Chapter Three - The Human

Riley? Kenny’s voice asked me from somewhere. Great, was I having some weird out of body experience? What happened last? Oh, yeah, I should be waking up as a human now. I felt light-headed, so either I was ridiculously drunk or my head really did weigh less. Considering how blurry my vision was, I was leaning toward the former.

I reached for something to help me up, and found a hand reaching out to me. It felt weird, so I was willing to accept that something had happened to me. It wasn’t until I saw my own hand that I realized something had happened to me. It wasn’t my scaley hand that grabbed whoever was helping me up, it was a very human hand that I was looking at.

So it worked? I tried to say. I heard the words, but they didn’t sound like my voice. If I were thinking clearly, I’d probably realize that my voice really wouldn’t sound the same, considering I’d just changed from dragon to human.

“Oh, it worked, honey,” Sharena said. “Are your senses coming back?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, with a minor groan.

“Good. I have to tell you something important, though.”

“What?”

“You’re not exactly male anymore.”

Well, that explained a few things that weren’t common for human boys, like the feel of my hair partway down my back or the lack of something swinging between my legs. “Is there a mirror around here?”

“Before that, take these,” she was holding a bundle of clothes out to me. Suddenly, I felt slightly embarrassed. I was a human girl now, and there was a human boy my age in the same room with me. He was getting to see a naked girl, he was probably enjoying the experience. I looked over at Kenny, and realized he was looking away from me. Either he realized the awkward situation, or he didn’t like girls.

I took the clothes and looked around. “Is there somewhere I can change?”

“Of course there is.” She pointed to a door that I hadn’t noticed before, but this woman was a magic user, so there might not have been a door there earlier.

I thanked her, then walked into the room she’d pointed at. It was a plain bedroom, with a very basic bed, dresser and mirror. I took a deep breath and walked over to the mirror and looked at the new me for the first time. The human girl I saw in the mirror was darker skinned than Kenny was, and about an inch or two shorter than him. I’d been six feet tall before, but now I had to be about five foot seven. I didn’t often look at human girls, so I couldn’t really tell if my breasts were too large or too small. They felt large to me, but they were also new to me.

I brought one hand to my nipple and lightly touched it. It felt really weird. I pulled my hand away quickly, because it felt too weird. This whole thing felt too weird. Maybe I should have just taken my chances in my normal form. I turned away from the mirror and looked at the bundle of clothes that Sharena had given me.

I pulled out the underwear first and held the article in my hand. It felt… Weird. Soft. I’d never worn underwear, but I’d seen enough humans (well, not too many) taking off their clothes to swim that I knew how to put on their clothes. I sat down on the bed and slid the underwear up my legs. My legs were long, it felt weird. Weird described this whole experience. I stood back up and pulled the waistband over my hips. I looked in the mirror again and the image still looked odd.

I found something to cover my breasts and it looked confusing to me. How the hell was I gonna put this thing on?

There was a knock on the door. “How’re you doing, honey?” Sharena asked.

Should I ask her for help? Did I really even need to wear this? “I’m... “

The door opened and I was suddenly joined by Sharena. “I kinda figured this is where you’d get stuck.”

I blushed. “What… Um… What even is this?”

She smiled. “It’s a bra, sweetheart, and you’re gonna want it in the long run.” She took it from me and told me to hold my arms straight in front of me. She put one arm through one strap and one arm through the other and then pulled it onto my chest. To say it felt weird would be both an understatement and a broken record at this point, but that’s exactly how it felt. “Okay, now reach behind and I’ll guide your hands so that you can hook it by yourself.” I felt her hands take mine and then I was grabbing the two ends and hooking them together. “There we go, now we’re all taken care of, and the excitable teenage boy in the other room won’t be getting a nose bleed every two minutes.”

I looked in the mirror again and the girl in front of me had an uneasy look on her face. I couldn’t even begin to describe how odd this all felt.

“Thanks,” I said. My voice sounded distant, like I wasn’t really in my own body, and to an extent that was true.

“Sorry about this, by the way.”

“Huh?” What was she apologizing for?

“The potion I gave you was an accident. I grabbed the female potion by mistake.”

“There’s different potions for different genders?”

“Well, you can’t use the same potion for different genders, silly.”

“Is there some reason you can’t give me the male potion now?”

“If I were to give you the male potion now, it would cancel out the female potion and return you to dragon form, then neither potion would work on you again.”

“That seems… Odd.”

She sat down on the bed in front of me. “Magic is a very picky thing, especially potions. Things need to be exact, and that means that the ingredients in one potion can counteract the ingredients of another, even if those ingredients are similar or even the same.”

