by Jade Alters
“Serge,” Cece says. She reaches back behind her to slide my arms over her waistline. I feel the fire inside her right through her clothes. She rests her own arms on mine. “Why can’t I control the fire, or transform? Even partially? Is that…common for new Dragons?”
“I…wouldn’t say common,” I admit. I feel Cece shrink the tiniest bit in my arms. “But not much about your situation is common… You’re in Scale Science with Gaela, right?” Just when I’d almost completely forgotten why I originally brought her here.
“Yeah,” says Cece.
“She fed you the whole line about letting go to find control, didn’t she?”
“Yeah,” Cece tells me. I chuckle a little - I knew she’d hate that. Cece’s more of a traditional trial-by-fire learner. She needs traditional methods, not classroom instruction.
“Well, it’s true in theory…but we used to actually practice it more. There were a few accidents with students who weren’t ready to cut loose who did, and the Academy cut back its field practice. What you need is experience,” I tell her.
“Experience… Letting go?” Cece asks.
“Essentially. You need to actually use your abilities, before you get a handle on how to control them,” I tell her. I scout the inside of my skull for an example that would make sense to someone with a Norman upbringing. “It’s like driving a car. Did your parents teach you to drive?”
“Yeah,” Cece mutters a single, pained note. Wrong analogy - but I’ve already stepped in it.
“It’s like that. They probably told you all about the gas and brake, but you didn’t really get it until you sat in the driver’s seat and felt it with your own feet,” I tell her. I feel the back of her head bob up and down, her warm, black hair brushing my face.
“Don’t get me started on the clutch,” Cece laughs quietly.
“In San Francisco?” I scoff, “What, were they trying to raise you into Nascar?” The two of us laugh into one another for a while. We feel each other’s breaths in the contact of my chest and her back.
“So…I need practice, but I’m not going to get it in class?” Cece asks after a while.
“You might, but not until we get towards the end of the term…which is why I brought you somewhere where the Academy doesn’t have power sensors,” I tell her. Cece pulls away from me, just an inch, to spin in my arms. I swallow the lump in my throat when she looks me straight in the face.
“You won’t get in trouble for that? Me, setting fires up here?” she asks.
“I didn’t say that,” I smirk. “But there’s a particular test I have in mind. One we used to give to Dragons who struggled with their powers. As long as no one sees, we should be alright. You’re having control issues because you haven’t transformed fully. To encourage it…you’ve got to put yourself in a situation where you have no choice.”
“Are you going to tease me all night?” Cece whispers, so close that the edge of her lip grazes mine.
“Jump,” I tell her.
“That’s your solution? Get me out of your hair?” Cece jokes in a sudden stroke of nervousness. How can I blame her?
“You jump from these walls and one of two things will happen. You’ll change, or I’ll catch you,” I promise her.
“Oh yeah? And just how are you going to do that?” Cece cocks her head to ask.
“What Magicians do best. A trick,” I tell her, “Trust me. But more than that, trust yourself, and you’ll do what you came here to do.” Cece stares into me a few seconds longer. She searches every stress line, every sliver of gold in my light brown irises. When she finds whatever it is she was searching for, she backs away. She slips her hands free of mine.
“And how do you know just what I came here to do?” Cece smirks. She slides her feet backward to the ramparts. She scoots her butt up on the edge of the rock and climbs up, all without looking at the drop behind her. She stands up straight at the very edge of the Academy wall.
“You’re going to show me,” I challenge her, when I see the last of the fear trickle away out of her eyes. Cece closes them for a second. She puts her head back. She lets the wind toss her hair around and play up and down her clothes. She puts her arms out at her sides, and falls straight back.
Cece,
What in the hell was I thinking? It all spirals up above me and scatters in the wind, the second my toes slide off the edge of the Academy wall. A second ago, I was thinking about how badly I’ve always wanted to just let it out - to explode. I thought about how Serge is powerful enough to hurl my mind into a world that doesn’t exist, and I trusted him to catch me. I thought about his body against mine, how he didn’t recoil from the fire inside me.
