Book IV: Avi Dragon

Menolly

The cafeteria lady came in with her broth then, breaking the spell.
   Angel waved at the short, older woman with a bright smile. She tried not to notice the way her skin brushed his moustache as it left his grasp.
   "Girl, it is so good to see you awake!" She set the broth on the table, which was off to the side, and hugged Angel as best she could with Avi still holding her other hand.
   "I'll be sure to tell Dan you're doing better. He was awfully worried, you know."
   Angel smiled, but this one didn't reach her eyes. "Please," she signed.
   The woman, whose name tag read Sue, looked to Avi, then Angel. Angel rubbed her throat to show that it was sore.
   "Oh yeah, tube. Sorry, I forgot. D'you know what she said?" she asked him
   "She said 'please'," he translated.
   "Oh yeah, will do. Now, you'd better eat all of this by the time they come for the tray, you hear?"
   Angel smiled weakly and nodded. Her hand shook when she reached for the wheeled table. Sue was quick to swing the little table into position, but the lever gave her a bit of trouble. Avi helped her, which required letting go of her other hand. Together, they got the tray where she could eat without straining too much.
   She would have fed herself, but the spoon shook so badly that there was nothing left in it by the time it got where it needed to go.
   Avi firmly removed it from her iron grip, rusty as it was. "You've been in a coma for months. Maybe take it a little slow, huh?"
   He filled the spoon and set it to her lips. Her eyes sparked with ire, but she opened her mouth and took the spoon with a loud clack of metal on teeth.
   Or what teeth she had. He noted with some shock that she was missing several of her teeth.
   "Well, looks like he's got it covered. I'll see you tonight, 'kay?"
   Angel waved goodbye to Sue, glaring mutinously at her Bonded. She was daring him to comment on her infirmity.
   He didn't.
   :You told me once that this body couldn't do what we needed,: he said as Sue left.
   :There are many things I cannot do. If you plan on sticking around, ye may's well know that.:
   He spooned another mouthful, outwardly calm. :Lay it on me.:
   So she did. She listed off every health condition, acronym, allergy, and missing organ she could think of. She was testing him. Only one other man had passed this test, and that was her best friend. She'd thrown everything at Dan, trying to scare him off before he got too close; just like she was doing now.
   She'd learned early on how unlovable she was, how lucky she was to have her ex for as long as she had. So, instead of staying with someone for years and years, only to find out that they were extremely incompatible, she laid her faults at their feet right from the beginning. Better to know right off the bat, rather than waste her life with someone who was just going to wear her down, bit by bit.
   The fact that her best friend hadn't run away, or used her faults against her, made her appreciate him immensely. If certain real world problems hadn't kept them apart, she might even have dated him. There was no attraction, mind you. She was just grateful to find someone who appreciated her as she was, no strings attached. He didn't want anything out of her, he just wanted to keep company, take care of her needs when he could. Plus he had a beard.
   Now, here was another man who wanted into her life. But this time, she was attracted to him. Not just the outside, either. She liked everything she'd seen, inside and out. In fact, the reason she was so close to her best friend was because he was very much like Avriel, in so many ways.
   To be completely honest, she was terrified.
   :Why are you scared?: he asked. He hadn't "heard" anything but bits and pieces, and none of them made sense. The undertone of anxiety and fear colored what she had told him. Every obstacle she'd thrown at him was hurled with the force of a frightened animal.
   She looked out the window. He set another mouthful of broth at her lips. They briefly compressed, but she needed the nourishment, and she knew it. The brief pause left a drop of broth on her lower lip. She sucked her lip in and held it there. If she'd had enough teeth, he would've said she was biting it. She clearly didn't want to tell him why she was afraid.
   Meanwhile, he was suppressing a bodily reaction to seeing the dusky droplet perched there, catching the afternoon sunlight and refracting it. Even though it was gone, the image remained.
   She reached for the spoon, which brought him out of the minor trance. He fed her while they both thought about things they'd rather not.
