by D. R. Perry
"So tell me then, what do you want to learn?" Yoshi's fresh bout of chest pain only made him sit up straighter, defying it.
"I'm not sure."
"Once you've figured that out, come and talk to me. I will allow you to take the rest of this semester off, but if you have not decided by the end of May, we'll have trouble planning another course of education for you."
"Okay, Daddy."
A buzzer went off, its low atonal hum stretching longer than it should have by Yoshi's estimation. The throbbing stab in his chest reached a tipping point, then ran like a stream from a mountain spring. A chill came to his bones, one he'd never quite felt before.
"That's the fish." Ren turned his head, his body following until he was halfway across the parlor to the kitchen.
The cat leapt into Yoshi's lap and from there to the arm of his chair. She clung, hissing to the velvet upholstery, raising all the hair on her back, her tail an exclamation of something gone horribly wrong. But Yoshi stood anyway.
Just one more meal, one more hour with my children. He pleaded with fate itself, wanting more than it had ever offered him before. But it wasn't meant to be.
"Daddy!" Kimi caught him, her enhanced shifter strength allowing her to sweep him up in her arms as he'd done with her as a little girl. Ren's hand flew with Extrahuman speed to the phone on the wall, pressing three numbers.
"I need the EME!" Ren raised his voice into the phone, as though the volume would bring the Emergency Medical Extrahumans faster.
"He's already here." Yoshi raised one arm, pointing at the door. It trembled more than he'd expected it to.
Ren dropped the phone and pulled open the front door to find Taki Waban there. He stepped inside, carrying his old black bag. Aside from the gray at his temples, the ancient dragon appeared almost the same as Yoshi remembered him best, from their days on the Western Frontier. Taki removed his shoes and set them aside.
"Daddy, that's a dragon, not a doctor." Kimi held him closer.
"All the same, he can help."
"No, he can't." Her voice came low and soft, a murmur even her Selkie brother and the oldest dragon in the Americas might have trouble hearing. "It's your Luck running out."
Yoshi had figured he couldn't hide that from her. As Tanuki, the two of them alone could see the running and turning of Luck energies, a type of magic even dragons couldn't properly track.
"He can." Yoshi gripped his left arm, unable to stop a grimace.
"Set me down and let him do what he can, Kimi."
She brought him down the hall and to his bedroom. Ren turned down the covers, then put them back up, covering Yoshi from the waist down. They both made way for Taki Waban, who perched on the edge of the bed. After setting his bag down, he opened it and produced a magipsychically-enhanced stethoscope from inside.
"Your father needs a Luck charm." Mr. Waban turned grave eyes on Ren instead of Kim as Yoshi expected. The old dragon was a master of deflection.
"On it." Ren rummaged through the top drawer of Yoshi’s dresser but came up empty-handed.
"Ren." Kim stared at her hands.
"Okay, maybe in the desk." Ren crossed the room in the blink of an eye, searched again without results.
"Ren."
"At the office then."
"Ren."
"Come on, Kimi." He tugged her wrist.
"No, Ren." Her shoulders shook. "They're all gone."
Yoshi let his eyes wander from his daughter's face to his son's. This would be harder on his Ren than Kimi. He'd been hiding alone so long, missing them, while she'd been shut away fuming with anger.
"Wait." He dropped her arm. "Gone? Because of your--"
"Yeah." When she turned her head up, Kimiko's eyes glowed with brash conviction and the gold light of Luck. "But don't worry. I got this."
Fury suited both his children better than solitude, something he'd never realized until the cancer took Sora. His son would go on missing him, shutting himself away with regret at missed years. Kimi would be the one to fight for him now. But he'd known that since the day she was born.
The Precognitive who'd consulted with Providence's Extrahuman elite hadn't been wrong yet. Lady Luck help them all if she proved fallible this time.
Dragon My Heart Around
The series continues with Dragon My Heart Around coming May 13, 2021.
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