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Newly promoted Ambassador Eskar made her way down the winding halls of Castle Orison, feeling content but unable to rid her body of tension. She rolled her shoulders, trying to crack some of the confoundingly human stress out of her body. She felt absurdly alien in a place she rationally was familiar with. She no longer wore a bell; none of the sarantraai did now. It was a provision of Comonot’s reforms, designed to help the wellbeing of dragonkind, but she felt the silence of every step, unused to the absence of the tinkling emanating from her cloak clasp. People no longer stared at her in the corridors for wearing trousers; they owed her a debt for protecting Goredd and they knew it. The subtle changes in the atmosphere of the castle made her feel displaced. The quiet was deafening; she felt that she was futilely trying to fill some kind of spatial void, not unlike a hatchling attempting to calculate the volume of a two dimensional shape. Realizing that she had retreated into her head while pondering the feeling, she tethered herself to reason again, shook her head, and walked on.
She had been in communication with Seraphina for the past few months, helping the girl wean Orma off of his ‘heart’ medication, which she had expertly determined that her former colleagues had prescribed exclusively for emotional suppression. She briefly marveled at the cleverness of the use of destultia, but there was a harsh undertone to her curiosity about pharmaceutical trickery that she had come to understand was called “bitterness”.
She reached Seraphina’s suite and knocked on the door, knuckles bristling at her too-harsh contact. She swore and wished for her talons. The girl opened the door at once.
“Hello, Eskar.” She said, seeming pleased to see her, motioning for her to come in. Seraphina sat down in one of the chairs by the window.
“How is he?” Eskar asked, ignoring the greeting, stepping over the threshold, not bothering with a chair.
“Himself, minus the memories of the two of us, some of Linn, and some of his father; his enthusiasm for life.” The girl said, looking at her feet. Eskar thought briefly that subtracting enthusiasm from the equation of Orma would make the algebra unrecognizable, but she swatted that thought away before she had time to examine it.
When Seraphina looked back up, Eskar jerked back out of her thoughts and noticed the wetness in the girl’s eyes. She didn’t have the experience that Orma did in understanding of the human brain, but she knew that when humans got upset, it tended to get out of control quickly. She looked on in uncertain silence as the tears spilled rebelliously out of Seraphina’s eyes. The girl was holding back for her, Eskar realized, pondering the remarkable heights of human compassion, feeling that one called “bitterness” combined with a recognition of situational irony. It made her feel dazed, like she had felt when she was forty, still learning to fly, falling on her head frequently. In part, she forced herself to admit, she was grateful for the girl’s restraint, because of her lack of experience, but she felt an inexplicable twinge in her chest when she looked at those eyes, so similar to Linn’s.
Eskar understood that it made sense for a child to look similar to its mother, but something about the reminder of her agemate sent her mind reeling for a moment. Linn was gone, but so much of her sensitive nature was preserved in this girl, leaving Eskar with an unpleasant and brief longing for the past. She blinked; remembering the situation must be handled, regardless of her introspection.
“Child, what ails you?” She hazarded.
“I miss him. He raised me when my father could not. I have tried everything— his favorite books, calculus, even our chord on the harpsichord. Nothing is working, and I don’t think I can bear it if he doesn’t remember me.”
Eskar approached, still cautioned. She felt at that moment that she was hungry, but mustered up the tact to ignore it for a few beats. Instead she sat down in one of the chairs across from Seraphina, knowing company typically helped humans. She tried to think of what Orma would have said to his niece in this situation prior to his excision.
She settled on reaching out a painfully tentative: “If I told you I knew how to make him remember, it would be a lie. I cannot lie to you. But I can tell you that I know that he has cared about you for years and that he would want to remember. I can also tell you that I will try. However, first I must eat.”
Seraphina, well-versed in her uncle’s draconian social shortcomings, understood perfectly. She asked, “The Mallet and Mullet in Quighole?”
Eskar nodded curtly, and they set off from Castle Orison. Eskar, despite knowing that the girl was old enough to keep up competently, found herself looking back to make sure her traveling companion was still there. It was still light out, ensuring they had no trouble getting through the gates in Quighole. After weaving through crowded streets and avoiding quig panhandlers for nearly a mile, Seraphina approached the door to the Mallet and Mullet and confidently swung it open. Eskar didn’t visit Quighole often, but she wasn’t uncomfortable being there; when Mitha visited Goredd they had often met there for a meal. She wondered briefly what about this neighborhood perturbed humans so much, making a mental note to ask Seraphina later.
