On The Road Again

“Well that settles it then,” the black-cloaked, white-masked man stated as he swept into the room.

Emily stood by a terminal, her long, graying talons ticking patiently at each key in the sequence she painstakingly spelt out. Though they’d lived aboard the Abstract Destiny for years by then, she had never gotten used to technology. It felt cold and soulless. Not at all like the tingle of warmth she recalled from the touch of magic.

The corpse blue dragonness turned toward her companion as he removed his cloak and mask and let his draconic form take over the humanoid one. Pale skin turned black as char but kept the webwork of scars written across him like an archaic edict. Wings sprouted from his back, but they were ragged and torn through like a ghost ship’s sails. And where his eyes were meant to be were nothing more than two black, empty pits.

V tucked his mask into his cloak, then took the combination and tied it round his eyes. He saw perfectly fine without the empty sockets, and this was his solution to Emily’s disquiet with his physical form.

“I’ve asked around and people have confirmed. We’ve entered atmosphere because they intend to settle here. Which means we’re leaving,” V said, finishing his earlier thought.

“Oh,” was all that Emily replied in her soft, wispy voice. She looked down at her hands, then back at the terminal where she’d been steadily working away.

“Emily, we’ve discussed this,” V said, stepping closer to his companion. There was a note of pleading in his tone, as if begging her not to reopen what he considered to be a closed book.

“I know. I know,” Emily said. “I just… There has to be a reason, right? We chose the Abstract Destiny because we knew Doctor Schroeder and Her Grace were not on good terms. It was the safest place for us.”

“And for many years, it has been just that,” V confirmed.

“Then what changed?”

“I don’t know. I don’t particularly want to find out.” V glanced back at the door. Though his eyes had vanished beneath the black strip of cloth, Emily had learned to read his emotions in other ways. The subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth that meant he was on edge, for example.

“Well what if… What if things have improved?” Emily ventured. If her heart could beat, it would be in her throat. “What if they’ve become friends? What if… she’s gotten better?”

V sucked in a breath, held it a moment, then let it out in a carefully controlled sigh. His tail twitched a fraction of an inch at the tip. The only sign of his irritation.

“I”ve had that thought too. But is it really worth it?”

There it was. That heavy line. The thing that had kept them away all these years. Emily clasped her hands together and stared at them as she fumbled through all the lines she’d prepared in her head. In the end, none of them worked.

“I want to see home again,” she said in a voice as soft as a spring breeze.

For a while, there was silence between them. V’s tail continued to twitch and the console against the wall hummed with low, continuous energy.

“Let's imagine the best case scenario,” V said. “Her Grace of Lanutha has seen the wrongness of her ways and become the reborn, kinder, gentler leader we desired. Faust is dead. All of Faust’s creations have been freed or destroyed.” The black dragon paused and turned his sightless eyes on his companion. “Does that attone for what we went through?”

Emily did not look up at him. She continued to stare at her hands for several long seconds. When at last she moved, it was to push a few more buttons on the console and call up a holoscreen with the star coordinates of another location.

“I found this place. It’s another spaceship, but it’s next to a planet. We may be able to request amnesty there.”

V stepped closer, shoulder to shoulder with the blue dragonness. After a moment, he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I tried to think of a way to inspect what might have changed at the Warren, but it’s too risky. Even if it looks like everything we desire has come true, you know as well as I that Faust always had a backup plan.”

“Do you really think he would set a trap just for us? He didn’t even bother to look for us after we left.”

“That we know of,” V countered. “And yes, I do believe the man is that petty.”

“Rex is going to be so upset,” Emily said. She let out a long, aggrieved sigh, then placed her hand over V’s. “Okay, let's get this over with. The sooner we leave, the better.”

The black dragon at her side gave her a smile and a gentle squeeze on her shoulder.

As they headed out of the communication room and into the labyrinthine halls of the Abstract Destiny, Emily spared a glance over her shoulder. She may not love technology, but she loved this ship. She loved the people on it and the way it had felt like a home from the moment they set foot on it.

“Emily,” V called from up ahead.

“I’m coming,” she called back. Emily spared a smile for one of the ship’s officers as they passed each other in the hall, then quickened her steps to catch up with V. “I’m going to miss this place. We’ve built a good life here.”

