Free Fiction: Chasing Dragons

Pulling the space ship through a wyrm­hole always felt to Gwen like falling feet first into an ocean. First she dipped her fin­gers into the water of a new star sys­tem, swirled them around a bit to test the tem­per­a­ture, and when she had a good feel­ing about it, she jumped. Space warped inside out to accom­mo­date her, the prac­ti­cal physics try­ing their best to resolve a divide-by-zero, and in the span of a breath, Gwen pulled a new ocean of stars up over her head. 

”They’re not here, dammit. Go again. Now!” Captain Griffith struck his hand on the for­ward con­sole. Several screens flick­ered. He stood fac­ing away from Gwen, his atten­tion fixed on the exter­nal cam­eras. Tension coiled in his neck and hunched his shoul­ders. He’d been stand­ing or pac­ing for Gwen’s entire six-hour shift, demand­ing she jump them through sys­tem after system.

Gwen took a breath and blew it out rough­ly. She closed her eyes to focus on the water of space around her rather than the radi­at­ing anger from her cap­tain. Gwen dragged her men­tal fin­gers across the sur­face of the ocean, seek­ing an anom­aly. Humanity was­n’t the only thing out here, and the big­ger things left traces of them­selves behind.

There! Gwen’s men­tal touch found anoth­er fault in space. This one big­ger, more sta­ble than the pre­vi­ous. That meant it was fresh. The crea­ture who had torn through real­i­ty here did so recent­ly. Gwen could­n’t cre­ate these tears that con­nect­ed one spot to anoth­er, but she could dis­cov­er them with a lit­tle effort. Gwen dipped her fin­gers into the the water on the oth­er side, found a good grip, and dropped herself—and the ship—through the hole. 

That was the trick, was­n’t it, bring­ing the ship, and all of its crew, with her. Gwen had dis­cov­ered her abil­i­ty to trav­el the wyrm­holes in the usu­al way: she tele­port­ed her­self down a hall­way, or across the mess hall, fold­ing space and time to a sin­gle point that she could step through with nat­ur­al con­fi­dence. It took years of care­ful train­ing to bring some­one with her, and even more advanced prac­tice to car­ry an entire ship. 

Each jump through space splashed over her head, a wave of dis­ori­en­ta­tion, a chill, the urge to hold her breath until she sur­faced a pow­er­ful one. And each jump left some­thing of her­self behind, just as the crea­tures who trav­eled before her left the holes torn in space.

Gwen’s knees buck­led. She put her hand on the hull but exhaus­tion dragged her to the floor. Six hours of jump­ing had leached the strength from her mus­cles and stolen the breath from her lungs.

”Go again,” Griffith demand­ed. ”They were just here. We’re catch­ing up.”

The engineer—Charlie—stood from her chair. ”Captain, she needs to rest.”

”We’ll rest when we’ve caught them.” He turned to pin his sin­gle arti­fi­cial eye on Gwen, the lens turn­ing as it zoomed clos­er. ”Go again.”

Gwen let her head fall to the cold floor and leaned heav­i­ly against the hull wall. With anoth­er breath she reached into the ocean. 

”You’re push­ing too hard. This is dan­ger­ous,” Charlie said. 

”You were informed of the risks. So was she.”

Gwen heard the argu­ment at a dis­tance, gar­bled under the waves. It was easy to dis­miss when the cold ocean of space demand­ed so much atten­tion. Gwen tried to keep her­self near the sur­face of the water—it was eas­i­er to pull back that way—but she was too tired to hold her­self up. Rather than search the sur­face for the next tear, she fell into the depths.

It was dark­er here. Quiet. Cold, but peace­ful. Small lights gave her some per­spec­tive of huge dis­tance expand­ing around her. Gwen thought she could sleep here. 

Someone slapped her face.

Gwen choked and sur­faced inside the space ship. It was bright, cold, and very loud. Charlie was hold­ing her up by the shoul­ders, eyes wide. She was yelling but Gwen’s ears were full of water and every­thing fil­tered slow­ly. Charlie shook her, which made Gwen wince. Her head ached and her stom­ach rolled over. She tilt­ed to the side and vom­it­ed bile. A bub­ble popped and every­thing snapped into chaot­ic clarity. 

”Captain, she’s awake but some­thing is wrong!”

