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Everything in the castle felt like déjà vu, and Thisbe was beginning to get sick and tired of it.
Everywhere she turned, it seemed, conjured up another memory. It didn't matter if it was hers or not, didn't even matter if it actually existed or not; a memory would surface all the same, sometimes multiple, tickling at the back of her mind and begging to be acknowledged, then slipping away before she could properly grab hold.
She was glad that the ancestor bone broth had saved her life, of course; she owed a debt in that regard to people who were long-dead. She just wished that the payment wasn't constant acknowledgement flooding her senses and causing the scales on her arms and legs to stand at attention. Then again, what could a ghost do except haunt?
The walk down to the castle's entryway carried quite the heavy amount of nostalgia, and turning down the hallway that formerly led to the dragon stables resulted in something closer to Thisbe's own trauma surfacing in her mind, though she tried her best to ignore the feeling. At the end of this hallway, she knew, there were no longer any stables, nor a prison.
Instead, there was a huge, gaping ravine, the mountains rising on either side like teeth. The moat around the castle had been partially rerouted to trickle down here in a sparkling waterfall, creating a deep pool at the bottom of the cavern.
(She wanted to joke that they'd probably put more effort into making this than the previous king had done, building the stables for the young dragons and the prison for those who spoke out against him, but it had been rather easy, actually. A few well-placed dragon flames and "Boom!"s and it'd all come crashing down, and Drock and Thisbe had gotten to watch as their former jail collapsed into the mountainside for good.)
In the end, it was a lovely place for both her claustrophobia and her fear of heights. Oh, and her fear of drowning, too; she couldn't forget about that one no matter how much she wanted to. At least there was a railing, she supposed. Thisbe tried her best not to look down and was reminded of the fact that she was still, technically, in something of a cave. The opening leading outside rose up high above the ravine, large enough for a dragon to come and go, of course, but entirely useless to a human without wings.
There was one dragon in particular who came and went, though, and she wanted to speak with him, so she swallowed her discomfort and nausea for the time being.
"Drock?" she called, voice echoing through the cavern. "Are you down there?"
She got a few splashes in response, before a large gust of wind, and then the dragon's head appeared, large golden eyes staring at her. He looked something like a shark pup, with that wide nose and his big eyes on the sides of his head and a mouthful of rows upon rows of sharp teeth, but he would've hated being called adorable, so she kept that thought to herself.
"Hello, Thisbe," he said, settling himself more properly on the wall of the cliff she stood on. "Did you need something?"
"Just wanted to hang out, if that's okay with you."
He sniffed, perhaps able to smell that she was leaving something out of that. Dragons were fond of secrets, after all, and she wouldn't have been surprised if Pan had raised him to be able to track one down like some sort of hunting dog. Something, perhaps, like how Alex had raised her to see the good in others, even when it was the worst option possible. Those memories, too, she was trying desperately to avoid walking back into. At least Maiven had taken back that dressing room and balcony, but the rest…
"Is it alright if I lift you?" Drock asked, and Thisbe nodded, getting closer to the railing so he could grab her with his long, ropelike tail. In one swoop, he wrapped his tail around her and dropped himself lower into the ravine, bringing her along with him. She took a deep breath, just in case, her heart leaping into her throat—and then he slowed her fall and softly settled her down in the small nest he'd built, hidden away beneath the cliff.
She gathered herself, gulping down air like she'd never breathed it in before. "Oh, that will never get easier," she muttered as she panted. The experience was far too similar to Hux carrying the three of them up the side of the mountain, even though the worst case scenario, here, was that Drock would drop her into a pool of water that wasn't even very deep. The water, as it was, lapped at the edge of this small platform, and she could see rocks sticking up out of it.
"I've been trying to work on it," the dragon said softly, circling around her like a cat and curling up. "My apologies for the rather rough grab."
Thisbe shook her head. "It's alright. Good to get used to it, anyway, in the event of an emergency." She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it off her face, and sat down so her legs wouldn't be shaking quite so much. "Thanks for letting me come sit with you."
