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The old mirror had a long, thin crack in it, right down the middle. Light bounced off its surface, scattering sunshine into Charlie’s eyes. It made him blink like an owl confronted with bright daylight.
He set it up at one end of the paddock and knelt down in the long grass nearby, only vaguely conscious of how strange the tableau would look to any observers. It soon got even stranger. The only other occupant of the field, a small female dragonlet with neat green and brown mottled scales, came scampering up and skidded to a halt a little way off. Charlie stretched out a gloved hand, making little coaxing noises through his pursed lips. She tilted her head and regarded him thoughtfully.
They were old friends, he and Gwennie, but she was nearing six months old now and not quite as tame or biddable as she had been when she was newly-hatched.
Still, after a moment the knobbly head pressed eagerly against his palm. She gave a soft, puffing sound and licked his gloves with her forked tongue. Charlie laughed, loud and unreserved, before quickly proceeding to take advantage of the opportunity to carry out his experiment. He pulled a small roll of star-shaped stickers from his pocket and placed one gently above her right foreleg. Then, giving her a final scratch behind the ear, he withdrew.
Viktor was waiting by the gate, leaning with a brooding elegance against one of the fence posts. As he joined him Charlie found himself rubbing his chin reflectively. Serious, quiet and intense, the former Bulgarian seeker was everything that he was not. Yet somehow, despite that, they had become fast friends in record time. Things often happened that way back during the war. Danger heightened feelings and helped to cement relationships of all kinds, much faster than would have happened otherwise.
That was ten years ago now, he realised with a jolt. Ten years since his brother had died. The dull weight of the grief still threatened to shackle him to the ground at unexpected moments.
Sensing that something was amiss, Viktor gave him a questioning look. Charlie merely smiled in response and rubbed his hands together, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Right,” he announced, “a galleon says she recognises her reflection.”
Viktor arched a sceptical eyebrow. “Done. Dragons aren’t all as clever as you think they are, Charlie.”
They waited. The dragonlet ignored the mirror entirely at first but all of a sudden she seemed to become aware that there was something new in her enclosure. She approached the mirror cautiously, all four limbs close to the ground. Her yellow eyes were intent on it, as if she thought it was a kind of prey. A puff of smoke curled against the glass. Charlie held his breath. How he wished he could know what was going through her mind.
After a few moments she raised her leg, her gaze flicking swiftly between her reflection and the sticker. She gave the yellow star a sniff, then started to nibble at it.
Charlie grinned and gave a triumphant whoop. “Yes, she’s made the connection! Good girl, Gwennie!” He turned to Viktor, whose expression made him look more like a disgruntled hawk than ever. “Come on, mate, pay up.”
Grumbling, Viktor slipped a hand into his pocket.