know why, it disconnected without even ringing..."
Satisfied with his work, Liam turned to Emma to help her with hers. She was still struggling to hold the crayon, so Liam reached out and gently took it from her, leaning over in his chair. "Here, I'll write it for you. Tell me what you think it is."
"Um, okay," she answered, staring at the last problem on the page. "What comes after eleven?" She tried to bring a hand up to her mouth to bite the fingernails she no longer had out of habit, and succeeded only in pricking her lip, making her wince.
"Twelve," Liam told her.
"Okay, twelve!" she said, tapping the page with one claw and putting a tiny hole in it. Liam stuck out his tongue as he dragged the crayon down over the paper, slowly writing out '12'.
"You wrote the 2 backwards!" Emma huffed. He apologized, crossing it out and writing it out again for her.
With the page completed, they got down from their chairs and went to the living room where their parents were. Liam looked at the TV screen – but it wasn't on the "news", as mom called it, which he could tell since there wasn't a desk in front of the people who were talking. Instead, there were three people sitting in a vague semi-circle, dressed more casually in sweaters and pants. There was a bar at the bottom of the screen that said what they were talking about, but the words were too difficult for Liam to understand most of it.
"All done?" Daniel asked as he saw the kids enter. "Ha-hah, you two will be little geniuses in no time!" Bending down, he pulled them both into a hug against them, which they returned.
"Ouch, careful, Emma!" he said suddenly, gently pulling her hands away from him with his own. "You've got some sharp nails there, kiddo. I think your mom is going to need to teach you how to use a nail file!"
"Sorry, dad," she said apologetically, looking down at her hands and the claws on the end of them with a scowl.
Liam looked at the TV again. The people on it were talking quite energetically, unlike on the "news" that mom seemed to watch so much of.
"...aliens, who think they can just start interfering in our lives," a well-dressed black man on the screen said angrily. "How can we know what else they've done? How can we know what else they WILL do? First, it's this, but who knows what tomorrow will bring? Where will it end?"
Liam saw his mother's expression darken, but he didn't get much time to think on it before his stomach rumbled. Walking a little closer to the sofa, he stood next to Gloria's legs. "Mom, I'm hungry," he complained.
"Already?" she asked, looking away from the screen. "You had a big lunch, too. It's not even dinnertime for another hour."
"I'm hungry too," Emma piped up, "really hungry."
"You two have both been eating a lot more all of a sudden..." their mother mused aloud unhappily. But after a moment, she picked up the remote and got to her feet. "I'll make you two a snack, okay? Here, let me change the channel for you too..."
"We CANNOT let this-!" the man on the TV began, but he was cut off as the channel was changed on him. As bright and colorful cartoons filled the screen, Emma and Liam quickly started clambering up onto the sofa to watch.
"Easy there, Emma, you're going to tear the fabric," Daniel told her as her claws rasped against one of the sofa cushions. As he helped her up, Gloria paused at the doorway, her distant look at her family going unnoticed before she slipped off towards the kitchen.
Once she had settled into her seat, Emma tried to rest her hands on her knees, but the claws pricked her legs through the thin fabric of her dress. She let out an "ouch!" and pulled her hands away abruptly.
Her father looked at her, having seen out of the corner of his eye what had happened. "Are you all right?" he asked in a concerned tone.
Emma held her hands, staring at them instead of the TV. They looked so different already. The black scales were smooth and pretty, and the dark gray claws on her fingertips were smooth and hard too, but they were so sharp. Why had they changed so suddenly?
"Daddy?" she asked without answering his question, "What's happening to me?"
Her father let out a long, slow exhalation of breath, the kind he did when she'd asked him difficult questions, like how clouds got made, or how his truck worked, or where babies came from.
"I don't know for sure," he told her after a moment. "But do you remember that special TV broadcast? The day before your brother grew scales?"
Emma looked up at him and nodded. "Yeah, but it was just someone talking though, and there were only words on the screen. It was really boring."
"Yeah, that one," Daniel told her. "Well, whoever made that broadcast... they're the ones who made this happen. I don't know exactly what you're turning into, they didn't show or tell us."
Emma looked down at her hands again, and the sharp claws. "Am I gonna become a monster?"
She felt his arm wrapping around her shoulders as he gave her a one-armed hug. "I don't know. I don't think so, because no matter what, you're still my little girl."
--------------------
Even though she didn't have to go to school any more, Emma still liked Saturday more than the other days. Both her parents stayed home, there were good cartoons on TV, and her father usually barbecued something out in the back yard during the summer. Her mother also didn't make her study today either. She'd even told them they didn't have to go to church any more, so she'd get to sleep in a bit tomorrow, too.
When she had woken up, Emma had felt some extra weight behind her, rubbing against her pajamas, and had asked her mother to check, so Gloria had taken her off to her room while Daniel woke and took care of Liam. At first, her mother didn't say anything, and just found her a dress to cover it up, but in response to Emma's incessant questions she had eventually told her that it was a tail.
It was small, only a few inches long, and although Emma couldn't see it, she could just barely reach it with one hand, feeling the scaled surface through the back of her dress. It seemed like it was growing directly off the bottom of her backbone, getting smaller and smaller towards the tip, and there were scales around the base where it was thickest. She could only wiggle her tail a little bit, and it took a lot of effort to move something she'd never had before.
However, Emma couldn't help but feel a bit uneasy. Her mother normally was up and about cleaning and doing chores in the morning, but instead after making the family's breakfast, Emma's mother had gone off to the living room to watch TV while eating alone. Emma had asked her father why, and he only answered that Gloria wanted some time alone. The TV shows hadn't even been anything fun, just more news and 'talk shows' – Emma didn't see what the difference was, though. They were both really boring.
Gloria had only stopped watching TV to make lunch, and then had been back in the living room after that. After finishing her PB&J sandwich, Emma peeked into the living room anyway out of curiosity, just in case there was something interesting. Sometimes the news had pictures, usually of places she hadn't seen before. And watching the bright colors of the 'weather forecast' was sometimes fun, too.
But the pictures today showed something else. They showed more people like her. People with scales.
"More and more cases of the so-called 'scale rash' have been reported all across the globe," the woman in the suit had said. "Nowhere has been spared. Hospitals across the U.S. have begun turning away patients who have grown scales, with no known treatment or cure available."
"What's a moo-tay-shun?" Emma asked her mother.
Gloria had gently shushed her, and Emma went quiet. The still picture on the side kept changing as the woman on TV talked, showing other people with scales in different places. Some of them even had scales on their faces.
"The head of FEMA was not available for comment, and is believed to have been a victim of this mutation himself. His deputy had this to say..."
The image changed, showing just a picture of a man and some words appearing as the TV woman spoke. "Our colleagues at the CDC have been attempting to track the spread, but we do not know exactly when it started, how it spreads, or what triggered it in the affected individuals. Initial theories that it coincided with the aliens' broadcast have been disproven, as records have surfaced proving some individuals showed signs of mutation prior to it."
Emma watched as the words disappeared all at once, and then more started appearing. "We have more questions than answers. We do not know the purpose or goal of what is happening. But with collected data from across the globe, we believe we know the end state of these mutations."
A whole series of images came up of different people, all with scales. The first ones were a lot like Emma, mostly human but with some scaly features. But the last few were much further along – people with wings and tails and scale-covered limbs, some with fully transformed heads, and others with barely any visible skin left at all. Several of them were standing on four legs rather than two. The most heavily transformed ones wore little more than tattered rags, though a few had hospital gowns loosely covering them. "By forming a composite of alterations to those suffering from these mutations, we have predicted the result."
Emma gasped as the picture changed again. There was now a creature on the TV that was completely covered in black scales, against a solid blue background with "Artist's Rendering" written in the corner – whatever that meant. It had wings, and a long tail, claws, and a snout, with no visible skin at all. It looked a lot like the pictures of dragons in some of her story books – but much less colorful. Not as happy and friendly looking as some, but not mean and evil-looking like others.
"It's a dragon!" Emma said, pointing at the screen.
Her mother gave the image a long look, not paying attention to the commentary about the CDC's guesses on how fast the mutations progressed. And then she turned her head to look at Emma, her gaze fixed on her scaled, clawed hands.
"Am I gonna look like that?" Emma asked. Moments ago she had been excited, but seeing her mother's worried expression sapped her eagerness.
Gloria took the remote and turned off the TV. "I need to go and get the groceries," she told Emma without answering her questions. "You should go upstairs and play with your toys. Don't cause trouble for your father while I'm gone."
Dejected, Emma went upstairs to her room, distracting herself with her dolls and eventually moving on to her books. Kneeling on her bed, Emma tried once again to brush her finger against the edge of the page of the book to turn it, but her clawtip caught on the side of the page, nicking the paper slightly. She huffed; 'Mary-Lou Visits the Zoo' was her favorite book, and she was getting annoyed at all the little nicks and tears she had accidentally put around the page edges. But with her fingers covered in scales, and the nails all claws, she didn't know of a better way to turn the pages. Maybe mom could help when she got home, or she could go find her father and Liam and ask.
She barely managed to slip her clawtip between one page and the next and turned it to look at the brightly-colored pictures. "A tiger!" she read aloud, giggling to herself, looking at the illustration. The tiger in the picture looked fierce, even inside of a cage; it had big teeth, and big paws with sharp claws...
Emma bit her lip, looking over at her hand. Her claws were quite different from the tiger's – even bigger and sharper, and they didn't retract. Looking back at the page, she frowned; was that going to happen to her? Was she going to be put in a cage, too? Would she be taken away from her family?
She remembered what her father had told her the other day. And what she had seen on the TV earlier – that she was going to turn into a dragon. She'd seen dragons in books too. Sometimes they were friendly dragons people would have tea and cookies with. But sometimes they were evil dragons that kidnapped people, and then knights would come after them. Would that happen to her? Would she start stealing things and taking people away? Even if she didn't want to? Would knights come after her, even if she didn't do anything wrong?
"No, no, no!" she cried out in frustration, tossing the book onto the floor. She turned and tried to sit down, and let out another cry of discomfort as she sat on her tail. It wasn't the first time it had happened today, and she hadn't gotten used to the tail being there yet. It wasn't small and thin like a dog's or a cat's, but even in its small and stubby form, it was still very thick at the base where the scales were spreading out from. Emma leaned forward to free her tail so that it could stretch behind her, then brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them against herself. She was afraid, even if she couldn't express exactly why. But she didn't want to be taken away from her family.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard a car coming up the driveway. Mom must have been returning! Emma got up and went to the window, standing on a little plastic step-stool on her tip-toes so she could see over the windowsill and out into the back yard. It was more awkward than usual, as her hips had gotten wider too, spacing her legs further apart from one another. But with her clawed hands on the windowsill, she was able to keep herself steady, and pressed her face up against the bug screen to look out into the yard.
She saw her father and brother out in the back yard, playing catch. She giggled a little as she watched; Liam was just as bad at it as always. Maybe even worse, now – though he still had normal hands, his legs were shaped weirdly, kind of like a dog's, making him walk around on just the front half of his feet with his knees bent. On top of that, he had been hunched over since the previous day; Emma had been very smug to point out that he was now shorter than she was when they stood next to each other. Finally, he wasn't wearing a shirt, but still had his denim overalls on, the straps going up and over his shoulders.
Liam fumbled another gentle underarm throw from his father, laughing as he ran off after the soft foam ball they were playing with. He stumbled, making it a few more steps before falling onto his hands and knees, but from there he started to crawl forward surprisingly quickly on both his hands and his feet until he grabbed onto the ball with both hands. Awkwardly, he stood back up, unsteadily walking back towards his father. Emma tilted her head as she watched; it almost looked like he was able to go a lot faster on all fours than on just his feet.
The gate to the back garden opened, and Gloria leaned into the back yard. "Daniel, could you help me with the groceries, please?" she called out.
Stretching out an arm, Daniel easily caught Liam's slow toss of the ball in his right hand. "Sure thing, honey," he answered, walking over to Liam and rubbing the top of his head with one large hand before handing him the ball. "It's almost dark, what kept you? Was the traffic that bad?" Emma tilted her head a little bit; normally she wasn't able to hear her parents in the back yard from her room, unless they raised their voices or were right under her window. But now, she noticed that she could make their words out clearly.
They left, the gate swinging shut behind them, leaving Liam alone. Putting down the ball, he tottered unsteadily off to the swing set and sat down on it. The strange way his legs bent now stopped him from properly pushing himself off the ground – he'd need a proper push from one of his parents to really swing, but that didn't deter him, and instead he just swung back and forth a little.
"There were blockades on all the roads out of town," Emma heard Gloria say from just around the corner of the house, followed by the sound of the car doors and trunk opening. "It must have been the army. They had jeeps and hum-vees. It was backed up for quite a distance, and they kept forcing people to turn around."
"I wonder why?" Daniel mused aloud. Emma heard plastic bags rustling, but even leaning forward, she couldn't see around the corner of the house. "All the roads, you said?"
"Yes. I don't know why. They were only letting semi trucks through, so they were only blocking off residents."
"How'd you find all that out?" Daniel inquired. The gate swung open again as the two of them made their way to the back door of the house, hands full of grocery bags.
Gloria didn't answer for a moment as they stepped inside, back out of sight. Emma heard her mother give an exaggerated sigh of relief as she put down the grocery bags. "Oh, before I forget, I hope you're okay with some other brands than usual. A lot of the shelves were empty or running low, so I couldn't get everything we usually do. You know how to skin a fish, right? I could only find fish with the skin still on."
"Of course I do!" Daniel boasted, laughing. "My father taught me when I was young, just like his father did. I'll teach Liam how to do it too, once he's old enough to handle a knife."
"I'm old enough!" Liam called out from the swing set, probably not fully understanding the conversation but well aware his parents were talking about him.
"I don't think so, kiddo," Daniel said as he stepped back outside. "You can come with me to go fishing, but you're gonna have to be a bit older before I teach you how to cut one up."
Liam pouted on the swingset as Gloria came out, stopping abruptly. "Why isn't he wearing his shirt?" she demanded. "The bugs are out, they'll have a field day with him!"
"Uh," Daniel began, suddenly sounding less confident. "His shirts don't fit him any more."
"Why not?" Gloria demanded, storming her way across the yard towards Liam. He froze on the swingset, eyes widening, aware that something bad was happening but not knowing why.
"Gloria, calm down-" Daniel began, but it was too late. She closed the distance to the swingset, and when he looked down, she immediately saw the problem.
Emma knew what it was, too. While Liam was running around after the ball a minute ago, she had seen what Gloria was now looking at: a small pair of wings starting to grow from his back. The base of each wing was on the back of his shoulders, on the big flat bones there, and where the wings met his shoulders they were surrounded by patches of black scales. The wings were still so small as to be useless, but they had still caused him a great deal of discomfort when his shirt had been pinning them against his back.
There was a brief moment of silent tension before Gloria reached down, grabbing Liam under his arms and pulling him off of the swing. She grunted with the effort, something she hadn't done before, his partly-changed body weighing more than it used to. "You need to go inside," she said in a quiet but stern voice. Liam began to cry, and Daniel started to protest, but she ignored both of them as she went in through the back door of the house.
Emma could hear them coming up the stairs, and quickly got down off the step-stool, grabbing her book and climbing up onto the bed to pretend she hadn't been listening. Her claws snagged on the blankets, and she heard the fabric rip as she gripped a little too hard while pulling herself up onto the bed.
But when the door opened, it didn't stay that way for long. Gloria simply set Liam down on the floor, then backed out and slammed the door shut – and Emma heard the lock click shut a few moments later.
"Mom?" Emma called out, but there was no response. "Mom!"
"Gloria, you can't-!" Daniel began from outside, but Gloria immediately began shouting back at him, and as they tried to argue over each other it became completely incomprehensible, even with her more sensitive hearing.
But Emma could hear her mother's footsteps as she stomped back down the stairs, her father following after. Liam was frozen in place, his legs wobbling a little as he stood in his hunched-over position, staring blankly at the door. But then, Emma heard him sniff, and saw him slump to his knees and then onto his hands as he started to cry, looking down at the carpet.
Emma bit her lip. She wanted to help him, but she was afraid, and didn't know what to say. She could barely hear her parents' voices through the window, and then she heard the back door of the house slam shut, and then it was all quiet, save for the sound of Liam's incoherent sobbing.
"W-w-what's ha-ha-happening?" he blubbered, wiping his nose on his bare arm, and Emma shook her head, blinking back tears of her own.
--------------------
Liam shivered as another cold breeze blew in through the open window. Neither he nor his sister were tall enough or strong enough to close it. After they had cried until they were out of tears, Emma had told him she didn't feel well, and lay down on her bed, still in her dress.
At first, Liam had climbed up onto his own bed, trying to lie on his front. But as he heard Emma groan occasionally, he felt an urge to stay closer to her and to protect her, even if he didn't know how. So he had pulled the blankets and pillows off of his bed and piled them up on the floor next to hers, sprawling out on top of them afterwards. It felt surprisingly comfortable, and stopped his wings from getting squished, but it didn't do anything to help him from the cold nighttime air blowing in through the window. He had dozed off at some point, and didn't know what time it was, but he was ravenously hungry, and thirsty as well.
As he heard footsteps approaching slowly, Liam felt conflicting emotions; part of him wanted to hide, to pull the blankets over his head, to keep still and quiet. But another part of him wanted to protect his sister, and to stay up to whatever was coming. The indecision made him simply stay exactly where he was, staring up at the door with apprehension. Even though the lights were off, he could still see it fairly well, and he fixed his attention on the door handle.
The footsteps stopped outside of their door, but it was another few moments before there was a gentle knock. "Liam? Emma?" his mother's voice came, calm and gentle once more. Liam relaxed a little, no longer feeling so tense.
"Mom?" he replied.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly, turning the handle and opening the door just a crack so she would be heard better. "You two must be starving. What do you want for dinner?"
"Chicken nuggets!" Liam said excitedly, his stomach rumbling just at the thought. Without thinking, he rose up onto all fours, standing on just his toes with his hands on the pile of bedding.
"Your mom could only find one bag," Liam's father said, and he felt a little happier knowing that dad was there too. "But I think you deserve a treat. You'd better eat your veggies too, though. I don't want any peas left on your plate at the end. Promise?"
