Page 68 of Emerald Waves
After the encounter with the Gorynych, I’d struggled to get back to work on the bassinet and shelving I’d been carving into the rock face of our horde. Every time I extended a claw, I thought about the damage I’d done to that other dragon and the way I’d tormented him with my claws to get what little information he gave me. I was afraid of carving the memory of that into the stone, so it remained partially finished, in the exact state it had been when the wards had been tripped. I had cleaned up the debris and moved the desks back into place for Emerson,who’d thanked me but appeared disappointed every time he glanced over at the rock.
Despite how many times I’d scrubbed my claws, there was still this nagging in the back of my head, telling me they were filthy and shouldn’t be used to finish work on the bassinet. Several times I’d considered reaching out to one of my brothers to ask them to finish it, but each time I stopped myself, feeling hollow and disappointed whenever I thought too long about not being the one to complete it.
Honestly, nothing felt normal. While I knew it was me who’d changed, in several different ways, it was a struggle to be comfortable in my own skin now. The pattern of my days had changed. I no longer went to the sea as I always had. The knowledge that Mattias had followed me for a good chunk of my time in the water had left me prickly and a bit miffed at the fact that he’d seen the need to do it. Had it been a lack of trust or had he truly felt that I was not capable of handling myself beneath the waves?
Either answer would be irritating, so I hadn’t asked, I just gave him a wide berth and Ionus too, since I could feel that he was upset at the revelations that had come out since Emerson’s kidnapping. He’d need some time to cool down and honestly, I needed a break from my brother’s prying eyes and the disappointment I saw whenever either looked at me.
I had managed to assemble the floor to ceiling shelving we’d picked out to line one of the walls in the study I was creating for Emerson to install for him once the expansion of that space was completed. He’d asked for the desk to be set up in front of the window, where he’d have plenty of natural light, wooden cubby holes on the opposite walls, and the easy chair placed in the corner near the lamp he’d selected. He hadn’t picked a desk chair yet, but he had narrowed down the choices to three. A sliding ladder ran the length of the shelves, so he’d never haveto stand on something unsteady again, not that I wanted him to stand on anything while he was still carrying our egg. I was more than happy to retrieve whatever he needed the moment he thought about reaching for it, which may have also contributed to me driving him up the walls, when I kept appearing beside him, reaching for what he sought before he’d barely finished the thought.
The look on his face when I handed him volume two of a collection of books before he’d had the chance to realize that it was volume three that he truly needed was enough to send me fleeing from our horde before he chucked the offending volume at my head. Best to leave him to it and wait for him to request my help before I jumped in with the wrong thing again.
There was one other task I’d been putting off.
The archive building.
For reasons I couldn’t figure out yet, Ionus had assigned its destruction to me and me alone. Odem probably would have had fun firebombing the hell out of it, but I could see where that could lead to some collateral damage and force Mattias to put out the accidental fires that spread to other dwellings if my brother got overzealous.
Still didn’t lessen the feeling that it was part punishment, especially after I’d revealed to my brothers that I had not sensed any disturbances in the earth during the time those dragons had been tunneling their way across our lands. Ionus had dubbed my reasoning unacceptable, but we had wards for a reason. None of us had suspected a flaw in them, so why did the responsibility, and thus everyone’s ire, seem to be coming down on me? Yes, I’d been lax in paying attention to them and keeping plugged into the ground beneath Dragon City, but until those dragons had come along desperate to locate my mate and discover what the archives held, the earth beneath our feet had been stilland silent. Not much for a protector to do when nothing was happening.
Flying to the archive building allowed me to take in the structural damage that had been caused over the course of the fighting. The roof and two sides had suffered heavy damage with the worst of it being the wreckage caused on the side where the tunnel had allowed them access to the building.
Heavy rains caused by savage thunderstorms that I was certain Ionus’ anger had fueled, had caused more of the already compromised roof to crumble. The heavily damaged side of the building sagged, all of it ready to come down the moment another support beam or two failed, something I could easily attend to.
Almost too easily.
Are you bored with the earth, human?
My dragon’s voice in my head sounded offended, and even a bit miffed, like he was displeased with my approach to the project.
There is no real challenge to making a building sink.
Even as I shared the thought we focused on the ground beneath the structure, until it was churning without disturbing any of the nearby buildings. The rapid rattling of the earth caused the bricks to start crumbling, the sounds aggressively loud as an avalanche of broken mortar and cracked bricks began pouring towards the archive room, until the floor gave way, sending it all plummeting into the basement. The dust was so thick it stuck to my tongue and coated the insides of my nostrils as I flew circles around the building, stirring the earth around the building until a whirlpool formed. Noisy, messy, with plumes of dust so thick my sight was obscured. I didn’t stop until I’d rendered the dirt beneath the former archive building quicksand that rapidly began to suck the broken construction material down with a grinding crunch. I could feel the swirlingcontinue beneath the earth, like a garbage disposal chopping up the remains of the structure, and my heart gave a heavy throb.
I met my mate here.
Claimed my mate here.
Now it was gone.
We’d barely begun to forge a life together and now a big piece of that history was being erased. By me. If Ionus were here, I’d have flipped him off for giving me this assignment. Maybe it was sentimental bullshit, but I’d have loved to walk past the building with our dragonet and tell him or her about what their Daddy had looked like pouring over maps and tomes on his desk. Did Emerson know that I used to watch him through the windows? Had he ever felt me lurking while he worked, slowly circling the building just to watch him while struggling to tamp down my curiosity over what it would be like to share a home with him?
Wonderful, that’s how it was.
Guess I’d wasted a bunch of time worrying about not being compatible, having nothing to talk about, and him so deep into his beloved books and research that we rarely engaged. I’d pictured a sad, almost lonely sort of mating, not that I ever wanted him to know just how badly I’d misjudged him. Now I was thrilled to have anything but the sorry images I’d conjured up in my head. Talk about wasting some prime time brooding. I’d damn near brooded myself out of the most amazing mate the Goddess could have ever created for me.
As I waited for the dust to settle, I wondered what we’d do with the space now that it was a vacant, empty lot, well, provided my dragon and I had done our jobs right.
The task was handled sufficiently while you were busy trying to detract me from our work.
I’m sorry if seeing the building vanish bothered me. I have several fond memories of watching our mate do a little shimmy in his chair when he was excited about something, or dance infront of one of the shelves when he discovered the bit of history he’d been pursuing.
I share your fondness for the memories, though I wonder how much greater Emerson’s joy would have been if he’d had us to share those special moments with.
He has us now and there will be plenty to celebrate together in the future.
You baffle me sometimes, human. You are either getting in our way with your incessant what-ifs or forcing me to drag you kicking and flailing into a good thing that you nearly what-if us out of. You never take the time to consider if something might be a good thing until after you look back on it, reminiscing about how good it was. Your pessimism is about as bad as Odem’s snark, which is why the rest of our dragon brethren are constantly upset with the two of you.
If that’s the case, then they shouldn’t have an issue with me taking my brooding to the other side of the planet and blocking them out while I’m there. I can’t help considering the potential outcomes before taking a leap of faith, it’s just not in me.
