CORAM

by Bonnie Burrows

  people who felt they were dragons inside, dragons in human bodies. And when my parents found that these people weren't just dreaming, that they had a real need, a need to identify physically, not just emotionally, my parents would help them...assimilate."

  She repeated the word. “‘Assimilate’…as in, become a part of something.”

  "Yes. They'd help these people take on the Lacertan mutation, and then, they'd help them learn how to live with two bodies, two physical selves. Assimilating is a transition from one form to two forms. It's a process that the first Lacertans had to learn how to do on their own, and it was very traumatic for them, coming to this planet as just humans and then becoming dragon shifters because of the mutagenic properties of the water here. It was a physical and emotional shock. It was terrifying for them, and it led to violence and death. The colony almost didn't

  survive. My parents' work, in the most extreme cases, was about helping people learn to go from being one thing to being two things. We're born assimilated, you might say. Humans, if they make the transition, have to learn it. I know from listening to my parents what all that means."

  “And you think I’m like your parents’ clients, is that it?”

  “Honestly,” said Coram, “you remind me of some of the stories they told me.”

  Leanne leaned back in her chair and breathed out. “And you know this from just knowing me for a couple of days. We've been assigned to work together, we've been in battle together, and you think I'm like the people your parents worked with, who 'identified' with Lacertans."

  “Please don't be hurt or embarrassed,” Coram said in an appeasing tone. “There’s no

  reason to be embarrassed.”

  "'Embarrassed?' Coram, it's a pretty big judgement you're making, don't you think? You're making a lot of assumptions about me here. You're seeing people that your parents talked about in me, and you don't know..."

  "I know the signs, Leanne. The signs are never the same for two different people, but there are things we can recognize from what we've seen many times; things people who identify with us have in common. Sometimes, it's a traumatic incident that happens when a person is young that involves weredragons. It's usually something that was always there, deep inside someone, maybe so deep that the person didn't even know about it consciously.

  Sometimes, it takes a traumatic event to bring it out. Leanne, you went through one of the most traumatic things that can happen to someone, and it involved us. There could have been something deep down inside you that came to the surface when Sir Hagen saved..."

  She balked worse, throwing up her hands. "Stop it! Please just stop! You're supposed to be my duty liaison, and you're sitting there psychologizing me, analyzing me! I'm not here to be analyzed, Coram. I have a mission; that's what I came for. A mission!"

  "Yes, I know. A mission. Your latest mission that deals with us. There have been many. And I'm sure there have been not just missions but...relationships."

  "Sleeping with Lacertans doesn't mean anything either. Coram, a million other humans have been to bed with Lacertans; that proves nothing."

  “No, it doesn’t,” he conceded. “But there are patterns you learn to see.”

  “What, because I request duty assignments with Knights? Because I’ve had relationships with them?”

  "Because you've had so many assignments with us--and relationships with us--after what happened on Dorian III."

  She put her hands on the edge of the table as if she wanted to snap it off. "So what, Coram? So what? Everything else you've said is true. I've always admired your people, maybe even

  envied them a bit. Maybe even I've had a kind of hero worship for you because of Sir Hagen. But none of that has to mean what you're implying!"

  “You don’t have to be ashamed of it, Leanne.”

  “I am not ashamed!”

  “I'm sorry; perhaps, 'ashamed' isn't the right word. But answer me just this one thing. Was there ever a time when you thought that maybe, perhaps, if you and your parents had been like us, able to become dragons, able to fly away from that attack on Dorian III, that perhaps things would have been different? That perhaps you could have saved yourselves? That just maybe you would not have lost your parents that day? If you had been like us, you might still have your family right now. Didn't you ever think of that?”

  Now, she got up from the table, and as she stood, her voice began to rise with her. “That is enough, Coram! I'm not having this conversation anymore! I don't want to talk about this! You talk about me as if I'm still a sixteen-year-old girl! You talk as if I'm still confused and scared and grieving! I'm not! I've had sixteen more years to live with this since it happened. I am a grown woman. I'm an officer. I have training, I have experience. I'm not a teenage girl; I'm an adult. And I don't need you to analyze me and tell me why I do things!”

  He stood up as well, speaking more softly. “I’m sorry, Leanne. I didn’t mean to offend you. I only know what I see.”

  “Are you a Morphology counselor, then, like your parents?”

  “No,” he said. “I only know some of what they knew.”

  “Well, until you’re a counselor like them,” she said with a bitter edge, “you shouldn’t go analyzing people and reading into the things they do.”

  A moment passed in silence, with Leanne fuming and Coram still trying to be

  conciliatory. With the same soft, even tone, he said, “You never answered the question, though.”

