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The metal frame surrounding a partially dismantled excavator came crashing to the ground under the coercion of some enterprising dragons, making Camila jump and reach for the shotgun no longer hanging from her shoulder. "Peace, first friend." Acorn said, spreading his wings to briefly encompass the young Mexican American woman. The aura of his mind brushed hers, conveying assurance and protection. "The Lights and the Guardians patrol. We know what funny little bombs smell like now. No weapons here!"

Kevin sadly put a steadying hand on her shoulder, adding his own presence to help her. Not that he could blame her lingering anxieties after the number of times others had threatened her in the past year. Besides the would-be bomber six months ago, someone had stolen her scooter from her at gunpoint two weeks before. To add insult to injury, the woman who'd held her briefly hostage with a hand grenade had never faced justice. Since a Child had detained Camila's attacker, the law released her immediately pending a trial that had still yet to come. The courts did not give Children any legal authority to stop the commission of a crime. As improbable as it was, they had violated the attacking woman's right to threaten others with a hand grenade. The charges she was being brought up on were for assaulting the police officers that had responded to the attack. Nothing else was admissible.

Today, Camila, Kevin, and Acorn were at an in-calling arranged by a government panel and the local Constellations. Everyone that was interested in attending from two Canadian provinces had gathered at a repurposed mine outside of Yellowknife. Thousands of humans, hundreds of Children, and even one of the elusive Dreamers along with more than a hundred of their mercurial two-legged juveniles known as Diggers for their heavy clawed hands and powerful muscles.

Kevin wasn't sure where those last on his list had come from, in honesty. Either they were from one of the two lakes near the capitol or swam the very long way from the Beaufort Sea up the Mackenzie. The enigmatic titans and their children didn't bother to explain their intentions much. Only coordinating with the Children and, of all things, fish. One of their hot-tempered youths had tried to slap the elderly man for stopping him from burying his snout in a dangerously spinning cotton candy machine once. That, Kevin knew, and had long since learned to always carry some cookies to pacify and distract the young raptors. Not that sugar didn't cost a small fortune in those days. The cotton candy he'd saved from the Digger, besides preventing the wayward child from maiming his nose, had been worth a thousand dollars.

The sound, smell, and sight of two alien species intermingling with humans was more than a little disorienting for Kevin. Especially considering one of those species communicated by scent, an overwhelming experience that seemed to endlessly entertain the stray dogs wandering around sniffing at the legs of the towering Children. Having lived for eight decades knowing that life existed only on Earth, this was still, after eleven years, a tough pill for him to swallow.

Being around this many of the other apex species was also a tad stressful for humans. When the dragons moved, they didn't always check around themselves first. One entire tiered step of the quarry had been roped off to prevent others from wandering underfoot of the Dreamers and some of the larger Children. Although that had not stopped one of those weird cults that had been springing up lately from joining the giants. Men and women wearing cloaks and hoods patterned to look like scales that worshipped the dragons as emissaries from the gods who could grant them divine favor. A state of affairs not helped by there being periodic accounts of people continuing to be transformed in vague and limited circumstances.

Saying that the dragons, who did their best to ignore these worshippers, had a complicated relationship with the humans falling over themselves to form a religion around the newest species on Earth and the alien masterminds behind them would understate the case.

Smaller and nimbler juveniles of both species instead acting as intermediaries whenever the larger members wanted something or someone from the lively crowds. Even then, the juvenile's size and power were enough to cause some accidents. The wary humans did their best to keep within the sight of the dragons' eyes, while they themselves tried to minimize the movement of tail and wing.

Seeing that Camila's jumpiness remained despite the soothing touch of the Constellation suffusing the in-calling, Acorn and Kevin helped her navigate to a less crowded tier just above the one marked out for the giants. It gave Kevin a chance to take in the crowds. The sense of community of those there was a balm for the aging widower after he'd lost all his other social networks and support. A radio playing a news broadcast nearby was telling a familiar story. The report brought a frown to Kevin's face after what he heard.

"City and county officials continue to plead with state authorities to halt the dragon bounty system to aid in the emergency response to the EF4 tornado that had devastated the Oklahoma City suburb two days ago. Sophia, a matriarch from Colorado, has spoken to local reporters and promised the aid of her Constellation in delivering badly needed supplies and to assist with search and rescue operations."

The reporter must have cut to an audio clip from this Sophia because the voice of a dragon replaced the human one for a sound bite. "Why won't you let us help you?" Sophia said, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. "We are not the monsters that you think. We serve life!" Cynically, Kevin thought, her naivety made her sound young, and he wondered at her age.