"I promise!" Liam answered, bouncing a little on his hands and feet.
The door swung open a bit further, letting in light from the hallway. Liam blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, smiling at the happy faces of his parents.
But their smiles disappeared almost immediately when they saw him. His mother let out a shocked gasp, and his father stared at him in surprise. Liam froze again, feeling like he had done something wrong, but he didn't know what. Was he going to be punished?
"His eyes... they're like a cat's!" his father said as he stared at Liam. But then his gaze traveled up to Emma, who was still lying on the bed. "Emma?" he called out to her, but she didn't respond with anything more than a grumble.
Liam clutched at handfuls of the bedclothes. He didn't want them to leave him again. "Please," he begged, his voice cracking a bit, "I'm so hungry. And, and, and, I'm thirsty." His words grew less coherent as he became more desperate and afraid. "And Em. Please. Water. Need water. For her. For Em. Thirsty! Please, water!"
Emma groaned a little as the noise finally woke her up, whimpering from discomfort. Out of habit, she tried to rub her eyes, but quickly pulled her hands away when the motion brushed her scales the wrong way uncomfortably. Liam turned and looked up at her, and quickly saw what was troubling her: the back of her dress was being pushed out by something underneath. He thought it might be wings like his, but at the bottom of the back of her neck, he could just about see a fin there that looked kind of like the ones he had seen on the backs of some dinosaurs in his picture books. But the dress was folding it against her, trapping it under the fabric. He imagined that it felt like his wings had felt when they had been pinned by his clothes too, but probably worse, since the fin was bigger.
His attention was torn away from her as the light disappeared and the door closed sharply. "Mom!" he called out hoarsely, "Dad! Please! We're hungry!"
His protests were in vain, and he felt tears welling up in his eyes again as he collapsed onto the pile of bedding. He closed his eyes tightly, trembling against the blankets, simultaneously angry and afraid.
"Liam," he heard Emma call out meekly from behind him after a short time.
Raising his head, he turned around, lifting up the front half of his body to rest his hands on the edge of the mattress so he could peer over it at her. "Em?" he asked in response. She was lying on her front with her face buried in the pillows.
"It, it hurts," she moaned to him, trying to reach behind herself to grab at her back. Reaching out, he tried to tug at the dress, but he succeeded only in making Emma cry out in pain, and quickly let go. If only he had claws like she did...
Heavy footsteps coming up the stairs alerted him to danger. Danger? Yes; he didn't know why, but he felt like he was in danger, a shiver running down his spine as he felt on edge. Keeping his hands on the bed, he twisted his upper body to look behind him at the door.
The handle turned, and the door opened, and he saw his mother's silhouette in the doorway. But she was holding something, something long and narrow, something that she lifted up and held in both hands, pointed towards him.
As his eyes adjusted to the light coming in from the hallway, he saw what it was: his father's hunting shotgun.
Fear and confusion gripped him; what was happening? His father had shown it to him once, and told him what it was, but his father had also told him never to touch it – in a very stern tone he almost never used with Liam – because he would hurt himself if he did. So what was she doing? Why did she have it? Was she going to hurt herself?
"Mom?" he asked, trembling in fear.
He heard more heavy footsteps coming up the stairs down the hall. "Gloria! Stop!" he heard his father calling out, but his mother didn't acknowledge him, resting her finger on the trigger.
"I'm so sorry," she said in a choking voice, and Liam could barely see the hallway light reflecting in the tears streaming down her face. "Please forgive me."
He heard rustling from behind him as Emma stirred, unaware of what was happening. "Mom?" she called out. "Mom, please help. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts all over. Make it stop!"
Liam couldn't understand what was going on, but his stomach still ached. "I'm so hungry," he told her again. "My stomach hurts. Mom, please..."
As his father ran down the hallway towards them, Gloria closed her eyes, but then fell to her knees instead, dropping the shotgun onto the carpet. Daniel arrived a moment later, snatching it off the ground, turning it over to unload the shells from the magazine tube, pocketing each one with a quick hand movement.
"God have mercy on us," Gloria whispered, burying her face in her hands.
Setting down the empty gun, Daniel put a hand on Gloria's shoulder, kneeling down and whispering something to her that Liam couldn't hear. Liam tried not to interrupt, but his stomach growled at him angrily, and he spoke up.
"Dad, please, I'm hungry," he begged once more.
His father stood up slowly, helping his mother to her feet. "Don't worry, Liam," he responded solemnly, "I'll make dinner for us. Tell you what, I'll barbecue you something. Even better than chicken nuggets. You like that honey barbecue sauce, don't you?"
Liam began to grow excited again. "What're you gonna make?"
"I'll see what we've got in the freezer," he said, reaching out for the door. "Sit tight. I'll be back as soon as the food's ready."
He closed the door gently, returning the room to darkness. Liam began to get worried again until he heard his father in the back yard, pulling the cover off the barbecue and opening the lid. He wanted to get up and watch, but he felt weak and didn't want to move more than necessary, so he lay back down on the bedding pile. The sound of sizzling meat and the smell that wafted in through the window only made him hungrier, though, and he groaned at the pain in his belly from going without enough food.
It felt like an eternity before the sizzling stopped, and he heard his father go back inside, shortly thereafter coming upstairs. The second set of footsteps indicated his mother was with him, too, and Liam began to feel afraid again, hunkering down into the pile of bedclothes, worried about what she might do.
But when the door creaked open again, his parents were both there holding plates of food. "Here you go, kiddo," Daniel told him, setting a plate of barbecued pork and steamed vegetables on the floor next to the bedding. It was already cut up into pieces, and there was only a fork resting on the side of the plate. "I got this for you too," Liam's father added as he placed a bowl of water next to it, "since it seems like you're stuck on all fours now. This'll probably be easier for you to drink from."
Daniel turned around, taking another plate and a sippy cup from Gloria, who seemed reluctant to set foot inside the room. "Hey, Emma," he said as he stepped over, careful not to disturb Liam, who had wasted no time in starting to shovel food into his mouth. "Here, I've got something for you."
Emma groaned quietly as she turned her head, rolling onto her side, watching her father set the plate and cup down next to her. "Eat up before it gets cold," Daniel told her, standing straight. "Speaking of cold..."
Glancing around, he quickly noticed the open window and went over to it, pushing it shut. "Sorry about that, kids. You must have been freezing your butts off." Without waiting for a reply, he went over to the door and stepped out into the hall, leaving it open as he walked off with Gloria.
Liam was far too engrossed in his meal to pay them any attention, however, gleeful to at last sate his hunger. He was so hungry he didn't hesitate at all to eat the peas and carrots on the side of the plate after finishing all the meat, even picking up some of the ones he accidentally pushed off the plate edge with his fingers to eat them too. Then, he sat down with his feet on the floor to free up his hands so he could pick up the bowl, raising it to his parched lips, guzzling down the entire bowl of water with gulp after gulp until it was completely drained.
His fingers were still a bit messy, and he wiped them on his overalls before remembering that his mother didn't like when he did that. But it was too late, so he turned around to see how Emma was doing instead.
Most of her food was still on the plate, and he could see why; she was struggling to hold the fork. While she had gotten better at grasping things since their first day off from school, she was having trouble in the dark room, especially while finding it hard to focus from how hungry she was.
Liam frowned, then climbed up onto the bed next to her, careful to not knock over her cup. Sitting down, he held out his hand to her. "Give it here," he told her, pointing to the fork that she was holding awkwardly in a fist.
"No! It's my dinner!" she told him, protectively curling one scaly arm around the plate, pulling it closer to herself.
Liam shook his head to try and indicate he wasn't trying to steal her food. "I want to help," he told her simply. She grumbled quietly, but then held out the fork to him, and he took it from her, holding it in his fingers. Spearing a piece of the meat, he held it up to her face so she could eat it; once he had established what he was trying to do, he was able to continue feeding her until the entire plate was empty. Just like him, she was far too hungry to complain about the vegetables. Tiredly, she pointed to her sippy cup, and he picked it up for her wordlessly, holding it to her mouth for her to drink from.
Once she was done, however, she simply lay back down, groaning. The fin under her dress was still hurting, no doubt, but Liam didn't know what he could do about it. He'd have to ask his parents for help, but the idea made him hesitate. Maybe if he could just talk to his father alone...
Liam looked towards the door, climbing down from the bed. He walked on all fours despite the awkward position it put him in with his hips raised, making his way down the hall until he came to the railing at the top of the stairs. He winced but tried to keep quiet; without a shirt on, the straps of his overalls dug into his shoulders directly, and rubbed them raw when he moved.
"...saw the checkpoint myself when I went out to the liquor store after our argument, lots of empty shelves but at least they still had something," he heard Daniel say from downstairs. He heard the sound of a can opening – probably a beer, since his dad didn't drink soda. "It's military, all right. I thought we could try and leave, but that doesn't look like an option."
"Then what are we going to do?" Gloria asked, her voice a mixture of panic and fatigue. "We can't go on like this."
There was a moment of quiet, and Liam sat down on his haunches by the railing. "I could lead them out into the woods," Daniel suggested. "I'm not one of those hardcore survivalists, but I could manage long enough to get us somewhere else."
Liam trembled a little. Was his father going to try and abandon him? He'd heard fairy tales about bad kids being left in the woods, but he wasn't bad, was he? He'd tried to be good. He didn't want to be alone.
"And just... leave them there?" Gloria asked uncertainly. Liam lay down on his front, trying hard not to cry lest he be heard.
"What? No, I'd stay with them. But we've seen the pictures on TV. We know what they're turning into. They can't stay inside forever. I'll tell them we're going on a camping trip – they love camping trips. It'll help keep their mind off it, and maybe they won't think to ask for a while when we're heading back."
Gloria gave a long sigh. "I don't know. They... what's going on? I swear... I swear I could still see her. Even in the eyes of that... that creature, I still saw my daughter. The way she looked at me... I thought they were just monsters, but... they're still... they're still..."
Her voice trailed off, and there was a moment of silence. Liam was still upset, but hearing that his father didn't intend to abandon them had reassured him a little. Eventually, his mother spoke again. "I still haven't been able to get through to my family."
"I think most wireless stuff is out," Daniel told her. "My radio hasn't been working since that broadcast. I'm glad I still have all those CDs lying around so I have something to listen to on the way to work."
"We need help," she insisted. "But who else is there?"
There was another pause. "Actually," Liam's father said after a moment, "I think I know who we can ask. The pastor at the church on Elm Street conducts evening services. The lights have always been on when I go out for a walk."
"You're right," Gloria said, almost too quietly for Liam to be able to hear it. " 'If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you,' " she quoted, her voice sounding a little steadier.
"Let me get my jacket, and we can go," Daniel said. "The kids will be fine alone for a little bit. I'll go get their plates when we come back."
Liam got into a hunched position as he listened to his parents moving, ready to leave quickly if it looked like they might come upstairs and find him, but he was also worried that they'd hear him if he went back to his room. Fortunately, they didn't; after some rustling of coats, Liam heard the front door open and close, the lock clicking after a moment as his parents left.
--------------------
Sitting on his haunches, Liam glanced out the window. It was a hot day out but with a nice cool breeze that he could feel blowing in past the bug screen. He wanted to be outside, but...
He looked over towards the door; it was open, as was the new normal. His parents had made sure to leave it open ever since that night. But going out was scary, so he stayed in his room except to make trips to the bathroom, unless his parents asked him to come down. And they rarely did, now. His mother wasn't trying to teach them anymore, and instead seemed to be avoiding interacting with them as much as she could.
Each day, his wings were a little bigger than the previous day, and continued to prevent him from wearing any kind of shirt. With a bit of experimentation, he'd learned how to stretch them out like his arms, and to fold and unfold them as best he could. Sometimes he tried to touch them; the outer wing bits were firm, but the fleshy parts in the middle between the 'fingers' were a lot smoother to the touch and didn't have any scales on them.
Before long, it was impossible for him to walk on two legs at all, even if he wanted to – even in the last few days when he still could, it had been more comfortable to go on all fours. But at least his arms had gotten longer too, so he no longer had his upper half hunched down all the time. More patches of scales were growing on his body, around his waist, down his back, on parts of his legs, and just underneath his eyes, too. When he'd reached up and felt the top of his head that morning, he'd noticed that what little hair he'd had was gone entirely, leaving him bald.
He didn't know what it all meant. Something was happening to him, he knew that much. And whatever it was, it was making his mother upset. It had come to a head yesterday morning when, despite her best efforts, she could no longer get his overalls or any other pants onto him. Part of that was due to his legs having shifted further apart from each other, but they had also gotten thicker and stronger, in addition to always being bent like a dog's legs. So she had tried to put a skirt on him, but he told her that he didn't want to wear girls' clothes. His mother had gotten angry, and told him he had to wear something, and had yelled at him until he gave in. He'd stayed in his room that day until his father had come home, feeling humiliated. Although Liam had initially been happy when his father had taken the skirt off him, the argument that broke out between his parents shortly afterward made him afraid again. He couldn't hear all the words, but he'd known they were arguing about him.
Then, today, when she came into the room to wake them up, she took a look at him, sighed, said something about him being "just like some kind of lizard down there, now", and ignored him to attempt to dress Emma. She wasn't faring a lot better – the day after her fin had come in, she had gotten little sleep, and had been grumpy as a result. Her mother had had to cut her dress off of her, after a lot of crying and yelling from the unsuccessful attempts to take it off normally. For a few days, Emma had worn her mother's shirts, which were way too large for her – they offered enough space for her fin even though it gave her a weird hump-backed look, but they reached down past her waist, and Gloria had had to roll the sleeves up and secure them with safety pins so that Emma could use her hands. She'd been upset about it too, saying it looked weird, but Gloria had insisted she wear something just like she had with Liam.
But today, it was no longer practical. Now that Emma had wings too, even if they were smaller than Liam's, they were too big for the shirt. After some frustration and failed attempts to fit a shirt over Emma's back, Gloria gave up, leaving the room without a word, taking her shirts with her.
Liam could see his sister now as she sat on the bed reading. Her whole upper chest was covered in black scales, the same color as the ones on her lower arms. They had crept higher since yesterday; and were just past her elbows. She was still wearing a skirt, but Liam didn't know how long for – his mother had seemed quite frustrated that none of Emma's skirts were long enough to cover up her tail, which kept getting longer with each passing day. It was getting thicker and thicker at the bottom too, with more muscles forming around where it joined to her lower back, the whole tail so wide at the base that it was almost as broad as her hips.
He had a tail too, now, vastly shorter than Emma's, but his mother hadn't noticed yet from how intently she had been ignoring him that morning. He had felt the extra weight behind him when he had woken up, and Emma had pointed it out while he was lying halfway curled up on the bedding, but he hadn't mentioned it to his mother out of fear for how she might react.
Every time he heard his mother's frustrated voice, he felt an urge to hide, afraid that she would start yelling at one or both of them again. And she was the only other one in the house right now. If he left the room, he might bump into her, and then...
Liam forced himself to look back down at the Lego set he had been playing with. He wasn't sure he had enough pieces left for the rocket ship, especially the sloped ones. He'd already made everything in the booklet that had come with the set, and he was simply passing the time by assembling whatever came to mind, even though it rarely came out the way he'd planned it to.
Emma, meanwhile, had also been very quiet. Sometimes she read her books, and she had coloring books too that she drew in, but whenever Liam looked she seemed to be drawing a lot more slowly than normal, as if she were sad. She had a few dolls as well, but she didn't play with those much; the claws on her fingers kept nicking and tearing the dolls' clothes and damaging the dolls themselves, and she had gotten upset when she had noticed.
Both he and Emma suddenly looked up towards the door as they heard the front door of the house open and close. It was barely noon – was their mother heading out somewhere? But the answer came a moment later when they heard their father's voice. "Liam? Emma? Can you come downstairs, please?" he shouted up from the base of the stairs.
Liam hesitated, looking over at Emma. He saw her bite her lip, looking uncertain, rubbing one hand over the rough patch of hide on the bridge of her nose that had not yet fully turned into scales. Neither of them got up; they were afraid. And when they heard their mother's voice talking to their father, too indistinct to make out the words, Liam hunched down a little more, feeling an urge to hide under the bed where he would be out of sight.
"Please come down," Daniel repeated after some time. "You're not in trouble, I promise. I have something to tell everyone. I have some gifts for you."
Hearing that, Emma hopped off the bed, her bare legs bending as she landed on her sock-covered feet. The only scaling on her legs so far was on her right knee, but they had started to bend a little like Liam's, and she was hunched over as she walked to the door, to make up for the weight of her wings and limp tail. Liam rose his hindquarters to walk on all fours after her, feeling the carpet under his hands as they both made their way to the stairs.
Emma carefully held the handrail as she walked down, but Liam took it even more slowly. He had already had a couple of accidents on the stairs trying to go down them as a quadruped, but other than bending his wings painfully on occasion, he fortunately hadn't been seriously hurt.
At the foot of the stairs, their father was waiting, with a couple of plastic bags on the floor next to him. Liam didn't recognize the logo on the side of them, though, so they weren't from the grocery store or the toy store. His mother stood nearby, and he saw her glance at them and then look away as if disgusted; he felt a pang of sadness, but seeing his father there and watching them both, he felt a little better about it.
"What's this about?" Gloria demanded as Liam sat on his haunches. Close by, Emma hung onto the bottom of the staircase railing, cautiously peeking around one of the vertical wooden poles as though afraid. Both of them stayed silent to listen to their parents. "Why are you home so early? Did something happen at work?"
"Kind of, yeah," Daniel answered evasively, looking back at the kids. "I've got some good news for you two. I'm going to be around a lot more often from now on! Liam, you know how I kept saying I wanted to teach you more about the woods? And Emma, how I wanted to show you how to work in the garden? Well, I've got all the time in the world now!"
"Wow, really?" Liam asked, suddenly excited. Emma didn't say anything as she kept her hands still, but her tail swished back and forth behind her in a small arc.
"What's this about, Daniel?" Gloria persisted, a lot less pleased by the news than Liam would have hoped.
Liam's father let out a sigh as he turned to face his wife. "The plant's shut down," he said grimly, the excitement in his voice from moments ago having disappeared. "Looters came in and sacked it over the weekend. They made off with all the computers. We're missing too much equipment to be able to operate."