"How goes things for the human side of the kingdom?" They both knew that Drock already knew how things were going with the humans—he was the dragon ruler, it'd be quite silly if he didn't, and he lived in the same castle as them, so it wasn't like he missed out on much—but he asked as a formality. He was…quite awkward, when it came to starting conversations, which she understood well. Responding was the least Thisbe could do.
"Eh, so-so. Rohan and Prindi are working on something or other with the castle guards and reorganizing the army with Maiven, Ashguard's working on rebuilding his palace with his daughter and grandchildren and some of the other black-eyed kids, and they're looking for family trees to see if they can track down their parents… But it's good otherwise, I think. Nobody's tried to overthrow Maiven again, so that's good."
Drock nodded along, but she could tell he wasn't really listening to what she was saying. Out of the blue, he asked, “Something in you aches. Why?”
“Hm? Oh, I mean, yeah, but I’m always in pain these days. It’s nothing that can be fixed. I’m fine, Drock, don’t worry.”
He peered down his snout at her, bright eyes narrowed and fiery nostrils glowing in the shadows of his new cave.
“Deeper than that.” The dragon put his head down, resting it by Thisbe’s side. He still wasn’t very big, his head just about the size of her and his body gangly and thin. He’d been growing, though; all the young dragons had, and they promised to return regularly to have their wings added onto, a task they assured her would take up the next hundred years of her, Alex, and Aaron’s lives.
Thisbe abandoned the former conversation, considering the topic had been there to fill time and nothing more. Absentmindedly she reached out and ran her hand along his horn, feeling the slight ridges all along it. Were those new, as his horns grew in? Something like the new scars on her hips and chest, where she grew into her skin too quickly, maybe? He wasn’t much older than she was. Despite being a different species, they were both new to this whole living thing.
Once upon a time, he would've flinched from her touch, threw his head away from her hand, run away if he could've. Seth had told her the story of attaching the extensions to his wings, the way Drock had fought him and how they almost hadn't escaped. He was the most wayward of Pan's children, the most errant, the most aggressive. Now, though, he almost seemed calmed by her petting his horns, or running her fingers along his grooved scales. They were different than hers, more sandpaper-y, and toothed at the edges, like a shark's, only much bigger. Her own scales were smaller and smoother in comparison. There were so many types of dragons in this world; she wondered which ones they looked like.
She wondered if it had to do with the dragon bone broth she'd ingested, which dragon's skeleton it had come from, and that got her mind thinking about things she didn't really want to think. But Drock was here, so she asked, “Do you remember, with the Revinir—”
Drock snorted, his head shooting back up, far out of her reach. He ruffled his wings.
“Sorry,” Thisbe said, leaning away from him a bit, looking up at him just in case he decided to spit fire down at her and she needed to move. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”
The dragon’s face was entirely in shadow for a moment as he looked around, before he tipped his head back down to her, his eyes meeting hers once again. “No, it is alright. I don’t like thinking about it, but I know it’s good to discuss it.” He settled himself back into his nest, but he did not relax the way he had been.
Thisbe swallowed the fear in her throat and charged on. “You fought off her mind control, but acted like you were under her spell.”
The dragon nodded. “It was not easy. I’m still not sure how I managed to do it, if that is what you are asking."
“Not really.” Her heart squirmed in her chest. Gods, she really needed to stop starting conversations and then wanting to get out of them. Best to just rip the bandage off, she supposed. “You never talk about how difficult it was. Did you ever think of giving up?”
His response was quick and sharp. “Why would I? I did what I had to do to survive. It was not easy, but it was necessary. Without my rebellion, Dev would be dead, you would have not been taken on your own terms, and defeating her would have been much more difficult. We all had our parts to play, and that was my contribution. Besides the fact that giving in would have meant working for that monster.”
