Fight or Flight

Chapter 20

Enola

Thirty years ago...

"Hi sky-wi... eep!" I was still fanning my wings out in excitement when the image of the blue dragon vanished. I dipped my head in embarrassment and put my hand back on the crystal formation, and the blue dragon appeared again a few seconds later. "S-sorry..."

The older yellow dragon who was assigned to this guardpost grinned a little, but he didn't say anything. He had politely shown me how to use the communication crystal before giving me space to make the call, and he was showing me the professional courtesy the Sea Guard showed when on duty... but I guess my excited clumsiness had been a little too much for his professionalism.

If Cess noticed my embarrassment or thought anything of my silly mistake, he didn't say anything. He just looked happy, and he smiled back at me while waving with one of his wings. "Hi there, sweet-wings. How's your trip been so far?"

"It's been great! It's further than I thought, but I'm only a week or two from the ocean now. And the guard posts have been easy to find, and everyone I met has been really helpful." I smiled again as I thought about the three dragons I had met so far, not counting the yellow dragon I had met tonight, and how they had made sure I had gotten plenty of food and a comfortable place to sleep. "They've all been super nice."

Cess's grin grew wider as he nodded, and I caught the sudden teasing expression in his eyes. "They probably got word that a new healer recruit was on her way through. I'm sure they'll go back to normal once they realize they've mistaken you for her."

I rolled my eyes. "Cesssss... go on, be a jerk." I giggled, letting him know I wasn't upset with his teasing, and looked back at the image of the blue dragon inside the crystal. "I'm nothing special; they're just being professional and courteous, and you know it."

"Ha!" The teasing expression faded from Cess's eyes. "Every healer is special, and you've shown a lot of promise as one. And I know you know that – it's how you got into the Sea Guard so early, instead of having to wait another two years to be old enough. You're going to be apprenticing at some post far away from any possible fighting for a while, to make absolutely sure you're safe, but trust me, Enola. You're special."

He reached up with his free hand and tapped one of his horns, and I lowered my head in a slight blush. It was a reminder of the first time I had done healing magic. Cess had gotten into a fight with another dragon – some tussle over something silly, the way we were always doing back when we were hatchlings – and the other dragon had broken Cess's horn. That normally wouldn't have been that big a deal, except that his mother's rider was sick at the time, and she was focusing her magic on helping her rider through the illness. She hadn't wanted to be distracted from that, especially just for something as minor as a horn that would grow back on its own in a few months, and she had told him he would just have to take that as a lesson to not pick fights.

I had come across Cess sulking under his wing, and I had pestered him for the next ten minutes straight before he had pulled his head out of his wing to yell at me. That had shown me the problem with his horn, and from there I had dragged him – and the broken piece of horn that he still clutched in one hand – back to my parents' den. A bit of digging through some scrolls had found the instructions for the basic spell to mend a bone, and... then I had regrown his horn. There hadn't even been a seam to show where the break had been – if Cess hadn't still been holding onto the broken piece, nobody would have known it had ever been broken.

Mom and Dad had been proud of me for managing such a complicated spell so easily, and all the other adults had made a big deal of it. They had examined Cess's horn – much to his annoyance – and gave me a bunch of other spells to try. Until they had finally decided I had a talent for healing magic. Everyone treated me like that was something special, and it had caused me to get into more than a few fights myself with some jealous hatchlings... but I didn't really think it was that big a deal.