"So they fired you?"
"Not... technically," Daniel explained, "I'm furloughed, so if they get things back up and running, they'll hire me again. But I have nothing to do, so I'm not being paid, and nobody has any idea how long it will take to get things fixed up. I got my last paycheck from them today, and got some stuff on the way home with it."
Gloria raised her hands to her head, holding her fingers against her temples. After taking a deep breath and exhaling, she asked, "What kind of things did you get?"
"That's where these two come in," Daniel said, reaching over and rubbing Emma's head – suddenly pulling it away and shaking his hand. "Ouch! You got horns hiding under your hair there, kiddo?"
Emma stared up blankly for a moment, then reached up with her right hand and felt around on her head. There were no horns, but Liam could see that the fin along her spine had grown further up the back of her head, and the crest at the very top of it was rough, stiff, and slightly sharp. Lowering her hand, she hunkered down a little more behind the poles on the staircase, hoping her parents hadn't seen what she had felt.
"I got us a bunch of seeds and other gardening supplies. We'll have to start growing some of our own food. Plenty of empty land out here at least, and I don't think anyone's going to come by and bother us for using the land beyond the fence. Stocked up on fishing gear too, and hunting ammo – I bought shells for everything from birds to deer, and one box of double-ought for self defense if things come to that."
"What's dub-ott?" Liam asked, but Gloria seemed horrified by that last comment and talked over her son.
"You what?" was all she could manage to say, but the expression on her face made it clear she was upset.
Daniel held up one hand and backed away slightly. "Look, things are getting dangerous out there, especially somewhere this remote. They only let me buy one box for that exact reason. I hope to God I don't have to use it, but it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."
"I can't believe you would even consider it!"
"I'm just looking out for us, okay? We're on our own now, nobody's going to come out here and help us. We've got to protect ourselves, and feed ourselves. I can't say I ever expected that I'd have to live off the land as anything more than a hobby, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't daydreamed of this at work more than a few times."
"How can you be so calm?" Gloria snapped at him, making the children shy away from her. "We have almost no money! The government is barely functioning, they'll never get us unemployment benefits in time!"
Daniel held up both hands this time, palms out, trying to calm her down. "Honey, that works both ways. I never did make that payment to Mastercard – we've got enough to tide us over for a bit, and I don't think they'll be sending debt collectors out in any real hurry with everything that's going on. I think I even saw something big and black up in the sky while I was driving to the stores; if there are other dragons in the air, that's going to get people's attention more than some missed payments. Getting mad about it won't help, all we can do is make the best with what we've got."
But Gloria wasn't convinced, and she leaned her back against the wall, putting her head in her hands again. Daniel gave her an uncertain look, then glanced over at Liam and Emma. "Why don't you two go play outside for a bit?" he suggested, "Get some fresh air. I've got to bring in the stuff from the truck, but when I'm done, I'll come get you, and we can go fishing. Maybe we can find some wild berries out there too."
With furtive glances at their mother, Liam and Emma went past their parents and out into the back yard. It didn't take long for Liam's hands to get dirty as they went across the grass yard, over to where their toys were. He had to admit, it did feel nice to be outside under the sun, feeling the warmth on the scaled parts of his body, and he stretched out his wings without even realizing it. The sunlight on the membranes of his wings felt particularly nice, and he was more aware of the light, cool breeze against them compared to how it felt on his skin.
He raised his head a bit and looked up at the sky, flexing his wings; maybe he'd be able to fly some day? The wings were far too small right now, but they were bigger every day. He could see a lot further, too, his eyes darting between a V-shaped flock of birds near the edge of his vision, a lone bird soaring through the air far away from them, and the very distant shape of a huge... wait, that wasn't a bird.
"Look, look!" he told Emma, pointing excitedly up at the sky towards the big creature.
Emma stared upward, trying to follow his finger to where he was pointing. It took a few moments, but she was able to see it too with a little squinting. "It's a dragon!" she gasped excitedly.
"A dragon, a dragon!" Liam echoed. It was so distant, and mostly seemed to be keeping its wings still, only beating them every once in a while. He watched it with Emma briefly, but eventually he got bored when it didn't do anything interesting, and turned his attention back to the yard.
"Let's play something," he said to Emma. He could hear his parents talking from inside the house, but he didn't want to think about it. "Where's my ball?"
"Over there," Emma told him quietly, pointing with a clawed finger. He turned to look where she was pointing, and saw his rubber ball resting against the roots of the big apple tree in the back yard. He ran over to it, but realized it would be hard to use his rear feet to kick it, so he simply reached out and swiped at it with his hand to bat it away from the tree in the vague direction of his sister.
She stepped to the side and stopped it with one of her feet, the socks already stained by grass and dirt. Liam suspected she would get yelled at for it later, but he didn't want to think about that now, either. She kicked the ball back towards him, and it rolled across the grass slowly enough for him to bound over and push it back towards her.
For a short time, he felt a lot of his worry and fear disappear as he played with his sister. It was hard for him in his new stance, but he was getting more and more used to it. And his reflexes seemed to be improving too; both he and Emma were able to react much faster than they had been the last time they had played like this. When Emma kicked the ball and it bounced up, Liam reared back on his hind legs in reflex, and managed to stop the ball with one of his wings, batting it back down to the ground. And when the ball went through Emma's legs once, she managed to hit it with the end of her tail, stopping it from rolling away from her.
At some point, his parents had come out into the back yard and were watching them – he had been having so much fun that he hadn't noticed until he went chasing after the ball when it got close to the back door. Even his father was giving him a strange look, and as he took the ball and pushed it back towards Emma, he could hear his mother muttering quietly; "He barely even looks human any more..."
His own stubby tail hung limply behind him as he returned to his sister. He normally hadn't been able to hear the things his parents had said quietly. He wasn't sure he liked that he was able to now. Had they always said those kinds of things about him? He stood there with one hand on the ball for a few moments, lost in his emotions.
"Hey, give it here!" Emma told him, coming over and pushing the ball out from under his hand with one foot. She playfully kept it away from him as he tried to take it back, both of them soon giggling as they played a different kind of game, each trying to take the ball and stop the other from getting it.
"It's mine, it's mine!" Emma taunted when she got the ball away from him again, turning away.
Liam tried to dart around her, but misjudged how much room he needed. His shoulder slammed into the back of her leg, and with a yelp, she fell over onto the grass. She started to cry and Liam stopped dead, letting the ball roll away as he turned to her.
"That hurts!" she cried, rolling onto her side; she had landed on her tail and bent it uncomfortably. Her fin had gotten folded a little too, and she tried vainly to reach behind her and rub at it.
Liam lowered his head. "I'm sorry, Em! I didn't mean to!" he felt tears welling up in his own eyes too; he hadn't wanted to hurt his sister, and he was sad that she was in pain. He tried to hold back, but he couldn't stop himself from crying alongside her. But it was a strange noise that came from him – an odd, breathy whistling noise that rose and fell as he sucked in air and let it out in uncontrollable sobbing gasps.
Their parents were both over in moments. "Are you okay?" Gloria asked Emma as she helped her daughter to her feet. "I have some ice packs in the freezer."
"I'm sorry!" Liam blubbered as his father put a hand on his shoulder. "I didn't mean to!"
"I know, kiddo, I know," his father told him. "Your mom will take care of it. Accidents happen, I know it wasn't your-"
The rest of his sentence was lost to the booming sound that engulfed the yard, rustling the trees and rattling the window panes of the house. Liam didn't know where it was coming from, but it had sounded a lot like the roar animals made on the nature TV shows he sometimes got to see. Only it was much, much louder.
"Get inside," Gloria said in a hushed voice, ushering the sobbing Emma into the house. Daniel awkwardly grabbed Liam under his arms and hauled him up with some difficulty, grunting with effort – he had only gotten heavier as his transformation had progressed. Holding him like a cat as he quickly ran back to the house and through the rear door of the kitchen, Daniel set Liam down on the floor and shut the back door behind him. Liam expected his father to make some kind of comment on his weight – the fact that he didn't told him things were serious.
"Kids," he said quietly, kneeling down near them, "listen to me. This is important. You need to be quiet. No matter what happens, I need you both to be very, very quiet."
They both stared at him, shaking with fear, and he put a hand on each of their shoulders. "Just like that, okay? If you can stay quiet, once this is over, I'll get you some ice cream."
"Ice-!" Emma began out of reflex, but Daniel quickly put a finger on her lips and shushed her, and she went quiet.
He ushered them both into the living room where the curtains were already drawn, forcibly grabbing Liam's wings when they caught on the door frame and folding them for him. He motioned for them to hide behind the sofa, and leaned in close. "Stay right here, and stay perfectly still and quiet," he told them both in a low voice before leaving the room.
Another roar shook the house. It was even louder than last time; the living room's bay windows were open at the top, and Liam could hear what was going on outside. He could still hear the trees rustling, but all of the birds had stopped making their noises. Liam was terrified; he had no idea what was happening. Was some big animal coming for them? They had always been in cages when his parents had taken him to the zoo – did one escape?
His mother joined them shortly, but she silently hunched down behind the sofa with them, resting a hand on the back of each of their shoulders. Even though he was afraid, Liam was in some small way grateful that whatever was going on had made his mother stop avoiding him, and he felt calmed by her touch on the bare skin of his shoulders.
Something hit the ground outside, making the floor shake with a loud rumble, rattling objects in the display cabinet in the corner. His curiosity getting the better of him, Liam peeked around the edge of the sofa to try and look out the windows. With the curtains drawn, he could only just barely see through a tiny gap at the edge of the window, but there was something outside. Something huge, and black. It was at the edge of their front yard, on the other side of the two vehicles parked in front of the house, and the trees and hedge row next to the street.
And then, whatever it was, it spoke. Its voice was a deep, gravelly baritone, unlike any voice Liam had heard at school or on TV, and yet something about the unusual inflection of the English words that came felt familiar to him.
"Release the children!" the voice boomed. "I will not let them be harmed!"
The black thing outside moved. Liam heard rustling and wood crunching as it got closer to the house. From somewhere behind him, he heard his father doing something, repeating a short word he didn't know over and over. Liam hunched down further, pressing his belly against the carpet, shaking with fear. He was too terrified to even think about making a sound.
The creature outside got closer. There was a tremendous racket of screeching metal and shattering glass from the driveway, followed by an even greater noise a moment later with more breaking wood mixed in. Liam heard footsteps from behind him, and looked back to see his father in the doorway.
Daniel was holding his shotgun, and was staring at the three of them as they hid behind the sofa. His face wore an expression of mixed fear and determination that Liam had never seen on his father, who hesitated only briefly in the doorway. "I love you all," he said simply, before running for the front door.
Gloria made a choked noise, but let go of Liam to put her hand over her mouth to stifle it. Liam heard the door open, banging against the wall like his parents had told him dozens of times not to do.
"Get away, or I'll shoot!" Liam heard his father shout.
The deep voice from outside did not seem terribly threatened. "Give. Me. The. Children."
Liam winced and lowered his head as far as he could when he heard the shotgun go off, once, and then twice. Even with it being outside, the sudden loud noise still hurt his sensitive ears. Was his father hurt?
A loud growl tore through the air. There was a clatter of something against the side of the house, and Liam heard his father scream in agony.
Suddenly, the fear that had gripped him moments ago vanished, and he was standing up before he knew it. "Dad!" he cried out without thinking, running for the front door, more terrified than he had ever been, but no longer for himself.
"Stop!" he heard his mother cry from behind him, as Emma's footsteps followed after, but he was too quick, and was out the door in a flash.
The yard was in ruins. The hedge had been trampled in one section, and the trees had been knocked over. His mother's car was crushed, and his father's truck had been flung aside, flattening a section of the wooden fence that bordered their property. In the space where the truck had been was an enormous creature, as tall as the house itself, so long that its tail stretched out into the road. It was, unquestionably, a dragon, just like the one he had seen in the sky earlier, and sometimes on the TV, except that this one was completely dragon from head to tail-tip, with not a single patch of visible skin.
It had black scales on its whole body, much like the coloration of the scales he and Emma had. A fin like the one that had grown on Emma's back ran all the way down its neck, but it had a drastically different shape. Its wings were fully grown, unfolded to reach a width even greater than the length of the dragon itself, the fleshy bits on the wings a deep, dark red in color. Each of its limbs ended in feet with big, ebony claws, and its right foreleg was still raised, preparing for another strike.
Liam's father lay on the ground next to the house, clutching his right arm with his left hand, his face contorted into an expression of extreme pain. His shotgun lay on the ground next to the house, bearing deep scratches on one side. The sleeve of his left arm had been cut in several places, and was bleeding profusely from the wounds underneath.
"Dad!" Liam cried out again, running over to his father, turning his back to the dragon. His palms were scorched by the tarmac driveway that had been in the sun for hours, but he was too worried about his father.
Emma ran out after him, almost stumbling from being unused to the weight of her wings and tail. "Dad!" she called out as well, seeing his injury.
"No..." Daniel forced out through gritted teeth, "Go inside...!"
Liam turned sharply and faced the dragon. "Stop it!" he begged, staring up at the massive creature. "Don't hurt my dad!"
Emma turned around as well, pointing at the dragon accusingly. "You big meanie!" she shouted at it, "Why did you hurt our dad?"
"Come back!" Gloria begged from just inside the doorway, "Come back inside, now! Liam, Emma, please!"
The dragon stared down at them with a steady gaze. Much like Liam's, the pupils were slitted, but the irises were a bright green color that Liam had never seen in someone's eyes before. Liam stared up at it, and watched as it slowly lowered its raised leg down to the ground.
"Are you two hurt?" it asked them.
Liam tilted his head to one side in confusion. "No," he answered honestly, not sure why he was being asked.
"My leg hurts," Emma grumbled, pointing down at her right leg, then pointing at Liam. "He hit it."
"I didn't mean to!" Liam protested.
The dragon backed away a step, its tail extending further out into the road behind him. "I understand," it said after a moment, its chest expanding as it took in a deep breath, then contracting as it breathed out. "I... I heard dragon children crying. As soon as I heard it, I couldn't stop myself. I had to come find them and help. Save them. Protect them."
The dragon looked down at Daniel, and then at its own right foreleg. "I've done something terrible. Wait here. I will get something to help."
Liam watched in awe as the dragon crouched down, spreading and lifting its wings – then launched itself up into the air with a mighty jump and a downward flap that sent air rushing past him, almost knocking him over. He heard the beating of the dragon's huge, leathery wings steadily growing distant as the dragon flew off, and almost as suddenly as it had arrived, it was gone.
Gloria ran out from the house and knelt down by her husband. "Oh God," she said in a panicked voice, "there's so much blood. I don't- I don't have any bandages that big. What do I do?"
"My other arm got it worse," Daniel said with a heavy grimace. "I held the gun up to block his claws... damn near tore my arm off. I think... something's broken."
Liam watched helplessly as his mother grew more panicky. "What do I do?" she repeated, "That... that monster destroyed our cars! The hospital is so far away! Oh God. Oh God. I don't know what to do."
"Get some of Liam's shirts," Daniel told her between pained, panting breaths, his eyes shut tight. "Rip them up. Use them as bandages. Not like he needs them any more. And get antiseptic."
Gloria ran into the house, leaving her husband alone with the kids. Liam approached cautiously, too stunned by what had happened to cry. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked.
Daniel's head sagged back and rested on the ground. "I hope so," he forced out, "I can't... leave you two alone."
Liam sat down, at a loss for what to do, and he saw Emma fidgeting with the hem of her skirt, her claws snarling some threads in the fabric as she did. For a short time all he could hear was his father's ragged breaths and pained grunts, but within a couple of minutes he heard the beating of the leathery wings again, getting closer and louder this time.
Casting his gaze upward and looking around, Liam saw the dragon returning. It had something big and metal grasped in the talons of its hind feet, with its front feet reaching back to clutch it too, but he couldn't make out what it was. The dragon flew closer, and Liam hunched down, feeling afraid but not knowing if he should leave – it had told him to stay there, after all, and he didn't want to make the dragon mad at him.
It flew past at a very low altitude, and there was a horrendous racket as it released what it was carrying. Liam could now identify the object as an ambulance – heavily scratched and with the sides partly caved in – as it landed on its tires, bouncing, rolling over once, and coming to a stop a short distance forward from where it had been dropped. The dragon landed some distance down the road, then turned around and walked back with heavy footsteps that Liam could easily hear.
Gloria returned to the front door with the remnants of some of Liam's shirts in her grasp, but seeing that the dragon had returned, she stayed inside, peeking around the corner of the front door. The dragon stopped outside of their front yard, sitting on the road, and lowered its head as much as it could.
"I saw this ambulance earlier when I was flying over," it explained. "It was already abandoned. Take whatever you need from it if it will help him; people have been fleeing from many places, and law and order is hard to come by." Looking downward in a gesture of shame and regret, it continued, "I am deeply sorry for what I have done. I am still adjusting to this new body, and the new instincts that came with it."
"'Sorry' isn't going to cut it," Daniel fired back, opening his eyes enough to glare at the dragon.
It cast its gaze over the ruins of the yard and the wrecks of their family's vehicles. "I know. I will stay here and help you, to atone for my sin. And to protect the children."
Liam looked up at the dragon. The way it had its head lowered reminded him vaguely of a dog, and he felt sorry for it. But there was more to it than that. There was some strange smell in the air when the dragon was nearby, but he hadn't figured out that it was coming from the dragon until it had returned. Whatever the smell was, it... told him something. He felt like he could understand that the dragon really, truly felt sorry. That it felt... regret, and sadness. Even though it had hurt his father, he couldn't be mad at it. It reminded him of how he had hurt Emma by mistake, and felt bad about it in the same way.
"You're gonna help us?" he asked, trying to understand what was happening. He had only just met this dragon, but he felt somehow... like a friend. Or a relative, maybe? Liam couldn't quite express it.
"As much as I can," the dragon replied. "I must right the wrong I have committed."
"What's your name?" Liam heard Emma ask curiously. She stepped a little closer to the dragon and seemed to sniff at the air; she must have been able to smell the same things that Liam could.
"Michael," the dragon answered simply, trying to sound friendly. "And yours?"
"I'm Emma," she told him, turning and pointing to her brother. "And that's Liam."
