Chapter Text
December, 1998
Vancouver BC
December 9th
Rayla had barely talked to him the whole way back from school, and Callum didn’t understand why.
It had to have something to do with gifts, because he had asked what she wanted for Christmas and she had made a joke instead of answering and then clammed up like she did sometimes.
Was there some code or something he had missed? Was it too soon? They had been ‘together’ for 93 days, and that was a really long time, the longest of anyone in their grade. The first 17 of those days might be debatable, but he chose to count it from the day he had taken her hand at Melanie’s party. And it was dumb anyway, because she was his best friend, and he had given her Christmas gifts for years, it would make no sense that they should stop just because they were a thing now.
Runaan had said they were too young to be boyfriend and girlfriend, so ‘thing’ it was. It was okay. They both agreed on what ‘thing’ meant, because they had talked about it.
They just had to talk about this, too.
Callum looked at Rayla, snowflakes settling in her hair, almost as bright.
There was embarrassed pink in her cheeks and she was looking down at her knitted hat twisting between her fingers, and it wasn’t right at all, that she should feel this way.
He had sometimes been confronted with the fact that… well… Rayla’s family was not poor, exactly, but-
Yeah. She had 2 dollars and 15 cents to use for a gift and he had 56. And 18 cents. He even had more cents.
And Rayla cared about things being fair and she would never accept that they share his gift budget, even though it wasn’t really fair either, that he had gotten way-too-fancy-for-his-skill-level watercolors from some rich relative he barely knew and had exchanged them for something more sensible and got 41 dollars back too and she didn’t have rich relatives and also not as high of an allowance as him even though she had more chores.
“What if neither of us spent any money. And we just make gifts for each other?” he suggested.
“Yeah, that’ll make it more uneven,” Rayla sighed. “You’ve seen my drawings.”
“I won’t draw, then. I’ll do something I’ve never done before. And you do that too?”
“That’s very daring, Callum.” She was smiling now, though.
It was daring. It was their first Christmas as a thing, and he wanted to get her something good, and not his first attempt at wood carving or bone carving or… stone carving. Really, he had tried his hand at a lot of stuff, it was mostly just the stuff involving knives he had steered clear off, so those would be things he hadn’t done before.
And Rayla wouldn’t be happy if he cut himself, and he might, he tended to get distracted. His dad wouldn’t even let him use the really sharp knives in the kitchen until he managed a three-month streak without cutting himself with the peeler or the little peeling knife for babies that even Ez was allowed to use.
But you did a lot of things for the people you cared about, and Rayla looked much less upset and he supposed… he would be daring. Gifts should be good things that made people feel good, not bad.
“Okay,” Rayla agreed, reaching out to take his hand, twining a few of her fingers between his. “But nothing with knives. I like you with five fingers.”
“But we would fit, if I only had four!” he laughed, intertwining their fingers fully and wiggling his leftover pinky to demonstrate, when he ran out of spaces between her fingers to put his.
She smiled, and it was like warmth inside him. Gentle heat, like ginger and cinnamon. Like Christmas.
Yeah, they fit, regardless of amount of fingers.
December 10th
Rayla never believed she was as amazing as she was. He should make her a gift that would remind her, maybe?
Like a big, framed sign she could hang on the wall, saying ‘you’re amazing and brave and funny and have the softest hair and the most-‘
Yeah, he didn’t think Rayla would want that on her wall, she got really embarrassed about feelings. And it was just for her, anyway, not anyone else.
He should put those word somewhere she could carry with her, and hide if she didn’t want others to see them, and take them out to look at when she wanted to, like she did with his not-very-good crayon drawing of Sailor Moonshadow.
Callum… he really liked dreaming, thinking up things that weren’t real, like adventures and wizards and dragons. He had been a bit upset that she hadn’t liked his dragon riding books.
They were so cheesy though. No sense of humor about themselves.
He had read the Diskworld books she had lent him, hoping they would be a compromise they could both like because they had magic and self-awareness, but she could tell he deep down still preferred the cheesy ones with the knights unironically riding dragons into battle and wizards with lightning powers.
And she wanted him to have his fantasies. He was worried sometimes, because people made fun of him for reading those books and she had too a few times, but she wouldn’t ever again. He liked that stuff, and she didn’t really, but she wasn’t at all bored when he talked about it because he got the cutest face when he was excited about something.
