Kate shook her head sadly.
"Of course, I just wanted to go into advertising."
"'Go into advertising?'" Tina said, feeling wrong-footed. "But you told me the other day that you hated the way the magazines make normal people feel about their bodies."
"I do, that's the whole point!" exclaimed Kate. "I mean, that's why! I want to make a difference! Change the way things are done, stop people feeling that they have to live up to someone else's idea of what it means to be ... well, whatever it is they are ... That was why I came here, why I ended up in your cave ... "
Kate trailed off, and Tina looked at her sceptically.
"You broke into my cave because you wanted to get into advertising?" she asked.
"Yes! I mean, well, no, not exactly." Kate took a deep breath. "Look, it was difficult enough getting my parents to agree to support me to leave home and come here. I couldn't very well tell them that actually I didn't give a toss about slaying and pillaging and whatnot, that actually, what I really wanted to do was to be the first human editor of Modern Serpent, could I? No, so what I actually said was something along the lines of, 'oh, I really feel like a good bit of dragon-hunting, does anyone know about any good quests coming up?'"
Kate sighed again. "The problem was, there was never the right moment to leave. Actually, I'd already made up my mind to try and hide in your cave. I had this plan—brilliant, obviously—that while the others were busy looting through your hoard, I would hide myself somewhere, wait for them to leave, then throw myself on the mercy of the first reasonable-looking dragon to come along and find me."
She shrugged. "As it happens, things didn't work out so badly."
She smiled up at Tina, and there was such a genuine look of hope there, such trust, that she felt her heart lurch. Suddenly, Tina couldn't hold it in anymore.
"But I nearly killed you!" Tina exclaimed. "I killed your friends, and I nearly killed you! How can you say things didn't work out so badly?"
"They weren't my friends. Actually, they were sort of ... horrible. All they talked about was how they wanted to kill dragons and steal from them. The worst thing was, I had to pretend to be like them. None of them knew my real name."
Kate looked up at her, and there was that expression again. Hope, hope and trust. And ... affection?
Kate smiled.
"You know my real name," she said softly.
Then she lifted one of her tiny hands and laid it gently on Tina's flank. It felt so soft, so light. It was like being touched by a feather, by a breath of air.
Tina's was aware of her heart. It was beating fast, she could hear it pounding in her ears.
I should go home, Tina thought to herself. Something stirred in her. It felt good, it felt warm ... but it was wrong.
She didn't move. She held herself as still as stone.
Slowly, very slowly, Kate ran her hand over the thick skin of Tina's flank. She was stroking her.
Gently, imperceptibly, Tina's body relaxed.
A cloud scudded in front of the sun, shimmered, and moved on.
The meadow was warm and Kate's small body was warm and they were alone.
*~*~*
A few days later, Tina took Kate into the city.
Tina was not a city dragon herself; she found the towering caverns and wide, thronged streets oppressive at the best of times. But she felt so much more self-conscious with Kate there ...
"It's so dark!" complained Kate. "Can't you take the cover off yet?"
"No!" hissed Tina, a passerby staring curiously at her and at the small, covered cage she held in one hand. "We're nearly there, just be patient ..."
"Fine. But I'm sure you're being over-protective."
It was only for Kate's good. Who knew what a city dragon might make of a human? They might become angry, they might snatch the cage away and force it open and pull Kate out ...
And what would they think of you? A traitor part of her mind asked. Dragons who keep humans as pets are strange. Everyone knows that. They'd hate you, they'd laugh at you ... And that's if they assumed she was just a pet ...
Tina forced the thoughts down.
No, this wasn't about her. This was about keeping Kate safe. Of course it was.
The truth was that she was getting so sick of keeping things secret. She hadn't told her flatmates, of course. They would have been outraged, she was sure. And things had gone so fast over the last week, they had spent so much time together, they had ... done things.
She couldn't keep it secret anymore. She had to tell someone.
And so, she had decided, she would go to Suzie.