"However, despite a lack of personnel and resources, there seems to be no interest in suspending the bounty program and granting the dragons safe passage, even as the number of casualties continues to soar. The governor of the state has released a defiant statement after joining the League of Dragon Hunters massed at the Colorado border, where anti-aircraft missile batteries taken from National Guard armories remain pointed towards the Northwest. Meanwhile, critics of her actions grow louder as the humanitarian disaster remains unaddressed."

Kevin shook his head. The number of deaths and displacement from the horsemen of the apocalypse was rising everywhere as governments turned to bitter international disputes and internal divisions. Mass suicides in Southern Europe. Cholera and Malaria in Indonesia. A multi-front war between the Philippines, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and a vast force of titanic Sea-Dragons. Famine in Russia and most of Africa. Civil War in Mexico and the countries that the Amazon Rainforest resided within. The self-segregating migrations in the United States as the country split along new, and long-standing, cultural fault lines.

Many blamed the aliens. Many more were like Kevin in blaming their own species for turning on itself in a race to exploit as much of the world as possible. A cultural schism that grew wider each year. Between those who felt they were being unfairly manipulated, and those who felt they deserved what happened to them. Even the major religions were fracturing along similar lines, with ideological conflict erupting around the globe as one sect killed another for daring to think differently. Elements of both sides using the newly introduced species and their loved ones as pawns to agitate their followers in pursuing nihilistic agendas that might get them all killed. As the Golden-Eyed ones drew their numbers down and removed themselves further from the public awareness, amnesia had set in, and people seemed to forget about the sword of Damocles hanging by a thread above their collective heads. Instead, returning to the same behaviors that got them in this position.

But before them were plenty of reasons to hope. Acorn and Kevin made sure that Camila could see it. Life. Light. What was important was what was before her, not the trauma of before. The sense and feeling of the community coming together here in this place, full of beings that made the trek from three provinces where the Lights and the Guardians made all feel welcome.

Ostensibly, the in-calling was a meeting to spur local economic development and canvass ideas to deal with the rampant unemployment and local solutions to the lack of food. It was also a chance to barter and trade at the market on one tier. Get free medical exams on another. Find work or learn skills on a third tier. Or, at the bottom where Camila and Kevin's employers Eat Mint and Be Cool were, engage with the council sent by Ottawa as agents with the authority to issue grants and contracts from their respective departments. Each with their own goals and mandates that were often in conflict with each other. Symptoms of the newly fractured nature of the Canadian national government.

Two Children from below and one from above the convalescing trio broke away from their respective groups, moving towards Kevin with their heads gently bobbing. The brothers, Eat Mint and Be Cool, with their identical movements, were easy to spot from a distance. The rough sawn pattern of the spinal fins and their glowing yellow eyes further giveaways. From the uppermost tier set aside for the larger beings, conveniently placing themselves between everyone else and danger from the outside, a Matriarch approached within a bubble as others made way for her passage. She had concern written into the set of her wings and the creases in her ear fins. The large brightly polished stainless-steel hoops around her right leg jangled with each step and the muscles of her flank made the tattoos of trees and deer there come alive with her movements. Aretha was Kevin and Camila's primary, and from the feel of her concern she had noticed Camila's distress.

"We will never let that woman come near you again, Camila, my daughter. I hope you remember that." Aretha said, laying herself all the way down so she could nuzzle her much smaller ward, leaving the woman draped over the Matriarch's nose. Camila hooked her fingers into the finely layered scales of the bridge of Aretha's snout as she suddenly found herself fifteen feet in the air. The rumbling breath of the dragon resonated within her, the infinitely variable smell of her leaving the woman feeling warm and secure despite being midair.

"I will, Mother Aretha." Camila said, patting the Child just below one grey eye, causing her to blink the eyes as large as the Mexican American's head with an indulgent snort. Aretha lowered her head again and Camila let go when she felt her feet touch down on the Child's hand. She hopped to the ground just as Eat Mint and Be Cool arrived.

"You say word, and we find grenade woman," Eat Mint said, nuzzling Camila.

"Find grenade woman and drop her from five thousand meters for what she did to you. You will not want to see. But it will not matter. She will never see again." Be Cool added, bringing his snout into join in caressing her, lifting her once again to her growing irritation. The Children, especially lost ones like their bosses, were often ignorant of human sensibilities. Substituting it with their own sense of familiarity where boundaries did not exist.

"Yes! Woman dead."