She wanted him to know… he was okay the way he was and she was okay with the way he was. Cheese included.
She should make him a dragon, maybe? Dragons were cool, they definitely agreed on that.
December 12th
Callum had picked up his nice paper all… automatically. And he wasn’t supposed to be drawing anything for her.
He had drawn a card, but that didn’t count, the card wasn’t part of the gift. It turned out really well too, because there were no rules for the card, so he could use his colored pencils that he was actually good at using.
The wood anemones stood out in highlighted white against the grey cardstock, like the image he had had in his head. They were Rayla’s favorites, and only grew in Europe he thought, and she missed them. She had shown him pictures, whole forest floors covered in lush green and dotted with little white stars.
He had drawn them for her once before, in black sharpie and green whiteboard marker that had smeared, on her cast when she had broken her arm two years ago. It hadn’t been very good, but Rayla had liked them and been sad when the plaster saw cut right through the anemones.
She had kept that crayon-drawing of Sailor Moonshadow, since 2nd grade. She would remember, he thought.
He emptied his pencil case onto the desk. Everything was used, except… the chisel tipped calligraphy pen? He had bought it because he had studied the drawings in Ethari’s Asterix comics and thought they must have been drawn with a chisel tipped pen and he had wanted to try that. It had been a bit of a fail to draw with it, but surely writing with it would be easier, because that was what it was meant for?
Pencil first though, because who was so burdened with confidence they went straight for the pen?
It was supposed to be a dragon, but it looked more like a tiger, which wouldn’t be so bad, because who wouldn’t like a giant, awesome cat? But it looked like a lumpy tiger. Not an awesome one.
A tiger that spent too much time near Chernobyl. A sad, mutated, lumpy tiger with radiation tumors that was supposed to be wings.
Not even close to good enough for Callum, who thought really hard about things and always made her nice things.
Rayla glared at the ugly excuse for a dragon, willing it to be less horrible. It wasn’t even cute-ugly, just ugly.
She smushed the whole thing into a ball. Clearly, she had been too ambitious. At least now it looked like a ball, the thing she had been aiming to make.
But Callum really didn’t like ball games of any kind, he was not very good at catching or throwing things.
He had liked bowling, that one time? The railings had been up because Ezran was there, and it had just been the three of them and Ethari, so no one was making fun of anyone’s throwing technique.
She supposed she could poke holes in the clay surface and make a tiny bowling ball?
…that was seriously her best idea?
Callum liked dragons and wizards and magic and stuff, not stupid balls.
She cocked her head at the ball, then rolled it tentatively to make it more oblong.
A dragon egg was just a dragon before it was a dragon, right? A pre-dragon? Better than a bowling ball, that was for sure.
It wouldn’t work this size though, she thought, looking critically at the vaguely egg-shaped ball, only about twice the size of a chicken egg. It needed to be bigger. Weird how a dragon could be really tiny and still a dragon but a dragon egg needed to be big to be a dragon egg?
It was fun to cut off more slices of clay, anyway. Like garroting someone, if that someone had a really soft neck that you could cut through with a piece of wire.
December 25th
It was somewhat wonky calligraphy.
Callum had only kinda figured out the chisel tip, and the letters got a bit off base because it had been dangerously daring to think he could write straight on unlined paper, but really, it wasn’t too bad, style-wise.
The content…
Yeah.
It was what it was. At least no one would doubt that it really was his first attempt at poetry.
He just hoped Rayla got the meaning.
It had been a slightly lumpy egg. Miss Driver had insisted she hollow it out or it wouldn’t dry and it would crack in the kiln, and the hollowing process had definitely made it lumpier.
It was okay though, who knew what dragons’ eggs really looked like? Maybe they were lumpy?
But the glaze had been nice, shimmery blue with lighter patches that made it look like it was glowing.
Had been nice.
Had been lumpy.
Now it was broken, because stupid Runaan had chosen today to not scold her for running in the house.
“I dropped the egg!” she wailed.
“Rayla, I have told you about running in the house-” So now Runaan could remind her? After it was too late and she had already messed things up?