All of that rattles out of my head, up into the sky above me along with the Broken Academy. Now all that’s left between my ears is holy shit, I’m going to die.
My heart thumps in my ears under the rush of wind as I flip around to face the ground. There it is, California, steadily growing by the second to flatten me like a pancake on a skillet. I open my arms and legs to catch the air. It hardly slows my decent. I bite my lip to make sure I’m not dreaming. After all, it doesn’t really feel like I’m falling. My brain isn’t sure what to tell me this feels like, aside from horrifying. But I feel the clamp of my teeth on my lip. I’m here, I’m awake.
That’s when I realize I’m doing the opposite of what I should be. I’m spreading myself wide, making myself relax. I’ve got to tighten up - I’ve got to get angry. I’ve got to let out everything I always wished I could. Do it, or die. That’s what I need. I tell myself Serge can’t save me now. I’ve fallen too far below the Academy now, and I’m moving too fast. It isn’t all too hard to convince myself, with the mountains threatening to close their earthy jaws on me below. I bring in my arms and legs. I scrunch into the tightest cannonball I can. I become a tiny orb of scalding heat, but before anything can truly come out, I have to let it in. Everything I’ve been holding back. Since the beginning.
My parents walked away. Jason’s dead, and I’m an accomplice in his murder. The one who actually tore into him, Darius Jecks, lives down the hall from me. I’m too weak and wild to do anything about it. I was thrown out of college because I got cheated on. A juvenile record built itself around me because of something I never understood - because of what I am. I’m different, and I never learned how to deal with it. Because my parents gave me up. That’s it.
I don’t realize how hard I’m clenching my eyes shut until they shoot open. Every inch of my skin is pockmarked with the ridges of something beneath. Flame twists around me in unbridled tails and plumes. My nails have sharpened themselves to a point. Clenched in my tight little ball, I’ve become an infernal meteor, plunging straight for the planet.
Wings… Wings… Give me my wings, dammit! I focus on it with all my might. I straighten my legs and arms behind me to focus on tightening and wiggling my shoulder blades. Maybe I just need the right angle or tension? I wait for them to burst from my back, but each second I do, I only scorch a streak of fire further across the sky. I plummet down to the tallest branches of a forested grove. A leaf grazes my cheek and I brace for impact. A thousand whipping branches, then the thud of the earth - the end of me. I squeeze my eyes tight again.
“Hey, hey, you’re okay. Open up,” Serge’s voice is the only sound in the blackness I mistook for death. It makes me realize. It’s just that my eyes are still closed. It takes every muscle in my face to pry my eyelids open. I haven’t a clue what to expect when I let the light in again, but it definitely wasn’t Serge’s smile and the Academy wall. Yet there he is, and here we are, right back where I started.
“I… Did I… Was that real?” I whisper, my throat hoarse.
“Now you’re just inflating my ego. Are my tricks that convincing?” Serge teases. He slides his fingers around the outsides of my goosebumped arms to ground me in the moment. The second I feel him I know it was real, all of it, as much as this is. “You didn’t transform, but you put on a hell of a light show.
It was actually-”
I put a stop to the rest of Serge’s evaluation with my lips. I push them up in between his. It only takes a second of my tongue sliding along the side of his to unravel his tense frame. His arms fold down over my waist, just above the ridge of my butt. Every inch of our skin that touches is like an ice cube to a flame - each so dramatic to the other. My thigh heats up his leg as I push him into the ramparts. I’ve already cut loose in front of him - what the hell is the point of holding it back now?
I’m surprised to see just how much Serge was holding back, too, now that I’ve incinerated the wall between us. His hand slides carefully up my shirt. His fingers dance up the ridge of my loosely defined abs, slow, to read me for signs of hesitation. When I give him none, they round the side of my chest and cup my breast. He massages me in a semicircle while I pull my lips away to kiss his neck, just below the ear. Our bodies answer the call of each other’s tease. My nipple hardens right through my bra, into Serge’s cold hand. It raises the hairs on my neck as his penis throbs to life against my thigh. I slide between his legs, rocking like a wave to lead us both into a rise of passion.
