A Kind of Magic

Twenty-Seven

"Here you are, dragon." Leodhais, who happened to be the closest to the door when Peregrine and Fiona returned to the flat, greeted them, frowning, as if he blamed them for having left him with the inquisitive boy who was now busy talking to Gilderoy. 

Fiona looked up at Peregrine, smiling conspiratorially after their talk, her heart reaching out to Annwyn, Peregrine's little sister whom she had never met yet... whom she would never meet, feeling sorry for her. 

How could she fall in love so desperately, at least according to Peregrine's words, with this elf, who seemed to act, in some ways, as if he was much less mature, and way more spoiled than Freddie? Oh well, love entered one's being uninvited, through the heart, entirely avoiding the person's mind, Fiona knew that well. However, Leodhais didn't look like he wasn't capable of returning such love, he only needed to grow up a little, morph from his boy stage into a man just like his best friend Gilderoy, and Peregrine himself, had done at some point. 

Biting her lower lip, she looked back at the dark dragon shifter still standing statue-still at her side, rain drops glistening on the shoulders of his black cloak and in the strands of his midnight hair, as if he didn't want to be the first one who would create distance between them by walking deeper into the flat. She had to give to him; he had chosen just the right things to tell her to make her feel seriously intrigued about Silmarea. 

"Are you a dragon? Really? Were you hatched from an egg like the dragons in fantasy books?" Freddie, leaving his current victim Gilderoy seated on the sofa alone jumped to his feet and ran towards them in the opposite direction of Gollum who, liking the unusual noise and commotion as little as Fiona, headed for the peaceful sanctuary of her bedroom. 

"Freddie!" she scolded, feeling mortified but breathing freely again when Peregrine laid a reassuring hand on the small of her back even as he laughed. 

"No, I wasn't. I'm a dragon shifter, which means that I'm more human than dragon. Those dragons you are thinking about only live in old tales."

The boy nodded, pulling at Peregrine's sleeve, distancing him from his mother as he dragged him towards the sofa and pushed him down next to the dwarf, pressing his copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy gathered in one heavy volume on his lap. 

"These are my favourite books. I think you would like them." Fiona heard him say even as she met Peregrine's look above the boy's short figure. Are you alright there? she demanded wordlessly, smiling first at him when he nodded, returning her smile, then at Gilderoy, who had noticed their silent exchange and echoed his friend's smile. 

She left them then and walked across the flat, finding her mother in the kitchen just as she had expected, preparing a late dinner for their visitors. 

The older woman lifted her eyes from the pot she was stirring as Fiona entered. "They must be hungry, men always are," she muttered, reaching into a cupboard and pulling out a pile of plates and bowls. "I made the beef stew before we came to pick you up; there's enough for everyone..."

"Peregrine, the big dark one, is a vegetarian like me," Fiona told her. "I'll make something for the two of us; you'll feed everyone else, alright? But don't you start getting used to them, they'll be gone soon again," she finished, pulling a container of frozen mushroom pasta sauce she had made days ago from the freezer, taking the lid off and placing it into the microwave before she filled another pot with water, then watched her mum to switch the cooker on for her while she found a box of tagliatelle pasta. She wondered whether Peregrine had ever eaten anything like it before, deciding that he had-- if any of the three seemed to have had a previous experience of this world, it was him. 

A few minutes later, with the table set and everything ready to be served, Fiona was sent to call the men while her mother laddled her stew into four plates. 

"Oh, thank you, Lady Alexandra!" Leodhais exclaimed, dropping in the closest chair, bending low above the plate to inhale the mouthwatering scent. Unlike the 'Fish and Chips' Peregrine had made them eat for lunch, this stew smelled like home, like The Gate...

"Oh, just call me Lexie, Leo," Fiona heard her mother say as the woman sat next to him in her most elegant manner. 

It made Fiona laugh and she used Peregrine's shoulder to muffle her outburst, not realising that he had come to stand at her side while the others sat at the table, blushing as she looked up at him, feeling embarrassed when she realised what she had done.

"Only my mother would call someone like him Leo," she explained in a whisper before she turned back to the two plates she had prepared. "Do you like mushroom pasta?" she asked, speaking normally again when she glimpsed Gilderoy, observing them from across the table.

"Of course," he said, bringing the plate she had passed him to his nose, inhaling deeply. 

Fiona couldn't contain her smile-- she loved the scent of mushrooms, too. They smelled of age-old forests, of pathless wilderness... Botheration! The dark man was awaking the adventurer within her, the part of herself she had put to sleep when she morphed from a romantic girl into a practical mother, somehow skipping the phase of untroubled womanhood... She sighed when she realised that she had never looked at her own life this way and that the view she glimpsed now was somewhat... sad.

She pointed the last free chair to the dragon shifter-- her mum had done a great job in making everyone feel at home; Fiona didn't know she had all these chairs, shabby and mismatched as they were, in the flat-- and continued to the window where she sat on the floor, her back against the wall, the plate balanced on her knees. She looked up from the small nest of wide noodles wrapped around her fork as she was about to bring it the her lips in surprise when first Peregrine, carrying his plate and two glasses of white wine sat at her side, sliding to the floor with such grace that he looked like a black, silk ribbon gliding in through the window on the night breeze, soon followed by Freddie who set his steaming bowl of beef stew on the wooden floor next to their glasses, joined her.

"You both have your place at the table," she muttered, not wanting to disturb her mother's conversation with her 'Leo' and Gilderoy, looking from the dragon shifter to her son with a mock frown. She wasn't surprised by Freddie joining her on the floor; they were inseparable. She was surprised by Peregrine, though. Despite the down to earth outdoorsy scents surrounding him, he just looked too polished and regal to eat his meal on the kitchen floor of her shabby flat.

"It's delicious," Peregrine praised her cooking skills, his silvery eyes meeting hers for a moment before he looked at Freddie, the weigh of his gaze making the boy look up at him from the bowl now resting on his crossed legs.

"Have you ever thought of eating like your mum? About not eating meat, I mean?" 

His voice was perfectly matter-of-fact and serious as he spoke to her son, making Fiona wonder why he would ask that.

"I have. But she said she thought I needed to eat meat while I'm growing up," Freddie replied in an equally serious tone, soliciting her smile. He was so solemn and wise for his age. Sometimes she wondered whether it was because he had grown up without a father, whether it was her fault that he didn't quite act like a child his age should...

As if he could perceive the self doubt raging in her head, Peregrine put his empty plate on the floor, took his glass of wine in one hand while he placed his other arm around Fiona's waist from behind, without Freddie noticing, while he spoke to him.

"And she's right. You are still very young."

Freddie simply nodded, pleased with the impressive man's agreement before he dug into his stew again. 

But Fiona wouldn't be distracted so easily. There was something in the dragon shifter's words, which she thought had a deeper meaning. He knew something she didn't, and she was going to make him tell her before he would return to his world.