He had told her she was too emotional too, and what was she even supposed to do with that? And that she didn’t dry the dishes properly and they would get mildew, which was clearly just some fairytale to make children waste inordinate amounts of time drying the dishes. That she should tuck in the sheets so her bed wasn’t lumpy to sleep in, even though she was the one sleeping in it and should get to decide if she liked it lumpy. That the swearing and the sass had to stop, that she was clearly just ‘acting out’, whatever that meant. And… so many more things she didn’t do right.
How was she supposed to know the not-running-in-the-house thing was important?
“You told me too late!” she accused angrily, wiping her stupid leaky face so Runaan wouldn’t see.
“Do not project blame onto me for your inability to listen the first fifteen times you are told a reasonable rule,” Runaan said calmly.
She sobbed, her words lost in the misery, and then just… ran away, leaving the broken egg, the living room with her not-dad and the smell of Ethari’s cookies and the little feathery fake birds with little Christmas hats just staring at her with their beady little eyes all judgy.
The door to her room slammed behind her, another thing she had been told at least fifteen times to not do, and failed to listen to.
The room was dark, the window over her bed seeming to glow with the fairy lights in the tree outside and the snowflakes falling slowly down.
She climbed into her bed, leaning her forehead against the cold windowpane, looking out into the glowy whiteness, mocking the vibe with how calm and pretty it was.
Callum would be by in two hours and the shops were closed even if she had had more than two dollars and fifteen cents. And she didn’t have a room full of art supplies, like Callum, or the ability to make something magical and amazing in two hours.
“Rayla?” Runaan’s voice on the other side of the door. Not angry anymore because… she had cried in front of him, and Runaan folded like a wet rag when she cried and that felt like a failure too, because he shouldn’t stop scolding her for something she had done wrong just because she had done another thing wrong too- “Can I come in?”
“Yeah,” she muttered, very quietly. But he heard.
There was the squeak of the door. Clink of broken ceramics. He must have brought the shards of broken dragon egg. Squeak of bed springs beside her. Then a warm hand on her back.
She shifted to sit next to Runaan on the edge of the bed, because she… had to fix things. It was Christmas, and you were supposed to be happy and with family and… Runaan was hers, whatever else he also was and wasn’t.
“Rayla, surely this is not just about your craft project?” Runaan asked. “You can make another one? Or Ethari can help you fix this one, you know he has at least six types of glue we do not know the purpose of, certainly one of them will work for ceramics? Or-” He didn’t get it!
“I messed up! I know I did! Now and- Well, always!” She sank forward. Runaan probably didn’t understand feeling like you messed up, he had probably never messed up his whole life. “That’s pretty much the point.”
“Rayla. I know you like this boy, but if he is worth your time and affections he will not be upset when you tried your hardest.”
“I fail all the time. At all the things you want be to do… to be. I didn’t want to fail him-“
“If you really think you have failed because of something that was an accident, I think I might have failed, with you. Ethari and I have talked about that. That I may be… a bit hard on you.”
Her lips quirked. “A bit?” she snickered, wiping her eyes when stupid tears that was failure too, came out with the laughter.
“A big bit,” Runaan said, and that was a big admission, from him. “Sometimes. I see what you could do, how talented you are… but you are more than that, and more to me, and I have not been so good at communicating that to you.”
“It’s okay,” she hiccupped. “I’m a bit of a handful. A big bit. Sometimes.”
She hesitated, looking up at Runaan’s face, all blurry, but then she climbed into his lap and buried her face in his neck. She used to do that all time when she was little, without distance, without hesitating like she had now.
It had changed, when she started to understand things more, like what he was really saying to her and what he never said, and that she wasn’t really their child, not… officially…
But Runaan wrapped his arms around her like he used to, and pulled her close into his chest. Maybe he hadn’t wanted the distance either?
It was a while, with no talking, because not all feelings needed words.
“I will help you fix it,” Runaan said. “Your egg.”
But… no. That wasn’t right, wasn’t… how it went.
