The Moon Dragon

Chapter Two

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

Sylvia groaned, fumbling for the off button on her alarm. The red numbers flashed 7:30 and Sylvia groaned again. She felt like she had barely slept at all.

Kept awake by crazy, very vivid dreams, she guessed. She looked forward to telling Grace about her dream, Sylvia decided as she clambered out of bed. It was something they could laugh about over lunch.

She walked past her mirror and did a double take. What....?

Her brown hair had changed, turned to a shimmering silver apparently overnight. How on earth did that happen? It felt like normal hair and it went into Sylvia's normal half-up half-down style like usual. But it caught the light like it was full of glitter, or shards of moonlight......

Oh.

Oh no.

It hadn't been a dream, had it?

Sylvia glanced at the rest of herself in the mirror; yep, still in the NASA shirt and jeans that Grace had leant to her last night.

'No way. Did I ACTUALLY turn into a dragon?' Sylvia thought. That was impossible!

She had to get to school and ask Grace.

Sylvia rushed through getting ready, almost crashing into her mother who was coming the opposite way down the hall.

"Oh! Morning dear- oooh, that's new." Sylvia's mom commented on her hair.

Sylvia panicked. "Oh! Yep. Grace did it for me last night, I'm sorry I didn't ask you earlier..."

Her mom just smiled. "That's okay. You know your dad and I are happy for you to be making more of your own decisions, now that you're older. And might I say, it looks great on you."

Her dad, walking up the corridor, planted a kiss on the top of Sylvia's head as he went past. "Grace did a good job."

Sylvia grinned. "Thanks, mom and dad. Gotta run, see you this afternoon!"

"Bye, sweetheart! Have a good day at school!"

Sylvia waved as she ran out the front door, jogging the rest of the way to school.

It wasn't far, and she got there just in time to see Grace walking in at the same time. Grace's eyes widened, and she beckoned Sylvia over.

"Sylvia! Hi! I gotta talk to you!"

"About last night?"

"What else, silly! Come on, we'll be late to class."

"So it did happen, last night? I wasn't just dreaming?"

Grace grinned. "Unfortunately not. But I can tell you what happened. And why."

Sylvia quickened her pace to keep up, and with arms linked, they walked into school.

x+x+x

Science class was even more of a pain than usual. Sylvia couldn't stop her mind from drifting to what happened the night before, her hands rubbing at her forearms where she remembered scales being. Even Grace seemed distracted, which was highly unusual. Grace was top of the class at science, even as she failed most of her other classes. Grace worked for it, though, and Sylvia was fairly certain it was to prove herself to her Scientist mother. But today, Grace was ignoring the teacher, instead sketching something down in the margin of her book while the teacher wrote on the board.

"Am I boring you, Miss Monroe?" The drawl of the teacher sending Grace's head snapping up, flicking to a different page in her book. Sylvia caught a glimpse of deep lines of pencil: a wing, maybe a tail.