To Marry a Dragon

13. The Scholarly Pursuits

Ferrante didn't shapeshift to dragon and back these many times in quick succession since he was first discovering his hereditary affliction. Back then, he hid in the wild cliffs on the shores of Lake Rastelli, as far away from the familial castle and the town as possible. Solitude made him forget the shame that went with the exhilaration of sprouting wings and tripling in size. Sometimes he missed the naïve joy of those days, stifled with shame as the time went by even when he was alone. For what boy doesn't dream of becoming mighty by a minor effort of will?

The Medical Faculty of the Rotdaam University stranded him in the middle of a broad field, used for experiments too dangerous for being conducted inside. Theoretically, the space was allocated to the leisurely philosophical discourse in open air, but the academicians seemed to venture outdoors only when the safety considerations demanded it, and sometimes not even then.

Sixteen faculty members were presently in attendance, watching his every move with shining eyes. They jotted notes. One of them sketched so fast, Ferrante expected smoke to either curl over his quill or pump out of his ears.

"I avoid dragon-shifting too frequently," he explained, "because it wears out the heart, leading to an early death of an apoplexy."

"Ferrante," one of the professors, a gnome with his silver hair matching his silver skin, started.

Ferrante detected a tinge of embarrassment in his voice, because Revolution did away with Sirs and Dames, and the new honorifics didn't immediately leap to the elderly gentlemen's tongue.

"Ferrante, is that true that the dragon shift ability is predicted at birth?"

"In my family, it is always a mark, usually a patch of scales or a port wine stain in a distinctive shape," Ferrante said. "The Dragon Codex states that it is always the case."

"Yes, yes, we have this text," the professor's eyes glittered so eagerly, that Ferrante clasped his cloak protectively around himself. The dragon shift transformed every shred of matter touching the skin, including the clothes, utilizing them to create the Dragon. Even in his full suit of armour, changing there and back, he already felt exposed under this much scrutiny. Standing in the open field in naught but his skin... black pits of doom, no!

"It would require me to behave immodestly to show you my mark. But the scales fan out from the small of my back even when I shift to a human, Professor. I was born with it." His tongue itched to add Sir, because he just remembered that the silver-haired gnome was the Dean of Medicine, Professor Rubenius. But he had been corrected so many times, with a small lecture on the meritocratic society without the hereditary nobility and the necessity to reflect that in the language... Professor it was.

Alas, sixteen pairs of eyes shone with unsatisfied explorer's zeal. Ferrante rubbed his forehead. Please, let the hearing come before they force him drop his pants and submit to pocking his scales down there in the interest of the enlightenment.

"Could you describe it for us in more detail?" Rubenius asked, while another voice piped in: "Is the mark the same for all of your immediate family members?"

He felt heat flooding his cheeks. Black pits of doom! This was worse than he expected, except it was a lesser sacrifice than what Elvira was prepared to do to stay with him. Gnashing his teeth, Ferrante tried his best to answer all the questions with the amount of details required.

"My mark is about three fingers in length. It starts at the vertebrae near the waistline, about the same in width. It fans out at the end to be about as wide as the spread of my palm." He lifted his hand up and demonstrated, splaying his fingers, but leaving it to the imagination as to where the scales ended. "The scales are similar in color to my other scales, but finer and softer, more like a snake's skin, then the dragon's armoured ones.