   :I meant what I said about strong emotions, you know. I don't know how to deal with them. I'm afraid of letting myself feel them, because they might... stop. As much as I don't know how to handle emotions, I really don't know what to do when they... change.:
   The broth finished, he moved the table out of the way and took her hands in his again. There was a pressure building in the back of his head, and he was fairly certain it wasn't Angel. He had to break the news to her now, before Menolly built up a full head of steam.
   "There's more."
   Her face twisted. :Of course there is.:
   "Whatever else you believe, there is something not even you can deny. Well, someone, really."
   Esther appeared in the hospital room, disheveled, half awake, and thoroughly confused, holding an almost six month old baby who was flailing for all she was worth toward her mother.     
   Kapa looked equally surprised, from his perch on his aunt's shoulders.
   Avi let go of her hands, stood, and took the visibly upset infant from his sister. "Sorry, I didn't know she could do that. Do you want to stay, or, uh, try the visitor's lounge..?"
   Menolly calmed when she was in her father's arms, but she was still waving her chubby arms for Mama. Esther looked around, and nothing looked familiar. She glanced out the window and saw something her brother had missed: a very great lake.
   "We're not in Portugal anymore," she said on a weak chuckle. Kapa flapped to the window for a peek. Angel watched him, eyes as wide as they could physically be.
   "Minnesota," he said, trying to restrain his daughter.
   Esther sat in the other chair, waved him toward Angel. "You'd better let her at her mom, or she's likely to fall on the bed."
   A choked sound behind him made his shoulders hunch. He turned slowly, afraid to see the expression on her face.
   It was a mixture of disbelief, and a pain/hope blend that was so intense, it hurt to look at. She looked at her daughter with such longing that he brought her the baby immediately.
   Menolly would have thrown herself bodily at her mother, but her father was strong enough to enforce restraint. "No, sweetness, be gentle. Mama's hurt."
   He was watching the baby, to make sure she didn't hurt her mother, so he missed the intensified emotion that contorted her face. Esther didn't.
   Menolly didn't understand the words, but she did get the caution he was subconsciously projecting. She patted her mama's cheek, looking back at her daddy to see if she was doing good. He smiled and kissed her rosy cheek.
   "I think you have some explaining to do," Angel rumbled.
   "Oh no! You sound almost as bad as the day Menolly was born! What happened?" Esther rushed to the other side of the bed. She couldn't get very close, with the table in the way, but Angel was feeling suddenly crowded, so that was a good thing. Kapa had inherited his mother's distaste of strong emotions, so he remained on the windowsill.
   "She was intubated." He tried very hard to keep the meaning of his words out of his head, so the baby wouldn't pick up on it.
   Menolly was busy patting her mother anywhere she could reach, trying to stand on her lap but bouncing and wobbling unsteadily. "Mum mum mum mum," she babbled.
   Angel openly, quietly wept, torn between happiness and sorrow. She knew this child couldn't be hers, but oh, how she wanted her to be! She loved this baby instantly, no matter whose she was, besides his.
   And her eyes showed that love in a startling way.
   The Kaplan siblings gasped. Menolly just smiled and babbled.
   Avi whispered for his sister to take a picture. Angel heard, but she didn't care. She'd ask for a copy later, for her scrapbook.
   "Can you look at the camera?" Esther asked, her voice trembling ever so slightly.
   Angel looked up, eyes glowing a bright pink where the whites should be. Esther took a few photos, then handed the phone to her brother. He held his daughter one-armed, which he'd gotten very good at, and looked at the photo evidence. He nodded to his sister, handed the phone back, and signed "wait".
   Angel missed it, having returned her gaze to the amazing little girl in front of her. "What is with you, sugarplum? You're all... sparkly. Wait, blink again?"
   Menolly was just so thrilled that Mama was talking to her sweetly, even if it sounded funny, and she looked funny, that she blinked, nice and slow. She didn't know the word for it, but her mother pictured the action, quite without thinking about it.
