Page 74 of Mytho Investigations: Side Stories

“You have been good,” Jordan said.

Someone would also lose their tongue for lying…but Edra kept his mouth closed. So far, there had been no reports of actual judgements being passed, so either Santa had decided not to continue passing judgement on his followers, or he had been killed in the collapse. When it came to gods, only a few had come forward, despite Pan’s example.

After another round of kisses and promises that Santa definitely knew where they lived, which kind of made Edra uneasy, even though they had never prayed to him by the human name for him, or any other. Both hatchlings closed their eyes and agreed that they would go to sleep and would wait until dawn to go downstairs and check their stockings.

Edra and Jordan went downstairs to watch a little TV and have a drink before finally creeping around the house, filling the stockings, and placing a few presents under the tree. It seemed like an awful lot of stuff for two very small dragons, even though Jordan had assured him that it wasn’t.

Even the tree seemed extravagant, though it was the same plastic one they had bought when they moved into this house. It was tall enough that with the star on top, there were only a few inches between the top and the ceiling, and every year Jordan decorated it with baubles and tinsel and lights. It was pretty and glittery, and he could understand why humans thought it magical. As a family, they celebrated the Tarikian holidays like the solstices and Samhain at the temple, as well as the human ones like Easter and Thanksgiving and Christmas, though they did not go to church like many humans. Jordan had no interest in following the religion that had caused his parents to drive him out of his home, and which still refused to acknowledge the existence of the Tarikian gods.

“Do you think they’ll like it? Or is it not magical enough?” Jordan stepped back to study the tree and then the stuffed stockings.

“I think it’s plenty magical.” He put his arms around his mate. “You’ll have to live up to this again next year.”

“True, and it’s a bit late to go last-minute shopping.”

“They really don’t need anything else.” Except for some common sense and survival instinct, and that was not going to be on the shelves in any store. That would take another year to kick in, apparently. He was wondering if it wouldn’t be better for the rookery to hang onto the hatchling until they were less…well, dangerous to themselves and others.

Sinner lay down in front of the fire, her black fur gleaming. “I will make sure they do not get into the stockings early.”

She was a very much-needed extra set of eyes on the hatchling. Even though she griped about them sleeping in her cat bed, and climbing on her cat tree, and eating her kibble, she liked playing with them and would often take an afternoon nap with them, all three of them curled up in the sun on the end of Edra and Jordan’s bed.

“Thank you, Sinner, you need to wait for your stocking too,” Edra said as she licked her front paw as if ignoring him.

Hand in hand, they crept upstairs and got into bed, Jordan checking his phone to make sure no one was trying to get hold of him.

They could go weeks without a late-night callout, and then the next two weeks would be absolute Hell for no good reason, but tonight everything was quiet.

Edra did not expect to get woken up by Sinner bounding onto the bed. Jordan rolled onto his back, and she jumped onto his chest.

“They are in the stockings, aren’t they?” Edra asked, trying to shake off the remains of sleep.

“No, it was too quiet, so I got up to check on them. They aren’t in bed, and their window is open.”

Jordan picked Sinner up and sat, setting her on the bed as he got up and grabbed his phone to track the hatchlings.

“If the window is open, they are on wing.” Edra shifted, not waiting for an answer.

“The app is showing them still in the house.”

Edra snorted and ambled down the corridor, claws clicking on the wood. Jordan padded behind him. He flicked on the hatchlings’ bedroom light and retrieved their pajamas. “No sign of the anklet, which means they’re still wearing it. They are here.”

Or they’d shifted and then taken it off. They’d never done that before, as they didn’t want to get lost or be returned to the rookery because no one knew who they were or what to do. They were old enough to understand that getting lost in the big city was bad because some people were bad.

Edra hopped onto the windowsill and then jumped out. His wings spread as he looped over the backyard before flapping higher. He’d been wanting to nail the window shut for a while, but Jordan called it a fire risk. Which he could agree with; however, it was also a flight risk at this age. How have they even managed to get it open?

But while they were the size of human toddlers, they were older and more dexterous, and their developmental milestones were different. Jordan had bought several books about how to raise humans, and so far, they had been more entertaining than useful.

Snow and Sky spoke English, and their Tarakian was almost to the point that he couldn’t have conversations with Jordan in it without them understanding too much. They spoke dragon and could shift and fly and climb. Things that human two or three-year-olds didn’t do, but they were almost six in human years.

The rookery had provided a list of milestones—though he doubted that learning to hunt before they turned ten was an important life skill—and they had spoken to the humans at the education department to figure out when to send them to school. Because at the moment, they were much smaller than their human peers, and next to an ogre, they were tiny.

His tiny hatchlings were out in the dark and cold. As long as they remained in their dragon form, it wouldn’t be so bad, but if they shifted to human…they would be naked and vulnerable.

He flapped his wings and looped over the roofs and yards of the nearby houses, panic gripping his chest. It was only as he swept around the front of their house that he glimpsed the two tiny dragons on the roof curled up tight against the chimney, sound asleep with the plate of cookies between them, as if hoping that Santa would wake them up when taking his cookie.

Clever.

But they couldn’t stay there as it was far too cold for them to be on the roof without an adult to keep them warm, and he was not staying on the roof all night, not when he had a nice warm bed waiting for him. He was too old to be sleeping on the roof.