Charlie helped hold Gwen up as her stom­ach revolt­ed. Every mus­cle shook invol­un­tar­i­ly. Her knees and elbows ached deeply. Her hips and shoul­ders, too. She was too cold, but Gwen could­n’t seem to make her tongue coöper­ate. She just drooled. 

”Hang on, lit­tle bird, I’ve got you,” Charlie said soft­ly. ”Just hang on.”

Charlie hoist­ed her up with a jerk and Gwen moaned. Pain radi­at­ed from every joint. The ship’s main hall­way flashed by too quick­ly for her to focus, then sud­den­ly she was being put down on her side in a bed fixed to the wall. Nausea rose up to meet her. 

Gwen dry-heaved while Charlie rubbed her back. 

She was so tired. When the ship rumbled—her rear thrusters burst­ing to life for the first time in months—the vibra­tion soothed Gwen’s eyes closed. She could almost see the ship cut­ting through the waves of space, turn­ing toward this sys­tem’s sta­tion around a local moon. Charlie cov­ered her with a blan­ket that was­n’t quite like the dark depths, but it was close enough. Gwen slept.

–\\–

”There’s a lit­tle bird sent to Earth on the wind, a lit­tle bird meant to fly, a lit­tle bird we sent to die. There’s a lit­tle bird I found asleep on the wind, a lit­tle bird who ought to sing, a lit­tle bird.”

Gwen grunt­ed when she woke. Charlie’s soft voice sang in her mem­o­ry, but the woman was­n’t here now. Gwen rec­og­nized the angles of Charlie’s berth once she sat upright and her foot knocked an emp­ty buck­et at the bed­side. She remem­bered los­ing her stom­ach on the bridge. Her hips still ached, deeply, and Gwen swiped one hand down her face. 

Jumping sick­ness. The signs were obvi­ous now that her head was back on her shoul­ders. The cold, her vision of space, all the aches, the nau­sea. Gwen had pushed too hard for too long. She should have spo­ken up when Charlie protest­ed, but fight­ing with the cap­tain would cer­tain­ly cost Gwen her job. 

She need­ed this job. And not just to keep the school pay­ments off her back. After six years of study and anoth­er two out on her own, she could­n’t go back to her snide, self-impor­tant par­ents. The I‑told-you-so’s alone would plunge Gwen back into the depres­sion she’d spent so long claw­ing her way out of. She’d come so far with­out their help, she could make it the rest of the way.

Gwen want­ed to find a sta­ble colony some­where. Maybe set­tle on a sta­tion and start her own trade route if she could pick up a lit­tle-used ship. But first she need­ed the mon­ey, and Captain Griffith seemed to be on the edge of fir­ing her late­ly. It left Gwen unsettled. 

She lurched to her feet, brac­ing on the wall, and splashed water on her face. The pump chugged deep inside the ship, rat­tling in a way that told Gwen they were docked some­where and hooked up for pow­er and sewage. It would be good to get off the ship for a bit, breathe some air processed through dif­fer­ent filters.

After a change and run­ning fin­gers through her hair, Gwen stepped off the Heron and onto Iris Station. She was four sto­ries long in the shape of an invert­ed cone. Ships docked on the upper ring while mer­chants and sup­ply crowd­ed the sec­ond. Gwen pur­chased a piece of dehy­drat­ed soy pro­tein to chew on while she explored. 

The third lev­el appeared to be res­i­den­tial, while the fourth housed admin­is­tra­tion, nei­ther of which were of inter­est. Instead, Gwen wan­dered the shops. 

Charlie found her peer­ing at the curi­ous form of a gourd—carved for prac­ti­cal use as a pitch­er, but out­ra­geous­ly expen­sive thanks to the water it took to grow. 

”You’re awake! How are you feel­ing?” Charlie grabbed Gwen’s shoul­der and squeezed. 

Gwen winced but gave Charlie a bit of a smile. ”Better, thank you. I’m sor­ry I took your bed.”

”Nonsense. I put you there. Did you sleep ok? You were out through breakfast.”

The men­tion of food turned Gwen’s stom­ach, but she nod­ded. ”I dreamed about you singing to me.”

Charlie grinned. ”That was­n’t a dream.” She hooked her arm through Gwen’s and turned her away from the bou­tique shop. ”Anyway, I’m glad you’re up, there’s some­thing I want to show you. Everyone here is in a tizzy since the wyrm­hole was just refreshed. We’re lucky we came in when we did. There’s already a wait­ing list to dock.”

