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--- Sally ---

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“Hey Ayli-i-in?” I slowly said as I turned around I found that yet again, a very important item was missing from Orion’s bag again. And just before we left for the wall, again.

“Y-yes?” she nervously replied, twiddling her fingers as she refused to look at me.

“Have you seen the money, it seems to have gone missing again.” I asked, my words tinged with annoyance and an almost undeniable accusation. But Aylin just violently shook her head in denial as I prepared to start searching the usual places. There weren’t many places in this tiny room to hide, sorry, loose things, so it didn’t usually take too long, but it had made us late once, which is something I’d like to avoid. After looking around for a while I was ready to leave without it, even if it did mean that not having anything for lunch, but then Orion made a little *hurumph* noise to get my attention.

“Maybe we could bring Aylin along?” Orion suggested, which was both a good idea and a horrible one. For Aylin’s wellbeing it was probably a good thing and for the sake of our belongings, but did I want to babysit Aylin for however long we were going to be stuck on top of the wall for. And making sure nothing happens while she gets bored?

It’d be a long day.

I turned and prepared to say no to Aylin, but she had the most desperate face, not in a cute way. It was torn and sad, like my answer meant the world to her, and a no would ruin her far more than I would ever know. It wasn’t an expression I’d ever seen a kid make, the only thing I’d seen like it was something out of a desperate prisoner in a war movie.

“… sure, why not?” I eventually relented, Aylin immediately turning her whole personality around and becoming excited as she started bouncing off the walls.

After calming her down we started making our way to the wall again, walking through less-busy than usual streets. It seemed that with the lockdown, and as time went on, people had less and less things to sell.

But there was a much interesting problem when we got to the perimeter wall, the ten metre ladder to the top proved to be a bit too much for Aylin.

Not that it was too physically hard for her, climbing up and down the stairs of the steep city helped with that. But she just was afraid of heights, her little legs shaking as she stared at the ladder.

“Are you sure?” I asked after we waited for a couple minutes for her to start climbing, and after some more prodding she eventually stepped onto it. And that was it.

She spent a few more minutes just hanging onto the bottom rungs of the ladder, and there was a queue starting to grow behind us, making a resentful embarrassment start to simmer in my chest.

“Can you… y’know, help her up?” I hopefully asked Orion, the man giving me a blank stare for a few seconds before walking over and standing beside the frozen child, his hands awkwardly hovering around her for a few seconds before he helplessly looked at me.

“Just give her a little push.” I muttered, a well armed man behind me giving me a ‘is that a child climbing a ladder into an active war zone?’ look.

Orion tried giving her a push, but she refused to move, gripping on tighter as the ranger tried to force her to climb up another rung.

“Sally? Is that you Sally?” An annoying voice called out, flashbacks of an annoying prick that’d been missing his pants surfacing in my mind as I sighed and turned around to see Derick. But with him was a couple new faces and a slightly familiar woman.

“How’s babysitting Orion going?” Derick said, just quietly enough that the man himself shouldn’t hear.

“Oh its going alright.” I jokingly replied, the instinctive response slipping out of me as the man and his group walked up to me.

“Hey you can’t skip the line!” an angry warrior a few spots behind me in the quickly growing queue complained.

“It’s fine! I’m friends with this dragon.”

“We’re not friends.” I scowled at him as he effortlessly ignored me. I sighed as the man started to yap on and on about all the stuff he’s done recently and I tuned it out, but as I started to let my thoughts wander I noticed that girl again, and I finally remembered where I’d seen her before. She’s the one who’d called me weird outside the tavern and then was so drunk she forgot where she was.

“what’s your name again?” I asked while pointing at her, the girl in question looking at the people around her before pointing at herself like she was surprised I was asking her.

“uhm, it’s Grace?” she bumbled, awkward and clearly confused about my question. I guess she didn’t remember that night, I’ll make sure to reminder her later.

“You can start climbing now” An annoyed voice called out behind Derick, who was still yapping. I turned and looked back at the ladder, which thankfully Orion had finally started climbing, with Aylin surprisingly clinging to his chest like a baby monkey instead of the ladder. I suppose its easier to carry her rather than force her to climb.

I jumped up into the air to join them at the top, and by flying I quickly overtook them on the ladder.

“Why were you in the line if you could fly?” Someone shouted from below, and I ignored the probably reasonable question as I landed at the top, my two companions joining me at the top as Aylin flopped off the panting Orion.

“See that wasn’t too bad.” I jokingly said as Aylin laid on her back, her pale face covered in sweat as she heaved air in and out.

Orion wasn’t much better, the man stumbling over to our usual position and letting the bag fall off of his shoulders onto the wooden planks.