“We have, and were the circumstances anything else, I would be happy to continue on here.”

“Are you sure you’re not just… overthinking this?” Emily grimaced as she finished the question. She couldn’t deny V’s ability to analyze a situation was truly a marvel to behold. He had a masterful grasp of logic and reasoning, and always seemed to be ten steps ahead of anyone else. Yet that same analytical mind of his never seemed willing to accept that sometimes the simplest answer was the correct one.

V tilted his head in her direction, then faced forward again. He walked on for several seconds in silence. When he spoke, his voice came out flat and pointed as a knife.

“How do you want to test that hypothesis?”

Emily said nothing. There was nothing more to say at that point. They’d been over this discussion a hundred times in the weeks since the Abstract Destiny had first visited Tris’Hath. The realization of what world they approached had thrown V off balance, and she’d watched over him as he spent many sleepless nights attempting to work through the complex web of connections that brought them to this moment. It likely had something to do with the assault on a structure known as the Labs earlier that same week. Beyond that, he’d only been able to grab morsels of information here and there and pieced them together to form a meager meal.

There was a group of dragons known as the Death Court. They sought to “free” all dragons from human enslavement. They’d attacked the Labs, and also the Warren. From that, Doctor Schroeder and Mystic had rekindled a connection. That was where his theorizing ended and conjecture began. Yet at the end of it all, no matter how he plotted out the interactions, it all came down to the same fact; the Abstract Destiny was setting up roots on Tris’Hath. Their interstellar safe haven was no longer safe.

For the remainder of the trip through the lower levels of the ship, they walked in silence. Emily thought up and aborted several attempts at conversation. V remained steadfastly silent and single minded in intent.

As they neared the nursery area of the ship, Emily placed a hand on V’s shoulder.

“Let me be the one to talk to him,” she said.

V inclined his head in a short nod.

Emily stepped through the wide, brightly coloured doorway and into the nursery room.

The nursery was the single most cheerful room in all of the ship, and that was saying something given Doctor Schroeder’s tastes. There were happy little clouds painted on the walls next to happy little flowers. There were trees growing in small, curated gardens along the edges, their branches kept low and trim so as not to endanger any avid climbers. There was a small splash pad off to one side, and a door at the back that bore hand painted signs. One pointed toward the kitchen, and the other toward the quiet zone. The room rang with the sweet music of children’s laughter and a voice raised in a simple, playful song.

Emily set her sights on a figure in the center of the room. The only piece that seemed out of sorts with the rest of the nursery.

The creature was massive, both in terms of height and bulk. His scaled, brown skin stretched taught over steely muscles, and the mess of twisted, spiked teeth filling his mouth might have made for an intimidating image had it not been for several factors. The first being that he was the source of the children’s song. The second being the dozen or so children playing on or around him without a single concern to the fact that any one of his talons could end them in an instant. The third being the vibrant purple shirt with a smiley face covering his midsection.

Emily paused to listen to Rex’s song.

“I love you. You love me,” the hulking, brown dinosaur sang in a dopey voice. “We’re a happy family. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you,” as he neared the end, the children chimed in, “Won’t you say you love me too?”

The children whooped and cheered and demanded another round. Rex danced with them, moving with the delicate steps of a kitten despite his size. When his beady little eyes spotted Emily, he extracted himself from the horde of children with the utmost care.

“Okay, everyone. It’s reading time!” Rex paused for another round of cheers and cries of delight. “Get into your reading circle. I’ll be back in a minute. My friend Emily is here to say hi.”

A dozen cheerful, pudgy faces turned toward Emily and a dozen voices raised in a chorus of hellos and his. Emily smiled and waved back to the children. When Rex reached her side, she turned and coaxed him back toward the entrance.

“We have to go, Rex,” she said in a soft voice.

“Oh, okay. I have morning shift tomorrow though.” Rex smiled his toothy smile, and it broke Emily’s heart. She took up one of his small hands in hers and held it tight.

“No, sweetie. We have to leave leave,” she said. When that still didn’t seem to penetrate Rex’s skull, she added, “I’ve found us a new home.”

The realization came over Rex’s face like a slow tide. His eyes, small as they were, doubled in size. Then his brows crashed down atop them and drowned them in shadows.

“But I like this one,” he said, his voice as mournful as if she’d just told him his puppy died.