Gloria finally stepped out from the house hesitantly. "You used to be human?" she inquired in a shaky voice.
The dragon nodded to her. "Yes. I will tell you everything I can, but let us first tend to your husband's injuries. I'm a doctor of law, not medicine, but I know some basic first aid. I do not want an innocent man's death on my conscience."
--------------------
At first, Emma was excited to have a new person around, especially someone who had gone through the same thing she was going through. Michael was far too large to fit inside the house, or even the yard, but his presence gave her the courage to slip out from her room and go out to see him. Her parents were still very wary of him; she'd heard her father muttering something about "can't exactly argue with something that didn't even flinch from being shot." Her father spent a lot of time resting, lying down on the sofa in the living room, one arm bandaged and the other arm held in a splint Gloria assembled from the supplies in the ambulance. She'd go to see him now and then, and he'd give her a forced smile and a pained "Hey, kiddo," but he didn't rub her head any more on account of his injuries.
And she was still very afraid of her mother. Gloria must have been unaware of how much Emma's hearing had improved, as her ears gradually changed into large fins growing from the sides of her head just like Liam's. She'd seen that Michael could move his fins around, but try as she might she couldn't do the same with them in their partly-grown state. They made it uncomfortable to lie on her side, so she had taken to sleeping on her front; she'd been unable to lie on her back ever since the fin had started growing. But they also meant she could hear things she couldn't before – including things she wasn't intended to hear. Her mother had a lot of mean things to say about Michael, calling him a 'beast' and a 'monster'. Emma was more and more afraid that soon, her mother would say the same things about her.
So instead, she went out to stay with Michael whenever the weather permitted, and when the elder dragon was around. He told her what the various new parts of her were called – the spinal fin on her back, for instance, and the talons on her feet (that were different from the claws on her hands, according to him). She thought that the 'spine fin', as she kept calling it by mistake, had gotten longer – until she realized that her neck was getting longer along with it. Initially she didn't know why she was able to look behind herself far more easily, but as she rubbed at the parts of her neck that were itching and aching, she had discovered her neck was longer than it used to be. The first time she had been able to turn her head enough to look at her fin, she had stared at it for minutes; though its color was the same as Michael's, its shape was drastically different, and she thought that hers looked a lot prettier.
Michael also told her that the weird way their back legs were shaped was called "digitigrade", but she'd stumbled over the word trying to repeat it back to him, so she just called it "dij'ty" instead. And he told her that she'd get bigger too, a lot bigger, maybe even as big as he was some day. Maybe even bigger and stronger than Liam! That got her excited, and she bounded around in a circle, her tail-tip dragging on the grass from how long it had gotten even as she tried to hold it up at the base.
But Michael wasn't always with them. He frequently went hunting, bringing back his kills to drop in the yard. The first time she'd seen one, Emma had cried at the sight of the dead deer, and Michael had comforted and soothed her, explaining that it was important for her to eat meat, especially if she wanted to grow as big as him. Her parents had gone through the grisly process of cutting it up, with her father directing her mother on what to cut and where; Emma had gone inside to her room, not wanting to watch.
Her father had cooked it, too, using his left arm to turn the meat on the barbecue. It had smelled so good through the window as she sat and read, and she had been able to hear her father talking to Michael about it.
"It's going to take a while to do all of these cuts," her father had said. "Do you really need me to cook it for you? Can't you just eat it raw?"
"I CAN eat it raw, yes," Michael had responded, "but I would prefer not to. I haven't had any barbecued meat since my transformation, and after weeks of raw meat I can barely wait to have a cooked meal. Please don't skimp on the sauce, either."
"You can't cook it? Can't you just breathe fire on it?"
"Children of the Egg don't have fire breath. We look a lot like dragons from books and movies, but we're not the same. We don't breathe fire, hoard treasure, or kidnap people. I have no strong desire to live in a cave, either. I did as much research as I could while I still had hands, and my wife helped me after that."
"Your wife? What happened to her?"
Michael had made an odd noise, a slow exhalation through his muzzle that Emma interpreted as a sad sigh. "She's fine, as far as I know. But we agreed it would be best if I left, once it was clear I was about to be too big for the house. I didn't want to attract unwanted attention, so I went out into the countryside where there would be fewer people. I still miss her, of course; how could I not?"
"I see," Daniel had replied simply. "I'm sure she thinks about you just as much. What exactly were you researching?"
"The experiences of other Children. It's quite remarkable. Your son and daughter are changing quite slowly, but other people's transformations have been all across the board. Some have been exceptionally fast, others very slow, and even on a single individual the rate of transformation is not steady. There does not seem to be any particular pattern to the order in which parts transform, nor the speed at which it progresses. Nor is there any clear pattern in who was chosen; there are individuals across the globe, from all walks of life. If there is some logic to it, it is an alien logic, one I cannot comprehend. The broadcast from the aliens gave me almost as many questions as it did answers. Now that I'm like this, I want to answer those other questions. Why me? Why was I chosen? What should I do with this power? Is this part of God's plan? Are the aliens His emissaries, perhaps?"
"He moves in mysterious ways," Emma's father had muttered.
"How are your arms?"
"The cuts are healing. Gloria did a good job stopping them from getting infected. The other one hurts like a bitch." Emma gasped quietly and put her hands to her mouth; her father had said a bad word, but she couldn't exactly go tell anyone about it. "I have no idea how long it will take to heal."
"I am sorry. Please tell me if there is anything I can do to help."
"Just keep the food coming. I don't know how long the electricity will last, but we'll manage. We've got a wood stove, this barbecue, lots of charcoal, and I have a camping stove in the shed too. But I can't go hunting with my injuries. Can't even fish, right now. My top priority is keeping my family fed. Eventually we'll run out of frozen vegetables or the electricity will get shut off, and we'd better have our garden going by then. Gloria doesn't seem to mind going foraging – she's always liked going for walks, so getting some fresh air while looking for mushrooms and berries is helping her relax – but we need all the help we can get."
"You can count on it," Michael had answered. "Especially if you can continue to cook it. It smells delicious." The conversation had ended after that, leaving Emma alone until she was called for dinner.
The following morning after waking up, she realized that her skirt, which had only tenuously been secured to her by the edge of the velcro patch, could no longer fit around her waist and had come off while she was asleep. She tried to stand up straight – or at least, into her normal hunched-over position – and found that she couldn't. Every time she tried, she kept tipping forward back onto the bed. Liam had noticed too, and seemed excited, telling her that she was walking like him now. But after she got frustrated from trying and failing to stand up straight, he offered to help, showing her how to walk on all fours like he had been doing for a while. She was reluctant at first, not wanting to walk around on her hands and get them dirty, but after she eventually gave it a try she found that it felt much more natural to walk around on her scaly hands. It was much more stable, and with a little practice, she found she could move more quickly, too.
Her brother had continued to change, too, as scales crept down his arms, up over his belly, and higher along his neck, which had begun to grow longer. His bald head had the very beginnings of a fin of his own growing on the back of it now, as well.
Emma's neck was still longer than his, since it had started growing before Liam's. She was now able to look completely behind her by turning her head and neck around her side, partly curling her body as well. She took the chance to properly look at her tail, wiggling it and moving it about experimentally, first moving the whole thing and then trying to move just the tip about. It was still very thick at the base, so wide that not just her spine but her whole back seemed to just continue along the tail, her legs simply on either side of it, just like the lizards and crocodiles she'd seen in her books. Sadly she didn't quite look exactly like the friendly dragons from her books, but they tended to be a lot bigger and fatter, especially the ones that shared her love of candy, sweets, and ice cream.
Her mother had been much less excited. Now that even Emma's skirts didn't fit, nor any form of legwear, Gloria stopped trying to even dress Emma at all. The scales from her tail base had spread all the way around her waist and between her legs, and were starting to creep down her legs, so much like with Liam, their mother seemed to no longer care about keeping her covered up. Gloria had given Emma a wistful, pained look at the sight of her daughter's four-legged stance, and had silently gone down to the kitchen to make them some breakfast. Without a word to either of the kids, she had set two bowls of cereal down on the floor before walking off into the living room where her husband lay on the couch, watching TV.
Emma had watched her go sadly before starting to eat, carefully using the spoon left for her; it had taken a while, but she had slowly re-learned how to grasp things with her new hands. Liam, meanwhile, simply shoved his face into the bowl like a dog, making her frown.
So, as soon as she had finished eating, she went outside to see Michael, who was lying in the empty land outside the back yard, on the other side of the fence, enjoying the morning sunlight. He always looked so content basking in the sun, and whenever Emma joined him, she always found it pleasant and relaxing to stretch her wings as best she could and enjoy the warm dawn rays on her body.
Liam followed after her, and for a while they talked to each other, listening to Michael tell them about his transformation, and answering when he asked questions about theirs. He couldn't always answer their questions, but even when he didn't know, he would take a guess and explain his reasoning – as much as they could understand it, at least.
"What is all that racket for?" Gloria shouted from the back door of the house after a while, interrupting the conversation. "You've been grumbling and growling out there for an hour!"
Emma wasn't sure what her mother was talking about, but in response to her mother's angry tone, she answered "I am sorry" reflexively. But it only seemed to make her mother angrier.
"Yes, that!" Gloria snapped. "Stop making that noise." Liam tried to apologize as well, but she cut him off; "You too, Liam," she said sternly.
Michael cut in after that. "They are speaking in our language," he clarified, but it did not make Gloria any happier.
"Well, tell them to knock it off! You can speak English, and so should they!"
"It isn't that simple. Give them time; it is merely part of their transformation. They will..." he trailed off as Gloria went back inside, slamming the door behind her, and he took a deep breath, exhaling slowly.
"Mom is mad," Liam said quietly, looking down at the ground and pawing at it with one hand. His hands were still humanlike, but there were scales starting to grow on the back of the right one.
"She is afraid," Michael told them. "She does not understand what is happening."
Emma hunched down, her claws digging into the ground. "I do not understand either, but I do not yell about it," she said grumpily.
"Try not to be mad at her. I can tell she cares for you both, this is just a difficult time for her."
Emma didn't feel very convinced, and looked up at Michael. "Do you think she is going to put me in a cage?"
Michael tilted his head. "Why would she do that?"
Emma pawed at the ground as well, her claws digging grooves into the dirt. "She calls you an animal," she told him, "she says you are dangerous. And dangerous animals get put in cages. They get sent to the zoo."
It took Michael a moment to think of a response. "I do not think she will," he told her flatly.
"But what if she does?"
"Then I will protect you," Michael told her. He lowered his head and pushed his snout against her side, giving her a gentle nuzzle. It felt unusual, but somehow comforting, and she giggled a little from it even as she got pushed to the side slightly by his much larger head.
Emma felt happy until Michael eventually left to go hunting. She went back inside, having to awkwardly rear up on her hind legs to reach the back door handle, pushing it inwards. Once she entered, she could hear both the TV, and her parents' voices, and was able to follow both of them concurrently. Cautiously, she stood just by the kitchen doorway, around the corner where they wouldn't be seen.
"...estimate that there are one hundred and fifty thousand dragons in the United States alone," came a woman's voice from the TV set.
But her parents apparently weren't listening to it. "...can't bear to see them like this," Emma's mother said to her father. "Every day, they slip a little further away from us."
"Have there been any new cases of this mutation?" Emma heard from the TV.
"They're still our children," Daniel said in response to Gloria.
"None on record. While the changes happen at different rates for different people, it seems like they were all triggered by that broadcast."
"But for how much longer? How long until they don't recognize us? How long until they attack us?"
"Those numbers do not account for the recorded deaths of the afflicted so far."
"Don't be like that, Gloria. I'm sure they're just as scared and confused as you are."
"Deaths? So the mutation can be fatal?"
"You don't know that. One day I might go into their room and they could attack me."
"Not directly, no, but there are records of some of the afflicted being killed by those in their neighborhood, or committing suicide before the mutations can reach their conclusion."
"And you don't know that will happen either. We promised we'd stick this out together. Don't give up now."
"There are some conflicting reports about shootings; sometimes the afflicted individuals were not injured, but others were killed. It is possible the scales grow tougher further into the changes."
"I just don't know what to do. I don't want to lose them. I don't want them to turn into monsters."
"Should our viewers at home be worried that we have these dragons flying around that are impervious to bullets? It doesn't sound like anywhere is safe."
"They're not monsters, Gloria. Maybe that sounds strange from a guy whose arm was broken by one, but I've talked to him. You can't talk to a monster. He's a person. He used to be human just like you and me. If he can be like that, so can our kids."
"I don't think we should make those kinds of blanket statements. Even after their changes, many of the afflicted still maintain some capacity to reason and speak with us. Some don't. We have to decide on a case-by-case basis."
"You're right. I'm sorry. I need to go see what I can find in the woods while I can. I'll change your dressings when I get back."
"Thank you, Dr. Morgan. After the break, we'll be talking with our White House correspondent to see what government officials have to say on the matter."
"Thank you. I'm sorry I can't be of more help, but there's only so much I can do with my arm like this."
"You're watching Channel 7 news."
"Just rest up. I'll be back in a bit."
Emma heard her mother's footsteps approaching and backed up. She raised her tail up off the floor, but felt it strike against something, and turned her head to see that Liam had been listening in from behind her. "Watch it!" she barked at him.
"You watch it!" he retorted, shaking his head a little. Thankfully, he seemed unhurt.
Gloria came around the corner, glancing over and spotting the two of them. For a moment, she hesitated at the foot of the stairs, then looked at Emma, who shied away a little.
"Can you two still understand me? Please nod if you can."
Emma bit her lip, but gave a small nod. Liam must have done the same behind her, because her mother seemed to relax a little. "That's good," Gloria said quietly. "I need to head out for a bit. Be good and keep your father company, okay?"
"Okay!" Emma answered instinctively, only remembering after she said it that her mother couldn't understand. Unsure what to do after that, she wandered off to the living room to see her father, sitting on her haunches next to the sofa.
"Hey, kids," he said as he saw them enter, picking up the TV remote from his lap with his left hand. "Here, let me see if I can find some cartoons or something for you. You can't trust everything you hear on the news, anyway. Let's just take it easy for a bit, okay?"
—-----------------
Emma shifted on her bed and whimpered quietly, rubbing at her face again, taking care to keep her claws away from the long muzzle that had grown there. It ached constantly, and she had been unable to get much sleep because of it for the last few nights. It was long enough now that it was taking up a noticeable part of her vision, covered in rough black hide.
On the floor next to her bed, Liam slept peacefully. He already had most of a muzzle, but his had been growing in more slowly than hers, and he hadn't been as bothered by it. He had been worried for her earlier when he heard her pained sounds, but his own tiredness had stopped him from staying awake for long. Emma was unsure how long ago their mother had put them to bed, but she had been unable to get any sleep despite her tiredness. She didn't know what to do; her parents couldn't understand her, and Michael would probably be asleep as well. He seemed to sleep a lot more than her parents did.
But it was worth a try. Standing up, Emma stepped carefully off the bed, feeling the carpet fibers under her feet. The door was ajar as her parents always left it, and she pulled it open with one forelimb before slipping out into the hallway, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light from downstairs. On all fours, she made her way to the stairs, trying to walk down them quietly, hoping she could get out the back door.
Halfway down, a stair creaked under her weight, and she froze. She heard footsteps and knew that she had been heard, and tried to turn around to go back upstairs, but the stairs weren't wide enough for her long body, so she was still trying to figure out how to twist herself when her mother came around the corner from the living room.
"Emma, get back to bed!" she scolded, and Emma lowered her head. Her face still ached, and she whimpered again, rubbing at it with one hand out of reflex.
Her mother's expression softened at the sound. "Is something wrong?" she asked, cautiously approaching her.
"It hurts," Emma told her with a nod.
Gloria didn't understand the words, but she understood the nod, and gave Emma a concerned look. "What is it? Do you need to go outside?" Emma shook her head. "Are you feeling sick?" Emma repeated the motion. "Does something hurt?" She gave a nod in response to that one, and tapped her hand against the side of her muzzle.
Emma's mother hesitated for a moment, then gestured for Emma to come closer. "Come down here and let me take a look," she said, and Emma walked the rest of the way down the stairs. She sat on her haunches on the carpet in front of her mother and held still as Gloria moved to get out of the way of the hallway light, so that she could take a better look at Emma.
"It's still spreading..." she muttered under her breath disapprovingly, before looking Emma in the eyes. "Does it hurt right here?" she asked, pointing to the dark hide on Emma's muzzle, being careful not to touch it directly.
Emma nodded again, wincing and whining softly as she gave it another rub. Her mother sighed and gave her a sympathetic look. "Come with me," she said quietly, and walked past Emma to go up the stairs. Cautiously, Emma followed after her as her mother led her down the corridor to the bathroom, the tiles cold underneath her feet. Emma hadn't been there ever since she and Liam had been told to "go out into the fields instead" to "do their business".
Gloria opened up the mirror above the sink, looking through it for a bottle of medicine. She read the label in silence, turning back towards Emma, looking over at her as she stayed on all fours, not wanting to sit on the cold tiles. Emma could see the label, even though she didn't understand the words on it, but she knew that it was a painkiller her mother had given her before once when she had had a toothache.
"How do I even determine the dosage?" she wondered aloud. "Will it even work on you like this?"
Emma whined, raising a forelimb to rub at her muzzle again, and Gloria sighed. "I suppose there's only one way to find out. I'll play it safe and give you the normal children's dose... if you feel sick, I want you to come and find me, okay?" she told Emma, taking the measuring cap off the bottle and holding it up towards the light as she poured out some of the liquid medicine. "Now open wide."
Emma did as told, tipping her head back and opening her jaws, even though the action irritated her snout. Gloria hesitated, giving an uncomfortable look towards Emma, but soon reached forward and tipped the medicine onto her tongue, being careful not to touch her muzzle. It tasted kind of like cherries, and Emma swallowed it down quickly.
Watching as her mother washed out the cap and put the medicine bottle away, Emma stared up at the mirror. She was far too low to the ground to look into it, and hadn't looked in a mirror since she'd started walking on all fours. What did she look like now? Something was changing with her face, but she hadn't been able to look and see what it was.
