Submission (#818) Approved

“Don’t go far, stay where its safe,” said Mummy and Daddy said as they wandered off.

“Okaaaay,” “Yeeessss,” twin voices called after them loudly.

With their sides pressed together, their parents disappeared into the orange distance. Rin spent a few moments staring after them, amazed at how quickly their purple and blue bodies disappeared against a background they should have stood out against. Bellmoril wasn’t as nice as Silveil, Rin decided — and wasn’t Rize mad that she’d missed the gambling capital and only instead was brought on a family trip to the peaceful forest wilds of a studious country. The forest wasn’t dark or dangerous or even green. Not at all like the forests from fairy tales. But at least it meant they could play on their own without needing a babysitter while mummy and daddy left for some romantic time under the gently falling sunset leaves.

Alerted by a crunch and a flutter, Rin turned back to Rize in time to be showered with dead leaves. Making a face, Rin blew at leaves stuck in their hair and shook the rest off. Rize immediately affected an innocent look. Rin’s face soured further. If there’d been anyone else around, or if Rin didn’t know their sibling, Rin might have been fooled.

“You’re the only one here,” Rin pointed out.

Rize considered this before shrugging. “It’s your own fault for spacing out, then. Stop wasting time!”

“Fiiiiiine,” Rin huffed, rolling their eyes.

Visiting a region famous for studying was super boring. But! They had found out a very important piece of information from the boring city they’d been in before this.

<i>Bellmoril was where scales came from!</i>

It didn’t seem likely that dragons would be hiding in the forests. (Unless they were super small and hid under the giant piles of fallen leaves. But the twins had checked, diving into quite a few, and never managed to find any trace of dragons or scales yet.) Luckily, today they had been left on the shore of a giant lake.

“Big enough for a dragon to bathe in?” Rize had asked when they’d seen it.

Looking beyond it to the golden mountains stabbing into the sky on the other side of the water, Rin had nodded and said, “And they look big enough for a dragon to live in.”

It was an odd-looking lake. Flat like a huge mirror, it didn’t reflect much blue at all. On one side, it was coloured in reds and oranges from the forest. On the other, the gold and brown of the mountain range. Rin cupped some water on their paws and held it up, peering closely to check that the water itself wasn’t actually orange.

“Looks normal,” Rize said while peering over Rin’s shoulder. “I thought maybe it might burn or be poisonous…”

“Then why did you let me touch it—” Rin broke off. Of course that was exactly why Rize wouldn’t mention such suspicions aloud. Rin grumbled loudly. What would Rize even do if Rin had been injured, huh? Panic. Panic and then die of guilt, because Rin would absolutely never let his sibling live something like that down.

“You did not even think that,” was all Rin eventually huffed.

Rize looked pointedly away. “I could have. You don’t know.”

“Now who’s wasting time?” Rin splashed water towards Rize before stepping in. It was cooler than Rin had hoped, but not as bad as they’d feared. The morning sun shone brightly down on them, so Rin didn’t feel too cold. And there’d be plenty of time to dry off in the sun after.

A retaliatory splash came at Rin, but it was ignored as by this time Rin was already dog-paddling past where their paws could touch bottom. Taking a deep breath, Rin stuck their head under water, peering left and right as they continued paddling.

<i>Sparkle, sparkle~</i>

Light glinted off something on the lake bed. Raising their head for another deep breath, Rin dove down and came up clutching the treasure in their paws.

“I found one, I found one!”

With a shriek, Rize paddled over for a close look.

Held in Rin’s paws, slightly larger than one of their toe beans, was a thin, translucent scale. In the sun, it glimmered with the colours of the rainbow. It might have been a thin shell. It could possibly be from a large fish. But Rin and Rize were convinced it definitely had to be a dragon scale.

They studied it while treading water.

… “It must be a very small dragon,” Rize concluded eventually.

“Sure. Baby dragons probably have to shed their scales to make room for bigger ones. Like snakes,” Rin decided.

…

Made sense! Both twins agreed.

They also agreed that if they’d found one, there were surely many more. Rin paddled back to shore and placed the scale with their bags. As Rin headed back into the water, Rize was swimming back to shore, a scale poking out of her mouth.

Over the course of an hour or so, they amassed a small pile of scales. It wasn’t quite as useful as finding a dragon and asking for the secret of how to grow scales, but this could be considered to be almost as good.

“And now…!” Rin cried in a loud voice.

Rize obligingly provided a fast drumroll noise.

Reaching into their bag, Rin fished around and dug out a small tube.