When Thisbe didn’t respond, he lowered his head and asked, in a softer voice, “Is this about your own pretending to work with her?”
Thisbe nodded silently, repositioning herself to pull her knees up to her chest. Drock placed his head down next to her again. Despite how young he was—how young they both were, really—he always seemed so much wiser than she was. His lifespan was longer, and yet he matured faster. As the days went on, Thisbe understood more and more why Maiven had chosen him to rule at her side—though she also wondered more and more why she herself had been chosen as Maiven’s heir.
“Sometimes I just feel like I’m nothing more than bad decisions and overreactions,” Thisbe said, “all wrapped up in the shell of a person.”
Drock was quiet for a long time, and Thisbe resumed petting him, running her hands over the slight mane of scales he'd started growing behind the frills of his jaw. Arabis didn't have it, and it wasn't quite as obvious as Hux or Pan's, but there was a ring of slightly larger scales around his neck.
With their newfound freedom, his siblings had been eager to scatter to the winds, exploring the world for themselves after being robbed of it for over a decade. Pan still worried, and Thisbe knew that Drock worried, too, even if he tried not to show it. Arabis had already come to visit, but Thisbe hadn't seen Hux, Yarbeck, or Ivis since they decided to leave. But it had only been a few weeks, she reminded herself. They would come back, in time, she hoped.
Maybe she should have been more grateful that her siblings were only a few button clicks away, most of the time. Drock didn't have that luxury.
"I got into a fight with my brother recently," Thisbe whispered as softly as she could, so it didn't echo so badly. The sound of the waterfall seemed to drown it out, but she couldn't be too certain. "Brought up some bad memories. I don't really know what to do about it."
Drock's eyes closed as she kept petting him, and a deep hum in his throat told her that he was listening, now.
"Because when I was young it was…different. Like we'd yell at each other and say things we didn't mean and then we'd both cry and…I don't know, then it always got better after. This was the first time he tried to physically restrain me and all I could think about was being in the stables, here, and being dragged away to the prison, and being in the Revinir's claws, and running through the catacombs, and…and I panicked. And then I thought maybe he was right and maybe it would be better if I couldn't hurt anybody and it was awful, Drock, it was so bad."
Her voice broke, but Thisbe fought to not cry. "But he just wanted to help, I guess, and I…I know it's on him to apologize. I know that. And he will, I'm sure he will, I just don't know what to do after that. Because I'm still scared that maybe he won't make it better and I'll get scared and jumpy again."
Drock opened his eyes and lifted his head the slightest bit to bump her leg with his nose. "Someone wise once told me that it's okay to be scared, and to take deep breaths when I got panicked," Drock mumbled, "and he told me all the good things that were happening and that he was there with me, and that helped. The reminder that it wasn't all bad."
Thisbe smiled. "He sounds familiar. I wonder who that was."
"Well, it was more like two someones. Three, really, if you count Arabis. We used to fight, too, claws and teeth and everything, like dragons do. Not as bad as with my other siblings, but they…steered clear, after a while. I don't think they like me very much."
"Oh, Drock, that's not true! Of course they love you."
"But that's not the same as like. I put them in danger, when I got scared, and I could've killed all of us because of it."
Thisbe didn't really know what to say to that, because she felt the same way. It'd been her choice to sneak off with Hux, and thinking about the consequences of that action still made her want to curl up and vomit and do a hundred other horrible things that wouldn't leave her mind. The best she could manage was, "But you didn't. You're all alive, and now you can do better, right?"
"If they'll let me. Only if they'll let me."
She patted him between the horns, then returned to petting his little mane of scales, one falling loose under her fingers. "They'll come back, Drock, I promise, and you're all growing up and you'll be friends again in no time."
The young dragon closed his eyes again, letting out a deep sigh, a wisp of smoke floating out of his nostrils. The smell didn't bother Thisbe so much, anymore. It sparked memories, good and bad, and then she took a deep breath and they faded, and it was just her and Drock curled up around her and his scales under her hand.