"Okay, now back to bed with you," Gloria told her as she turned back to Emma, but she didn't budge. Raising her right hand, she pointed towards the mirror insistently. Gloria turned her head to follow where Emma was pointing, then looked back at Emma. "What is it? The mirror?"
Emma gave a nod, pointing at the mirror, then at herself. For a moment, her mother said nothing, then let out a small sigh. "You want to look in a mirror?" she asked, and Emma gave another nod, fidgeting in place. She wasn't sure if her mother would let her or not, but after thinking it over, Gloria turned and pulled open a drawer, taking out a hand mirror. With a little hesitation, she turned around and bent her knees, holding the mirror up.
Emma stared at her reflection. She barely recognized herself; only a few small patches of skin remained on her face and midsection to give any indication that she hadn't always been a dragon. Leaning in closer, she looked at the snout that was giving her so much discomfort; it looked kind of like Michael's, but wasn't fully there yet, growing out from her face, replacing her mouth and nose. No scales covered it yet, just black hide. Her hair was already gone, and she made a small sad cry when she saw that it was missing. The fins on the sides of her head had grown bigger, and she stared at them, wiggling them a little.
Twisting her head sideways, she took a look at how much longer her neck had grown, along with the fin on the top of it. Opening her mouth, she saw all the sharp teeth that were there now, just like the kinds that fierce animals had, and she quickly shut her mouth again after seeing them. But it still looked strange to see herself without any lips, just like a lizard, so she quickly turned her head to face directly towards the mirror again with her muzzle angled down to hide it. The only thing that seemed completely untouched was her eyes, but with Liam having already gained cat-like pupils, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before hers changed, too.
Lowering her head, Emma turned away from the mirror and started to slink off towards her bedroom. Every new change made her look more like a ferocious animal; how long would it be before she got taken away? Her tail dragged on the carpet as she slowly walked off, her ear fins and wings both drooping sadly. She heard her mother putting things away behind her, and followed after Emma just as she got back to her room.
"Emma," her mother began, and Emma stopped halfway to her bed, looking back over her shoulder. Gloria hesitated, seeming unsure of what to say, glancing over at Liam, who was still asleep.
"...do you want me to read you a story?" Emma's mother asked quietly. Her eyes widened, and she scurried over to the bookshelf, looking over the books on it for a particular one with a bright yellow cover...
Gloria came over to see where Emma was pointing, and bent over to carefully slip the book out from the shelf. On the front was a picture of a happy, comically proportioned and rotund dragon under a tree with a picnic blanket, holding a teapot in one hand. Gloria looked at it before looking back at Emma, who was thumping her tail on the carpet excitedly.
Emma quickly climbed up into bed as her mother stood back up, standing by the door so she could read the book better using the light from the hallway. Curling up on the mattress, Emma listened as her mother told her about the dragon and his tea party, and all the friends he invited to it, and all the sweets they brought. She hoped she could be like that too, a good dragon with lots of friends (and ice cream,) and dozed off with the mental image of her parents, Liam, and Michael all having a tea party in the field behind the house.
--------------------
Liam's eyes slowly opened as he woke on his own, lifting his head. Much to his relief, his face no longer ached as it had done for the last two weeks as the transformation began to take hold of it, gradually extending his nose and mouth into a muzzle while scales grew over them. He'd had it much better than Emma, who seemed to be in pain often, and had been grumpy as a result, until her scales had grown in to signal the end of the changes to her face.
Different teeth grew in to replace the old ones, and most of them were all sharp and pointed. He still had some non-pointy teeth right at the back of his mouth, but it was difficult for him to chew his food with them, so Michael had instructed him on how to use his teeth to tear at food too big to eat, and how to tip his head back and swallow things that used to be too big for him.
However, Michael had had no advice to offer Emma when her eyes were changed even more drastically than Liam's. While Liam still had his father's brown irises, Emma's eyes had not only become slitted, but the rest of them had gotten much darker, almost completely black, dotted with streaks of a blue color very unlike the brown she used to have. Even their father had seemed unsettled by it the first time he'd seen her eyes, staring in silence for several moments before giving her a small and slow pat on the side of her head.
Liam slowly rose to his feet on Emma's mattress, his sister still curled up and snoozing. Some instinct had made him want to go from merely sleeping on the blankets next to the bed to sharing the mattress with her. But when he had first climbed up onto the bed, the frame had broken, dropping the mattress under them onto the floor with the sound of breaking wood. His parents had run up to see what the noise was, making sure that both of them were unhurt, but there was nothing they could do for the bed. So they left the mattress on the floor, and once his parents bid them good-night again, Liam climbed onto it next to Emma, resting his head on his forelimbs and settling in there.
The second night he had done so, he had draped the tip of his tail over hers, and she had not complained; something about being in contact with another dragon helped him sleep more easily. He felt something similar when he sat in the sun with Michael and could smell the content emotions of the older dragon, and felt happy whenever Michael nuzzled at him. Liam peeked at Emma's belly to see if any of her skin was still visible there, but the scales had completely covered it up.
Carefully, he climbed down from the bed, knowing his mother wasn't going to wake him up any more. The first time that had happened at the start of the week, when he had woken naturally instead of from Gloria's voice, he had been scared. He had been afraid that his parents had abandoned him and his sister, and that they wouldn't come back. That Emma had been right and someone would come and take them and put them in cages.
But fortunately, his parents were still around, and his fears did not last long. He had wandered around calling for them, but they apparently still couldn't understand his "squeaks and whistles". However, he had been able to hear them just fine, his hearing improving every day as the fins on the sides of his head slowly got bigger. His mother had been saying that "they're almost gone", and he had been confused what she had meant by that; his father had answered something about it being for the best, and that "they looked unsettling with human faces on dragon bodies."
They had ended their conversation when he went downstairs and wandered into the kitchen. Daniel had stopped resting on the couch as soon as his left arm had healed, ignoring Gloria's protestations; "it's going to take weeks for THAT to heal," he had insisted, "and I refuse to be dead-weight any longer than I have to." Though he visibly struggled with having to do many tasks one-handed, he had handled it stoically, taking over what he could of the yard-work. He'd even taken the excuse to get Liam to help him, asking his son to dig holes for planting or for disposing of animal remains in the fields around the property.
So it had been for several days; each morning, he got up whenever he woke up on his own, sometimes before Emma, sometimes after, and when he went downstairs his parents would make him something to eat, and then leave him to his own devices, unless they needed him for something. He had spent more and more time outside with Michael, the only person he could still talk to other than his sister. He felt himself growing more and more distant from his parents, unable to look at his mother every time she saw him and looked away with a hard to read, but nonetheless negative expression on her face.
But this morning was different. As Liam walked downstairs and into the kitchen, his mother glanced up from her cup of coffee, and gave him a long, silent stare.
"So that's it, then," she said suddenly, breaking the silence and taking Daniel's attention away from his breakfast. "I don't see any human left on her. She's gone."
Liam's father looked him over for a few seconds. "That's Liam," he said, but clearly only after thinking about it for a few moments. "You can tell if you look at his eyes."
Gloria was not consoled, and her shoulders sagged as she looked down into the depths of her coffee mug. "I can't even tell my own children apart any more," she lamented quietly, and her husband reached over with his good arm to hold her shoulder.
Liam felt awkward. He couldn't fully explain his emotions, but he didn't want to be there, knowing that somehow he was at fault for his mother's sadness. Lowering his head, he walked to the back door, which they had left open for him, and stepped through it. Even though he had his wings folded and lifted, they still caught on the edges of the door frame. But this time, the scales of his sides rasped against the wood too; he was barely able to fit through the door now.
"You okay, Liam?" his father called out from the kitchen.
Liam responded "Yes" reflexively, but after remembering his parents couldn't understand him any more, he turned and waited until he could see his father's face peeking around the doorway, and nodded back to him before walking across the yard towards where Michael was basking in the warm morning sunlight.
"I think we're going to have to move them outside," he heard his father say from the kitchen. "He barely fits through the door. I hate to do it, but if they get stuck inside, we'll be in a heap of trouble." If his mother responded, it wasn't verbally; Liam didn't hear her say anything back to his father.
But Liam's worries melted away as he got closer to Michael. The bigger dragon was so content and relaxed, exuding those feelings as a scent, that Liam couldn't help but feel the same way, joining Michael in the sunny spot just outside the back yard. There was something else to the emotion scents Michael was giving though, a sort of sadness, though a kind of subdued, distant one. It was hard for Liam to understand it, especially when Michael looked so content, staring off into the distance.
"Good morning, Liam," Michael said to him as Liam settled down on the grass.
"Good morning, Mister Williams," Liam replied respectfully.
Michael gave a small rumbling noise, analogous to a human chuckle. "You do not need to call me that. Just Michael is fine."
"But mom always said I should, um... 'Address strangers with respect'," Liam told him.
"Do you still think of me as a stranger?" Michael inquired with a curious tilt of his head.
Liam had to think about that one for a moment. "No," he answered, "you are nice to me and to Em. And you are a dragon like me. I want to be friends."
"You already are, Liam," Michael replied, craning his neck over to give Liam a small nuzzle in the middle of his back. Liam made a happy rumbling noise, stretching his wings out a little more to enjoy the sun on them.
After a few moments, Liam asked, "What were you thinking about, Mister- um, Michael?"
Michael turned his head to the side to peer at Liam. "What do you mean?"
"You smelled sad," Liam said simply. "When I first got here."
"Ah. Not to worry. I was just thinking about my wife. I have not seen her since I left, of course. She can fend for herself, she has her own job and more than enough money to get by, but I miss her."
"Oh." Liam didn't know what else to say, and lowered his head. But he soon felt Michael nosing at the back of his neck again, and straightened up.
"Do not be sad, Liam. If God wills it, one day I will see her again. Things are just a little chaotic right now, and it is best if I stay out here in the country where it is safe."
Liam didn't fully understand, but he did know that Michael was trying to make him feel better, so he just relaxed and settled down on the grass to enjoy the sun's morning rays. He wasn't sure how long it was before he heard a noise behind him, back towards the house. He saw the sunlight glinting off of Emma's black scales as she came out into the yard, soon followed by his parents as they worked together to bring out the toy chest from Liam and Emma's room.
Michael rose and turned to walk over to the house, stepping over the fence with ease to bring his front half into the yard itself. The swingset was already gone, having buckled under the extra weight when the kids had tried to sit on it while halfway transformed; Daniel had scrapped it for the chains and pipes and now there was nothing left of it but the divots in the ground where its legs had originally been. The flowerbeds had been uprooted to make room for plants the family could eventually eat, and gardening supplies had been stacked and arranged around the yard. One part of the fence had been destroyed by Emma when she had been roughhousing with Liam, and had accidentally lashed her tail against it – she hadn't even realized that she had broken the fence until Liam pointed it out. The only things left in the yard that Liam could remember from back when he went to school were the trees and the tool shed.
"May I help?" Michael offered.
Liam's parents set the toy chest down just outside the back door. "Please," Daniel asked him, puffing a bit from exertion. "This is tough for me to do with only one arm."
Liam watched as Michael reached out and easily grasped the toy chest in one hand, picking it up off the ground effortlessly. Liam gasped; he'd never even been able to so much as budge it, though he hadn't tried to move it since turning into a dragon, and even his parents struggled. Michael must have been really strong! He looked closely at the way Michael was holding his clawed hand, too; Liam was still having trouble grasping things, though Emma was ahead of him in that respect, since her hands had transformed first. Following Daniel's directions, Michael moved the toy chest out to the center of the yard in the empty space where the swingset had once been.
"Thanks a ton," Daniel said afterward. "I might need your help with some more things. I don't know how big those two are going to get, but I don't think they'll fit inside much longer. I don't want them to be cold and bored out here though, so I'll have to see if I can make some kind of shelter for them. Put their mattresses together, tape together some blankets, and find something to hang them up with, maybe the swingset poles..."
"I admire your concern for them. Their scales should protect them from the weather, but they will be far more comfortable with somewhere warm and sheltered to rest. You are correct, though; they are going to get bigger, much bigger than they already are. It's not exactly the same for everyone, but there are definitely patterns in the transformation – the majority of the change in size occurs at the end."
"I figured. I guess they're going to get even hungrier, huh?"
"Most likely. But I think I can help with that."
Daniel gave a shrug with his good shoulder and arm. "You already are, as long as you can keep bringing animals back for us."
Michael shook his head, however, backing up and sitting on his haunches before lying down on his front. "That is not what I meant. I have something I think might be able to help you. Look behind my left shoulder."
Liam was curious to see what it was, and got up off the grass to get closer to Michael, with Emma following closely behind him as she crossed over the broken section of fence. They watched as Daniel walked around to Michael's side, but he shook his head and frowned as he stared upwards; Michael's shoulder was over four times his height off the ground. "Gloria, could you bring the ladder over, please? I'd get it myself, but..." he called out, gesturing to his splinted arm.
Liam watched his mother, who had been observing from the back door of the house, as she went around to the tool shed to grab the extension ladder that was resting against it. Under her husband's direction, she brought it over, extended it, and set it against the big dragon's side. She held it steady as Daniel climbed up it slowly, while the kids watched and Michael kept himself still. Reaching out with his good arm carefully, Daniel felt around the scales at Michael's shoulder, each one the size of a small plate.
"Right, right!" Emma called out from beside Liam, standing up and bouncing in place suddenly. Liam squinted and saw what she was looking at after a moment; one of Michael's scales was raised up by something trapped underneath it.
"What's she saying?" Daniel asked after glancing over at her.
"Your daughter says you should look to the right," Michael instructed Daniel, who moved his hand accordingly. Liam also saw the raised scale move more as Michael raised and lowered it, trying to draw Daniel's attention towards it. Finding the raised scale, Daniel carefully reached under it and extracted something small and black, tucking it into his shirt pocket before climbing back down the ladder.
While Gloria took the ladder back, Liam and Emma bounded over, crowding around their father as he fished the item back out of his pocket. "Whoa, easy there, kids!" he told them as they jostled around him, "Sit down, or you're going to knock me over. You're way stronger than you used to be. Just be patient, I'll let you look in a minute."
Liam fidgeted a little before sitting on his haunches, as Emma did the same, but they both stuck their necks out to try and get a closer look. His father seemed to be holding a black wallet, and Liam could smell that it was made of real leather. Raising his broken arm and keeping it straight, he held the wallet in that hand as he used the other to look inside, extracting several $20 bills. Liam peered at them closely, but he couldn't remember whose face was on them – he'd asked before and his father had told him, but he'd forgotten.
"I have no need for money any more," Michael explained as he turned his head to join in watching. "Perhaps it is a sign from God that I should leave behind my wealth. 'tis easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, is it not? You need it more than I."
Daniel was silent for a moment before looking up at Michael's face. "Thank you," he said sincerely, "we were barely making ends meet as it is. How can I ever repay you?"
But Michael simply shook his head. "There is no need. Use it to look after yourselves and the children, and I will consider that payment enough. You can take the credit and debit cards too, the PIN is 8724 – but be aware I do not know if they still work. If I have been presumed dead, it may only bring more trouble to your doorstep."
Liam's father took a moment to take out small plastic cards one at a time, examining them and showing them to his inquisitive children before putting them back. Liam gave them a sniff, but other than being shiny, they weren't very interesting, just with some words and numbers stamped on them. "I'll think it over. It might be worth the risk," Daniel answered after a moment.
Continuing to look through the wallet, Daniel took out something different, a laminated card of some kind. Liam saw his father look at it closely, then up at the dragon who was watching him. "Not bad for a 52-year-old," Daniel said as he turned the card and held it for Liam to look at.
He recognized it as a driver's license, but only because his father had shown him his before and told Liam about it. There were a lot of words and sets of numbers and letters that Liam didn't understand, but he could read "Williams, Michael" for the name, next to the picture of a stern-faced black man with short dark hair, a small beard, and a pair of glasses.
"Why do you look mad?" Liam asked as Daniel turned to show the driver's license to Emma.
Michael gave a quiet chuckle. "You are not allowed to smile for most official photographs," he explained.
"You must have had it made before all this," Daniel commented as he slipped the driver's license back into the wallet.
"I was a judge," Michael replied, "and my wife is a lawyer. We had a downtown apartment and a nice cottage up in the mountains. My son already moved out to go live on his own years ago." The big dragon sighed softly, and Liam could smell a melancholy emotion from him. "I don't know what happened to him in all this. I tried to call him, but his phone didn't work. And then my wife found the scales on my back..."
"What about her?" Gloria inquired a few moments after Michael trailed off.
"As far as I know, she is safe. I miss her, of course. Every day I fight the urge to fly back and find her. But I knew I wouldn't be able to stay in the city – I needed to get out, not just into the country, but the wilderness, where I could hunt in peace. If I stayed near any farms, even if I didn't take any livestock, people would hunt me down. ...there should be a picture of her in my wallet somewhere. Could you please take it out and let me look at it?"
It took a few moments, but Liam's father soon extracted a dog-eared photograph from the wallet, holding it to his kids first as they nosed at his sides to try and see. Liam got a brief look at the picture of Michael as a human with one arm around a smiling and well-dressed black woman, before his father showed it to Emma, and then to Michael, who had lowered his neck to get closer to Daniel.
Turning his head to the side, Michael stared at the picture with one large eye for several moments, and Liam could detect the scent of his emotions change back to contentment. "Thank you," the big dragon said simply. Daniel held the photograph out towards Gloria, who hesitantly came forward from the edge of the yard to look at it.
"What is her name?" Emma piped up.
"Lucinda," Michael answered.
"She is pretty," Emma added, her tail sweeping back and forth on the grass behind her.
"Thank you, I am sure she would be pleased to hear that," Michael answered.
"What did she say?" Gloria asked, looking between Emma and Michael.
"She was simply paying my wife a compliment."
Michael folded the wallet and handed it to his wife. "Thank you again. Every little bit helps. I'm not sure how I'll be able to get any groceries without a car, and I don't think anything I could order online would be delivered out here, but I'll figure something out."
"I want to help as best I can," Michael explained. "You are helping me a great deal too. In this new world, I suspect those like me will have few friends and allies. It remains to be seen if we will even have rights at all, despite the wishes of the aliens when they gave us this gift. As a judge I worked to uphold the rights of others, but now, nobody will fight to uphold mine. We may be treated as pets, as livestock... or even as slaves, if we are captured." Grimly, and with an emotion of bitterness that Liam could smell easily, he continued, "I can't imagine what my ancestors would think, if their descendants were taken right back into that injustice they had escaped from not even a century ago."