They head­ed straight for a knot of peo­ple gath­ered near the spine of the sta­tion, a cen­tral space for meet­ing and the pri­ma­ry way to move from ring to ring. But rather than head for the lifts, Charlie guid­ed Gwen to a glow­ing dis­play board set into the wall. Updated text flashed across the screen every few min­utes, push­ing old­er entries off the list.

”Charlie, I’ve already got a job…”

Charlie gave her a flat look. ”I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your job has got­ten you sick three times this last month.”

Gwen nod­ded. ”Griffith push­es hard.”

”You mean Griffith is a bit of a dick.” Charlie rolled her eyes.

Gwen snort­ed.

Charlie nudged her for­ward with her shoul­der. ”Just glance through. It’s good to have options, right?”

”I sup­pose.” She would humor the engi­neer since there was no harm in it, but Gwen knew this was some kind of phase for Griffith. When he’d hired her on two years ago, before Charlie had joined the team, he’d been a dif­fer­ent man. Calmer. Their routes were long, but not unusu­al, and Gwen had grown a lot at Griffith’s side. When it came to trad­ing deals, the cap­tain was in his ele­ment. He’d for­got­ten more than Gwen would ever learn. 

The two of them had made an excel­lent team. Gwen was young and eager to prove her­self. Griffith had a pen­chant for tak­ing the risky bets and spin­ning them into his favor. They had been flush when Charlie first came aboard. 

Gwen was­n’t sure what changed. Griffith had nev­er run from a bad deal since Gwen had known him—he knew how to take his knocks and give what he got—but six months ago he had point­ed Gwen to a wyrm­hole so fresh it still glowed in real-space and they had been chas­ing drag­ons ever since. 

Space whales. Spirits. Monsters as long as a plan­e­tary orbit, as big around as a gas giant, with wings like gos­samer, and eyes that burned so hot they ignit­ed new stars. 

They passed through most mat­ter with­out inter­act­ing. Their bod­ies thinned out at the edges until they were translu­cent and they were the ones who dove into the ocean of space and left holes behind. Wyrmholes. 

Six months ago, Captain Griffith demand­ed Gwen catch up to a migrat­ing drag­on. When she did so it nev­er appeared to notice them. It sim­ply curled itself around the local sun for a stan­dard hour, then slipped away again through space. 

Gwen was the first to admit it had been awe­some, but Griffith could­n’t let it go. 

Perhaps Charlie was right. It was time to con­sid­er anoth­er ship. There were plen­ty look­ing to hire an expe­ri­enced jumper like Gwen. 

She began to scan the list­ings in ernest, pick­ing out the details of ships incom­ing and the rates they were will­ing to pay. None of them were close to what Griffith was pay­ing her now. She frowned. 

”Charlie, do you know if these are stan­dard rates?”

”A lit­tle high­er, actu­al­ly. Since the wyrm­hole was just refreshed.”

”Huh.”

”Something wrong?” Charlie crossed her arms. 

”No. Just that Griffith pays me more.” Gwen turned away from the board and brought Charlie with her. 

Charlie craned her neck to see the last few list­ings as they updat­ed. ”Probably because he knows he’s a jerk,” she groused. 

Gwen liked to think it was because Griffith rec­og­nized her skill and was will­ing to pay her well for it. But in light of Charlie’s com­plaints, per­haps he had oth­er motivations. 

They returned to the Heron arm-in-arm and as soon as they stepped foot inside, Griffith called Gwen to the bridge. She found him lean­ing on the for­ward con­sole, watch­ing the exter­nal cameras. 

”I saw you at the job board,” he said, full of accusation. 

”Just check­ing the mar­ket.” Gwen shrugged. She did­n’t want to pin the blame on Charlie. 

”I would appre­ci­ate it if you did­n’t linger there. I don’t want some­one think­ing you’re avail­able.” Griffith stabbed his thumb on a dis­play screen, clear­ing a con­tract of some kind. ”I pay you enough to dis­re­gard the market.”

”Yes, sir.” Gwen was­n’t sure what else to say. Griffith had nev­er tried to restrict her like this before. But he was right, the pay was bet­ter-enough that she was will­ing to con­tin­ue with him. For now. 

”Since you’re up and walk­ing be ready to leave in twen­ty minutes.”

Gwen offered anoth­er affir­ma­tive but Griffith did­n’t turn or address her again. She stepped away some­what con­cerned. Gwen could­n’t help but let Charlie’s com­plaints col­or her view of the cap­tain now. Perhaps this was­n’t a phase? What had changed him?

–\\–

They’d done it. 

Gwen had pulled a new blan­ket of stars over­head, drag­ging the ship into a new and unchart­ed star sys­tem two weeks beyond the edge of col­o­nized space. Griffith’s tem­per was short, and his abil­i­ty to rea­son frayed under the pres­sure. He’d pushed Gwen to the edge of jump sick­ness, but even Charlie could see the chal­lenge had only made her a stronger pilot. 

And they had final­ly done it. The exte­ri­or cam­eras cap­tured them in grainy low res­o­lu­tion until Charlie could deploy the satel­lite receiv­er. Then the ship’s com­put­er could over­lay images from infrared, ultra­vi­o­let, x ray, and gam­ma. The com­pos­ite bloomed in high fideli­ty, a rain­bow of false-color.

Dragons. There were three. Gwen sat heav­i­ly in a near­by chair to stare at them slack-jawed. The small­est curled around this sys­tem’s cool­ing, red-giant star, its gos­samer tail trail­ing like a ban­ner through an aster­oid belt. It passed back and forth over the rocks like a ghost, unable to affect them. 

The two oth­ers were much larg­er and they danced through the space between plan­ets. Their long bod­ies rip­pled in chang­ing false-col­or. Their eyes glowed brighter than the sun, and their bod­ies… Gwen could see right through them. 

Magnificent. Beautiful. Utterly alien. And now that the crew was here, Gwen won­dered why she’d been reluc­tant to chase these fas­ci­nat­ing crea­tures. What were they doing out here? How did they trav­el from sys­tem to sys­tem? What did they eat? Was this a fam­i­ly group?

Gwen want­ed to call the larg­er two mom and dad, while the small­er was their child. But then, did drag­ons even have bina­ry sex­es? Did they express sex­es at all? What if this was a ter­ri­to­ry dis­pute? Or per­haps a negotiation.

Did they have language?

”Oh my god,” Charlie whis­pered, her voice loud in the silence of the bridge. ”Please tell me we’re record­ing this.”

”Not just video,” Griffith said. He tog­gled a set­ting on his vid­screen and threw a dig­i­tal file to Charlie’s sta­tion. ”Send that out on every wave­length we can. Ultrasonic, xrays, visu­al light—everything.”

”What is it?” Gwen gripped the arm­rests of her seat. ”Are you going to make contact?”

Charlie frowned at her ter­mi­nal as she worked. ”It’s a song,” she said. ”It’s going out now.” She turned back to the cam­eras as the first strains of some­thing elec­tron­ic and lilt­ing played over the ship’s speakers. 

The drag­ons react­ed instant­ly. If it was the light, the x rays, or some­thing else, Gwen did­n’t know, but the larg­er pair broke apart and one flew toward the sun—and the small dragon—while the oth­er spi­raled direct­ly for the ship.

It grew larg­er on screen, and the clos­er it came the faster Gwen’s heart raced. She could make out fin­er detail as it approached—fur-like struc­tures across its muz­zle, a pair of long whisker-ten­drils that trailed behind, and a gap­ing mouth full of a hun­dred thou­sand sharp teeth.

”Uh… boss?” Charlie fid­get­ed. ”We just going to let it ram us?”

”They don’t inter­act with mat­ter,” Griffith said.

”We can’t out-fly it,” Gwen added. ”It’s so fast…”

Then sud­den­ly, the drag­on veered sharply down­ward and a new sound joined the song. A com­ple­ment. Almost like… singing?

”My god,” Griffith gasped. ”Like whales. They have language.”

”We’re record­ing?” Gwen asked.

”Yes, yes, everything!”

In a rush, the drag­on erupt­ed through the bot­tom of the ship and burst out the top. The singing inten­si­fied through the entire ship, as if the met­al were a bell being struck with a ham­mer. It engulfed the for­ward sec­tion of the bridge—computer, chair, and Captain Griffith—entirely. Charlie fell back out of her sta­tion and scram­bled away from the crea­ture with a yelp. It’s body seg­ment flowed through the ship for eter­ni­ty, long enough for Charlie to grab Gwen by the shoul­der and drag her fur­ther back. Within the drag­on, ice seemed to form on the ship’s con­sole and around Griffith’s edges. He turned slow­ly to face Gwen, and stretched one hand toward her, palm up, just as the drag­on’s tail whipped through the room.

