Page 55 of Sapphire Seas

“That would be so pretty. Yes, we will have rain and snow and treats and sunsets and Mattias can paint to his hearts content since we’ll all be right there together.”

“Sounds perfect, we can tell him when he gets home.”

“I wonder if he ever gets bored patrolling?” Caspian asked.

“Better to be bored than to encounter dragons who shouldn’t be here,” I reminded him.

“True,” Caspian said. “It’s going to be so amazing to see the porch built, and the nursery, but I have a question I haven’t been able to ask anyone yet since every time it pops up in conversation another one happens so fast that I never get a chance to.”

“I’ll answer as best as I can.”

“When Mattias talked about the furniture he was having built, the one thing he didn’t mention was the nest I keep hearing about. Is Jacob going to build that too? I don’t want to wait until the last minute, like Emerson joked about.”

“I wasn’t here for that,” I replied, “but the stories I’ve heard paint an extremely chaotic picture that resulted in Odem leaping in to try to help Caro and Emerson threatening to bite both of their tails off if they didn’t do it just right.”

“Let’s avoid that, shall we and go ahead and ask Jacob to make the nest.”

Giggling, I nuzzled the back of my mate’s neck, licking over his skin just to taste the lingering salt from his morning swim. We tried to make it to the shore as often as possible, so he could spend time with the other Seadragons and slip into safe waters to enjoy himself.

“We make the nest,” I explained. “With soft blankets and pillows and anything else we’d like to add, much like this one.”

“Can this be our nest?”

“I’d like that, but we will need more blankets, and another layer of round, fluffy pillows so we can sink down into it and build railings along the edges, in case the eggs wobble. That’s what Ronan said, anyway. I got to spend time with him in his nest. He had a giant one that covered the whole floor of the nursery. I think I’d rather be in here though and if we nest here, we won’t have to carry the eggs up and down the stairs.”

“Yes, lets, where is the app Mattias uses when it is time to order things?” Caspian asked, making grabby hands for my phone.

I pulled up the app then propped my phone between us on a pillow so we could search for the largest, fluffiest things we could find. By the time we completed the order, we were giggling because someone was going to need to take a truck to the post office just to collect everything. Again.

We hadn’t stopped at blankets. We’d discovered SpongeBob and Patrick merchandise and ordered giant pillows shaped like them and Squidward and Mr. Crabs.

“Wait,” Caspian said, a thoughtful look on his face.

“What did we forget?” I asked.

“Twinkle lights for the nursery,” Caspian declared, “and a projector like this one. We should get one that shows the moon and stars too, so they can have the night sky on their ceiling.”

“I can’t wait to tell them about the first time I saw you.”

“I-I’m not entirely sure, but I think I saw you once before that, when we were dragonets,” Caspian admitted. “I wasn’t supposed to swim near the surface, but one day I followed a bunch of fish up and there was a dragonet the same size as me, with shiny white hair. He was floating on a big piece of ice, breaking off pieces of something and dropping them in the water for the fish to eat.”

“Shrimp cakes!” I said. “I can practically smell them right now. No wonder the shrimp chips we ate earlier tasted so familiar. My favorite treat when I was a kid was shrimp cakes, but I always broke off bits to share with the fish. My mama used to have to fly after me some days because I floated so far out.”

“Did you ever get in trouble when you did that?” Caspian asked.

“She’d just tsk, shake her head, and thank me for giving her the chance to spread her wings. My Papa, on the other hand, was never amused to learn how far I’d gone and used to threaten to freeze the water so I couldn’t go anywhere.”

“Did he ever go through with it?”

Smiling, I shook my head, because I remembered clearly how exasperated he’d been, even while creating an entire playground filled with ice slides to keep me entertained, so I wouldn’t go off on wild adventures. I’m glad you asked. I didn’t remember that part until just now. I had so much fun on those slides and didn’t float anywhere for weeks.”

“If our dragonets are anything like us, they’re going to keep us on our toes.”

“Don’t you mean they are going to keep our toes frozen or soaking wet?” I asked.

“That too.”

“I see ice slides in our future and not the ones I intend to make for them,” I said as an image popped in my head of a slide leading from the edge of the tub into the water.