His parents looked uneasy, so Liam glanced over at Emma to see if she understood that remark, but she simply gave him a motion approximating a shrug, and he could barely detect the scent of her confusion.
Daniel took a deep breath. "We're in this together either way. Maybe you could have made a better introduction," he remarked with a gesture towards his splinted arm, "but what's done is done."
"Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven," Michael quoted with a small nod of his head.
Liam looked up and saw his mother looking at him. He had an urge to look away and hide his face, but there was something different in her expression. He couldn't quite read it, and for a brief moment felt a little annoyed that he couldn't smell her emotions like he could with Michael and Emma.
"I won't let them take my children," she said, quietly but in a stern voice. "Even though they've changed, even though they look like this, they're still my children." She reached out, and Liam kept still as she slowly and hesitantly brushed one hand across his cheek, making him feel warm inside. Before he knew it, his tail was thumping against the ground behind him.
"Damn right," Daniel agreed as he reached over towards Emma and tried to pat her head, only for the fin on the top got in the way. So instead, he moved his hand underneath her snout and scratched under her chin, making her tip her head back and trill happily. "Dragon or not, you're still my little girl. They'll have to bring a small army if they want to take you from me."
--------------------
For the rest of that day, Emma had been happy. Michael had gone off hunting, and she and Liam had been left free to play outside, bounding around in the fields chasing each other. They tried to play hide-and-seek, but they were both far too big and their senses far too keen for that to work any more. Liam had even tried to fly on occasion, but the best he could manage was to beat his wings as he jumped for extra height.
Their parents had brought a few more things out from the kids' room and had put together a rickety shelter for them with the swingset poles and the blankets off their bed. Emma's mother had muttered something about feeling like she was building a homeless shelter, but her father had been a little cheerier, saying it was more like a tent big enough for the two of them.
Only after they put up the shelter, however, did they remember that the toy chest was in the wrong spot. Liam had declared he would help, and had gotten behind it and given it a shove with his front limbs; to the surprise of everyone else, he had actually been able to move it, shoving it under the sheltered area under the blankets. Moving it over the grass had been difficult and had dug gouges into the lawn, but he had been very pleased with himself afterward.
But when Michael had returned and the kids were called back to the house, things were somber again. Gloria told them that she had finally been able to get in touch with her relatives, and that other wireless things seemed to be working again. Upon hearing the news, Michael had practically jumped up from his resting spot outside of the back yard to crane his neck over the fence, all but begging Gloria to let him call his wife. Though she had initially recoiled at the sight of Michael towering over her, she had soon relented, bringing out her cell phone and dialing the number Michael gave her. When it only went to voicemail, however, Michael thanked her quietly and curled up on the grass once more.
Afterwards, Gloria had explained that her family wanted to meet up again, and she wanted to see them – but she couldn't leave Liam and Emma alone for long, and bringing them was going to be problematic. Not to mention that both of their vehicles had been destroyed – and the ambulance that Michael had brought was also out of commission after being dropped so roughly. That meant they had no way of making the trip unless someone came to pick them up, which would probably be even more awkward with the state of the yard after Michael's rampage through it.
Michael had been determined to help. He offered to carry the parents in his hands, but Daniel had taken one look at Michael's claws and had firmly declined – "Ignoring the fact that you could crush me to paste without even thinking about it," Emma remembered her father saying, "my arm is still healing. I need a way to travel that won't hurt it even more."
Her parents and Michael had started exchanging ideas, and Emma quickly grew bored, wandering off with Liam to play nearby. But she found that she could still follow the conversation without getting distracted from knocking the big rubber ball back and forth, and had listened to their discussion. Many ideas were fielded and discarded; carrying the broken car, pulling out the seats, and finding a livestock carrier, among others. Gloria had hesitantly asked to ride on Michael's back, but he had been quite insistent that that was not an option, explaining that he – like all Children, at least as far as he knew – had a strong aversion to being ridden, so that idea was thrown out too. Eventually they settled on having Michael go look for a hot air balloon basket; both of them had seen the balloons on their way to work before, but not since dragons had been spotted in the skies. Michael had speculated with some amusement that there was probably not a lot of interest in slow, vulnerable air travel when large flying predators were around.
"That ought to work," Emma heard Daniel say, "but what about Liam and Emma?"
"Could they ride on you?" Gloria suggested to Michael.
He was quick to shake his head in response. "That would be impractical for anything longer than a short distance. And it wouldn't be comfortable for me, or for them."
"We're back to square one, then," Daniel grumbled. "Unless we can find something big enough to carry us all, comfortable enough for a long trip, and light enough for you to carry."
Emma huffed as she listened, twisting her body to the side so she could strike the rubber ball with her tail and send it bouncing towards Liam. It hit an uneven part of the ground and sailed up into the air, and he reared up on his back legs to spread his wings out; the ball lightly struck the membranes on his right wing and fell down to the ground, bouncing on the grass. He giggled as he pounced on it, but Emma left him behind as she walked over to the adults.
"Why can we not just fly?" she suggested. It seemed like an obvious solution to her. Adults could be so dense sometimes.
Her parents didn't understand her speech, but Michael did. "What did she say?" Emma's mother asked.
"She wants to learn to fly," Michael answered.
Gloria immediately turned to look at Emma. "Absolutely not!" she blurted out, "It's far too dangerous! You'll get yourself hurt! What if you fall, or hit something?"
Seeing her mother angry made Emma shy away, and she backed up to cower next to Michael. Extending a wing over her protectively, Michael made a low rumbling noise in thought. "There's no need to be so hasty. It's not a bad idea."
Gloria was not convinced. "You can't be serious! They're children! If they were still human, they'd be too young to ride a bike or drive a car, and yet you think they can fly?"
Michael kept a firm gaze on her, but did not raise his voice. "Humans do not instinctively know how to do those things. But Children of the Egg do – how do you think I learned to fly? It took some practice, but there are many things that we... I do not want to say 'learn', a better way to describe it is that we remember. We remember things we didn't know before. As though we had known them all along. How to speak the dragon language, how to understand emotion scents, how to fly. They will be fine."
"Yeah!" Emma insisted from under the umbrella of Michael's wing, "We can do it! I want to fly!"
"They seem quite determined," Michael added, "I have seen Liam trying to take off by himself. It is best that I teach them the correct way now, otherwise they will begin experimenting, and that is more likely to lead to injury."
Frustrated, Gloria turned to her husband. "You can't seriously be thinking of allowing this, can you?"
Daniel put his hands up, not wanting to get dragged into an argument. "I don't know, I think you're right that they could get hurt, but it would definitely solve our problems. Maybe they can start small? Just stay in the field out back, try to take off, and then come back down again right away? That way they won't go high enough to get hurt, and there's nothing for them to crash into."
His attempt to compromise did not placate her. "Fine!" she snapped, "But if they get hurt, it'll be your fault!" Storming off into the house, she went into the kitchen through the back door and slammed it behind her.
Emma watched her father and Michael share a glance, but she didn't understand what was going on. Retracting his wing, Michael craned his neck over and gently nuzzled at her. "Your father is right," he told her, "I think you can learn, but we should only do it a little bit at a time, okay?"
"Remember when I taught you to ride a tricycle?" her father asked, stepping closer and reaching out with his good arm to rub under her chin. She felt a little calmer from his touch, and hummed quietly. "How I didn't let you ride it outside the back yard at first? This is kind of like that."
She nodded, and they made their way back out through the broken section of fence into the fields behind the house. Liam was still there, knocking the ball around and chasing after it, but he stopped when he saw the group approaching him.
"Liam," Michael asked, "would you like to learn to fly?"
Liam immediately forgot about the ball, bounding over towards Michael. "Really? Yeah! I want to fly!" Already, he had his wings extended, and tried to flap them up and down.
Daniel gave him a pat on the snout; even though he couldn't understand what Liam had said, Liam's body language made his excitement clear. "Make sure to listen to what Michael tells you," Liam's father told him firmly, "I don't know anything about flying, so I'm gonna leave it up to him. If he tells you to stop or come back down, you do it immediately, otherwise the flying lessons are going to end. Do you understand? You too, Emma."
Liam quieted down and gave a small nod, and Emma did the same when Daniel looked over at her. Their father was using the serious tone of voice he reserved for when he was telling them things that were really important. The last time he had spoken like that was when he was telling them to hide, when Michael had first arrived.
"Good. Now listen to what he says and be good for him, all right? I'm going to talk to your mother and try to calm her down."
After giving both Liam and Emma a parting pat on the snout, he turned and went back to the house, leaving them with Michael. "How do I fly?" Emma immediately demanded, antsily shuffling about in place.
"One thing at a time," Michael told her. "I'm going to teach you how to LAND first, so that you don't immediately take off when I tell you that and then get yourselves in trouble."
Liam and Emma watched and listened eagerly as Michael told them what to do – to land with their back legs first, how to bend their legs to absorb the impact, and to keep their wings out (or 'flared' as he called it) to slow themselves down. He stressed that they were not birds, and would need to find big, open areas to land, and that most things nearby would not support their weight. Emma drank it all in; she wasn't sure if it was because she was a dragon now, or because school was just that boring, but she didn't get distracted from him at all unlike what had usually happened in Kindergarten.
Michael had helped them practice by lying on the ground and having them climb up onto his back to jump off, so that they could safely try landing from a relatively small drop. Emma's first attempt had ended with her stumbling after landing and then falling onto her side, but she got back up again afterwards no worse for wear. And just in time to turn and see Liam's attempt, where he had landed on his front legs first instead, and tumbled headlong into the grass, wings and tail flailing about. After that display, Michael had made them go again and again until they pulled off several good landings in a row.
Emma took her last jump from Michael's back, keeping her wings fully spread, landing on her back legs first, letting them and her front legs bend as they hit the ground. "Rarrrr!" she playfully called out to Liam as he watched her, "I am a dragon! I am going to steal your gold!"
Liam laughed, tail thumping the ground, and even Michael chuckled quietly as he rose up onto all fours. "Now that you have mastered the art of falling gracefully," he told them mirthfully, "I can teach you how to take off."
Both of them quickly sat on their haunches nearby, attentive and eager to learn more. For this lesson, Michael had given them a demonstration, showing them the proper way to hunch down and bend their legs so they could launch themselves into the air. He'd also shown them how to raise their wings up high, then spread out the membranes to bring them back down to give them more 'lift' as he called it, moving his own wings very slowly and having them copy the motion.
Oddly, Emma had had no problems with that part. Even though she hadn't attempted to fly yet, she felt as though she already knew the right ways to move her wings, surprising Michael when both she and Liam were able to copy his motions easily on the first try. He'd had them repeat the movements a few times just to be sure, but it had been easy for them both.
"That should be all you need. Just put the two of these together – jumping and wing movements – and you can take off. I want you to try and do that, and then land immediately. Do not try and fly any higher, not yet."
"Okay!" Emma called out to him, immediately getting up and trotting over to an empty part of the field. She crouched down, raising up her wings, looking up at the sky. It was mostly clear, with just a couple of clouds, and she tensed her body before releasing, jumping up into the air and beating her wings downward.
The rush of air past her as she took off felt exhilarating, and she closed her eyes to bask in the sensation. But very quickly she reached the peak of her jump and began falling back down, and in reflex she quickly fanned out her wings and stretched her back legs downward to land just as she'd practiced. It wasn't a perfect landing, but it was good enough, and she bounded around gleefully back towards Michael afterwards. "I did it, I did it!" she called out to him.
"Way to go, kiddo!" she heard from nearby, and turned her head to see her father had come back out. He was holding a digital camera in his good hand, holding it up near his face as he followed her. Her mother, however, was nowhere to be seen. Emma bounded over towards her father, tail swishing back and forth behind her from the praise, sitting right in front of him expectantly.
"Did you get a good shot?" Michael asked him.
"Sure did! My little girl is learning to fly! I wouldn't miss it for anything." He lowered the camera and pressed a button, made more difficult by having to hold it one-handed. It slipped from his grasp, but he had the wrist strap on, so it didn't fall very far. "Gloria's not coming, though," he added grimly, obliging Emma with a scratch under the chin as the camera dangled from his wrist.
"I see. Well, it is her choice," Michael responded. "Your turn now, Liam. Go on."
While her father regained his grip on the camera, Emma watched as Liam took off very similarly to how she had done it, though she couldn't tell if he had gotten as high as she did or not. His tail trailed out behind him as he moved up, then back down in an arc, and he stuck the landing with a gleeful giggle. Bounding around in a circle, he took off and landed again for fun before running over to the others.
"You are very quick learners," Michael told them both.
"Now can you teach us how to fly properly?" Emma asked, bouncing about on her feet.
"Yeah! I want to fly just like you do!" Liam chimed in.
"Soon, soon," he told them. "I will teach you to glide next, and then I will teach you how to fly higher."
"Aww, okay," Emma conceded. Still, she sat on her haunches to wait for the lesson, as did Liam. Michael showed them how to hold their wings level, and told them about keeping their limbs close to their body to 'reduce drag' – which meant to help them avoid slowing down. When Michael rose and told the kids to follow him, Daniel was quick to raise the camera and start recording again.
The elder dragon got a running start before launching himself into the air, just as the kids had done before, but as his jump peaked he spread his wings out to their full width. He was able to glide for quite some distance before landing in another part of the field, and when he looked back and motioned with his head, Liam and Emma wasted no time in getting up and running after him.
Liam was the first one to take off, using the running start to give him extra forward momentum. He was a little late to open his wings, and came back down to the ground shortly thereafter, but he immediately tried again, undeterred. Emma, off to the side to avoid crashing into him, tried to avoid what Liam had done but opened her wings too early, stopping her from reaching the full height of her jump. Just like Liam, she simply tried again, and soon both of them were zipping along a few feet above the ground, laughing as they did, occasionally landing and taking off once again to get back in the air.
When they got to Michael, Emma landed a little too close and bumped her head against his side as she came to a stop. He simply chuckled though; she had done him no harm. Liam trotted to a stop, and with an encouraging tone, Michael crouched down and told them "Race you back!"
He sprung into the air as the kids quickly followed after him. It wasn't much of a race, with Michael way out in front, but Emma was having too much fun to care, feeling the wind whipping past her as the grassy field zoomed by under her feet. With each launch, she got better at her timing, crossing longer stretches of field before having to land again.
"That was incredible!" Daniel told them as they returned to him, keeping the camera on the group of dragons. "Wasn't that long ago that I could outrun you two easily, now I think I'd have trouble keeping up."
"It is as I said," Michael told him as he came to a stop, "they do not have to learn, so much as remember. And practice, of course."
Emma and Liam got on opposite sides of Michael, bouncing excitedly. "Now can you show us how to fly?" Emma insisted.
"Yeah, you promised!" Liam added from the other side of him.
Michael gave a nod. "Yes, one more lesson. Just be careful, and do not try to do anything silly up there – if I see you trying to do loops or rolls, there will be no more flying lessons, and you will be kept on the ground."
Emma settled down a little. "Yes, Michael," she told him sincerely. She really wanted to learn to fly, and didn't want to risk anything that would stop that from happening.
"Okay!" Liam piped up from the other side.
Emma and Liam listened in rapt attention as Michael continued his lesson, with Daniel filming it all. He kept it to the basics – how to safely descend by changing the tilt of their wings or by pitching forward a little, how to turn, and how to go higher by beating their wings. Much like before, he slowly demonstrated the motions with his own wings, but Emma found she was able to copy them effortlessly, like she already knew them.
"Remember, do not go too high until you have practiced at a lower altitude," Michael told them. "For now, I would say you can go just above the trees and houses here, but do not go any higher yet. Ready to try it out?"
"Yeah!" Emma cried out, as both she and Liam got to their feet eagerly. Michael gave his demonstration first, taking off and beating his wings to rise up higher, then turning his body so that one wing was raised and the other lowered, making him turn in the air. After banking the other direction, he came down lower, then raised his body up to flare his wings for a landing in the open field.
"You first, Liam!" he called out to them across the field. "Wait your turn, Emma. I do not want you to crash into each other."
She huffed, but did as she was told, sitting on her haunches as Liam dashed forward. With surprising ease, he managed to jump up and beat his wings to gain some height, though he did it a little too quickly and didn't rise up as far as he ought to on each beat of his wings. Still, he managed to gain some height, and twisted and turned in the air over the field while Michael watched.
"I am an airplane!" he shouted out as he flew directly over Emma and Daniel. He tried to make airplane noises, but his draconic muzzle garbled them and Emma laughed at the resulting cacophony.
"Come on down now," Michael shouted out to him, and Liam turned and flew over to the older dragon. He descended a little too sharply and had a harder landing on his feet than intended, but as far as Emma could tell from the distance she was watching from, he didn't seem hurt, and sat down by Michael.
"Your turn, Emma!" Michael called out.
"Go on, kiddo," her father told her encouragingly.
Emma ran forward and launched into the air just like before, but this time, instead of just gliding, she beat her wings to get height. On the upward motion, she bent them in the middle, and on the way down, she spread them back out. Each time she got a little higher into the air, the ground getting further away from her. She was so fast! The wind whipped by her, and she felt so free, like she could go anywhere in the world she wanted. She wanted to go higher, but remembered what Michael had said, so instead she turned her body to bank in a wide circle.
As she did, she looked back at her house. It already looked so small, and for the first time she could see the trees in the back yard from above. In one of the upper windows of the house, her sharp eyesight picked out her mother's face staring at her with a mixture of wonder and sadness. Emma frowned, but she looked over to her father, who was turning to try and keep the camera focused on her. He looked so tiny now. Even her street seemed small, just a strip of gray on the ground with white lines painted down the middle of it.
She kept turning in a complete circle to continue on her way towards the other two dragons. Diving slightly, she pulled up a little early, and glided the rest of the way until she landed a little bit past Liam and Michael, turning and trotting back over to them.
"Very well done, Emma," Michael told her, making her beam with pride, her tail swishing back and forth behind her.
"How high have you gone, Michael?" she asked him curiously.
