Watch The Sparks Fly

Bare Bones

NOTES: Canonical timeline | Year 0, Summer | third person

incomplete

———

When Wiz said he hasn't seen his parents in over a decade, the least he has been expecting was a forced expedition to his mother's house. It was sweet, really, how the midgets seemed to aggressively care about him.

In fact, so sweet, that Wiz didn't have the heart to tell them his folks have been dead for the last four hundred years.

"Say, Wiz, why are you so against seeing your mom an' dad?"

Wiz wondered how to say Their corpses have been reduced to bare bones without making things uncomfortable.

"I guess it's been a really long time," he says instead. "Got busy. Didn't have time to visit. Other stuff came up, too..."

Rody didn't seem particularly satisfied with the response. He liked the way Audromeda was stubborn — looked up to it, even — but right now this mulish behavior was trying to bite him in the ass. "Aren't you worried about them?"

The only things to worry about were the grave robbers.

"Not really. They can take care of themselves. I wouldn't say they're experiencing any problems — or anything at all, actually — so I reckon everything's fine."

Silence envelops the group once more. Wiz decides that his tone sounded genuine enough (after all, he was telling the truth) to finally make Rody let it go.

He is wrong.

Hesitance from an impulsive brat is the first warning bell. "Y'know..." Audromeda starts and Wiz catches the barest undertone of worry in her voice. "When— if there's something wrong, you can always talk to us, right?"

Guilt claws at him like some kind of an icy talon. Wiz wants to laugh and cry at the same time. The gentleness in her tone, reserved only for the dearest of friends (and the annoying-est of mentors, as she told him one day), almost breaks him, but he swallows the words on the tip of his tongue before they got out and made everything worse.

But the joking insult he was planning on having didn't transmit either, sticking in his throat and filtering into something completely different.

"Of course I can," Wiz says, "and I really do appreciate that you guys care."

"Don't read too much into it."

"Aww."

"Ugh! I'm trying to be genuine here!" Small, quick plumes of smoke blew out of her nostrils, the scales under her throat already glowing with soft magenta. We'll have to work on the temper issues one day, Wiz muses. It's perfectly normal among all dragons, but it was also terribly impractical, especially when faced with a bigger, angrier monster.

His hindquarters still hurt from that one time.

"I know, I know, but it really is okay. I don't have daddy issues."

It would be too hard not to take immense satisfaction in the way Audromeda choked on air.

"I didn't mean that."

"You walked into this trap on your own, kid," Wiz ignored the malicious look she sent him, "oughta know by now."

In hindsight, she should have. But the topic was pushed aside, for now, as Acacia joined their little conversation.

"Why are we coming over, anyway?"

"What a lame greeting. No manners at all. I'm offended," Wiz said, biting in a joking way. He watched in delight as Acacia had to quicken her steps to match his long strides. Both of them ignored him.