Of Cinder and Bone

by Kyoko M

  She had to suppress a wistful sigh under Jack’s delicate caresses. One wouldn’t have guessed a man his size with underlying anger issues would be tender, but he’d surprised her. With all that she knew of his history, she’d expected something primal from him during their first time, and yet it had been devastatingly intimate. Her past romantic partners were overeager when they finally consummated the relationship, sometimes skipping what was honestly her favorite part of sex. Jack didn’t. She’d never experienced being the full focus before, the center of attention, the main attraction, in bed. She was definitely a fan.

  Truthfully, the only thing that had startled Kamala had been those last savory moments of lovemaking. She’d had good lovers before, though certainly not as generous. Sometimes it took more than one try, but not with Jack. They hadn’t exchanged a single word the whole time and yet he picked up on the smallest things: places she loved to be touched, spots she loved to be kissed, as if he’d known all along. She couldn’t put her finger on why it unnerved her until that shining, perfect moment when he released her and she realized how much she had held back before, how she had been hiding from the men in her life even in the most intimate setting two people could enter. It had taken him minutes to break through walls she’d been building for years. She knew, deep down, that this was the beginning of something great and terrifying.

  “How’s your arm?” she asked a while later without opening her eyes.

  “Fine.” She looked at him then. “I’m taking the painkillers, I swear. I’m a fast healer. Besides, I’m supposed to be fussing over you, not the other way around.”

  He lifted his hand to her neck, where there was a faint ring of bruises circling her throat. His brown eyes softened as they fell across the purplish patches of damaged skin. Kamala touched his hand gently. “I’m alright.”

  “I know,” he whispered. “Always said you were stronger than me. Meant it, too.”

  “That scares me.”

  “What does?”

  She bit her lower lip. “How much you believe in me. Your faith in me is so powerful, so unflinching. I’ve spent most of my life not caring what anyone thinks of me, except for perhaps my parents, and yet I think I would regret it if I didn’t live up to your expectations. That’s dangerous.”

  “That’s also normal. We never want to let the people we care about down. I don’t think I could live with myself if I disappointed you either. At least it gives us something else in common. We’re both human.”

  He paused. “Well, I am. Still convinced you’re an angel who decided to grace us puny mortals with your divine presence.”

  Kamala rolled her eyes. “You’re so corny, Jack. But I’m glad you’ve given me a pet name that I can live with.”

  “What? You weren’t digging smoochie-boochie?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I will bite your nose off if you call me that.”

  “I’ll make you a deal. Don’t call me adorable and I won’t call you smoochie-boochie.”

  Kamala scowled. “That’s just not fair.”

  He shrugged. “Them’s the breaks, angel.”

  She let out a dramatic sigh. “Well, I don’t know. Perhaps if you were to sweeten the deal…”

  “Ah,” he said, sliding his hand down over her shoulder and across her back. She suppressed a shiver as his fingers glided along the length of her spine and lower to more curvaceous territory. “Makes sense. I’ve made my opening statement. Now I have to present evidence to back up the argument.”

  “Exactly,” she mumbled, her eyes rolling back as the wandering hand found its target. “You are an intellectual, after all. Must do the research.”

  He clucked his tongue softly. “Such a tedious job.”

  She bared her teeth in an eager grin, her brown eyes glittering like jewels as she lifted the sheets. “Get to work, Dr. Jackson.”

  He winked before disappearing underneath them. “Whatever you say, Dr. Anjali.”

  She awoke the next morning to find that once more, to her surprise, she’d slept like a baby with nary a nightmare in sight. Even more surprising, Jack had curled himself around her during the night and she didn’t feel suffocated or intruded upon. Her past lovers had been more muscular, heavier, more possessive. He was solid and steadfast, yet she felt almost weightless in his arms. All at once, it came to her.

  He was her anchor.

  She smiled and drifted off for a while longer until Jack’s phone began to vibrate and chime with the piano beats of Bleacher’s “I Wanna Get Better.” He didn’t budge. She swallowed a laugh, rolled over, and picked up the phone, holding it up to his ear. He growled and shoved his head beneath the pillow to escape.

  “Good morning, my dragon,” she drawled over the music. “Time to get up.”

  “No,” he said, his tone muffled but stubborn all the same.

  Kamala turned the volume up until the grumpy scientist at her side finally snatched the phone away and turned it off with a resigned sigh.

  “Fine, fine,” he muttered. “I’m up. You’d better not be a morning person, or I’m calling this entire relationship off.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “It’s a package deal.”

  “Can I return it?”

  She swatted him with her pillow before settling down on it again. “We took yesterday off. That has consequences. We have to go back to real life today.”