“You go on, I’ll take care of Aylin.” I reassured him when he glanced to the emotionally exhausted child.

…

“Eye spy something beginning with… B” she said, the girl seemingly having overcome her fear of heights already and was leaning on the wall as she looked out onto the forest.

“Hmm… is it a bird again?” I replied, the car game working well enough to entertain the both of us for a while.

“No!” She giggled, leaving me a bit stumped with what else could start with b in the view that we had, excluding the constantly screecher killer birds. After spending a few minutes trying and failing to find the answer, I gave up.

“Bark!” she excitedly shouted, taking great pleasure in beating me, again. What’s the point of having these cool eyes if couldn’t beat a child at eye-spy?

“How about you come up with something else for me to guess while I go talk to somebody real quick?” I asked and the girl nodded as I stood up and started walking over to Grace, the girl was sitting and fiddling with what looked like a set of cooking equipment or… something similar? I wasn’t too sure.

I took a moment to take in her features, the short-ish young women seemed, pale, almost unhealthily so, but her bright red hair did explain it a little bit. Maybe she was Irish or something similar, the freckles speckled on every bit of open skin that I could see definitely added to the suspicion.

“How’s it going?” I said, the girl jumping at the interruption and almost knocking over the mortar and pestle she was using.

“U-uhm, good?” she uncertainly responded, her frizzy hair accentuating her frazzled-ness.

“Just wanted to say hi again.” I said, my lips twisting into a snaky smile.

“What do you mean?” she asked, her attention fully on me now as she nervously fiddled with her hands.

“Don’t you remember? That night you ran into Orion and I on the tavern balcony?” I snidely commented, a part of me taking a bit of sadistic pleasure in reminding this girl about her drunken escapades.

“oh no…” she groaned, her head falling into her hands, which seemed to be covered in some kind of red dust.

“Yeah… called us weird and then forgot where you were.”

“I’m so, so sorry, things have gotten a bit wild sometimes.” she explained, lowering her hands from her face and revealing to distinct red hand-marks made of dust stuck to her face. I let out a snicker at the sight, she looked like Simba at the beginning of lion king.

“Was it that bad?” she asked, seemingly misunderstanding why I laughed. I decided not to tell her about it either, a bit funnier that way.

“Well, if you were drunk enough that don’t remember… I’m sure that you can imagine what happened.” I vaguely explained, letting her imagination fill in the over-exagatered blanks.

“But why do you guys get so drunk? It seems like every night you all drink like you don’t want to wake up the next day.” I asked, the complaining of the night-shift bartender was hard to ignore.

“I-it takes the edge off, everything.” She mummered, quietly enough that I could barely hear her.

“What?” I replied with a bit of disbelief.

“I don’t like sitting around and doing nothing, I need to be busy, okay?” She defensively said, like her unhealthy alcoholism isn’t a bad coping mechanism. Even I’m doing better at dealing with the sh!t this world throws at you, somewhat.

“Uh, good, for, you? But I did have something else I wanted to talk to you about.” I tried to redirect the conversation away from these depressing concepts that should stay with people in their forties.

“Yes?” she perked up, that manic excitement returning.

“What’s your class?”

“Oh, it’s witch’s apprentice. Most of it is this kind of stuff, feels like I’m cooking something most of the time.” she explained, while gesturing to the cups and pots around her.

“So what’s the stuff you’re making right now?” I asked, thinking that now was probably a good time to mention the red-orange smear on her forehead that she’d just absentmindedly itched.

“Oh it’s the weirdest thing, it popped up a week and a bit ago without a skill levelling up and it’s some sort of self-defence mixture. Like powdered pepper spray!” She answered.

“Well, you should probably wipe it off your face before it starts burning.” I quickly forced out before I fled the scene, the last thing I saw was her face paling beyond what I thought was possible as she grabbed a handy rag to wipe it off.

I ran back over to Aylin, the girl was badly trying to suppress a grin on her face as she fiddled with something in her hands, she seem uncharacteristicly excited, at least after recent events.

“Have you come up with anything Aylin?” I prompted her as I tried to ignore the pained scream of grace in the background.

“Uhm, uh-huh.” she grunted, seeming a bit panicked before she settled.

“it’s uhh, uhm, mmm, it starts with a b!”

“Is it birds now?”

“… maybe.”

…

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--- Orion ---

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Eventually I lowered my bow, my muscles crying out in relief as I relaxed and stretched my achy fingers. I rolled my shoulders as I stepped down from the turret and grabbed a set of standard arrows from a quiver that’d been hanging on the wall. With them automatically disappearing into (Barbarika’s quiver) I glanced at Sally and Aylin, who were still playing strange word games.