   Angel looked up at him, then. "Why are her skin and eyes like that?"
   Avi sat on the edge of the bed, which made the baby happy, and took one of the thin hands atop the knit blanket. "She got those from her mother."
   Confusion crossed her face, along with fear. She held the baby a little tighter with the other hand. "I thought you said I was her mother," she rasped.
   "You are, my little dragon." He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. He valiantly tried to ignore the shiver that rippled through both of them.
   Esther remembered, then, that she had pictures of Angel on her phone.
   "Actually, so do I. I forgot about that day in the desert," Avi said. He let go of her hand to pull up the image. When he found it, he turned the phone so she could see.
   "Oh, you were so tiny in this photo!" she cooed. "But... what's she propped up with?"
   The Kaplans' eyes met briefly.
   "She's nursing. From you," he said with quiet intensity.
   She scowled and thrust the phone back at him. "I don't like jokes," she nearly snarled. Her raspy voice matched the emotion running beneath it.
   Esther showed her one from Christmas. "Here, maybe we should start smaller. You're there, perched on the back of his neck, see?"
   Angel squinted valiantly, but she didn't have her glasses. Esther checked the drawers and cabinets. Avi checked the little table by her bed. He found them in the top drawer, under the phone.
   "Okay, now look. There's your tail, around my neck, and your wing is poking out."
   She squinted again, then scowled. "All I see is a necklace and somebody's hat."
   Esther took her phone, swiped over a few photos to find the one she'd snuck, one of the times Angel had to stretch.
   "There. Tell me you can't see your wings fanned out. That's your head, right there. Those horns are clearly visible," she asserted.
   Angel didn't have to squint. Even she couldn't deny the tiny dragon on the back of his head. "She's a very pretty dragon, but in case you haven't noticed, I'm not nearly that small."
   Avi already had the picture Kevin sent him of their mock fight in the dining room queued up. "You started small, just like any newborn. Here's what you looked like a couple of weeks later." He didn't tell her what to look for, this time.
   Her head tilted, brow curled. "What am I looking at here? It looks like you're wrestling an alligator, but... an alligator puma..? I know, that sounds weird, but I can't tell what's going on here."
   He swiped to the one where her jaw was open over his head.
   "Wow, you survived that?"
   He snorted. "As you probably would've said, 'I would have been a poor Guardian if I'd wounded my Bonded human'. Besides, the pain thing goes both ways." That wasn't the case when the photo was taken, but that was irrelevant.
   "'Bonded'? Is that like Imprinting in Anne McCaffrey's books?" She remembered the mating flights and flushed, but she valiantly ignored it, in the face of the mystery at hand. She absently rubbed her aching throat.
   "Mm, sort of. There's telepathy, sure, but I can't remember if they share pain too, or just... thoughts." He trailed off awkwardly, having also just recalled the mating flights. "You do blink, though. Apparently, so does Menolly." He tweaked his daughter's nose affectionately. "Hey, wait. That's where you got the name, isn't it? I knew it sounded familiar!"
   Angel chuckled, but it sounded more like shifting gravel. "Why am I not surprised you've read her books?" So how do I know this isn't just some fantasy he came up with? she wondered. It all sounds too good to be true.
   He took the phone away, picked up her limp hand, and kissed the inside of her wrist. It was... awkward, experiencing that electric sensation in front of his sister. He'd forgotten about the effect he had on her sensitive wrists. :No fantasy can conjure babies and dragons out of thin air,: he pointed out. :This is real.:
   Her pupils had returned to normal by the time he raised his head. :Then how do you explain her? I had a hysterectomy, if you'll recall.:
   He huffed an almost-laugh. :Yeah, that was one helluva surprise. I guess when you got turned into a dragon, He gave you a dragon's uterus? Never really got a chance to ask.:
   :He?:
   Avi used her old trick, looking up at the ceiling. Her eyes followed reflexively, then widened when she realized what he was saying.