Was she telling me the truth? I couldn’t tell. It really shouldn’t matter to me, either, since my choices were hide as a human and live or take my chances as a dragon and likely die. Not good odds. At least I looked like any average human girl.

Sharena placed a hand on the rest of the clothes. “The rest of the clothes are a simple pair of pants and a shirt. When you’re all dressed, see me about some shoes. I think I’ve got a pair of boots that you should be able to wear.”

“Thanks,” I said, trying to manage a smile.

“No worries, sweetheart.” She stood up and grabbed my hand. “If it weren’t for Kineas, I’d probably just leave you in the forest and naked.”

“Really?”

She shook her head. “No. I just like to let Kineas think that I’d do that.”

“He seems to like you.”

She smiled. “Well, he should. He’s my step-son.”

If it wasn’t for the mirror, I’d have never seen my confused look for the first time. It looked funny, actually. “If you’re the wife of the town’s greatest dragon slayer, why do you live in the woods?”

“That’s a trade secret, young lady, and if you’re a good girl, I’ll let you know one of these days.” There was my confused look again. “Oh, c’mon, it’s just a little mom humor.”

“Why were you so willing to help me if your husband is a dragon slayer?”

She traced the scar on my hand. It looked smaller now that I was human. “Get your clothes on first, okay? If you’re going to be my adopted daughter, I’m going to have to let you in on the family secret.” She smiled again, then walked out of the room and left me alone.

I sighed. Family secret? I was just a dragon in hiding who had to pretend to be a member of the family, why would I really need to know the family secret?

I reached for the clothes and pulled the pants on first. Wearing underwear alone was strange, but feeling fabric all over my legs was just… It felt even weirder. I ran my hands up my now clothed legs and shivered a little. How was I ever going to get used to wearing clothes?

I pulled the shirt over my head next. The front of the shirt was open a little bit, showing the tops of my breasts and the… Area in-between. I’m sure girls had a word for it, but I didn’t know it. I took another look at the human girl in the mirror and saw how awkward and unsure of herself she looked.

I took a deep breath and left the bedroom. Sharena and Kenny were both sitting on a couch that I hadn’t noticed before. Clearly these trade secrets of Sharena’s were all over the house. In fact, the place looked more like a house and less like what I assumed a gay bar would look like.

“Riley, please sit down over here,” Sharena patted a chair in front of the couch. I walked over to it and sat down. Yet another awkward feeling in a day full of awkward. Sitting on rocks felt normal to me, but soft, comfy chairs was nothing but different. “First thing, here,” she handed me a pair of boots, just like she said she would. “Do you need any help getting them on?”

I shook my head. “No. I’ve seen humans do this before.”

“That’s good.” She crossed one leg over the other and placed her hands in her lap. “Now, it’s time to let you in on the family secret.”

“Why?”

“Riley, you’re a member of this family. Even if you weren’t in hiding, just being a friend of Kineas would make you a member of this family.”

“Then how is this still a secret?”

She laughed. “Kineas doesn’t have as many friends as he lets on.”

Kenny rolled his eyes. “You just had to say it, didn’t you?”

“As I was saying, you’re a member of this family now. Kineas’s father, Irvine, is a dragon slayer.”

“I know that part already,” I said.

She gave me a somewhat amused/annoyed look. “I wasn’t finished, young lady.” I could tell she was enjoying that. “Irvine knows that there are dangerous dragons and not-so-dangerous dragons. Ever since before Irvine and I were married, he’s brought the not-so-dangerous dragons to me, and we’ve helped them survive in the world.”

“You run a dragon underground railroad?”

She nodded. “Yes. Most dragons harbor no ill will towards humans, so Irvine and I set up the D.U.R. so that these dragons can - “

I cut her off. “Did you just abbreviate that as D.U.R.?”

“If you’re going to tell the “dur” joke, I’d save it. Kineas thought it up years ago.”

I looked down at my feet. “Okay. You can go on.”

“As I was saying, Irvine and I set up the dragon underground railroad so that we could help the dragons that aren’t dangerous.”

“How do you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“How do you know when a dragon isn’t dangerous to humans?”

She sighed. “It’s not easy. Not many of them are like you.”

“Like me?”

“Riley, I can read you. I pointed to the bedroom over there and you went in there instantly. I could tell from the moment I saw your face that you’ve lived in a house before, correct?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“How old were you?”

“About four…”

---

Thirteen Years Ago…

“Mommy! Mommy!” the girl shouted. I tried getting up and moving, but I couldn’t. I was too weak. The girl poked at me with a stick. I sort of made a noise, but I could barely hear it, so odds were good the girl couldn’t really hear it, either. “Mommy! Itsa doggy!” I would have corrected her, but understanding human and speaking human were two very different things.

An older woman, probably in her forties, came over to the girl and I. I was fairly certain this was the Mommy the girl had called over. “Blodwyn!” she said, with a very… Stern sounding voice. “That’s not a doggy, baby girl, that’s a dragon!”

The girl - Blodwyn - looked up at her mother with wide eyes, then back to me. “Really? Can we keep it?”

“Baby girl, please, don’t touch it, okay? It looks hurt.” The woman reached down and picked me up. I nuzzled up against her and enjoyed the comfort of not having to move on my own for now.

The woman carried me into her house, where Blodwyn hopped up on a… A… A thing for people to sit on. Her mother set me down on something flat and wooden in front of the girl. I looked over at Blodwyn, who looked concerned. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t.

The woman touched me on the side where something had hit me. I didn’t know what the man had been using on me, but the thing that hit me had been thin and long, with a sharp point at the end. The pain shot through me again, causing me to groan. The woman clamped her hand over my mouth, which I tried to push away, but I couldn’t. I was too weak to do anything to stop her.

“It’s okay,” she said, “I’m not going to hurt you.” I wanted to tell her what a good job she was doing. My side was killing me more now than it had been when I landed behind her house. “Can you talk?”

Blodwyn giggled. “It’s a dragon, Mommy! Dragons can’t talk!” If only I could talk. I’d make that girl eat her words.

Her mother smiled and squeezed her hand. “That’s not true, sweetie. Can you stay here with our little guest while I get the first aid box?”

The girl nodded. “I will, Mommy.” I watched the woman leave the room and then looked over at the girl, who was smiling widely at me. “You’re cute,” she said, “I hope you stay here and live with Mommy and Daddy and me!”

I rolled over and sighed. I tried to go to sleep, but it just wasn’t working.

“Do you have a mommy like I do?” Blodwyn asked. I turned back to her and shook my head. “Do you have a daddy?” I shook my head again. “You don’t have a mommy or a daddy? That’s so sad…” I saw tears building up in her eyes.

I tried to slide myself across to her, but it was difficult to move. She reached out to me and helped me along, and I curled up in her lap. It was comfortable. I needed it.

By the time the girl’s mother returned, I was asleep.

---

Present Day

“Blodwyn and her family pretty much raised me.” I looked down at my feet. “I left them when I was about seven, and I haven’t seen them since.”

Sharena was still watching me with very studious eyes, while Kenny looked like he was about to fall asleep. Great. I wish I’d known this story would bore him. Sharena smacked him on the arm, rousing him out of his near-sleep experience. I giggled lightly, not even loud enough for me to hear.

“Did anyone aside from Blodwyn’s family know about you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. I was the family secret then. It wasn’t unusual for me to be sleeping on the couch, and then woken up and asked to move into the basement closet.”

“You let them do that to you?” Kenny asked.

“Actually, they let me do that. I didn’t really want to be out in the open.”

“You mean, you wanted to hide?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Especially after the white dragon showed up. It was either hide, or die.”

Sharena was still examining me, almost like she was… Testing me. What was she thinking about me? Why was she watching me so closely? It was starting to creep me out. My natural response was to hug my knees to my chest, which I’ve seen human girls do before.

Sharena turned to Kenny. “Take Riley into town, okay? Show her around.”

I said, “I can’t.” She and Kenny both turned toward me. “They heard my name. Isn’t it gonna be kinda suspicious if a girl named Riley shows up the same day as the dragon named Riley?”

Kenny turned to Sharena and said, “She’s got a point.”

She rubbed at her chin. “Yeah.”

“So what do we do?” I asked.

Sharena sighed. “For now, you stay in the house. I’ll bring you some books to read - “

Kenny cut her off. “Um… She doesn’t know how to read.”

She sighed again. “You never learned how to read?”

I rolled my eyes. “I was a dragon. Kinda hard to hold a book, even though I was small for my age.”

“Fine, I’ll bring you a radio. Kineas will help you learn to read. You’ll need that for school when I get you enrolled in a few days.”

“Why do I have to go to school?”

She smiled. “No step-daughter of mine is going to stay at home while her brother goes to school.” She squeezed my shoulder as she passed by. “Besides, you’re seventeen years old, there’s plenty of people your age to meet at school.”

I heard myself gulp.

---

“In other news, the white dragon was recently sighted at a train depot ten miles north of Endawa this afternoon. Casualty numbers are unknown, but we’re told they number low for a white dragon sighting.”

I kept looking at the book, but the words weren’t exactly turning into something I could read. I sighed. School. I had to learn in less than a week what real humans got seventeen years to learn. Even the comic books that Kenny brought in weren’t helping. Pictures didn’t help me understand words.

“The casualties came mostly from a passenger train returning from the war, as the depot was understaffed. We’re told that the trains stopped at that depot because of commotion in the cargo train, and the Imperial Guard believes that the white dragon was going after something in that train.”

The bed felt too soft. It’d been years since I last slept on a bed, but it still felt too soft. Or, was I too soft? I still had scales the last time I slept on a bed. I sighed. This whole thing was getting… Irritating.

“That was Imperial News at Five. A few stories they didn’t touch on, I noticed, were the heist in Kepton last week. One of the thieves, a Jaide Farson, was arrested, but he’s made mention of a partner that he’s not going to give up. What’s being done about this partner? Are the Imperial Guard going to hunt this guy down? Or am I gonna havta take out my dagger and take this punk out myself?”

There was a knock on my door. I flipped the radio’s power switch to off. “Come in,” I said. My voice was still strange to me, but I was getting used to it.

Kenny walked in with some kind of board game. “I thought you might need a break from your reading practice.”

I set the book down on my night stand. “If you can call this practice. I’m still not getting anything.”

“Don’t feel bad about it. Some people have trouble learning how to read.”

“That’s not making me feel better. I have to fit in at your school, and I bet most of your classmates know how to read, don’t they?”

He sighed. “Yeah, they do.”

“How’s it gonna look if your sister doesn’t know how to read?”

“They’re gonna know you’re adopted, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Is it common that adopted kids don’t know how to read?”

He set the game down on my bed and pulled the top of the box off. “Let’s just change this conversation and get to the point where you relax, okay?” He pulled out the board and set it in front of me. “Now, the goal of the game is to buy properties with money and try to bankrupt the other player, okay?”

“That sounds like it needs reading.”

“It does, but I can read the cards for you.”

“You’re not gonna cheat, are you?”

“Of course not. Believe me, I have no reason to cheat.”

“I’d never know, y’know.”

He smiled. “I don’t feel the need to cheat when I’m playing against my sister.”

“I have this one question, though. Why do you call Sharena by her name if she’s your step-mom?”

“She and my dad didn’t get married until a couple years ago, and my birth mom is still alive, in town.”

“Why don’t you live with her?”

He shrugged. “She’s not… When my dad started hunting and helping dragons, she got jealous of all the time he and Sharena spent together. Sharena’s been my dad’s best friend since they were kids, and dad knew Sharena used magic, so he knew exactly who to go to the first time he found a harmless dragon.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Mom left him, told him never to look at her again, and just threw her wedding ring at him.”

“That’s just cruel.”

“Yeah. Dad and I moved in with Sharena a couple weeks later, and they got married a few years after that.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “My mom clearly wasn’t in it for family. Dad loved her. He mainly married Sharena so that she could be my legal guardian in case something happened to him.”

“So, your dad doesn’t love Sharena?”

“I didn’t say that, he just loved my mom more than she loved him.”

I felt sorry for him. Here, I didn’t have any parents, and I felt sorry for him because his parents had such a complicated relationship. It was starting to remind me of Blodwyn and her family.

---

Ten Years Ago…

“He’s not a pet!” Gwyneth shouted. Blodwyn was sitting on the couch beside me, petting me. I wouldn’t mind if they did treat me like a pet, honestly. “Don’t treat him like one!”

Byrn shook his head. “He’s a dragon! He’s not a person! He basically is a pet, all he does is play with Blodwyn and sleep!”

Gwyneth looked irritated. “What else do you expect him to do? Don’t you know what people would do if they found out he was here?”

I lifted my head a little. “What would they do to you and your parents if they found me?” I asked Blodwyn.

She shook her head. “I dunno. But Mom makes it sound bad.”

I laid my head back down on the couch, like a sad dog. Or, at least what I thought was a dog. I’d never seen one, but Blodwyn described them to me once. Her parents were doing nothing but yelling at one another, and it was making me feel horrible, because they were arguing about me.

Blodwyn patted me on the head, then went to the bathroom. I slipped off of the couch, walked to the door and sighed. I didn’t want them arguing about me, and I didn’t want the family hurt because of me. I loved Blodwyn and her family, but I needed to be gone for them. I opened the door, walked outside, and never looked back.