I easily heard him talking about the birds and how fast they need to be able to regenerate the feathers they throw and also need for flying without falling out of the sky. I think he sometime forgets that my skill enhances my hearing.

I’ve heard him say quite a few things I think he didn’t want me to hear, like how he was babysitting me, or all sort of little comments. But I did my best to ignore them, maybe it was related to what he said, sometimes people don’t like hearing it. He probably thought that I wouldn’t like hearing it. He was right.

Though I did notice Aylin do something strange while Sally was distracted with his new friend, she’d gone through some of the bags of the other soldiers and taken something. And with unexpected grace too, it was unnatural how quickly she’d taken to the skill of stealing.

In general I couldn’t tell if Aylin was was doing better or worse than before. She was more responsive and much thinner, but soon it’d be far past a healthy amount of weight loss. The stealing wasn’t any healthier, she seemed to be constantly taking things, at first I realised it was something she did when she wanted attention, but it’d evolved far past that.

“Is anything the matter Orion?” Sally asked me after a got lost in thought for a little bit too long. I considered telling him about Aylin’s stealing, but I decided not to mention it, it probably wouldn’t end well.

“Nothing. I’m finished for the day.” I explained, and thankfully the dragon took my word for it as he got up, the sun reflecting off of his silver and gold tinged scales. It reminded me of sunsets over the great lakes, it filled my heart with a warm, nostalgic sort of feeling.

But that feeling faded quickly as I gathered the raw physical might needed to carry both Aylin and the bag down the ladder. It was surprisingly tough activity, like being draped in rocks, I much preferred when it was only Sally hanging on me.

But after an exhausting climb down we were finally walking towards the tavern, and I was ready to rest for the day and do it all again tomorrow, oh joy.

“Does anybody hear that shouting?” Sally asked the two of us, snapping me out of my thoughts and returning my attention to reality. The faint shouting was clear to me now that it was pointed out, it seems that someone’s dagger had been stolen.

I glanced over at Aylin, and the scared look on her face confirming that she’d been the one to take it. Though from the sound of it they didn’t know who’d stolen it yet, that meant we could still escape.

“Maybe we should run?” I suggested, Sally raising a scaly brow at the question, obviously wondering why.

“Do you want to get questioned?” I followed up, knowing that he’d hate the inconvenience of getting questioned more than complying.

He gave me a nod and we started running back into the cramped streets of the cities lowest layer. I grabbed Aylin’s hand and dragged her along, the girl looked pretty confused as to why we’d just start fleeing.

“We can talk about it later.” I whispered to the girl, just quietly enough that Sally wouldn’t hear me.

But she didn’t get a chance to reply as I roughly pulled her around a corner, the shouting getting louder as they spotted our fleeing shadows. I felt my heart start to race, something about running through these streets felt too familiar, like a wolf was chasing me again.

The walls were narrow, the stone suffocating as we ran into tighter and tighter back alleys, the sun becoming hidden behind roofing. I stumbled as a stone came loose underneath my foot and almost fell over if it wasn’t for Aylin trailing behind me to pull me backwards.

Everything felt cold and the hand holding Aylin’s felt clammy, weak.

My eyes only seemed able to focus on my feet, and the place where the next foot would land.

But then a heavy weight threw itself into my chest, the shock sending a new pulse of white-cold adrenaline through my veins. I instinctively let go of Aylin’s hand to touch the silvery mass clutching my chest, my brain going numb from the surprise of seeing Sally clambering over my chest, his claws digging into my shoulder as he stuck his head over it.

“hrneboud” I spluttered in surprise as Sally used my body like moving platform.

“Just make sure I don’t fall off” he whispered directly into my ear, and I followed his instruction and used my right hand to hold him onto my chest as I continued running.

“uh-huh” I mumbled back as the shouting got closer, and fortunately Aylin could keep up with me, the little girl was sprinting with all she had. Maybe I should teach her how to run properly if she was going to do this again.

But before I could get comfortable, Sally released both of his front talons and flung the two legs over my shoulders, forcing me to use my other hand as well to stop Sally from falling off.

I took a quick glance behind me to see what Sally was doing, and saw a trail of smokey white behind us, like mist was spontaneously appearing in back alley streets.

As I turned back towards the path in-front of us I heard the shouting become panicked as loud yet muffled thudding came from the mist.

But thankfully the noises became more and more distant after the next minute of running and we finally stopped, Aylin collapsing against a wall as she tried to keep her breakfast inside her.