They crossed the threshold into a raucous scene. Human and saar scholars alike sat at tables discussing math, science, and philosophy loudly over drinks. Quigs scuttled across the floor, engaging in metalworking, glassblowing or waiting tables.
Eskar and Seraphina quickly found a table. Eskar stared at a table full of rowdy scholars of all species discussing Porphyrian philosophy. A quig came to take their order almost immediately. Eskar ordered venison and two glasses of wine— one for herself, and one for Seraphina.
“Why did you do that?” Seraphina asked.
“I know wine can lift the spirits of a human quickly.”
“Thank you, Esk—“
“Aunt.”
Eskar was still staring across the room, deep in thought, her hand on her sharp chin.
“What?”
“Aunt. I told you that you may call me that when we took Lab Four. Did you not remember?”
“No, I just—“
Eskar cut her off again.
“I came to three conclusions while pondering this subject in the Tanamoot. The first, and the most obvious to me, was that Orma would want me to take up the moniker as an extension of his kindness toward you— like a diplomatic liaison. The second was that, despite my own prejudices, you are Linn’s daughter, and she would have wanted me to look after her offspring. The third was that you have personally, in a sense, earned the right to call me that. Your resource in the itysaari proved to be a useful advantage to dragonkind during the war. I underestimated you when I first met you; forgive me. If you would overlook that, call me your aunt.”
“Thank you, Aunt.” The girl obliged, smiling with that startling warmth in her eyes that Eskar had seen only once, all those years ago. Fleetingly, Eskar saw Linn in Orma’s—no, now her— niece, and was terribly sad. But then she shook her head, and she decided that she was grateful to have a reminder of Linn; there was still something left of her. There was still hope for Orma.
Gathering the frayed threads of her focus back up, Eskar remembered that she had news to bring.
Scrambling for what tact she could manage, she cautioned, “I have to tell you something.”
The girl looked at her with a general confusion; she was perceptive, but she never would have guessed Eskar’s latest information, not without help. Eskar found herself chewing her lip, then stopped herself.
“You are aware that I have an egg in the Tanamoot, correct?” Eskar began.
“Yes. What about it?” Seraphina’s words tumbled out; she was losing her patience with dragon communication.
“What did Comonot tell you?”
“He told me you’d been in the Tanamoot imparting memories to... oh! Congratulations.” Seraphina abruptly came to the conclusion Eskar had not had time to articulate yet.
“We lied to protect your uncle. I didn’t think the thnik connection was secure enough so soon after the loyalists’ victory at the Ker, and the Censors were still being disbanded. Comonot was willing to help me cover up my half-deviant hatchling because I’d helped secure the labs. Your uncle is the father, in actuality; alas, we had to keep that a secret until reforms were put into place. You should hear the truth from me before I attempt to tell him; I know humans appreciate a ‘warning.’”
“I understand why you had to lie. Thank you for telling me in private.”
“He wanted me to give you this if he was excised,” Eskar stated, ignoring the previous statement, pulling a letter from the pocket of her caftan. She handed it across the table to Seraphina, whose brow furrowed in curiosity.
The girl took the parchment and read the familiar hand that had been strewn across it, eyes frantically searching. She looked up at Eskar.
“I think I have the trigger. He told me to practice my scales. He hasn’t told me to do that since I started harpsichord; I just know to do it before I begin playing full compositions. I think he meant the scales I have on my arm, not the musical kind.”
Eskar’s lip twitched.
“Let’s try it.”
Eskar hailed the quig waiter, feeling as if her body was vibrating despite the fact that it was clearly not. She quickly paid for their meal with the coins she’d been keeping in her caftan pocket, and rose to leave. Seraphina followed suit.
They wove through crowds all the way back to Castle Orison, Eskar once again checking to make sure the girl was behind her against all her reason.
Eskar realized she had never been to Orma’s suite, bringing forward a strange variant of hate; she felt that it was similar to anger directed at another person, but rather it was directed at herself. It occurred to her that this was guilt, if in a different way than any one of her equals may have experienced it before a tribunal. Before she had time to fully delve into this concept, however, she watched Seraphina duck into a wing of the castle near the Court Composer’s suite and stop before a door.