After all, Suzie was her best friends from her college days. Suzie had done some pretty crazy things herself back then. Suzie had been wild. Suzie would understand. Actually, it was possible Suzie would respect her more. Tina had an image of her old friend looking awestruck and impressed as she, Tina, pulled the cover off of the cage with a flourish, and revealed Kate, her ... her human ...
But Tina couldn't even complete the thought. Just imagining it made her heart beat faster, made the streets around her feel uncomfortably close.
Before long, Tina was standing outside her old friend's door. She hesitated, uncertain suddenly. Could she really go through with this?
"Are we there yet?" came Kate's voice, muffled through the cover.
"Yes," said Tina, bringing her claw forward and ringing the bell.
There. It was done now. No going back.
There was a distant clattering from within the building, then with a creak the door was being swung wide, and there she was: Suzie, Tina's oldest friend.
She hardly looks a day older than when I last saw her, Tina thought, trying not to feel jealous. But she was a very beautiful dragon. Lithe and well built, with a perfect serpentine figure, and a jaw structure to die for, she leant casually in the doorway and beamed at her.
"Tina! Darling! It's been so long! Oh, but you look lovely!"
They embraced, Tina feeling rather frumpy and unattractive, confused suddenly by the sudden show of affection.
"I love your earrings," she mumbled.
"What, these old things?" said Suzie, giving her head a little shake that set the elegant crystals chiming. "Oh, they're a silly family thing. Got them from my mother. Come in, come in!"
Tina allowed herself to be ushered inside and shown into the visitors' parlour. It was very snazzy, done up in a sort of faux-barbaric style, with tiny mounds of gold positioned at exact, arcane angles, and lit up discretely by electric bulbs suspended overhead.
"I love the room," said Tina.
"Yes, I've worked rather a lot on the feng shui," said Suzie, her voice breezy. "Taylor—he's my designer, you know—Taylor really has a good eye. But I was quite insistent that I wanted the bones. Taylor said it would cheapen things, but he was wrong, don't you think?"
Suzie was gesturing to a small mound of yellowing bones in one corner. Some of them looked quite fresh. Some of them looked ... well, human.
"Oh ... yes ... they ... they work quite well," Tina managed to get out, her voice hesitant, awkwardly aware of the covered cage in her hand.
As if following the train of her thoughts, Suzie's eyes slid along Tina's arm, and to the covered object. "What's that dear? Have you bought me a present? Oh, you shouldn't have!"
She took a half step forward, and Tina lowered the basket without thinking.
"No!" she said, a little too quickly. "No, sorry, this ... it isn't a present as such. In fact it's ... it's someone I ... I wanted you to meet."
Suzie stopped in mid-stride, a look of confusion briefly visible on her face, soon masked with an expression of polite interest.
"Oh?" she said, tilting her head to one side. "Someone, is it? How intriguing! Well, hadn't you better show me who it ... oh, my!"
This last came out as a gasp, for at this point, frustrated by having spent so long silent in the dark, Kate had managed to reach through the cage and give the cover a good tug; and off it h
ad come, with a gentle whispering sound, until it lay forgotten on the floor.
Tina licked her lips. It was done, and in a way she was grateful to Kate; she thought that when it came to it, she probably would have been no more capable of whipping the cover away with a flourish as she had been of walking down the street without it on in the first place.
Suzie stared at the little human in the cage, astonished. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse.
"You didn't tell me you were ..." She glanced around guiltily, and hurried over to a corner of the room to draw the curtains.
Well, this wasn't as bad as Tina had imagined. Instead it was much, much worse.
"Um, Suzie," she began, stumbling over her words, "I'd like you to meet Kate. Kate is my, er, well, she's my ... my friend."
"Oh!" exclaimed Suzie, her eyes darting from Tina down to the little human figure, and back to Tina again. She tried to smile, but her heart obviously wasn't in it. It looked as if the corners of her mouth had gone into spasm. "Oh, I see."
