Dragon Hunting…For Real?
"Just…tilt your head to the left. Yup, that’s good," Briar Dallas said absently, turning her attention back to the sketch pad in her lap. Iris Foster, having been carefully posed in Hearth Home’s living room picture window, kept her soft smile on her lips, even as her eyes roamed the yard outside. Two hours of modeling for the mortal artist’s satisfaction left her mildly bored, but being what she was, Iris was a little too nice to ask for a break. Instead, she idly dreamt of surprising her girlfriend, Amelia with a rose and let herself drift off into a daydream where the cold sidhe relaxed…just a little.
Shrieks and shouts brought her immediately out of her daydream, sending Iris snapping to attention, peering worriedly out the window. Briar’s startled protests were lost against the sounds of frightened children, and the teenager acted without thinking. Pushing the glass away, she nudged the window further open and simply sprang out, landing gracefully on the lawn and sprinting towards the muddied, gasping childlings.
"Iris!" Tammi, a nocker childling with wet eyes and chubby, red cheeks, stumbled towards her, sniffling. "There was a dragon in the pond!"
Falling to her knees, Iris gathered Tammi into her arms, stroking the little girl’s tumbled whitish-pink hair, glaring at one of the older boys. "Ralph, how could you let them go to the pond? What if one of the little ones had fallen in?"
The troll child hung his head, looking horribly ashamed of himself. The wooden sword he carried everywhere was cracked, and his beloved shield with the rampant unicorn was nowhere to be seen. "I’m sorry, Iris. We were playing, and then Tammi said she saw a big fish in the pond…so we went to look, and then.."
"A dragon came out of the lake!" Shell shrieked. The kitten pooka was always eager to leap into explanations, and she bounded around Ralph with a bright smile, her ears perked forward, whiskers twitching.
Iris raised one eyebrow, her wings shifting restlessly on her back as she watched Shell, her opalescent gaze moving to the other muddied, frightened children. "All right, dragon or not, everyone here needs a bath, a snack and a nap." Despite the groans of protest, the children eagerly crowded around her knees and followed the gentle fae inside the freehold.
An hour later, as Iris descended the stairs, her t-shirt soaked, blowing tiredly at a strand of pearly hair, she was met with a pair of cold blue eyes and a tapping foot.
"What is this about a dragon?" Amelia Neally’s voice was sharp, her gaze darting over her girlfriend before resting on Iris’s face.
"Hi honey, nice to see you," the other fae said with a roll of her eyes, brushing past the imperious sidhe with a flick of her white-feathered wings. Heading into the kitchen, she mouthed a countdown as she pulled milk from the fridge. No sooner had she mouthed one than Amelia strode into the kitchen.
"I said what was this about a dragon?" The sidhe frowned at her, standing with her arms crossed.
"From what I could gather, the kids were playing in the backyard, and they ran into the woods. Apparently, there’s a very large fish in that pond with the waterfall, and it scared them. I’m going to go look later, or ask Aeneas or Black Robin to. It might be a chimera that could hurt the kids."
The sidhe nodded, a wisp escaping the tight French twist her golden hair was restrained in. "I’ll tell Honoria to go look. She’s the nightmare hunter."
"She hates doing it, you know."
Amelia just blinked for a moment. "And?"
Iris sighed faintly, pouring herself a glass of milk. "Never mind. I’ll talk to Aeneas and send him out to look. Leave Honoria be, okay? Please?"
The sidhe mumbled something noncommittal, and walked out of the room, leaving her girlfriend with a little smile. Taking a sip of milk, Iris had to smother a grin. She knew exactly what Amelia was going to do: head upstairs, bitch and whine mentally, then get her own sword and shield and head out to the pond herself to look. Manipulation didn’t have to be mean…if you knew what you were doing.
She did sigh, frowning a bit as she tried to puzzle out what could possibly be in the pond. They hadn’t had problems with chimera since Honoria had arrived three years ago, and this was really strange. Looking out the kitchen window at the forest, Iris wondered, not for the first time, just what little things there were tucked into the corners of Freak Central.