“I do too, but we can’t stay here. It’s not safe anymore.”

A hint of fear crossed the large dinosaur’s face.

“Has the bad man found us?”

V stepped out from the shadow of the entrance way. No matter where they were, he always managed to find a shadowy corner to conceal himself in.

“No, but the risk of his return has increased. It’s best to be safe and leave now while we can still be fairly confident that he’s unaware of our existence.”

Rex looked from his friends to the children arranging themselves in a loopy circle under one of the small trees. The children laughed and chattered amongst themselves, a pure shot of serotonin in their little tableau. Rex wrung his hands together and looked back to his friends.

“I can’t just leave the children alone. They need me,” he said.

“You need to call someone to cover you. We’re leaving today. Post haste,” V replied. His voice did not rise or lower, but the urgency came across in the way he clipped his words.

Rex’s entire body sagged, and Emily reached out to wrap an arm around his shoulders.

“It’s not fair. Why does he get to chase us out of everywhere that makes us happy?”

“I know, sweetie. I know. If I didn’t think this was for the best, I wouldn’t ask for it,” she said.

“I like my life here.” With that final, sullen statement, Rex heaved a great sigh, then stumped over to a panel on the wall. He pressed his tiny hand against the surface, waited for it to beep, then spoke quietly into it.

Emily didn’t need to hear the discussion to know what it contained. This too they had reviewed a hundred times before. They were so used to being on the run that they had their flight plan ingrained in muscle memory. What to pack and what to abandon. What words to say to get them out of any careers they’d picked up. Where to meet and how long to wait before moving on without one of the trio. Thus far, that final precaution had never come into play. No matter how attached they became to any place, they were more attached to each other. Three broken experiments, two dragons, and a little winged worm. It was an eccentric family by all accounts, but it was theirs and nothing would break them apart.

“Rustavomi will be here in a few minutes,” Rex reported a short while later. He kept his head down, eyes on the ground, as he spoke. “I’m going to go say goodbye to the kids.”

“You cannot tell them why we’re leaving,” V said.

“I know,” Rex replied automatically. “Leave no trace.”

“Just so, my friend.” V cocked his head to the side, then added a moment later. “This isn’t what any of us want, I know. I wish there were another way, but without the certainty of being safe, we can’t risk it.”

Rex bobbed his head in a morose nod but said nothing more. He turned and began to trudge back toward the children. After a few steps, his head came up and the smile returned to his face, but it was a forced smile. Even from across the room, Emily could see the pain hiding beneath her friend’s movements.

“I hate this,” she said.

“We’ve done this plenty enough times before. We all know the risks of settling down.”

“I know, but it really felt like we found a home here.”

“Our home is together,” V said. It was the line he always went to when they had to pack up and leave in a hurry. It was the thread that held them together.

Emily let out another short sigh, then turned and placed her head on V’s shoulder. She remained that way until the steady thump of approaching feet warned of Rustovami’s arrival. They stood aside to let the large, furry catdragon pass. A few minutes later, the trio were on their way.

It took a grand total of ten minutes for Emily to retrieve her emergency go-bag of personal items from her quarters and head down to the docking bay. The blue dragoness remained in communication with her bond, Ismaunassa, the entire time. The radiant phoenix dragon had already reached the docking bay, along with V’s Vaeyin. It was Ismaunassa that headed off a moment of potential panic when Emily did not find her tiny, winged companion in her room. Wormy, the aptly named winged worm, had gone down to the docking bay with them.

Despite her bond’s reassurances, Emily did not release the tight knot of unease in her chest until she stood before Ismaunassa and held out her hands to a small, wriggling green body bounding off his shoulder.

“There you are. Naughty boy,” she cooed at the winged worm. “You know you’re supposed to wait for me.”

“He stowed away under my wing this morning,” Ismaunassa said, his voice a rich, throaty purr. The phoenix dragon raised his head down and nuzzled Emily’s cheek. “He’s been picking up tricks from V. I didn’t even notice him until halfway down the hall.”

::He is a spy. Born and bred to move undetected.:: Vaeyin’s smokey mental words slipped across Emily’s mind like a rolling fog. There was no animosity in those words. Just a steely sort of affection.

“Maybe he knew something was happening today. He’s always been curiously aware of his surroundings,” Ismaunassa said.

“Did our little green friend predict the future again? He keeps doing that,” V said as he strode into the docking bay in his humanoid form. The black cloak concealed his figure from head to toe, and the cartoonish mask with its ear to ear smile covered every inch of his face. It was better that way. Somehow, his scars looked even worse in human form.

Emily knelt down to touch his shoulder as he came to stand beside her, and Wormy inched down from her fingertips to his shoulders. In her hand, the little green worm measured from fingertip to wrist. On V, he stretched nearly to his elbow.

“Has Rex arrived yet?” V asked.

Emily shook her head.

“But he still has a minute,” she said. She didn’t mean to make the words sound as desperate as they did, but fear nibbled at the back of her mind like a ravenous beast.

A minute passed. Then two. V turned to look at her and she could feel his resolve pressing in on her chest, crushing her heart. She pushed back, setting her jaw and keeping her eyes glued to the door.

“Emily-”

“He’ll show,” she said.

Another minute dragged by as the group of five stood in tense anticipation. The silence held them in thrall. No one dared break it, lest they be the reason the world shattered around them.

At last, the gnawing anxiety was too much for Emily to bear. She released a long held breath and straightened up, though that act alone felt as difficult as pulling herself out of a mud pit. Her movement broke the spell over the others. Though no one spoke, she felt their eyes on her.

“Okay,” she said. As she drew breath to make the call, the doors to the docking bay slid open.

“Hey. Sorry I’m late,” Rex said. He strode in, a tattered bag over one shoulder and a crumpled stack of papers gripped in his arms. Though he wore a smile, it lacked the exuberant joy she was used to seeing.

“It’s alright,” Emily breathed with the same air she’d almost used to give up on him. She stepped forward and drew him into a hug. His massive, square head rested on her shoulder; a heavier weight than she anticipated.

“I’m glad you made it, friend,” V said.

“Yeah, well, you’re my family.” The hulking dinosaur turned and lowered himself until he could press his forehead to V’s. “I’m gonna miss this place, but not as much as I would miss you guys if you left without me.”

“Never,” Emily said, willing the words to be true. The final rule existed in case of emergencies and emergencies only. Never would one of them willingly stay behind.

“Let’s be off then. We’re already behind schedule,” V said.

Rex nodded, clutching his papers tight to his chest as he followed his friend toward Vaeyin’s shoulder.

“What are those?” Emily asked.

“Hm? Oh. Pictures. My students loved to paint for me. I couldn’t leave them all behind.”

Rex paused, holding out the handful of bent and creased papers for Emily to see, and her heart broke a little more. Each one contained some bright, colourful rendition of the dinosaur playing amongst his students, or surrounded by flowers, or simply shrouded in hearts. They were crude and in some cases unintelligible, but the love these children had for her large friend shone through in every brush stroke.

“I have some room in my bag,” she said, unslinging her own shoulder bag. She held it open and shoved a few of her personal belongings to one side, making space for the precious cargo. “Here, so you don’t lose them on the trip.”

“Oh, thanks!” Rex happily folded up the pages and shoved them into the waiting satchel. “I had way too much stuff for my bag. I think I need to get a bigger one wherever we’re going next.”

Emily smiled, hoping that wherever they were going next wouldn’t require any more go-bags. Knowing that, no matter how safe it seemed, some day it wouldn’t be.

“Come on,” Ismaunassa nudged her shoulder with his beak and Emily turned toward her bond. She spared one quick moment to wrap her arms around the phoenix dragon’s furry neck, then attached her satchel to his harness.

Though Vaeyin was more than large enough to carry both V and Rex, even in her spell-shrunken size, Ismaunassa barely topped Emily’s own height when standing upright on his hind legs. They had been forced to learn more creative means of travel when venturing from world to world, but they had found a method that worked for them.

Having a world with an atmosphere helped tremendously.

Vaeyin led the way down the gentle sloping floor of the docking bay toward the hanger opening at the back. No doors separated the Abstract Destiny from the blue sky beyond. Nothing save a nearly invisible force field. With each step, she grew a little larger, doubling and then tripling Ismaunassa’s size.

As they neared the exit, the sunlight filtering in from outside caught on Vaeyin’s hide and almost appeared to become trapped within. It glinted off the smokey edges of her muscles and danced alone the translucent membrane of her wings. For Ismaunassa, it took his fire and drew away the colour, leaving only flickering tendrils of heat dancing above his wings and back.

Vaeyin unfurled her wings with a whomp of displaced air. Moments ago, she looked barely able to support her rider plus Rex’s bulk. Now, they were ants atop her broad shoulders. Rex held tight to V, engulfing the smaller humanoid beneath the shadow of his head as they stopped at the edge of the hatch opening. Vaeyin waited there a moment, wings spread and head tilted down at the glittering expanse of blue water below. Then she tilted forward and dropped out of sight.

::Sometimes I forget how big she really is,:: Ismaunassa said as he moved up to take the spot she’d vacated. There was a note of regret in his mental threads. A private hurt he would share only with his bond. Though he loved Vaeyin, and she him, they had never clutched together. The timing never seemed right and the location never seemed safe enough. And now they were forever leaving the one place that put them on equal footing in terms of size.

Emily pushed a thread of sympathy through their shared connection as she took her place beside him.

::Someday we’ll find a home where we can stay.::

Ismaunassa smiled at her, warmth and affection twisting back and forth between them. And a tiny little thread of doubt that said they both knew that line was a lie.

Ismaunassa dropped out of the ship first. Emily followed a moment later, keeping her wings furled until she passed through the barrier that separated the ship from open air.

The second the wind caught her, she momentarily forgot what she was supposed to be doing. It was cold and furious in the way it pushed at her feathered wings and pulled on her hair. It stole the breath right out of her mouth and howled in her ears. It tasted of salt spray and earth and sun and it was glorious. Tears blurred her eyes, and she couldn’t tell if they were from the wind or the sheer joy of remembering what it was like to be in the sunlight.

Then a shadow passed overhead, and Emily remembered herself. She corrected her flight path, wobbling slightly from side to side as her wings adjusted to fighting an air current for the first time in years. Then with a few quick strokes, she rose to the same level as Vaeyin and Ismaunassa.

The trio circled for a short time. Just long enough for Emily to spot the distant smudge on the horizon that marked the main continent. There she knew they would find endless hills of towering trees and mountain sides covered in vines and rivers as bright as sapphires, but they weren’t headed toward shore. V raised a hand with three fingers extended. Then two, then one. As his hand closed into a fist, Vaeyin dove downward, her wings slicing through the air like a bird of prey. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, she vanished.

Ismaunassa closed the distance between them, hovering just ahead and slightly to the left of his bond. He looked up at Emily as she matched her flight path to him. Then she reached out and wrapped one skeletal hand around his tail. The phoenix dragon dove on the same trajectory as Vaeyin, and moments later, the world disappeared.

* * *

The Refugium was not what Emily had expected. After so many years spent on the Abstract Destiny, she imagined all space ships looked the same. Steel walls, steel floors, steel ceiling, but festooned with plants and paint and lights to make it feel like a home. As much as the Destiny looked like a ship, it could just as easily slot its chambers into a stone foundation back home and call itself a castle.

Home. That word still ached. She pushed it down and locked it into the cellar of her mind as she, V, and Rex took in their new surroundings.

The Refugium was not so much a ship as it was a gigantic steel continent in space. They did not get to see the full breadth of it as they appeared in the hangar bay and immediately made introductions to the station’s security forces. Yet the holographic image of a floor plan on one wall drew Emily’s attention as V dealt with the battery of admission questions.

Though she had seen holograms before, she had never witnessed one quite as complex as this one. It stretched in three dimensions, creating odd optical illusions as people’s heads passed through entire hallways. The diagram gave life to the Refugium’s grand size, building layers upon layers of floors, and section upon section of unique, custom designed biodomes. Icy mountains and scorching deserts, humid forests and rolling meadows. This place had everything. More than everything. She could spend an entire year just exploring and scarcely see half of this place.

In a small, dark corner in her heart, a tiny flame of hope sprang to life.

“Woooooooow…” Rex said in an awed whisper over her shoulder. His typically tiny eyes opened as wide as they could to take in the majesty of the holographic floor plan. “It has a subterranean biodome.”

“You know, maybe this place won’t be so bad,” Emily said.

“I bet they have a lot of kids here. I hope I can make some new friends.”

Emily slipped her hands around her friend’s elbow and hugged his narrow arm.