"Hello," said Kate, and Suzie looked at her as if she had sprouted wings.
"Oh my, it talks!" she exclaimed, sounding genuinely shocked. "How ... how priceless!"
Tina felt things slipping away from her.
This wasn't how it was meant to go! Suzie was my friend, is my friend! She was always the rebel, she was always the cool one! I was sure I could talk to her ...
But obviously she couldn't.
And then Suzie was looking around, uncomfortable, edgy. She glanced at the clock on the wall, and then she was saying, "Oh dear, is that the time! Well I'd love to invite you to stay, but the thing is I have a rather important appointment ..."
"But ... but we only just got here," said Tina in a small voice.
"Wish I could ask you along," Suzie went on, "but it's a local council thing, and well, they are rather conservative in their views. I mean, I don't care at all what sort of ... what sort of, of pets, of friends you have. You know me, I'm very modern, very forward-thinking. It's just ..."
But Tina found that she was getting angry. It started off as something small within her, a tiny spark that made her voice deepen, that poured strength into her limbs and kept her eyes level as she looked at her old friend. "But you had a human!"
The air was very still. Suzie was looking at her strangely.
Suddenly, the beautiful dragon was rounding on her, her tongue darting out from between rows of sharp teeth.
"Yes, but that was in college!" she hissed. "Everyone experiments in college! It doesn't mean ... That doesn't mean ... And look!" She shifted her gaze abruptly until she was staring down at the tiny figure of Kate in the cage, her long snout poking forward, each deadly, curved tooth almost as long as one of the human's arms. "Look at this poor thing! It's cruel to play with them when they're getting old! I kept mine for a day when it was young, then I let it go free!"
She eyed Kate one more time, then knelt down and in one smooth motion retrieved the cover and laid it back over the cage, making sure to tie the corners in a knot underneath.
Tina squeaked in outrage, but Suzie was already ushering her out, leading her towards the door, opening it, and almost pushing her out into the street.
"Well, it was very nice to see you again, Tina," declared Suzie in a voice that was too loud and brooked absolutely no interruption. "But like I said, I am rather busy at the moment. Do keep in touch, and ..."
She glanced quickly from side to side, making sure no one else was near, and went on in a voice that was almost a whisper. "Take my advice. Have your rebellious period now, if you never got round to having it in college. But be sensible about it. And you should know when to get rid of your little pet. Your one's about to go stale, you can see. Look at the skin, look at the hair! It's getting old!"
And with a final guilty glance around the street, Suzie was gone, and the door was closing in Tina's face.
"That seemed to go well," came a muffled voice from within the cage.
But Tina was too busy thinking about her old friend's last words to pay much attention. She started walking back the way she had come.
She was thinking about Kate's skin, and about her hair ... and she was thinking about time, and about the life spans of dragons, and about the things that she had known, but which she had refused to think about.
"Never mind," she said absently. "We'll soon be home."
But soon was a relative term, wasn't it?
*~*~*
"So, Tina, how have things been since our last session?"
The voice was low but clear, the tone pitched just one professional notch over from neutral and into more friendly territory.
Tina, who had rehearsed this conversation a hundred times over the last few days, found that she was at a loss. She had imagined holding back, evading, not mentioning the recent developments in her life; instead, elaborating on the gathering momentum of her diet, the worsening relationship with her flatmates, implying some deeper meaning into the small victories and defeats of her week. Similarly, at other moments she had thought she might spill everything in a great cathartic gush. In these fantasies, she was always rewarded with a faint rustling, a stirring in the air which meant her revelations had gotten one up on the imperturbable abstention of the therapist, that a gesture, however small, had betrayed the true force of her secrets.
And yet now, when she came to it, she felt small, and her mental rehearsals felt childlike and shameful.
"Well, it's been ..."