Seraphina looked at her expectantly, gesturing for her to knock.
“Seraphina, are you sure you’re ready to try this? I know your bear him an attachment, which may make things difficult, especially if he doesn’t remember.”
“It’s sweet of you to ask, but I want to try everything I can to get him to remember.”
Eskar nodded sharply, chin jutting in the air. She knocked on the door, this time softer than she had at Seraphina’s door— her knuckles were still reeling.
The door swung open to reveal an Orma with shorter hair than she remembered. It was just a physical change, not chemical, but she had to remind herself that it was not permanent for some reason; it almost felt wrong when her eyes landed on his.
“Eskar. Seraphina. Come in.”
Eskar looked at Seraphina, who shrugged. Eskar concluded that her former colleagues must have left him some few memories of her from when they were hatchlings.
Orma, bug-eyed and softly curious as Eskar remembered, stepped aside to allow the two of them into the suite. He stared.
Seraphina was the first to break the silence that settled over the room.
“Eskar gave me a letter you wrote to me from before you were excised. I think it contained the key to your mind pearl trigger. Here.”
Eskar looked on as the girl pulled the letter from her bag and handed it to Orma, who took it with such tentative quietness that something in her chest seemed to experience pain, if from no physical cause. She watched as he begun reading; the way his brows seemed to furrow without deliberate command to do so had always intrigued her. She made a mental note to see if she could find a treatise on involuntary movements of the human facial muscles just as he looked up.
He spoke: “I don’t understand what you assumed I was telling you in this letter, but try whatever you think will trigger it.”
Eskar found herself chewing her lip, then forcing herself to stop as as she watched the girl unroll her sleeve up to the elbow, revealing her scales. Orma’s eyes danced over the glinting silver, then darkened, deep in thought.
Eskar turned to face Seraphina. She simply said, “It didn’t w—“ before she was cut off by Orma’s tall frame wrapping around her. It reminded her in many ways of all the times he’d held her like this in Porphyry, with one exception: she’d had no time to react, leaving her arms dangling uselessly at her sides. She thought she heard a laugh from the girl standing next to them, but she couldn’t see with her face directly against Orma’s shoulder. Her cheek smushed into her line of sight, but she thought she could see tears in Seraphina’s eyes. Orma, as if remembering they weren’t alone, carefully stepped back from Eskar, smiling.
Orma, sheepishly looking at her, explained: “I didn’t intend to forget you. Or my niece. I wish no trouble upon either of you.”
Eskar stared at the ground.
“Your absence has been… inconvenient… for me.” Eskar replied, sounding more tentative than she intended.
Once again, she swore she heard the girl stifling a laugh, but she didn’t look over at her. Instead, she met Orma’s eyes again, grabbing his hand and running her fingers down the palm. He returned the action, just as she decided to slide her other hand up to his neck and kiss him. It was quick and logistically impractical, she decided. But it gave her a sort of contentment not unlike the one she felt in her natural shape when she dove towards the ground and pulled up to hover into a landing at the very last second; like the ground hurtling up at her and then wind followed by release. Remembering her other responsibilities, she pulled back and said, “I do bring news…”
Orma looked at her, brows once again unconsciously furrowing in that way that made her feel like her abdominal cavity had liquified itself. He cocked his head at her, awaiting her answer.
“How much do you remember of Porphyry?”
“We were mated, as my niece tells me.”
“Yes and the consequence of that—“
“We have a child? My olfactory nerves detected that you are a mother, however, they couldn’t verify paternity with complete accuracy. It appears to be a lingering side effect of destultia.” He interrupted, with something in his voice that was curious but much more, resembling human incredulity.
She nodded, which sent him flying back to another awkward embrace. This time she was prepared enough to wind her own arms around his back. Something about it made her breathe deeper for a few seconds; she really should research human involuntary muscle movements. He backed off again, merely looking at her.
“I- I can’t seem to form words; this infernal body is seizing up again. I think it’s making my eyes water.”
This time Seraphina let out an authentic laugh. The two of them turned and stared in unison, confused.
“What?,” came Eskar’s simple question to the girl.
Seraphina planted the heels of her hands on her eyes, leaving Eskar bewildered. She looked to Orma for an explanation.
He merely came up with: “She does that when she’s taken aback, as do most humans; it must be an involuntary muscle movement.”