“I bet you’ll have hundreds of friends in no time. You’re the best at making friends.”

It was comforting to her to see the smile that spread across Rex’s face. It still lacked the jovial twinkle she was familiar with, but it was genuine.

“Well I did what I could,” V said, fatigue and irritation souring his voice as he joined them. “But there’s no way around it. They want us to register for residency applications. It’ll take a few days to process those and we’ll need to stay in the visitor’s sector until they’re through, but the delightfully helpful security guards say that once we’re processed, we’ll have our pick of biodomes. Or even a planet-side domain. Might be nice to see a sunrise again.”

Emily gave the departing guards a sidelong glance and noted that their expressions were less than enthused. Helping V could sometimes test the patience of a saint.

“Okay then,” Emily said. “I guess that’s what we do. Ready?”

“Yeah,” Rex said enthusiastically. The large dinosaur crooked his free arm and held out his elbow to V. The masked man turned his face toward Emily briefly, but she was not about to give him an escape route from this request. She just held a little tighter to Rex’s other arm and smiled at him.

“Very well,” V muttered, slipping his gloved hand over Rex’s elbow.

“Yaaaaaay,” Rex cried out. His shout drew the attention of a few bewildered onlookers, and then a few more as the odd trio began to make their way through the hanger toward the registration office. Off-worlders were nothing new to the Refugium, but to see a dragon, a dinosaur, and a human striding through its halls arm in arm, now that was a sight.

Ismaunassa bumped Emily’s shoulder with his beak as they made their way into the halls. She raised her free hand to cup his head and draw it close to her own, taking a moment to embrace the warmth and softness of her beloved bond.

The last few days had been a wild ride, what with learning that they were in the skies over their old homeworld and all the nightmares that reawakened. Then to hear that they were not just visiting, but getting ready to settle down. Then having to face the fear and uncertainty of being uprooted yet again. Yet just as before, they seemed to have landed on their feet. V would see to it that not a trace of Faust had ever touched this place, and Rex would work them into a brand new world of friends and associates. There was sorrow still, as there always was when leaving a place they loved, but for the first time in ages, Emily looked at the days ahead and dared to imagine that they might be happy here.

* * *

The underground tunnels were cool and damp. The ground cushioned with moss so thick that it ate all sound save the heaviest of footfalls. Rex knew because he tried stomping a few times and was deeply amused by the whumping sound each step made.

His companion didn’t need to worry about walking. She moved along at a sedate pace through the air, her wings maintaining a steady and pleasant buzzing sound. The soft illumination of the glow moss on the walls turned the pink petal-like splotches on her hide into deep purple bruises.

“So you really used to take care of all the children? All of them?” The whisper soft voice had a sweet, sing-song quality to it, and the enthusiasm in her words gave them a higher pitch.

“Oh yeah,” Rex said as he danced from one foot to the next, now seeing if he could find weaker patches of moss to make different sounds. “Rustavomi kept telling me I didn’t need to but I really liked the kids and they really liked me so whenever the parents asked if I could watch them, I always said yes.”

He still missed them. Though several months had passed since they’d arrived on the Refugium, Rex went to bed every night by saying goodnight to each picture on his wall. That day, he’d even chosen to wear the shirt they’d created for him; a simple white tee smothered in colourful hand prints.

“How many?” Croke turned in the air, peering down at her traveling companion with eyes that gleamed white under the moss light.

“Dozens. Dozens and dozens,” Rex said. He smiled up at the drone and held his arms out wide. Or as wide as he could manage. “I never tried counting. I just knew them all by name.”

“Oh. My queen will have many more than dozens,” Croke said. She spun in a tight circle, then continued leading the brown dinosaur deeper beneath the crust of the biodome. “My queen always has big clutches. But she will like you. Sometimes the grubblings stay, and if she approves of you, you may be asked to assist with their care.”

“I would like that very much.”

“Yes, I think you will too. I think my queen will like you just fine.”

Croke buzzed ahead a short ways, eager to reach her destination. Rex abandoned his hop scotch game in order to keep up. He didn’t mind the faster pace. It just meant meeting new friends that much sooner. For the first time since their departure, he was really starting to like this new home.

A grin spread across his face, wide and craggy and joyous. Under his breath, he began to hum a simple, happy song.