Then it was gone. And Griffith top­pled slow­ly for­ward, his eyes stuck open, his mouth agape, his hand bea­con­ing. The cap­tain crashed to the deck, frozen into a sol­id block.

”Jump us out of here, Gwen. Now. Jump back out.” Charlie’s fin­gers dug into Gwen’s shoul­der to punc­tu­ate her demand. 

Gwen dove back­ward in space. The watery stars splashed all around her, a con­fu­sion of light. The singing abrupt­ly cut short, but the music continued—suddenly alone and some­how lesser—through the ship speakers. 

Charlie inched over to her sta­tion to slap at the screen and shut down the sound, only to scut­tle back to Gwen in the loom­ing qui­et. For a long time, the only sound was that of their breath and the errat­ic, con­fused beat of Gwen’s heart. 

–\\–

Almost a week lat­er, Gwen care­ful­ly nav­i­gat­ed the ship into port at Lotus Station ThirtyFour, a small space sta­tion in an edge-sys­tem that cir­cled a jov­ian-type plan­et around a small blue sun. All Lotus sta­tions were the same: per­fect­ly clean, direct­ed by a semi-autonomous AI, and the best place to con­duct busi­ness in a uni­verse linked through wyrm­holes. Each Lotus was built in a sys­tem with a safe and sta­ble wyrm­hole present, ensur­ing trade, tourism, and eco­nom­ic growth for generations.

Gwen was here to drop off the body of Captain Griffith to the appro­pri­ate author­i­ty that could noti­fy next of kin and exe­cute his Will, if he had one. She’d been sort­ing through his things in the bunk for days, now, box­ing cloth­ing and old mag­a­zines into keep, toss, and donate piles. 

As the ship made con­nec­tion with Lotus, Charlie came up the hall­way to the bridge. She nudged the plain, reg­u­la­tion cas­ket hold­ing Griffith’s body ahead of her, allow­ing the box’s anti­grav­i­ty to do most of the work. She nod­ded to Gwen on her way out, which left the pilot with an emp­ty ship and one very clut­tered bunk to keep sorting. 

She spent anoth­er three hours elbow-deep in Griffith’s belong­ings when she found the tablet. It was half-buried in the side-table’s shal­low draw­er, cov­ered in job paper­work and hid­den by fold­ers. There was no pass­word pro­tect­ing the con­tents, and Gwen spot­ted an icon in the cor­ner indi­cat­ing a wait­ing mes­sage. She tapped it. A video began to play.

”Grandpapa, I know you’re out look­ing, but I can’t wait to hear back. I know you’ll find them and play my songs. Mom says you’re prob­a­bly on anoth­er job and I should be patient but I’m too excited.”

A teenag­er filled the screen, her hair a puff of curls behind her. She wore a graph­ic t‑shirt styl­ized with space drag­ons and she was clear­ly record­ing from the com­fort of her bed. A band poster Gwen did­n’t rec­og­nize had been tacked to the wall over her shoul­der. Most notably, the girl’s big blue eyes were hazy and focused off-cen­ter. She was blind.

”That song I sent you still does­n’t have a name. I want to call it some­thing like: Visions or: Perspective but I’m not sure yet. Those don’t feel right. Anyway, you’ve got to record the drag­ons for me when you play it. I know they’ll say some­thing back. Mom always says music is a way for peo­ple to com­mu­ni­cate across lan­guages, and I’ve heard par­rots like, dance to the beat and—”

Gwen stopped the video. She found an entire archive of mes­sages from Griffith’s grand­daugh­ter going back years, and looked into clips of them. It was only the last cou­ple of mes­sages span­ning about a year that talked about dragons. 

This had to be the rea­son Griffith’s atten­tion had shift­ed. He’d become con­sumed with catch­ing a glimpse of the drag­ons, not for him­self, but for his granddaughter. 

At the bridge, Gwen found the video and audio files Griffith had record­ed that day and passed them to the tablet. She sat in the pilot chair, checked the cam­era posi­tion­ing, and record­ed a short message. 

”My name is Gwen, and I worked for your grand­fa­ther as his jumper. A week ago we caught up to the drag­ons and he played your song. They sang back.” Gwen tried to smile, but she was­n’t sure that it reached her eyes. ”I’ve attached the video and audio we gath­ered and I hope you find them excit­ing… but I’m sor­ry that they come with sad news.”