At every turn, I feel my temperature climb. Yet Serge presses hard into me, unfearing of the burns. I flit between worrying about charring him and wanting to tear my own clothes off. Just when I’m leaning towards the latter:
“Cece? Are you alright?” a voice calls out to me. I pull away from Serge to look left and right. It sounded so close. Almost like it was coming from… Shit.
“Lee?” I call out into the Soul of Fire, “What are you doing? I thought Thise locked our connection, so only I could open it?”
“She...did. I figured you were in trouble, since you opened the connection again. What’s going on?” Lee asks from within the depths of our very souls.
“No-no-none of your business! Get out of here, would you?” I shout without using my lips. I must be making some sort of face, though. I can tell from the way Serge raises an eyebrow at me.
“Is...everything alright?” Serge asks with those honey-colored brown eyes. I just want to crash into him again. I want him to throw me over his shoulder and carry me back to his room, before I do it to him.
“Is that…Serge? What are you doing with your Wing Supervisor so late…” Lee stops himself here, I imagine because he’s just stumbled into my internal wellspring of lust. “Oh… With him? Really? That’s your type?”
“Lee! Get out!” I scream into the black ember-field inside.
“Believe me, I’d love to! I don’t want to see…this! You’re…kinda keeping me here, though,” Lee admits. The embarrassment in his voice just makes it worse. I wasn’t thinking of anyone but Serge - was I? I mean, I was a little worried about hurting him, but…
“Cece. If I did something you didn’t like…” Serge starts. He slides back maybe an inch, and already I feel the weight of the void where he just was like a fifty-pound weight on my chest.
“No, no, you didn’t… I…” I try, but how do you tell a guy he’s not the only one involved in this experience? How do I tell him I accidentally invited another man to feel our sex? Well, for starters, I don’t. I try one last time to hurl Lee out, back to the shadows from whence his troublesome ember came.
“You’re…worried you’ll hurt him, aren’t you?” Lee asks.
“Don’t start with your sage wisdom again,” I warn him from within, “I don’t want to hear shit about how you were so afraid to pop your flaming cherry and bake your partner! If you’re going to be here, you be silent. Until I can figure out how to get rid of you, you just shut up!” Lee’s answer surprises me with its immediate compliance. I can feel that he’s still there, though I don’t hear so much as a breath from him.
“Serge…I don’t know how to explain this, but I just - I need to figure some stuff out, before we do this,” I sigh.
“I understand,” Serge nods once. His daring little smirk makes one last appearance, before retreating behind the dry mask of Wing Supervisor again. It’s like a punch straight to my gut. “Will you let me walk you back to your room?”
“No,” I tell him immediately. I can’t stand to look at the mask I forced him to put back on the whole way back. “I- I mean, you’ve still got rounds to do, right? Take care of that. I can walk myself back.” I tell him. I turn to go for the stairs before Serge can try to stop me. I do give him one last, honest gaze of desire, before I close the door behind me. “Thank you, Serge,” I tell him, just before I vanish.
The Basics
Cece The Broken Academy, Room C2F
I try to stay awake as long as I can, the night after my date with Serge. I can’t risk slipping into the Soul of Fire. I can’t risk connecting with Lee again. The last thing I need is his input on my romantic choices. What’s wrong with Serge, anyway? What’s wrong with a skinny-but-powerful, stone-faced, fragrant, older guy? Maybe there’s even a soft spot somewhere in there, after everything I saw on the Academy wall. Besides, he did help me unleash a piece of the beast inside. That’s part of the reason I can’t bat the sleep away forever. I’m exhausted, in a way I’m not quite familiar with. Holding back the fire always left me mentally worn, but tended to wind up my body. This is different. The same night I almost had sex with Serge, that I unintentionally reconnected with Lee, I’m entirely spent.