   Esther cleared her throat politely, holding out her phone with the most recent photo queued up. He held out Angel's hand, by the wrist he still retained a light hold on. Esther put the phone into Angel's trembling hand.
   Her human eyes grew almost as big as her dragon eyes. Nerveless fingers dropped the phone on her knee. She unconsciously reached toward her face. Avi let go of her hand.
   "It's only strong emotions, but I think it's like Pern dragons, sort of."
   Menolly joined in the game, patting her mother's face again.
   "Did they do that before? When we were... talking?" She didn't want to say "arguing" in front of his sister or daughter.
   He made a sound that might have been a laugh. "How would I know? I was too busy crying."
   Angel scowled at him.
   Esther asked why he was crying. "They were happy tears, right?"
   Angel's jaw jutted out, but that prompted another coughing fit. She blindly groped for the tissues, which were thrust in her hand by one of the Kaplans. She tried not to look at the colors that stained the thin paper. She knew how flimsy they were, so she had a wad of them ready to swallow up the evidence. She knew Avi well enough to know two things: first, coughing made him cringe. It was probably out of sympathy, which meant that she'd do everything she could to spare him the grisly sight. The second thing she knew was how sensitive he could be. If he saw the debris from long intubation, he would feel bad.
   So Angel did what she'd always done, whether or not she remembered. She spared him whenever possible. She asked for the waste basket, so she could throw the tissues away in such a manner that the contents were hidden. She took another wad of tissue to do the same with the even more disgusting contents of her nose, disposed of likewise.
   Trying to make light of it, she said "Trust me, you do not want to know what was in there." Having just blown her nose, she thereby distracted him from the possibility that she'd coughed anything substantial up.
   "Hand wipes?" she asked, sounding worse than before.
   Esther was closer to the table, so she handed them over.
   "I can't wait 'til I can take a proper shower," Angel grumbled. "I feel like roadkill." She put the cannula back in her nostrils and absently flattened her hair, which Menolly was only too happy to help her with. It had been braided at one point, but her ordeal wrecked them.
   "Thanks, sweetness," she rattled.
   "Speaking of the baby, why did she teleport? Was she hungry? Wet? Do we know?" Avi asked Esther.
   "Not a clue. She seems fine, so it was probably the usual: she woke up, neither of you were there, and she freaked. Kapa brought her to me, since your door was locked." She aimed a Look at him that said she'd need an explanation later. "Maybe she could tell you were further away than usual, 'cause she didn't do this before."
   Angel was blushing when she told them she had a pretty good idea what the issue was. The Kaplans looked at mother and child, and it became pretty obvious what was on her mind.
   "I hope you've got a bottle, 'cause these haven't worked in over a decade."
   Avi was almost as bright pink as she was, but he soldiered on. "We don't know that. Angel sort of... merged with you, and she was nursing, so maybe..?"
   Her brow puckered. "What do you mean she merged with me? Am I Angel, or is someone else?"
   Pain flickered through his eyes, which he tried to hide before the baby caught a whiff of it. "It's complicated. Angel was... she was an astral projection of you, but then she got turned into a dragon--which, come to think of it, is probably how you wound up so small, at first. They didn't have anything solid to work with, in the beginning." He was staring at the wall over her head, lost in thought. The image of this woman, this partial stranger, arched in pain, dying or dead, flashed through his head. He visibly shook off the image, so he could continue.
   "Anyway, she touched your shoulder. I thought she was just going to, I don't know, absorb your memories or something. But then she fell back, into your body." His eyes skipped down her body in the bed, as if he could see where his Angel had gone. He lingered a few moments on her feet, belatedly realizing what he'd just done.
   He skipped directly to her face, afraid of looking like a lecher. He had to look away almost immediately, because his theory was correct.
   His daughter was sprawled under the thin sheet, and one of Angel's shoulders was bare above it.