Gwen took a deep breath and pow­ered for­ward. ”Captain Griffith died last week while chas­ing drag­ons. When we played the music, one of them head­ed for our ship and passed through it. Griffith was caught inside, and was frozen with­in sec­onds. Don’t blame the dragons—”she was quick to add”—they did­n’t do any­thing out of mal­ice. I don’t think they even real­ize what hap­pened. They just… want­ed to sing.”

Gwen stopped record­ing after a sec­ond, hav­ing run out of words. She sent the video with its attach­ments before she could sec­ond guess herself.

Some immea­sur­able time lat­er, Gwen was still seat­ed in the pilot’s chair when Charlie returned. ”No trou­ble with the paperwork?”

”Nah, and I found a nice place to eat if you want to catch din­ner. I’m starving.”

Gwen had­n’t been hun­gry in days, but she knew she need­ed to eat so she nod­ded her agree­ment. Before she could stand, the tablet in her lap chimed with a mes­sage. It was Griffith’s granddaughter. 

”Hi Gwen, I’m Caroline. I talked to mom about Grandpa Griffith and I think she just got the noti­fi­ca­tion because she was real­ly upset. I guess it has­n’t real­ly sunk in for me yet. I nev­er met him in per­son, just chats.”

Caroline picked at her t‑shirt, anoth­er drag­on-themed design, and sighed heav­i­ly, tilt­ing the view. ”I don­no. I’m sup­posed to be sad, right? But I lis­tened to the files you sent and I’m so excit­ed to hear the drag­ons singing! And I can’t even share that with mom right now, so I don’t know who else to talk to? This is awe­some! They actu­al­ly respond­ed to my music! And they har­mo­nized with it!”

The screen shift­ed view again as Caroline hopped across her room to a desk. ”I don’t know if you know much about music, but har­mon­is­ing is some real­ly advanced stuff. Anyway, I’m already com­pos­ing anoth­er piece and I’ll send it over to you as soon as it’s ready. I hope you’ll get a chance to play it for them soon!”

Caroline blew a blind kiss to the video screen and the mes­sage ended. 

”Who was that?” Charlie asked, peer­ing over Gwen’s shoulder.

”Griffith’s grand­daugh­ter.”

”Huh. I did­n’t know he had family.”

”Neither did I. I found the tablet going through his things and there was a mes­sage from her pend­ing, so I replied.” Gwen looked up at Charlie. ”It’ll take me anoth­er few days to go through Griffith’s things, but I think, after that’s sort­ed, I’m going to catch the drag­ons again. I’m a stronger jumper now. It should­n’t take as long.”

”And what are you going to do when you get them? It passed right through the ship and killed Griffith with­out even trying.”

”I don’t know yet, maybe just watch them. Study them. There are so many ques­tions and no one out there has any answers. At least Caroline is try­ing to… to… com­mu­ni­cate.” Gwen made a rough gesture.

”Ok. I think you’ve been stuck in this boat for too long.” Charlie took the tablet and set it aside. ”Come to din­ner and we’ll talk about it. You need to think about your future, too, you know.”

”What if I’m the first per­son to com­mu­ni­cate with them, Charlie? Think about it. If we could fig­ure out how they make wyrm­holes, maybe we could make our own. Who knows what they could teach us about time and space and… and… music!”

”Ok, ok, but din­ner first. If you’re going to run around the galaxy you need food.” Charlie dragged Gwen by the wrist toward the hallway. 

Gwen gasped. ”Charlie what about invisibility?”

”They’re not invisible.”

”They might as well be! Oh! And pass­ing through mat­ter? What if we could just… phase out on demand?” The ideas were com­ing fast and hard, now. There were so many things the drag­ons knew how to do just on instinct. What could they teach her if she could find a way to talk to them? Gwen detoured into her bunk to grab her own tablet for note taking.

She would go to din­ner with Charlie, but there were ques­tions to answer… and drag­ons to chase.

–//–

This sto­ry is avail­able from May 5^th — 13^th. If you’d like to be noti­fied of free fic­tion when it goes live, please join the newslet­ter! You can buy your own copy on my web­store, or your favorite ebook store. Special thanks to my Patrons who made this short sto­ry possible.

This sto­ry was avail­able from May 5^th — 13^th. If you’d like to be noti­fied of free fic­tion when it goes live, please join the newslet­ter! You can buy your own copy on my web­store, or your favorite ebook store. Special thanks to my Patrons who made this short sto­ry pos­si­ble.