"Yes. Woman dead. Eat Mint and Be Cool have decided, only wait for Camila to say."

"That's sweet guys, but I don't want you killing..." Camila tried, but they weren't having anything of it. Exhibiting the same ruthlessness any of the Children showed when anyone threatened those connected to them.

"Friend Camila," they said with their words and bobbing heads in unison. "You are family, and courts have shown tail to you. It is least we can do, to keep you and Kevin safe."

She protested, but their minds had already become set. The 'grenade woman' had threatened one of their family and that was the surest way to rouse the Children to violence.

Aretha lowered her head between the Children and the humans with a rumble and spoke with the two brothers at length in their sing-song guttural language before finishing in English.

"It is wrong for you to offer her a choice, and then take it from her," she said gently. "Remember the choice that was taken from you as well." The Matriarch flared her wings and clattered the rays of her fins meaningfully.

"Forgive us, friend Camila," Eat Mint said with the smell of his chastisement after Aretha left them to investigate a loud squabble at the rim of the quarry. Kevin could only ever tell it was him of their two employers by the gouge in the fin on his neck. "It is your choice. We will let the courts have her in time and watch until then." Camila squeaked helplessly as once more she found herself trapped between a hand and a nuzzling snout.

"Time for business meeting now, employee Camila and Kevin." Be Cool beckoned with his tail after his own contrite nuzzle, leading the group down the ramps to the bottom of the pit.

"I come!" Acorn proclaimed adamantly and made an ostentatious display of looking around. "Not liking chance of first friends being squished. I watch Child and angry, angry Diggers. You not see, I see. Watch out for pebbles, friend Kevin! Two-legs always kicking feet into air for no reason, not want for you!"

"I just wish," Camila said to Kevin between dodging wings and tails, greetings, and small talk with the beings along the way, "that they would stop treating us like dolls or like we'll shatter the minute they're not there to babysit us."

"A little more consideration before they decide things for us, too." Kevin added. But it was hard to convey such a concept to the dragons. Even those that had been human no longer seemed to understand how demeaning some of their actions felt. Perhaps it was something about their size that changed the way they viewed the world and the others in it. Camila sighed when Acorn sensed her irritation and rose on his legs to pat her head, cooing soothingly.

Like anything else, that behavior among the dragons was not universal. Some of them still would not let go of what they once were. A Digger that was wearing a kilt around his... her..., Kevin blushed, waist and draped partly over her tail. A few Children, including one the size of a dump truck with a passenger cabin and harness strapped to her and talking to a pair of red-headed humans, wore all-encompassing gowns that even concealed their legs but left cut outs for their wings and tail. They were among the minority of their kinds to wear clothes. Others were still aware and shy of their nudity, taking strides to prevent glimpses of their underbellies with strategic tail positioning, but not concerned enough to don garments. Or, as a pair of shattering roars and a tsunami of satisfaction coming from the forest surrounding the mine attested, there was the remainder that saw no problem in...sharing. From the whistling undertone in the roar, he knew the unseen fornicators were Diggers.

"Did you know in Utah that it's against the law for them to be seen in public without a state-approved garment on?" Camila asked, blushing furiously in the empathic afterglow as Kevin's aging heart raced dangerously. Acorn yipped, and his wing shot up to deflect the tail of an excited Child away from crashing into the old salesman.

"No, I did not," Kevin said, shaken by the encounter. He wasn't a young man anymore. Being knocked over like that onto the rock-hard ground could be his end. "What a waste of fabric," he said, pointing to one dragon wearing the all-concealing gown. "Is that what they're being required to wear? They could make shirts and pants for a dozen people out of that amount of twill."

"I think we need to hurry," Camila said with a nervous laugh while Acorn, Eat Mint, and Be Cool exchanged a quick hissed word after another close call with an errant tail. Kevin and Camila's protectors arrayed themselves in a narrow triangle around the two humans and the rest of the passage through the teeming horde of humans and aliens passed without risk of injury. Giving time for Camila and Kevin to point out to each other some oddities they saw people and dragons engaging in for one purpose or another.

"Come to Camelot!" a dragon with fake horns attached to his head and a scantily clad woman in medieval dress in his hand stood up on his legs to blare. "Where fantasy awaits! Joust with dragons on noble steeds! Have your fortune told by mystical dragons of the East! Purchase pearls blessed by the aquatic gods themselves! Test your survival mettle in forests against cunning raptors. Get your chance to say 'Clever Girl' when they put fear of death into you! Try your luck at betting on what hatchlings do next! Come one, come all! Drink with bards, swap stories with knights-errant, and feast with kings!"