  “Yippee,” he deadpanned. “I love being an adult. So worth it.”

  “Yes, it is. Now get up.”

  Jack yawned and sat up. Kamala openly admired the view of his shoulders and back muscles as he stretched his arms over his head and cracked his neck. He noticed her noticing him and something decidedly devious crept into his eyes. “Well, there’s one good thing about waking up: morning shower. Care to join me?”

  She pursed her lips. “Why do I feel like this is a trap?”

  “Why, madam, I am offended,” he said, crawling on top of her. He pressed his palms flat on either side of her and leaned down, kissing her in between every few words. “This would be a completely, utterly, one-hundred-percent platonic shower in which there is no funny business whatsoever. Would I lie to you?”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I suppose I’ll just have to trust you.”

  The warmth in his smile made her breath catch. “I suppose you will.”

  ~*~

  “Of all the things I want you to learn in the next several minutes, one thing stands above all: if I catch any of you attempting to do this for any reason at all, I will literally—and I mean it—literally strangle you with my bare hands Brock Samson-style. This is a one-time experiment for scientific purposes only. Do we understand each other?”

  The response from the small crowd gathered outside of Pete’s enclosure was slightly delayed on account of shock, but eventually they all agreed. Some were students who had been to Jack’s lectures before and knew about his off-color commentary, while others were merely the film crew sent by the Guinness Book of World Records. Jack finished glaring at everyone and then cleared his throat to continue.

  “Now then, as you can see, my partner Dr. Anjali is set up with precautionary equipment should Pete decide to fly high enough that the air would be too thin to breathe. The world record for highest flight documented by a dragon belongs to the pigmy dart dragon in 1474, when a spectator claims to have seen one fly high enough to snatch an eagle out of the air. It was estimated at 15,000 feet, and that’s being modest. That’s nearly halfway to the world record for highest bird flight, which is held by the Griffon vulture at a whopping 37,000 feet, or more commonly known as the height that freaking commercial planes fly at. Because of Pete’s immense size, we are predicting that she wouldn’t like to sustain such a height due to her metabolic processes, but better safe than sorry. After all, she flew up to a mountaintop in Japan and that’s nothing to sneeze at. We have a body cam and an altimeter hooked up to
the collar around her neck to help us clock her speed and altitude. We’ve also retro-fitted a basic saddle to help guide her instead of trying to use a tether, since Pete has shown that she can be persuaded to change direction with the proper influence. On a lighter note, it’s also a good opportunity for our girl to get some fresh air. Pun fully intended.”

  Jack turned to face Kamala, who stood next to the dragon. “Ready, Kam?”

  She flashed him a thumbs up, unhooked Pete’s tether, and climbed on the saddle. The dragon shook herself, verifying that the tether was gone, and stretched her leathery wings from end to end. She walked from beneath the large tree at the center of the pen and peered up into the blue sky, her nostrils flaring and her tongue tasting the air.

  The dragon’s powerful legs coiled and then released an enormous burst of power as she leapt into the air without further preamble. An audible gasp sprang from the spectators. Jack just smiled and switched his gaze to the iPad, which had a live feed as the dragon and his partner began climbing into the heavens.

  He watched as the forest surrounding the veterinary facility swept past beneath the dragon’s dangling clawed feet and the trees turned from dense brush into increasingly small patches, then green dots as she flew higher. He checked the altimeter readings. “Four hundred feet and counting.”

  Jack felt a tug at his lab coat and glanced down to see a familiar smiling face.

  “Jack, can I watch?”

  He glanced over Hayley’s head at her mother Barbara, who nodded and motioned that it was alright. He scooped the little girl up in his left arm. “Sure, munchkin.”

  Hayley beamed and helped him hold the tablet up, giggling in delight. “Wow! How high are they now?”

  “Fifteen hundred feet.”

  “Cool! Where are they?”

  He handed her the iPad and pointed about sixty degrees past her right shoulder. “If you squint, you can see them right around there.”

  “Can I ride her next?”

  Jack chuckled. “Maybe when you’re older, kiddo.”

  “Aww!”

  “Hey, no pouting. After all, you named a dragon. That sort of makes her your dragon, in a way. How many other little girls can say that?”

  Hayley’s face brightened immediately. “I have my own dragon?”

  “Yep.”

  “So, I really am a princess?”

  “You sure are, your majesty.”

  He held the iPad back up, this time addressing the crowd. “Thirteen hundred feet. Hanging in there, Kam?”

  “Loving every second!” she chimed in from the microphone. “This is incredible. I can barely even see the facility from here.”