"I went above the clouds once, but only once," he told the two of them. "It is very cold up there, and harder to breathe. Clouds are wet, too. I would not recommend it... but it is beautiful to see. You normally only ever see that sight by riding on a plane."
"How high can we go?" Liam followed up.
Michael gave a thoughtful hum. "Let us stay at a safe height for now. Try practicing more at the heights you just tried. Tomorrow, we can try going a little higher. How does that sound?"
"Okay!" Emma replied.
"I will race you back, Emma!" Liam called out. He started running towards the house, and she bounded off after him, the two of them soon launching into the air to fly once again.
--------------------
As the day of their planned departure came closer, the one thing Liam couldn't understand was why his parents weren't nearly as excited as he was to see the relatives again. He remembered the last time they'd gone, and several of them had fussed over him and Emma, given him candy and cookies, and taken pictures with him. Even though he couldn't fit back inside the house any more, he didn't see the problem; the relatives all seemed to love having their gatherings out in their back yards, barbecuing dinner just like his dad did. One of his aunts even had a swimming pool in the back yard, and he was excited to try and go swimming – though he wondered if he would still need floaties on his arms.
The trip had required an overnight stop outdoors, but it was mostly uneventful. His parents rode in a balloon basket, and Michael wrapped the ropes around his front limbs so they could swing underneath. The take-off and landing was a little rough, but he had practiced with the empty basket the day before to make it as gentle as possible, and again with some heavy bags loaded into it to be sure he could handle the weight.
The kids had been left to their own devices, at least until Liam had managed to get into a little trouble when he tried to climb up a small tree. Not accounting for his greater weight and strength, he accidentally snapped it near the base, pushing it over with a crash. Both his parents and Michael had given him a lecture, so he had stayed by the campsite for the rest of the night. Emma had gotten a similar talking-to for trying to chase a fox she had spotted out of curiosity, with Daniel firmly reminding her that wild animals were not pets and should be left alone.
Liam was reminded of the camping trips his father had taken him on a couple times, though he couldn't fit in the tent any more and instead slept outside, huddled up against Emma and Michael. It had been nice, listening to the wind rustling the leaves, and feeling Michael's protective presence nearby. He had curled the end of his tail around Emma's, and Michael had draped one wing over both of them – in a way, it wasn't all that different from camping in a tent after all.
But it didn't take long after their arrival for all of Liam's enthusiasm to vanish.
The way his mother had treated him as he had changed had been hard for him to handle, but the other relatives' reactions were worse. None of them wanted to talk to him, give him food, or even look at him, and he had been left sitting next to Michael in the fields outside the relatives' yard, feeling alone and left out, not even allowed to cross the fence.
Emma had felt much the same way, and had been chased away from the gathering when she tried to join in. The girls she had played with on previous visits didn't even want to speak to her, except for one, but that girl's mother had grabbed a yard broom and had chased Emma off with it. Crying, she had run off to where Michael was lying and lay against him instead. Even from the other side of Michael, Liam had been able to smell his sister's emotion-scents of distress.
Some of Liam's relatives had made signs of the cross or held their fingers in a cross at him, which he knew was for reacting to bad things, and seeing them do it to him made him feel even worse. He wanted to leave, but Michael had told him that "however bad it might be here, it will be even more dangerous alone," so he had stayed. If Michael hadn't been there, he would have run off into the woods alone.
He hated that his senses were so much better now – he could hear the conversations people had about him, and what they said to his parents. They were sympathetic to his parents, telling them that they must have "suffered so much" and "struggled so hard", that they were "cursed" and "unfortunate". Some of them told his mother that she should "put them out of their misery" – Liam didn't know what that meant, but it made his mother sad when she heard it.
And for a brief moment, he had been hopeful when one of the other boys his age came over to see him, sneaking out past the fence while the adults weren't looking. Liam had tried to talk to him, but he didn't understand a word Liam said. And then he'd tried to climb on top of Liam's back.
Something had overcome Liam when that happened, some sort of instinct. Everything felt wrong; he felt himself on edge and afraid, with a total stranger not only touching him but getting on top of him. He felt threatened, in danger. Before he had even realized what he was doing, he had shaken the other boy off. But he was so much bigger and stronger that the other boy was sent flying, and after landing in the grass nearby, he cried loudly enough that everyone had noticed.
And that was the end of the gathering. The boy's parents had yelled at Liam, making him even more afraid. The father had pulled out a gun, in response to which Michael had stepped between Liam and his relatives, stomping his foot hard enough to shake the ground. Daniel had gotten into an argument with the boy's parents, and Gloria had pulled him away before things got any worse. Liam's family made their exit to jeers and shouts about how they were all going to Hell, that he was the devil, and that his parents were sinners for sheltering demons. They called Emma all kinds of bad words, some he didn't even know the meanings of. One of the parents yelled that they should be locked up in a cage, and Emma had burst into tears upon hearing that. None of them had confronted Michael directly, but Liam had seen their scowls, heard them muttering, and had seen some of them making signs of the cross at the elder dragon. The whole experience left Liam shaking, and unable to sleep for a long time that night.
Little was said between any of them during the trip back, and Liam constantly grappled with thoughts of leaving. He wanted to fly away and hide somewhere, but to do that he would have to leave Emma and Michael behind, and despite all that had happened, he felt much safer whenever Michael was nearby. After they returned, he had insisted on coming along on Michael's hunting trips just so he could stay close to the bigger dragon, and Emma had joined too, not wanting to be left out.
And so, Liam saw less and less of Gloria and Daniel each day. Sometimes he saw them when they went into the back yard to work on the garden or cut up the animals the dragons brought back, but he didn't talk to them – they couldn't understand him, anyway. It was always Michael who said good night to him when he was sleeping outside, and it was always Emma who played with him when they weren't busy. Sometimes he could go an entire day without interacting with either of his parents.
One morning, Liam woke to feeling Michael's large snout nudging against his side. "Wake up, Liam," he heard, and he opened his eyes blearily, absently raising his head to try and nuzzle back. It was still quite early, at least for him, but he could hear the sounds of the humans moving around inside their big artificial den.
"What...?" Liam sleepily mumbled, raising to all fours and stretching out his neck and wings.
"You were having a nightmare," Michael told him quietly. "You were shaking and whimpering."
"Oh," Liam replied simply, lying back down on his front, his front legs stretched in front of him with his back legs by his sides. The dream had already almost completely slipped away, and he only remembered very brief things about it. Humans shouting at him, fires around him, metal bars surrounding him... it was all so indistinct, vanishing from his memory as he woke up fully. "I am sorry, Elder."
"Hmph. I am not THAT old. But do not be sorry. Are you all right? Do you want to talk about it?" Michael shifted slightly and extended one wing, placing it over Liam like a blanket.
Liam's tail thumped the ground a little as he leaned against Michael's side. "Why are we here?" Liam asked after a moment.
Michael took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. "Far greater scholars than I have pondered that question for a long time," he answered cryptically.
"Huh?" Liam tilted his head, not understanding, and tried again. "You and me and sis, we could go anywhere. Humans hate us. They want to hurt us. Why do we not leave?"
"Your parents are here, Liam. I cannot take you away from them. I am not your father, and I cannot be the one to look after both of you."
A confused sound escaped from Liam as he tilted his head the other direction, trying to peer up at Michael past the upper edge of the big dragon's wing. "You are not my dad?"
Michael folded his wing, turning his head to look at Liam. His expression was hard to read, but Liam could pick up a strange mixture of scent emotions from him; concern, fear, confusion, and others. "No, Liam. Daniel is your father, not me."
Liam lowered his head and pawed at the ground idly with a forelimb. "Who? That man with all the stuff wrapped around his arm? He cannot be. He does not look like me at all. He is a human."
In a sudden movement that took Liam by surprise, Michael stood up, walking to the wall of flat pieces of wood behind the humans' den. "Gloria!" he called out, "Daniel! Come quickly!" The words were in some other language. Liam felt like he didn't recognize it, but he was able to understand the words after thinking about them for a moment.
The noise woke up Emma, who grumbled and stretched her limbs as well, spreading out her wings as far as she could, curling her tail and then relaxing it, opening her mouth in a wide yawn as she rose to all fours. Liam trotted over to where Michael was standing, not sure what all the fuss was about. He'd grown a lot recently, and could see over the top of the wood-wall now; he remembered when he was a smaller dragon he couldn't quite lift his head that high without rearing up on his back two legs. He felt like he had once been even smaller on the inside of that enclosed area, but he couldn't quite remember. The thought of being penned in somewhere made him shiver, and he put it out of his mind.
The humans came out from their den after a short time. Liam recognized that the woman was holding a long metal object, and he quickly lowered his head and hid behind the wood-wall. He remembered the metal thing was a 'gun', that it could hurt him. And that it was loud, and scary. Images flashed through his mind; humans yelling at him, waving guns, telling him to go away, that he would burn, the woman with the gun pointing it at him...
"What is it? Is someone coming?" Liam heard the man say.
"No, and put the gun down, Gloria," Michael told him. "It's the kids. Something's wrong with them." Liam frowned; why did he understand the humans' speech? When had he learned that?
"What? What's wrong?" the woman said in a panic. "Are they sick? Are they hurt?"
"Come over here," Michael answered, and stepped back from the wood-wall. Liam hunkered down low to the ground, but he heard the footsteps approaching. Some urge in him told him to flee, but another told him to hide; either way, he was afraid for his own safety, and for his sister. Michael would have to protect them both.
The footsteps got closer, and Liam saw a leg covered in blue-fabric crossing the broken part of the wood-wall, coming into the open field where Liam's family lived. The urge to flee won, and Liam got up, darting off with incredible speed as he ran behind Michael, putting the big dragon between himself and the humans. Emma was already there, and they both got down low behind Michael's rear legs, cautiously peeking around them to see what was happening.
"Liam?" the man called out, "Emma? It's just me. There's no need to be afraid."
Neither Liam nor his sister moved, and Michael spoke quietly. "Something is happening to them. I don't know what it is, this didn't happen to me during my transformation. But Liam seems to think I'm his father."
Liam took a cautious peek around Michael's leg, and saw the two humans looking at him. The woman wasn't holding the gun any more, but Liam was still afraid. For a moment, his eyes met the woman's, and he quickly hid his head back behind Michael's leg.
"He doesn't recognize me," the woman said in a hurt tone of voice. "Oh God. Oh God, I know what this is. They're going feral."
"They're what?" Michael and the man asked at almost the same time.
"I... I heard about it on TV. Oh God. Dragons eventually lose themselves. They forget who they were and become complete animals. They attack people and steal livestock. I should have recognized it when they couldn't speak any more." Her voice grew more and more panicky as she continued, "Oh God, we're losing them. I didn't want to think about it, but they're... Daniel, they're, they're... what are we going to do? What did we do to deserve this? What did THEY do to deserve this? Lord, please have mercy..."
"There must be something we can do," the man insisted, though with a shaky voice. "Panicking won't help us. We have to try something. I don't want to lose them either. Even as dragons, they're still my kids, but if they go feral like you said..."
"Yes, yes..." the woman said quietly, taking a few deep breaths. "Michael, you said this never happened to you? Then maybe the people on TV were wrong, maybe it doesn't happen to all dragons. Maybe it's not too late. I... I'm going to try something."
"Gloria, be careful," the man said sharply as the woman walked around Michael's body, slowly approaching Liam and his sister.
"Help," Liam cried out softly to Michael, able to smell the fear exuding from himself and his sister, "help us!"
"Ssh, it is okay," Michael told them, turning his head to look behind him at the two smaller dragons. "She is not going to hurt you. Do not be afraid. Just stay still. Trust me."
Liam trembled as the woman approached, staring up at her. He wanted to run away, but Michael had told him not to. He hunched down as she got closer, an instinct demanding that he hide, every part of him screaming 'Danger!' as she got closer. He closed his eyes and set his head down on the grass, shaking with fear...
...and felt her hand gently touch the side of his head.
"Ssh, it's okay," he heard, but it was the woman, and not Michael, telling him this time. "Liam, it's me, your mother. Can you still understand me? Please open your eyes and look at me if you can."
He was able to understand, but he had to really think about all the words she was using, the strange human-speech, so crude compared to the dragon language he talked to Michael and his sister with. He was still afraid, and her words didn't comfort him, but something about her touch, the tone of her voice, and the way she had approached so slowly calmed him a little. Cautiously, he opened one eye. The woman was right next to him, on her knees on the grass, and he almost wanted to run again, but something about her touch was vaguely familiar. Kneeling on the ground, she looked much less threatening, too. There was something... something about the grass, he couldn't remember... grass stains...?
She slowly brought her hand to the top of his muzzle and rubbed down it towards the end of his snout. As her hand passed over his nostrils, he caught her scent, and something stirred inside him. It was a familiar scent, one he had known for a long time, even if he only recently had become more aware of it since... since what? Something had happened recently, what was it? He could also smell metal, and saw little bands of it on some of her fingers. The man only had one, for some reason, but the woman had several.
Gently and cautiously, he rubbed his head back against her hand, and he saw her concerned expression turn into a smile. "I think it's working!" she told the others behind her, without taking her gaze off of him as she held out her other hand towards Emma, trying to entice the other dragon to come over from her hiding spot behind Michael's leg. "Daniel, come help me."
The man approached, and Liam started to get up, but the woman put her other hand on top of his head, carefully avoiding touching his dorsal fin. "It's okay, it's okay," she told him quietly, and he settled down again as she rubbed over his scales.
The man knelt down on one knee beside her and held out his hand in front of Liam's face, letting him sniff at it. Another familiar scent. But from where? "Remember me, kiddo?" the man asked, before reaching under Liam's head and gently scratching under his chin. Liam lifted his head, thumping his tail as he enjoyed the attention, his memory stirring. Someone used to call him and his sister 'kiddo' all the time. Who was it? Was it this man? Liam's gaze moved to the man again, and something lined up in his head; yes, this man, he had known him for a long time. As far as he could remember, in fact. And the woman had always been with him. They seemed a lot taller in his fuzzy memories for some reason...
The woman turned her attention back to Emma, holding her hand out again. "See how happy your brother is?" she said as Liam's tail thumped the ground, "Come over here. I promise I won't hurt you."
Emma was hesitant, still hiding behind Michael's leg, but no longer moving her head back behind it every few seconds. The woman got up, leaving Liam to be scratched by the man, and walked around Liam's body, carefully stepping over his tail, to approach Emma, keeping her hand outstretched. She shifted a little, but with a few more calming words from Michael and a relaxing emotion-scent from him to encourage her to relax, Liam saw the woman reach her and start rubbing Emma's head in the same way she had done to him.
Liam tried to lean forward to nuzzle against the man's chest, but was just a little too forceful and pushed him backwards into a sitting position. "Oof! Careful there, kiddo, you're a lot bigger than you used to be!" the man said as he got back up, bending over at the waist now that Liam was being more cooperative. He'd heard things like that a lot recently from the man, he remembered, but he had been inside... inside where? The humans' den, of course, but why had he been in there?
"Daniel, I have an idea," the woman said suddenly. "Can you go get the photo album?"
The man stopped scratching Liam, and he grumbled quietly in response. "Where is it?" the man asked.
"It's on the bottom shelf in our room."
Liam watched as the man ran off back to the den, and once he had disappeared inside, Liam instead turned his head to look at his sister. Michael stepped away slowly and turned around to watch as the woman petted and fussed over Emma, taking something from a loose part of her fabric coverings. "Remember this?" Gloria asked, holding up a strip of red fabric. Liam came over, trying to sniff at it, but the woman moved it to dangle it in front of Emma's face. He tried not to giggle as he saw her eyes cross from attempting to stare at it, nostrils flaring as she sniffed. "It's your ribbon. You used to wear this every day."
Emma tilted her head curiously, her attention focused entirely on the ribbon. Liam sat right next to Emma, feeling a little protective of her, but also hoping that he could get the woman to pay attention to him too.
"Hold still, please," the woman said. "You don't have hair any more, but maybe..." Gently and slowly, she reached out and wrapped the ribbon around the base of Emma's left ear fin, and then delicately tied a bow in the top just like Emma had used to wear it. ...like Emma had used to wear it? Liam blinked and shook his head; when had his sister worn a ribbon? But something nagged in the back of his head, she had had that same ribbon on, but it had somehow been different back then...
The movement caught the woman's attention, and she reached out with one hand to him, so that she could rub the cheeks of both of the dragons at once. "You two remember me, don't you?" she asked as she rubbed, and after a brief moment, Liam gave a nod. He knew her, somehow. There was something familiar about her. But who was she? How did he know her? Those were questions he didn't know the answers to.
The man came back from the house, carrying something in his un-wrapped arm, a thick block of some kind, with a brown outer shell around the inner bits that he could see past the edges. Liam felt like he had seen it before, or at least, something very similar. The man handed it to the woman, breathing heavily from having just been running. As the two dragons leaned in to try and look at the thing, she held it up so they could both see it.
"I have some pictures of us all, from before all this," she told them as she opened the book. Book? Liam remembered he'd had things just like this; the shell was a 'cover' and the bits inside were 'pages'. But this one wasn't a normal book like Liam was used to; the pages were very thick and there were only pictures, no words, and the pictures were all photographs. Another moment of confusion gripped him; when had he read books, and how did he get used to them? Why would a dragon need them? It felt like it had been recently...
The woman flipped through the pages for a moment, and then held the book up so that Liam and Emma could see it. There were several pictures there, pictures of the man and the woman. But there were two others in the picture, too: two much smaller humans. A little boy in a white top-covering, with blue-fabric on his lower body plus straps that went up and over his shoulders. Next to the boy was a little girl in a big, red, loose fabric-covering with one of those 'ribbon' things in her hair. They were all waving at whoever took the picture, and all smiling together.
Liam's eyes fixed on the boy, but he didn't know why. Something about him seemed familiar. As though he had seen that face, that sight, many times before. But there was more to it; he'd seen the man and the woman in the pictures a lot, and the girl too. The girl, and her ribbon... he remembered playing with her. The rubber ball he and his sister knocked around in the field, they'd once been in the yard, kicking it around. But he couldn't kick it with his feet the way they were now, so how did he ever...?