  “What question?”

  “Did you ever think that if you and your parents had been weredragons, that day would have turned out differently?”

  She sounded more sad than angry now. “I never had to think that,” she said. “I knew it would come out differently. It would all have been different…if we could have just flown out of there. If we could have just flown…just…”

  Leanne did not finish the thought. Across the room was a tall window with a ledge large enough for sitting and a cushion for comfort. Instead of finishing her thought, she went to the window and sat there. Outside, the night was beginning to fall, along with her mood.

  Coram went to join her, sitting on the ledge beside her. He said nothing else for the

  moment. He only looked out with her at the cityscape of Silverwing, which was starting to light up with the approach of the evening. Against the purple and gold cast of the sky, Lacertans in dragon form flew over the buildings, making arcs in the light of the moons.

  At length, she spoke again, and she sounded neither angry nor sad but just a little dreamy. “I wonder where it comes from.”

  “What?”

  “This wish we have, deep down, to be…something else.”

  “I don’t know,” Coram replied. “Where do you think it comes from?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, considering. “I think maybe because we spend so much of our lives trying to get over our limitations. Did you ever notice that? So much of life seems to be about trying to overcome something, or get something we don't have, or make ourselves better, or reach for something more.

  Life is so full of limits, always limits. Always something more to have or something more to want. I think maybe being a dragon, being able to do the things a dragon does, especially fly... I think flying or wanting to fly is about not having any more limits. It's about everything being possible. Do you think that's what it is?”

  “I think that's a great part of it, yes. Perhaps, to you, it does mean something like that. But perhaps, there's something else.”

  “What?”

  “We were talking about it before, but it seemed to hurt your feelings. I don’t want to hurt your feelings again. I’d never want to do anything to hurt you.”

  And again, there was a pause, but this time, it was a pause with a look passing between them. There was a word of other meaning in Coram’s expressed desire never to hurt Leanne, and in spite of everything else that had passed between them, they both felt it.

  “My parents, you mean,” sa
id Leanne. “You think I want to be…one of you…to try to make up for what happened to my parents, for the way I lost them.”

  “Do you think there’s any truth in that?”

  She shook her head. “I don't know. I was angry at Sir Hagen at first. I was angry at

  everyone and everything at first, and I took it all out on him. And I think it's because he saved me...but he couldn't save them. Because he went for me first and got me out, and he didn't get to Mom and Dad, and none of the other Knights got to them either. Because I lived...and they

  didn't.”

  “They wouldn't have wanted you to feel guilty for living. They would have wanted you to live and go on.”

  “I know that. I do. But after I got over the anger and the grief...there was still Sir

  Hagen. Maybe he wasn't personally in my life, but he and the other Knights were still out there, serving, helping, saving. They couldn't save my parents, but they were still saving others. And...I wanted to be like them.”

  “And you did become everything you set out to be.”

  “Did I?”

  “That comes back to my original question,” Coram said. “Leanne…do you want to be a weredragon?”

  Again, she shook her head, trying to shake out the conflicting emotions. “I don’t know.”

  “How does the question really make you feel?” Coram asked. “How does that idea make you feel, the idea of becoming one of us? Does it fascinate you? Excite you?”

  She looked at him with an expression more helpless than he ever thought he would see from her. “If you really want to know…it scares me a little.”

  “Why? What about it scares you?”

  “I think maybe the idea of becoming one of you... I think it would be gaining something, gaining a power, gaining another body--gaining another life, in a way. But you know the way life is. For everything you get, you have to let something go.”

  “What do you think you’d have to let go?”

  “Them,” Leanne said flatly.

  “Who?” Coram asked. “Your parents?”

  Hesitantly, she answered, “Yes.”

  “Why would it mean letting go of your parents?”

  “Because,” she said, “when they died, it was the start of the life I have now. Because even with everything I've done with my life, I've still held on to that day, to them. Because they were human--just human. And if I became one of you, I wouldn't be just human any more. And I'd have to let go of the last piece of who I was--and let go of them, finally.”

  “They wouldn’t want you to hold on to them forever,” Coram said. “Remember them, yes, but not hold on forever. And you know, Leanne, every parent hopes their children will

  become something more than they were. Or at least, they should. Your parents, I think, would have wanted you to be everything you possibly can be.”

  Leanne slumped a bit and hugged herself, looking lost. “All these things...these are things I should have gotten over and gotten past so long ago. Why am I still a sixteen-year-old girl?”

  Coram smiled warmly at her and said, “I could ask why I’m still a dragon boy who goes flying into trees.”

  To her complete astonishment, to her utter bewilderment, Leanne broke out into

  spontaneous, sputtering laughter. The tumble of emotions that she’d had roiling inside her came suddenly spilling out in a laugh. And Coram, warmed ever more by the surprise of her laughter, laughed with her.

  And as the laughter slowly ebbed, another spontaneous thing happened. Coram leaned forward, angled his almost inhumanly handsome features over hers, and met her lips with a kiss.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As startled by Coram’s kiss as she was by her own laughter, Leanne pulled back from the moist warmth of it and stared at him, blinking, mildly stunned.

  “Why did you do that?” Leanne asked.

  “Because I wanted to,” Coram answered candidly. “I think I’ve wanted to do that all along. That, and more.”

  She shook her head at him and waved a hand between them. “You shouldn’t have done that. That’s not… You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Before Coram could say anything else, Leanne stood up and started to walk away—only to stop in mid-stride when she caught sight of the bed in the corner of her eye. At this moment, with him only a few steps in one direction and the bed a few steps in the other, Leanne did not want to look at either him or it.

  “Why shouldn’t I have done that?” Coram asked.

  Now, she did look at him, sternly. “Because of who we are, Coram!”

  “We’re two people learning to understand each other. Learning to like each other.”

  "I'm a member of the Fleet, and you're a Knight. We've been assigned to serve together. We have duty. We have a mission.”

  “We’re flesh and blood people,” he argued. “We’re not just our orders and our duty.”

  “How can you say that? You Knights—you’re all about your duty.”

  Now, Coram stood up. What he had to say now, he wanted to say standing. “You’ve known us long enough and well enough to know we don’t live only by duty. Just knowing me in the way that you have should tell you that. There's one thing--one thing--we love even better than we love being Knights. And you know very well what it is.”

  “There’s no place for that now, Coram,” she said.

  “Why not?” Coram asked, seriously. “Leanne, we have an opportunity. We have this moment, right now, when our duty together is in recess until we have more information about what we're facing. Nothing else will happen until the morning, when the data from Fleet

  Research comes in. There's something else that can happen right now. Right now, just between us. I want it, Leanne. I want to do it. And I think, judging by that kiss, you want me too.”

  “There you go again, thinking you know something about me.”

  “What I thought I knew before was true. And this is just as true. Would you actually tell me you didn't enjoy that kiss? Would you actually say you don't want more?”

  “We can’t have more, Coram. We shouldn’t have had even that.”

  “Why? And don't use duty as an excuse again. Until the morning, there is no duty. There's only you and I--and what we both want.”

  “And after? What happens after?”

  “What happens after is that everything goes on. The mission -- and us. There's no reason both things can't go on.”

  “You can really keep those two things separate? You really think one thing wouldn’t

  interfere with the other?”

  Coram walked nearer to her, put himself in her space, almost as close as they both wanted to be. “For us,” he said, “there's a place where one thing in our life leaves off and the other

  begins. I don't believe that would complicate anything at all. You only have to let it be. Just do that much--let it be.”

  “It’s not right,” she said.

  “Then why are you standing your ground? Why aren't you moving away? You'd move away if you were afraid. You're not afraid of me. And I don't believe you're really afraid of yourself. You're not sixteen, Leanne. You're strong, you're confident, you're in command. You know what you want, and you can make it what you want it to be. Don't let it pass. Let it be.”

  He had called her strong and confident, but at this of all moments, Leanne felt more

  powerless than she had ever felt in her life. She put her hands on his shoulders—his broad,

  incredibly perfect male shoulders. “This is you, isn't it? I’ve known so many of you and been with so many of you; I know this is the way you are. It's what you do.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s what we love. It’s what we do.” And he seized the moment and leaned down and into her again, and pressed his lips to hers in another kiss of rising heat and growing desire. He held their mouths together, stoking the flame, wrapping his arms around her and not letting her pull away—as if she wanted to pull away. As if she wanted to be anywhere but right there, d
oing just what they were doing at that moment. Leanne gave in and kissed him back. He kissed her harder, and she let him.

  It was a little agony to break the kiss, but it was necessary for what Coram did next. He reached to the back of his neck, then down to the small of his back, undoing the top of his armor skin, and let it fall to the floor at their feet. Again, she saw the achingly exquisite plates of flesh that were his pecs and abs fully exposed, but this time from much, much closer, and it stoked the fire for her as much as if they were still kissing.

  “I want us in that bed over there,” said Coram. “Now.”

  As much as he had said she was in command, Leanne knew that, in this moment, she was outranked by her own heart and her desire to know the body standing half naked and so close to her. He took her by the hand and led her to the bed.