  He heard her squeak in surprise as the dragon made a sharp turn and went into a spiraling dive before spreading her wings out to let the air currents carry them into the clouds. “Four thousand feet and climbing.”

  The dragon broke through the clouds and Jack could hardly breathe at the sight of the seemingly fluffy stratus clouds carpeted underneath Kamala’s hanging legs.

  “Six thousand feet.”

  Someone behind him whistled. He glanced up to see the tiniest speck in the sky and could hear movement through the ear piece, indicating that Kamala had pulled on the oxygen mask. “Eight thousand feet. Holy—”

  Jack glanced guiltily at the child in his arms. “—cow, she’s a freaking jet powered dragon. Look at her go.”

  “Look at the views go,” Matt chortled from behind him on his cell phone, watching the live feed thread. “I think we’re about to break Facebook, Jack.”

  “Pfft, it was broken long before we got there. Alright, looks like she’s leveling out now. We’ll give it a few minutes and see if this is her top altitude. Man, what a view. This is the stuff dreams are made of.”

  “So pretty,” Hayley agreed, pointing as the dragon wheeled towards the sun and filled the iPad screen with brilliant light.

  He smiled. “That it is, munchkin.”

  A little less than half an hour later, Kamala guided the dragon back towards the enclosure and landed, having topped out at 8,550 feet. While it didn’t break the all-time dragon flight record, it did qualify for the record of largest breed recorded in flight. After a brief interview, the Guinness film crew retreated, as did most of the students and staff who had been invited, leaving only two of Jack and Kamala’s guests.

  “That was so much fun!” Hayley said. “When can we do it again?”

  Kamala squatted in front of the little girl and patted her head. “Soon, don’t worry. It was nice to see you again, Hayley.”

  The child gave her a hug. “Bye, ‘Mala!”

  She hugged Jack next. “Bye, Jack!”

  Her mother took her hand and waved to both scientists before heading back down the hill. The pair faced the fence where Evelyn Stubbs stood leaning up against it, her long braid swaying gently as the wind blew.

  “What a magnificent animal,” Evelyn said once they were within earshot. “Thanks for the invitation. That was breathtaking.”

  “I’m glad you came,” Jack said, settling next to her. “Pete’s definitely one of a kind.”

  “Yes. I can see why you both protected her so fiercely. It’s one thing to read about dragons in text books or see their bones in museums. To be in front of one for the first time ever, alive and well… it’s stunning. I truly hope that eventually everyone will get to see her and those like her someday.”

  “Me too,” Kamala said. “Dragons are survivors by nature. Even when the worst in nature came into play, they remained. After the KT event, the world was full of ashes, cinder, and bones, and yet the dragons emerged through the chaos and still thrived. They have a lot to teach us.”

  “I can’t wait. It’s going to be incredible.”

  “Yeah,” Kamala said softly, smiling as she tracked her gaze from the dragon to Jack.

  “It is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SUCKER PUNCH

  One month later…

  He always greeted her the same way.

  “Doctor.”

  “Doctor.”

  The psychiatrist, Dr. Lana Lawson, smiled and shook her head, her dark hair fluttering around her face. She was pretty, tall, dark-skinned, and wore a black button up shirt, grey slacks, and pumps. He sometimes joked that half the reason they got along so well was that she reminded him of his first girlfriend before things went south.

  “Why do you get so amusement out of that?”

  “No idea, doc,” Jack said cheerfully, settling down on her surprisingly soft black leather couch after shedding his sport coat. “You tell me.”

  “I’m guessing you’re a Dan Akroyd fan.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  She folded her hands in her lap. “You’re also twenty-seven years old and somehow you know Spies Like Us enough to make that reference in 2016.”

  “What can I say? The 80’s gave us some great comedies.”

  “True. How are things going with you? I noticed you had to cancel our last appointment.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. I ran into a problem at the lab and it took the rest of my day to fix it. Couldn’t reschedule until now.”

  “Understandable. Last time we spoke, you said that the next batch of dragon eggs would be ready around this time.”

  “Yep. The screening should be in just a couple of hours, in fact. That’s where I’m heading once we’re done. As always, you’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”

  “I’d love to, but I have four more appointments today,” she sighed. “I’ll have to catch the feed when it runs tonight on the news.”

  “No rest for the weary, huh?”

  “None at all.” She lifted her pen and flipped to a new page on her notebook. “How are you sleeping these days?”

  “Better.”

  “How many hours a night?”

  “I shoot for seven,
but I usually end up getting five or six most of the time. I get antsy when I have a project due. Always have.”

  Dr. Lawson scribbled a little bit. “And your dreams? Better or worse?”