His eyes looked at the other pictures, as the woman occasionally turned the pages. They were similar, showing the four humans, sometimes with the older ones holding the younger ones, sometimes sitting together. But something was missing. Where was Michael? Where was the big dragon? Where was his father?
The last picture was inside. In the humans' den? There was a big wood circle, with the woman, the boy and the girl sitting at it; the man wasn't in the picture. The boy and the girl had little, colorful pointy hats on, and the boy was sitting in front of a big white food-thing with little colorful sticks on it that were all on fire. On top of the food-thing was colorful stuff in the shape of a 7. What was a 7? Liam subconsciously licked his lips; he remembered that food-thing, it was called a cake. It had tasted so good. But how could he remember that? Unless... unless...
In the background of the picture he could just barely see through the door of the room, into another room of the den. Fabric sheets hung up over the windows – curtains, weren't they? The back of a sitting-place... a sofa. A gray picture-box that was off – a TV? The stirring memories awakened another. A dragon roaring. Crashing sounds; a loud bang, his father screaming. His father? Yes, his father, but if he wasn't the dragon, then...
"That's you, Liam," the woman said, holding the bottom of the album with one hand and resting it against her front as she used the other hand to point to the boy in one of the pictures. "And that's you, Emma," she continued, pointing at the girl. "From before this all began. You know, on the news, they've been calling it Zero Day? As though that's when everything started. But that's not true, we were all here before that. You were my children then, and you still are now. I love you both."
Liam let out a small cry as emotions filled him; he barely registered a cacophony of scents from his sister next to him as something similar happened to her too. He'd heard those words before, from the woman in front of him, from his mother. His mother! She'd tucked him into bed – a bed! He'd lived inside, inside the den – no, it was called a house! – and told him each night that she loved him. He hadn't been a dragon, then. He'd been a human, the boy in the pictures, and his sister the girl. It seemed like it had been so long ago. But the memories came back to him.
Michael wasn't his father; Daniel was. The humans- no, his parents, they were the ones who lived here and were looking after him. Gloria and Daniel. Mom and Dad.
"Mom...!" he cried out to her, trembling as tears came to his eyes and began to roll down his scales. As sobs and whistling sounds escaped him, his wings drooped, and he smelled a strong aroma of emotional scents from himself, so complicated he couldn't even understand them despite them being his own.
Her reaction was different. "Yes, sweetie, it's me!" his mother told him, setting down the photo album. She wrapped one arm around his neck and another around Emma's as she held them close to her, and he settled his head onto her shoulder as best he could with the difference in their sizes. He felt her arm and hand rubbing at his neck, and he felt comforted.
"Mom, I'm sorry!" Emma cried out as she sobbed from the other side of Liam's mother, and Liam heard his mother patting the scales on her neck. Some complicated emotion scents wafted from his sister, but Liam was just as lost as to their deeper meaning as he was with his own.
"There's nothing to be sorry for, sweetie, mommy's here," Liam's mother said soothingly.
"They're speaking English again, thank God," his father said in quiet astonishment. "You really did it, Gloria." He came over and touched the top of Liam's head next to his fin, and he remembered his father's hands patting him there before. Not just when he'd been a dragon, but when he'd been human too.
"It's a miracle," Gloria whispered, continuing to hug her children against her.
Liam's tears continued to flow, and he made a rising and falling whistling sound. He remembered that sound; it had been the sound that had made Michael show up. He remembered now all that had happened, that he had been the boy in the pictures but had turned into a dragon. But everything would be all right now. His parents were here, and his sister, and Michael too – even if he wasn't Liam's father, he was still a friend. Everyone Liam cared deeply about was here with him. And that made him happy.
His mother hugged him tighter, and he wanted to return the gesture. But his hands were too big, too strong, and had claws on the end. So instead, he spread out his wings wide, and wrapped them around his mother, his father, and Emma, pulling them in closer. His family. His real family. He had almost forgotten them, but now, he didn't want to let them go for fear of losing them. His emotion-scents and Emma's filled the air, an unintelligible mix of feelings blending in the air around them.
Michael spread out one of his massive wings, big enough to cover all four of them, like a big umbrella. Michael wasn't part of his family, but he was still a friend to Liam.
He wanted them to stay together forever.
------------------
"Goodness, you two have gotten good at this," Gloria said as she smoothed out the dirt with one gloved hand. "Let's do one more set, and then you can play until dinner."
Emma beamed and thumped her tail on the ground as she watched her mother use a stick to draw in the dirt, writing out more math problems for them. She remembered doing it at the dining room table not that long ago, with a pencil and paper. Gloria still had the paper that she was copying the problems from, but even though she and Liam had both learned how to grasp smaller objects, it was a lot easier for them to draw in the dirt with their claws – the first time Liam had tried using a pencil, he had accidentally snapped it in half, while Emma had punched it straight through the paper and into the ground by mistake.
But their mother hadn't gotten mad at them, and had found another solution: she got them to dig up and loosen some of the dirt in an empty part of the yard, which let both of them draw in it. It didn't matter if they pressed too hard or used their claws, and it was a lot easier to write with the much bigger numbers that Gloria drew out with the stick. While writing, she had made a remark about how it would have been easier with sand, and had reminded them of a trip to the beach they had gone on once, where Liam and Daniel had built a sand castle together.
Once she finished writing out more exercises for both of them, she set the paper down. "Okay, go ahead, and when you're done you can play," she told them both. Emma leaned forward to look over the new set of problems; 10 – 2, 5 + 5, 7 – 3, 6 – 4...
Sitting on her haunches to free up both her hands, she reached out and stuck her index claws into the dirt, drawing an 8 under the first one and 10 for the second at the same time. She remembered being only able to do one of these at a time back when she was sitting at the dining room table, but now she seemed able to work out several at once, though she was still limited to how fast she could write.
Gloria shook her head, but it was in disbelief and not disapproval, as Liam did the same thing next to her with his problems. "It still amazes me every time I see you do that," she said, "it's too bad you can't go to school any more. I'm sure you'd be able to win all kinds of awards."
Emma giggled a little as she moved onto the next pair of problems. "You forgot to carry the one, dear," she heard her mother tell Liam, and he briefly complained about it for a moment before fixing his mistake.
They both looked up and away from the dirt as they heard wings beating; Michael was returning. Looking around, Emma saw the distant silhouette of Michael in the sky approaching the back yard, and smiled a bit before looking back at the math; she knew her mother would insist that she finish before seeing Michael, so she wanted to get it done before the big dragon arrived.
"What was that all about?" Emma's mother asked.
"Michael's almost here!" she answered giddily.
"You heard him from all the way over here?" her mother asked curiously as she gazed up at the sky for a moment, and Emma nodded in response. "I can't hear a thing, and I don't see him either. You must have some amazing senses."
A short time later, Emma stood up and bounced on her feet a bit. "All finished!" she declared, and ran off into the field without waiting for a response, looking for the rubber ball. Once she found it, she nosed at it and rolled it back towards her mother and brother dexterously; she'd gotten a lot of practice in recently even as she kept getting bigger. She only wished they had a bigger ball, as it was getting harder to play with.
As Liam did his last set of problems, Gloria laughed a little and picked up the ball when it came to a stop close to her, throwing it overhead with both hands back into the field. Emma chased off after it happily, and when she brought it back again, Liam had finished.
There was a loud thump nearby as Michael landed, and Emma felt the wind blow past her from his descent. "Okay, you two, I need to go help get dinner ready, go on and play," Gloria told them as she got up from the ground and walked towards Michael, her husband coming from the house soon after, holding the bag with his butchery tools in his good arm.
Liam knocked the ball out into the open field, and he and Emma chased after it. Pouncing on the ball first, Liam crouched down with his back legs, then launched himself into the air, wings flapping as he ascended. "Hey, come back!" Emma called out playfully, taking off and flying after him. He tossed the ball up into the air, and she flew over and grabbed it in her forelegs, turning and banking in the air with a giggle. She'd gotten a lot of practice in since first learning to fly, and other than getting caught at the top of a tree once, she'd done so without any serious accidents.
As they played with the ball in the air above the field, tossing it around and knocking it about with their legs or tails, Emma could hear the conversation her parents had and follow it without losing focus on the ball. "Wow, that's a big one," her father said, "just as well, with the way those two are eating."
"Their appetites will wane once they have reached the full size for their age, and the unnaturally rapid growth from their transformation is over," Michael replied. "Or at least, that's how it was for me. I was constantly hungry while I was changing into a Child of the Egg, but became less so afterwards. However, I am getting off track – I hate to be abrupt, but we have a problem."
"What kind of problem?" Emma's father asked.
"You've heard of the local militias roaming around, haven't you?"
Gloria was the one to answer, "I saw them on TV. They had an interview with one of the chapters. They're popping up all over the place, people getting together to hunt dragons."
"What? Why?" Daniel asked angrily.
"They see them as threats, especially in rural areas. They've been organizing online, and nobody prosecutes them, especially out here in the country." With a sigh, Gloria added, "It seems you were right, Michael. Dragons aren't being given any rights. They're treated like livestock – no, worse than that. It's never open season on livestock. They treat you like wild animals."
"Livestock go missing and farmers get their guns; that's how it's always been," Daniel grumbled. "Whether it's foxes, or wolves, or cattle rustlers. But it's not right to go hunting after every dragon for that."
"I've never taken anything from a farmer's field, but I doubt they would listen or care," Michael groused. "Law and order has mostly collapsed outside of the cities, and they have a lot of support from scared families, even those who don't join the militia themselves. I bring this up because I've seen some of those groups moving through the area while flying around. They've got trucks and guns – even some military vehicles. They're out for blood."
Emma missed trying to catch the ball, and it fell to the ground, bouncing on the grass. She was quick to land next to it, grab it, and return to the air, rolling over – Michael had told her it was an 'aileron roll' – and tossing the ball up when she had her back towards the ground. She only barely caught the sound of her father's sigh as she watched Liam soar up and snatch the ball out of the air. "It was only a matter of time, really. Someone was going to see dragons flying around sooner or later."
"And given enough time, they will find this house," Michael said solemnly. "There is evidence of my presence and the children's presence all around. I stayed far from civilization before coming here for that reason."
"Michael, we're eternally grateful for all you've done for us. But if you need to protect yourself-" Gloria began, but Michael cut her off.
"I'm not the one I'm concerned about," he interjected. "It's you two."
There was an awkward silence, during which time Liam fumbled a catch and dove down, grabbing the ball before it could hit the ground, pulling out of his dive and flapping his wings to gain height once more. "He's got a point," her father acknowledged, "I can't imagine they'd treat us any better for sheltering dragons. And I can't shoot my shotgun one-handed. We're not equipped to hold off anything more than a lone looter."
"I don't want them to hurt my children either," Gloria stated firmly. "Their scales don't feel very firm, compared to how yours look, Michael. Even if you can't be hurt by a gun, they could be. And in that interview, they said that big guns can still kill a dragon. I don't know if they were telling the truth or not..."
"...but we can't afford to take the risk," Daniel finished for her. "God. Just when I thought things were looking up."
Emma dropped the ball by accident while trying to throw it, and it bounced along the ground towards her parents. She landed nearby and trotted over, watching her mother pick it up and give it an overhead throw back into the field, where Emma chased after it.
"I have an idea," Michael said after Emma and Liam had flown off, though she could still hear him just fine. "I mentioned before that I have a vacation house up in the mountains. I haven't been there since last summer, so I don't know what condition it's in. It might be safe, since it's so remote. But it might have been looted, taken over, repossessed, sold off... who can say? I have no way to check. But it would be much safer than here, and there's vast swathes of wilderness around it we could hunt in. And... I admit, there is a possibility my wife has gone there, too, and I would love to see her again if she has done so. As you know, she has not returned any of our calls."
"How far is it?" Daniel inquired.
"It would be several days' flight. There will be no coming back if we decide to go. The children can fly on their own, but I would have to carry your belongings in the balloon basket. You two would have to ride on my back."
"That sounds dangerous," Gloria protested. "I saw what happened when someone tried to climb on Liam's back. You mentioned before that you wouldn't like it either."
"We Children do not like it when people we do not know or trust climb on us," Michael clarified. "But I consider the two of you to be good friends now, and the children need you too. You have done a lot for them lately. You would need to fashion some kind of harness for the trip. And there's no guarantee we will be safe when we arrive."
There was another moment of silence. "We'll think about it," Daniel eventually answered. With the conversation over, Emma focused instead on playing with Liam, pulling up and flapping her wings to hover momentarily in place so she could throw the ball his way.
--------------------
Dinner had been excellent, as usual, though Liam had been just as disappointed as Michael to hear that they had used up the last of the honey barbecue sauce and wouldn't be able to get any more. After playing a bit more with Emma after dinner, it had gotten dark and quite a bit colder. Even though neither of those things presented much of an obstacle to him, since he could see in the dark and his scales gave him good protection from the cold, Michael had insisted that he get some rest. Reluctantly, he had gone to where Michael was lying and huddled up against his side, humming contentedly when the big dragon draped a wing over him.
He found it hard to sleep, though, and lay awake for a while listening to the sounds from the house, of his parents doing the dishes and putting them away and tidying up in the yard. There had been quiet for a while, and then he heard them come out to sit outside, followed by the sound of his father opening a beer can cutting through the still air.
"One last beer before we leave," Liam's father said. Peeking open one eye, Liam peered through the broken section of fence and saw his mother and father sitting outside, his father raising up his beer can in his left hand before taking a sip from it. "I'm not going to take any with me, and I won't have a car to make runs to the liquor store up in the mountains. But we don't have much of a choice."
"Seems like it," his mother responded. "We're on borrowed time. I tried to do some research as best I could on the local militia, but I couldn't find anything on them specifically. We have to assume they're armed."
"They have that army base a few miles out west from the highway. If what Michael says is true and they've got military vehicles, we have to assume they've got guns too. I know a few people around here with family who serve on that base, it wouldn't surprise me if the militia got some inside help."
"Either way, we can't face them," Gloria said sadly. "Our only option is to leave. We've been here for almost ten years, and now we have to run away with whatever we can fit into a few suitcases."
"I'll be sad to leave this place behind too, you know. I remember us buying this place after we'd been married for a bit, moving in here, deciding which room would be the kids' room once we had them... I hate seeing it all messed up like this. Broken fences, holes in the ground everywhere, knocked over trees, the yard in shambles. But the important thing is that we're still together, despite all that's happened," Liam's father reminded her. Liam yawned a little as he listened and settled his head on his forelegs; adult talk usually went over his head and didn't interest him much. "As long as we have faith in God and each other, we'll be okay."
Liam's mother's exhaustion was plain in her voice. "I just want things to go back to normal."
"They won't, Gloria," his father said quietly. "We have to make do with what we've got. We'll figure it out, because nobody else can do it for us. Nobody else is going to help us. We're on our own, but we'll find a way."
"I know," she replied. They went quiet for long enough that Liam finally drifted off, and didn't hear if there was any more to the conversation.
------------------
Mitchell thumped a fist on the roof of the 4x4. "Pull over!" he shouted to the driver, supporting himself by keeping his other hand on the mounted M2 Browning that he had welded onto the truck bed.
The truck pulled over at the side of the road, and the other three vehicles in the convoy behind it did the same. Mitchell began barking out orders, ordering the other militia members out of their trucks and into cover behind them or onto the mounted guns. He was glad that his cousin in the third truck had helped him break into the armory; the kind of hardware they needed to be sure of taking down a dragon was hard to come by even before dragons had popped up everywhere. Plus, it was an excuse to use the biggest guns they could get hold of without it being complete overkill. Fifty-cals on a deer would just ruin the meat, but on a dragon? It was the only thing that they knew would get through its scales.
He hopped down from the truck as the two American flags secured to the back corners flapped in the wind, drawing a Desert Eagle from the holster at his waist. His belt held up the camo-patterned cargo pants he wore, but he had tied the matching shirt around his waist, leaving him in just a white tank top. His sunglasses kept the midday glare out of his eyes, and the flag bandana wrapped around his head kept his blonde hair out of the way. "Watch my back," he told the other militiamen behind him as he approached the yard.
This had to be the place. The front yard was devastated, with a crushed section of hedge and the destroyed wrecks of a car, a truck and an ambulance close by. The knocked over trees drew more attention, but the massive footprints in the front yard were a dead giveaway. Even though they went over each other many times, there were few things that made tracks that big. The fields around the property were dotted with mounds of dirt where things had been recently buried.
But it was too quiet. There were no signs of life in the house, and the front door was open. If there were dragons here, they were gone for the moment.
Mitchell carefully crossed the yard, keeping his gun held in both hands, pointed ahead of him, finger close to the trigger, his thumb taking off the safety. With beasts like this, any amount of time could make the difference between life and death.
"Anyone home?" he shouted into the open door as he got closer, but there was no response. "Come out with your hands up! We only care about the dragons."
There was still no response. Perhaps they had fled, but he would make sure of that. He raised one hand to wave a couple of the other militiamen over to follow him as he approached the front doorstep; after they secured the place, assuming they didn't find anyone, they would hide and wait for the dragon to return. If he didn't come back for a day, they'd move on. It couldn't be helped – every hunter always had a story about the one that got away.
As he crossed the threshold, Mitchell's combat boot stepped on something hard, and he heard glass crunching beneath him. Looking down, he moved his foot to see a picture frame that had been knocked onto the floor – likely a sign that the house's residents had fled. Did the dragons chase the original residents out? Well, it didn't matter now, but it might still be a clue.
He stooped down to pick up the picture frame in one hand, his thumb turning the safety catch back on his gun before holstering it. With a gloved hand, he brushed the broken pieces of glass out of the way, then pushed on the photograph to slip it out from the frame. It was an unremarkable family photo; a brown-haired mom and dad, their brown-haired girl and a blonde-haired boy, standing outside of the house – minus all of its current damage – smiling and waving at the camera. All it was missing was a family dog to be a stereotypical family picture.
"What'cha got there?" one of the men behind him inquired.
"Nothing helpful," Mitchell answered, dropping the frame and the picture onto the ground and drawing his gun again. "Keep your eyes open."
As the three of them advanced, another gust of wind blew through the house. The photograph he had discarded was picked up on it and blew out the front door and into the yard, carried off on the wind.
walnut45. 38,396 words. No seriously, this isn't just a short story, this is a full-on novella.