Rayla shook her head against his neck. “No. It’s not broken. I don’t need to fix it, I just need to think about it differently.” She drew back to look at him, because he had just said he wasn’t sure either and that was a big thing for Runaan to admit and… she could say this first. “It’s like our family, you and me and Ethari. We’re not broken. I just have to think about it… differently. About what you mean… to me. I’ll practice. I do know the law can get fucked, that doesn’t get a say in what you and Ethari are to me.” Runaan was smiling widely at her so she probably wouldn’t have to put any money she didn’t have in the swear jar. “And this?” She gestured at the shards on the floor. “That’s not a broken dragons’ egg, the dragon baby just hatched and flew away. Callum will like that, he likes the idea of flying, even though he’s scared of heights-” She stopped, realizing that this was the most she had ever told Runaan about Callum.
But Runaan was smiling, his hand stroking across her messy hair, and it was not correcting the messiness it was… love. “Rayla?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m very proud of you. And even when you are a big handful, you are my handful to handle and I would have it no other way.”
They didn’t draw away, getting used to the not-distance.
“Rayla?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you tell me about your… boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
It was a concession from Runaan, her bedroom door closing behind Callum, but what else was Christmas for, really, but… gifts?
They sat opposite each other on her bed, the room dark like before, lit up by the snow outside, but different.
Rayla took the card he handed her, carefully. He had used his favorite colored pencils on the card, which was cheating a bit, maybe, but she couldn’t be the slightest bit cross, looking down at the anemones, sparkly white like snowflakes on the front.
He had never even seen a real one, because they didn’t grow here, but Callum could make a thought in his head so real on paper.
And the card wasn’t the gift, he explained, so didn’t count, the gift was folded up in an envelope inside. His gift was words.
Words for her. She stared, transfixed at her own name at the top of the page. It was a… poem? For her?
Rayla,
You’re smart and fast and beautiful
I didn’t see it for ages, but it’s true
Of course it is, because it’s you
No less because it’s no longer new
In the beginning, my feelings were like a bud
Not a ‘butt’! I know that’s where your mind went
Because I know you
And I still like you
A lot
Not a butt
Not a bud, either
Not anymore
A flower
A forest anemone, little and normal and everywhere in the forest
Because it’s not weird at all to like you, or rare
It’s normal and everywhere
Everywhere in me, filling my heart and all the rest
It’s the best
You’re the best
Because you’re you
So… real.
It felt different, looking at those words on the page, real and there to look at and touch.
She had been staring at it for a while, she realized, and looked up at Callum’s face, instead. He was nervous, the dummy. He really thought there was any chance she wouldn’t like this?
She smiled to reassure him, but took care to fold the paper back up and put it safely on her nightstand before she hugged him as tight as she could, for as long as she could get away with.
They didn’t have long though, with the door closed, because Runaan was still getting used to things, so she got the box out from under the bed to hand it to him.
“It’s a dragon egg,” Rayla explained haltingly, as he unwrapped it to look at the probably-pretty-confusing pile of shards. She was hesitating, but… it was okay. He liked her. She set her jaw, defiantly. “It’s a dragon egg after the wee dragon hatched. He’s a baby lightning-dragon, a really, really cute one.” She gestured at the snow-covered landscape outside her window, the fairy lights she had put up making the snowflakes around them shimmer in the air. “He’s somewhere around here, close.”
Callum smiled widely, running his fingers over the smooth blue glaze of the curved outer surface of the largest shard, before he turned to look at her, with such an amazing googly-eyed-wonder-face that it made her believe in lightning dragons at least a little bit because it felt like… electricity.
“Yeah!” he said, excited now. “Light blue and white, with a fuzzy mane that crackles with static. And he’s a really sweet dragon that’ll give you little zappy kisses if he likes you. And he likes you. A lot. You protected his egg until he was ready to hatch.”
She leant into his soft sweater. “You made the lightning storm that let him hatch. Mage.”
Callum took her hand and looked out into the falling snow outside her window.
There was rumbling in the distance. That whole lightning dragon story was because she had heard the lady on the weather report say there would be ‘thundersnow’ tonight, and it had sounded like something magical from a story, and lightning was Callum’s favorite kind of magic. It had all fit. Like their hands now, even with the leftover pinky.
Things didn’t need to be perfect, to fit.
A lightning strike lit up the slowly falling snowflakes and Callum’s smiling face and… inside him, too.
Maybe he was magic.
Not really a mage, of course. But like… a spark inside.
Pinging off hers.
Some bonus art! First, an edit of an edit, that I thought went with the vibe of this gooey thing:
Second, Ezran, Bait and Zym designs for this universe:
