Lost Change

Chapter 47

Okay, this is... odd...

I peered out of the box that served as my makeshift den and stared at the carrier. The Kymari had woken up, gotten completely dressed, and then put the carrier down on the floor of the living room. It was in clear view of my den, and I could smell the scent of multiple sunburst berries inside it. If it was open I would have been tempted to try and run into it to retrieve them, despite knowing it was probably a trap, but with it closed I wasn't sure what was going on.

Also, it was still the middle of the night. There were at least several hours to go before sunrise.

I had no idea why she was awake now. The only reason I was awake was because I hadn't been sleeping that well anyways, and the sound of her stomping around was impossible to sleep through.

My Kymari walked into the kitchen again while I stared out from the shade of my den... then came back with a sunburst berry in her hand. She sat down next to the carrier and held it out for me.

"Ivy, are you awake?" I sent the question to the other dragonet. I felt an odd half-echo of my own words in reply, and the other dragonet was silent.

Was that what happened when you tried talking to somebody who's asleep? I would have to ask Ivy about that at some point to be sure, though I suspected I was right. It would be interesting to know if I could wake somebody up by pestering them with mindspeech, the way noise could wake somebody up, or if they weren't even 'hearing' my 'voice' at all to be disturbed by it in the first place. Oh well - questions for later.

At the moment I had a sunburst berry to figure out how to get. Preferably without something happening to me that I'd rather avoid.

I stared at the orange berry for another moment and tried to think it through. This could be a trick - or more specifically, an attempt to teach a trick. She hadn't really done anything like that so far, but I had a feeling it was coming. I had seen Ivy react to certain phrases a few times, so it was a good bet that Trenil had passed along some notes on how to 'train' one of us.

Still, why would this happen early in the morning? I knew my Kymari hated getting up early; what would be the sense of waking us both up and trying this while we were sleep deprived and grumpy? Especially since today was a work day for her - the last thing I would want when facing several hours at work would be to miss out on several hours of sleep. Especially not for something I could do later, without missing out on sleep.

It was still much too early for her to be trying to take my cast off; by my count I still had two weeks to go. I vaguely remembered the vet saying something about one of my wings healing faster than the other, but I didn't remember hearing anything mentioned about taking the cast for it off earlier. I doubted there would be any benefit to doing that while the other one was still healing. And certainly not in taking it off in the middle of the night. Why not at least wait until after the Morning Song?

Oh. Wait - Ivy had said something about that, hadn't she? When they were sticking me in that blasted harness. About my Kymari wanting to bring me out to Susie's grave. This must be a setup for that. Get me up early, lure me into the carrier, then bring me out there to greet the sunrise. That... was actually really nice of them. Especially since it looked like it was going to mean missing a lot of sleep that, given the tired and 'out of it' expression on my Kymari's face, she clearly needed.

Well. The least I could do was to not waste too much of her time. It would be nice to sing for Susie again. It had been too long since I had last done that... and I didn't like the idea of having to wait until I was released to be able to do it again. Maybe if I made it easy for her she would go out of her way to bring me to Susie's grave a few more times, too.