“Ta da!”

Rin’s triumphant cry was nearly drowned out by Rize’s victory trumpeting.

Glue.

Rin wrestled with the cap while Rize began to divide the scales into two smaller piles. When Rin noticed the pile closer to Rize was significantly larger, they made a loud fake coughing noise. Rize paused and looked up with large, watery eyes.

“Do I look like mummy?” Rin scowled. By this point, Rin was almost certain that even their mother knew Rize was faking it half the time and only gave in because Rin got other treats (like Silveil, hahaha, Rize!).

With a pout, Rize pushed a few extra scales to Rin’s pile. Eyeing the still significant difference between the two, Rin grabbed some more from the larger and shifted to the smaller pile. Rize grumbled but didn’t fight.

It might have used up all their current level of squabbling, because the glueing process was quite harmonious (for them) after that. The tube of glue was swapped back and forth, the scales slowly forming up over their bodies. The lake wasn’t as good as a mirror, so the twins helped each other out, making sure the scales were glued in spots that accented their starlit coats and didn’t get easily hidden when they moved. (They were proud to report there was only one incident of deliberately glueing a scale to someone’s nose!)

Rize finished first — must not have been sharing the glue as equally as it had appeared, Rin thought. With the tube to themself, Rin twisted painfully around, craning their neck to try and watch as the last of their scales were attached to their haunches. Just… got to… reeeaaaach…

From the corner of Rin’s eye, they could see Rize standing around, frozen in place. “You could help…” Rin forced out, still straining to attach scales down the backs of thighs.

“Rin,” Rize whispered.

“Yes, you could help Rin!”

A paw jabbed at his shoulder.

“Rin.”

Nearly toppling over from the shove, Rin dropped the last scale and turned to glare at Rize. “WHAT.”

At the same time, Rin made sure to slide a paw over the scale on the ground, just in case Rize’s plan was to steal an extra. But when Rin looked up, Rize’s gaze was fixed in the distance.

“A dragon,” Rize breathed.

Rin’s head whipped around. Not finding a giant winged lizard, Rin’s first thought was his lying sibling was not funny. But then Rin’s gaze caught on a figure that was smaller than expected, an adult elnin. “That’s not a—”

An adult elnin whose green scales caught the light and glittered darkly. An adult elnin with leathery dragon wings.

“A dragon!” Rin shouted. “It’s a dragon!”

Bursting forward, Rin bolted towards the dragon-elnin. A whooshing and crunching of leaves told Rin that Rize was not far behind.

A blue elnin emerged from behind the drago-nin, posturing threatening but then relaxing as it took it only two kittoms. “A dragon? Laurent, are they talking about you?”

An oddly echoing cackle filled the air, coming from somewhere above the adults.

Laurent? Rin’s mind caught on the name. If this elnin was a dragon, and mummy was a celestial dragon and daddy was a celestial unicorn-dragon, then this made Laurent…

“UNCA LAURENT!” two young voices screamed as they barrelled into the two adults.

“What?” the blue nin asked, and was completely ignored by the twins.

“We are not related,” the drago-nin — Laurent — protested. “I am an only child. My parents were only children. There are have been only—”

“But you have scales and we have scales, so we’re related!” Rize insisted, with Rin nodding along.

Something poked at Rin’s back. They sidestepped the blue nin, who’s paw came away with several scales where the glue had yet to fully dry.

“Your scales are pasted on,” the blue nin said in a dry tone.

Rin’s eyes watered and a sob caught in their throat. Faced with the true scaled majesty of a drago-nin, it made Rin’s dreams both closer and so much further away. It was possible, it really truly was. “They’re… gonna grow in soon!” Rin cried. “Any day now!”

“What Rin said,” Rize agreed.

Uncle Laurent looked vaguely put out. Rin ignored it in favour of inching closer to the green scales. Got to get a better look. Maybe touch them…

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” Laurent began. His voice suddenly changed from dubious to irritated. “Hey! Stop that! They’re not a transmittable disease, you can’t ‘catch’ scales.”

Rin paused from where they were rubbing up against Laurent’s side like a hungry, hungry cat whose owner just entered the kitchen.

“Okay, so how do you grow scales—?”

“How do you know, have you ever tried—?”

“Do you shed them—?”

“Did they itch coming in?”

Above the heads of two noisy kittoms, Sanosuke gave Laurent a flat stare. “Let’s take a shortcut through Bellmoril’s woods, he says. What could go wrong, he says.”

“… I regret my life choices.”