As I caught my breath, I realised that Sally hadn’t moved yet, the cool scales touching my neck feeling viscerally there. I thought he’d hate this sort of close contact, he’d always chastised himself for this sort of behaviour.

“Are you okay Sally?” I asked him, the dragon bringing his head around to face me by going around my neck, the silky coldness was soothing against my sweaty skin.

“Yes? Why do you ask?” he responded, and something about the close contact made me feel both uncomfortable yet reassured at the same time. It was contradictory and I wasn’t sure if I hated it or liked it.

“Didn’t you dislike close contact?” I reminded him.

“Oh shit, I forgot.” he scolded himself as he quickly untangled himself from around me and flopped onto the ground in a rushed panic. How could you forget that you hate something while doing it? I thought doing something you hate would remind you that you hate it?

I felt profoundly confused as Sally picked himself up in a panic, was it the bond messing with him again? But didn’t only make him more ‘emotionally honest’, was his behaviour just more genuine?

“Sorry, don’t know why I did that.” he said with I think a bit of shame in his voice. Did he think that I found the contact disturbing?

“It’s fine.” I said, trying to reassure him, but it didn’t really seem to help as he twisted in on himself like a snake in pain. I squatted down next to him and tentatively and gently touched his back, like how he’d comfort Aylin when she was upset. It took a few minutes until he unwound himself, eventually stopping the futile attempt to make himself small enough that no-one could notice him.

“It really isn’t.” he muttered back, his scaly eyelids twisting shut in anger, though I wonder if its directed at me, like it normally is, or at himself?

… I don’t think I should tell him that, I don’t think he’d like hearing it.

So I didn’t respond, and just kept awkwardly patting his back in what I thought was a reassuring way. But after another few seconds he recoiled away from me, shooting me an annoyed look as he made distance between us. I suppose I couldn’t blame him, it is my fault that the bond exists, but it doesn’t make the rejection hurt any less.

I wonder if he wants to leave Aylin and I, and go somewhere far away from here. The thought hurts more than I thought it would, Sally is the only person that’s…

That hasn’t been anything like my Father. I hope he doesn’t change that fact.

“What happened to you shitheads?” Derick shouted, his irritating voice reminding me why I’ve hated him for so many years. He and his friends were standing on the corner of the street we were currently standing in, with his hand resting on his war hammer.

“what do you want?” Sally spat back, at he least he found Derick as annoying as I did.

“Just wondering why you all seem so out of breath after someone stole something up on the wall?” he asked in a sing-songy, sarcastic tone, like he knew everything already and Aylin, who’d stumbled over during the conversation, hid behind me.

“Just training.” I quickly answered before Sally could, turning Derick’s attention towards me.

“Oh yeah, you and your pop were always obsessed with that.” Derick accepted easily, memories of when he and his dad would visit flashing through my head, it was far worse than just my Father.

He then turned and left, but one of his teammates stayed behind, a twitchy little girl I think was called Grace.

“Hey Sally.”

“What?”

“Thanks for telling me about the powder, it would’ve hurt a lot more if you didn’t tell me.” she said speedily.

“Oh don’t worry about it.” he responded sheepishly, making me wonder if there is something more to the story.

“But I was thinking if you wanted to join us in the bar tonight, as a thanks I guess.”

“I’m fine I-”

“Oh don’t worry about Derick, you can just drink with me in my corner if you like.” she interrupted him, pre-emptively guessing how his sentence would end.

“Uhm… I don’t think I can, I have the literal body of a toddler.”

“Oh that sucks, not being able to drink.”

“Suuure.” Sally hesitantly answered, I felt like I should help him escape this conversation, but I really didn’t know how to help without stuffing it up.

“You could still come hang out, meet some of my friends!” she assertively redirected the conversation. But Sally didn’t respond immediately as he took a moment to glance at his necklace.

“Sure, I’ll give it a go.” he half-heartedly responded, making my heart beat with anxiety. What about Aylin and me, what are we going to do? It’s not like I could bring her to a bar, someone had to look after her, and I definitely did not want to be anywhere near Derick for any longer than necessary.

Grace let out what I think was a noise of happiness before patting Sally on the head, making him let out a threatening growl.

“Do that again and I will bite you.” He warned her, which she seemed to ignore as she ran off to catch up with her team.

I let out a sigh of relief as the scenario came to an end, and Aylin stopped hiding herself behind me.

“Orion.” Sally suddenly asked in a strangely serious tone.

“Is something wrong?”

“Have you been talking with Derick? It sounded like you two knew each other?” he asked, reminding me that I’d forgotten to tell him when we’d first run into the warrior.

“He’s my cousin.”

“Ex-fucking-cuse me?”