A face flashed in front of her eyes, dark hair and strange eyes and alien features tracing themselves vividly in her mind and instantly fading. The face was accompanied by such a rush of emotions that the tight knot inside her was broken, as if it had been torn away by a great weight of water, and she said, simply, "I'm in love."
Her therapist stayed silent, but there was a palpable lightening in the air, and Tina felt her breathing deepen, normalise.
"It's not like I expected," Tina said at length.
"In what way?"
In every way! Tina thought, then surprised herself a moment later by saying it aloud.
Tina rolled her shoulders. They felt stiff, and her wings, which she had folded politely by her side on entering the cavern, itched interminably.
"I had imagined he would be ... well, not rich, I suppose. But well off. Able to look after himself. Able to provide for the children." That there were to be children had always been one of the few definites Tina had allowed herself. She had not been sure how she would get them, but they were there, just waiting for her, as it were, behind a bend in the road, over a hill and out of sight, but inevitable, however they were destined to come into being.
Tina became silent again, as her mind flashed over this familiar terrain. Because, of course, now children were the last things on her mind ...
"I'd wondered what it would be like if he wasn't so well off," she went on. "The only thing is, I hadn't considered what it would be like if he was quite so completely poor."
She paused. Just get it out.
"Or if he was in a she."
Nearly there.
"Or if she was, in fact, not exactly a dragon."
That was it. She had spoken. It was out there. The rest was just window dressing,
Outside, the sound of the wind rustling against the doorway tickled the air.
"Not, ah, exactly a dragon?"
"I know, I mean, what's in a label, right?" replied Tina, a little too quickly, remembering a moment too late that making jokes was, according to a particular column in one of her favourite glossy magazines, psychologically a defensive move, and bound to be seen as overcompensation in this context.
"She's a human, actually," Tina said, breathing deeply, trying to regain the feeling of calm inconsequence that had flashed through her earlier with the beautiful human face. "She's called Kate. She was one of those that broke in last week, that I told you about. I killed the rest. I killed her friends." She paused then, snagged on the gap between two conflic
ting perceptions.
I killed her friends. The dark weight of it, the guilt, the truth, the little lives Kate had sketched for her, the shameful relief she had felt when she had learnt that friends was actually too warm a term, that in fact colleagues described the relationship more aptly; and then again, the lucidity in their eyes a moment before they were snuffed out. And this was balanced against, I killed her friends: the affectation of it, something an indulged child might say when talking about ants that had been killed in a tussle over picnicking rights, twee, almost; as if humans had proper emotions, personalities, perceptions, rights.
But then, if she could fall in love with one, surely the word 'kill' could be applied; yes, and its grim cousin, 'murder' ...
"And how are you feeling about all of this?" said the therapist at last, when Tina had lain silent for the best part of a minute.
Tina gave a little shrug.
"It's complicated," she said at last. "I mean, I'm happy. I'm really happy. Sometimes I catch myself smiling, for no reason. Even when I'm not thinking about her, I mean, not really. But then someone will ask me what I'm smiling about," she added, lowering her voice and studying the ceiling of the cavern intently. "I can't tell them, you see. I can't even tell them that I've met someone. If I told them that, they'd ask who it was, and then I'd have to lie, and then I'd have to make up other lies to support the first lie." She shook her head. "I'd be making up excuses to get out of pretentious couple's dinner parties before I knew what hit me. And the worst part is, I really want to be invited to pretentious couple's dinner parties!"
She paused. Here it comes. After all, there was only so long someone could pretend to be indifferent to such grotesque revelations. She was about to be judged.
"So the other thing, of course, is the guilt," she said when the therapist remained silent.
"Do you want to talk about that?" said the therapist at last, and suddenly that was the final straw.
Tina wheeled round, lifting up from the comfortable hoard of gold, scattering a trail of gemstones in her wake.
"Yes, of course I want to talk about that! Of course I'm feeling guilty! And you can pretend that you're not judging me if you want, but I know what you're thinking!"
Modern Serpents Talk Things Through Page 3