When I finally succumb to the sheets and mattress beneath me, I’m too tired even to visit the Soul of Fire. Radio silence from Lee, which is just what I need. I need to be alone in my own head for a while, to sort out what in the hell I’m really feeling.
I wanted Serge, up on the wall. I believed, with the way he plucked me so easily from certain death, that he could handle me, too. Once I lay down alone, I’m more sure than ever that I wish someone was here next to me. It’s not that I doubt Serge’s feelings - he’s shown me trust and concern more than once, before he ever showed the same desire I’d grown for him. It’s more his capability to withstand me I worry for. How would he deal with a room literally in flames from desire? Would he still play it so cool? Could he really fix it with another simple trick?
When I’m finally honest with myself, when I lay down to sleep, I know that’s where Lee comes in. It’s not that I want him more than Serge, or even particularly more than a stranger. It’s just that I know Lee could handle it. He’d know exactly what to do. It seems like such a clear choice, which might just be why I tried to avoid thinking of him.
When I wake up, I realize I’m sitting upright. I’m at a desk, not in my bed. Somehow, in my endless morning cycle of sleep and waking, I must have dressed myself and actually come to class. The more I blink and look around the room, the more it comes back to me. I left my room to get here early. I wanted a good seat for the first class of the term I’m actually excited for. The content looks promising, and the instructor might just be the only one I’ve ever had who I actually respect.
“Welcome to Basic Transformation,” announces Dragonlord Thise as she crosses the threshold of the room. My tired eyes gravitate, along with the other thirty young Dragons in the class, automatically to her. Her presence changes the very atmosphere of the room to something more regal. It’s almost like her wings are unfolded around her, even in her fully human form, with how big she suddenly seems to us all. “Anyone want to take a crack at what you’ll be learning?”
A few renegade chuckles dare to pop up here and there. Most of Thise’s new students, however, like myself, are silent in wait. The Dragonlord herself teaching a class… If ever there was a time my pencil needed to fly. It poises ready now, for the first thing she’ll write on the parchment board. I’m left waiting for seconds, then minutes, as the lesson begins without a single written word.
“The things you’ll learn here are not really teachable. But they are learnable. I can only give you examples, explain why things are how they are. It is up to each and every one of you, however, to form your own understanding of what it means to transform. This is why I won’t be writing anything down. Feel free t
o write it yourself, if you feel the urge. I guarantee you that, once you truly learn them, these aren’t things you’ll soon be forgetting.” My pencil taps absently against my notebook until there’s a little graphite dimple where I’d expected to jot down every ounce of the Dragonlord’s wisdom. Now I fight with myself to let the pencil down. To truly listen, and take in what she has to say.
“The first thing I’ll tell you is that we don’t really transform at all,” Thise says, and sends the novice heads turning around the room. I keep mine straight ahead, locked onto her, not so easily duped by her ruses. There has to be more to it. I’m more sure than ever, after the scales I saw poke through my skin yesterday. “What we do is shed our human disguise. We show our true nature. That’s what others call a transformation.”
I lean back in my seat and let Thise’s explanation wash over me and sink into my pulsing brain tissue. According to her, my body, like all Dragons’, emits a constant cloud of hallucinogens. It’s invisible, odorless. It’s a sort of natural camouflage that evolved within us as we came down from high peaks to integrate with men and beasts. This gas causes humans to see us like them. It’s powerful enough even to fool other, untrained Dragons. In truth, we wear our scales at all times. Our wings rest behind our shoulders, whether we will them to or not. Those of us in the class - I can almost feel her thinking directly of me - who have been raised without training, will find it incredibly difficult to control these appendages because our brains do not register them.
“How can you believe there is something on your body you have never seen? Imagine telling someone that they have a third arm under their ribs, they just can’t see it. How would they know how to use it?” Thise poses. That much I can agree with. I’m still not sure, however, which is less crazy: that a constant cloud of hallucinogens follows me around, or that my scaly self is compacted inside my human self. I guess either could be true, and Thise does have a little more experience than I do.