"Do you have plastic bags? You give me or I sit on you while you review life choices!"

"Feeling no lift in wings? Counselors and Matriarchs available to bond! Not need be alone! Your life is meaning!"

"Truffles for sale! Get your truffles! I find, you buy! One favor, one truffle. Big favor gets you five! Favors to be collected at any time! No screaming allowed!"

"Buying used clothes! Will accept exchanges!"

"Swarm of Hatchlings for all your moving and maybe fixing needs! Seventy-three percent success rate! Is that a blue-jay? How many gears in are in your watch?"

"Stop! Leave... ow! Leave my watch alone, it's digital!"

"Need job? Find new skills! Openings with six-month apprenticeship! Learn things!"

"Have you planted your annual quota of trees this year? Saplings available for transplant!"

"Call the 711 emergency services for help with any dragon related problem. Remember, they are just as confused by you as you are them!"

"Help wanted for the Yellowknife Dragon Spa! Only one skill requirement: You can't be afraid of heights or teeth the size of your hands!"

"Seeds here for your backyard garden. Free, courtesy of His Majesty's Government! Summer is here, so don't forget your fruits and vegetables. Freeze-drying tips available online!"

"Transport movement opportunity up the Mackenzie River," an oddly echoing voice said from above at breathtakingly shocking volume. Kevin looked and saw one the Sea-Dragon titan had brought their head down to the market level from where they were gripping the bluff edge hard enough to send cracks racing through the rocks. The sea-dragon's six undulating nose whiskers fishing about in the crowd below, touching human and dragon alike on their heads. "Rates based on weight. Last stop, the Beaufort Sea. For an extra fee, I can bring cargo and little creatures to Kaktovik, Prudhoe Bay, or Barrow. Only prepared travelers will be allowed! We are not responsible for loss of extremities, hypothermia, war, or death."

There was, as usual, also a large group of researchers documenting every facet imaginable about anything the dragons did. The novelty of discovering the ins and outs of alien species and how their presence affected Earth unsurprisingly not yet showing any signs of slowing down. Another young researcher that looked like a student chased after a wailing dragon with her arm covered in a clear plastic bag up to her shoulder while clutching a silver rod with a blunt tip. Near the end of their area, where a dragon seemed to have no problem with having their mouth propped open and a human crawling inside to take pictures of their throat, Kevin ran into the pair of tall redheads he'd seen before.

Or they crashed into him, to be more accurate when he smelled the intense spice of a Child. The smooth skin and strength of a young woman's arm slid around his neck in a horse collar and then he heard a braying laugh and the poke of a middle finger into his chest. He blushed, feeling her press into his side. She was very... athletic. Kevin decided that word was suitably platonic, instead of several others that popped into his head when he felt the curve of her chest against his.

"Question for you, Kevin Flick. An injured hatchling comes to you. The sky is very red with the aurora. Tied to his tail is the flag of Brazil. She opens his mouth to bare her teeth in a smile. You hear the band Led Zeppelin and you smell incense. The hatchling hands you a coupon for a hardware store. What is the first word that comes to mind when I say the 'safety'?"

Completely unbalanced he uttered a word out of pure reflex. "Wings."

"Did you get that, Luke? First mention of wings. What do you think that means?" the arm and scent that made him feel much younger disappeared. A man, similar enough to be a sibling, or maybe even a twin, stepped forward with a tablet he was making notes on.

"Got the anomaly. Fits the profile."

Camila rescued Kevin with a tug on his hand. The trio of dragons that had been shielding him from the crowd tightened their grouping after the brief meeting. Kevin didn't know why they hadn't stopped the rather aggressive menace of the two young adults. When he looked back, he the pair standing next to each other, their arms at their sides and their attention eerily fixed on Kevin. Their frames startled him with how large and attractive they both were. They could have even been models if it weren't for the scars and injuries. The woman had burns covering her hand, and a tattoo staining her face beneath her ear. The man had a jagged scar on his cheek that ran beneath the collar of his light jacket. On the same cheek, another tattoo just like the woman's.

The woman and man raised their right hands at the same time with an eerie synchronized wave. The woman was missing her pinkie finger. That they knew his name told Kevin their meeting had been no accident.

"What was that about? That was creepy." Camila complained. Kevin could only shrug, just as mystified and still unsettled by the women's scent lingering in his nose.

****

Camila and Kevin were laughing at some of the more outlandish proposals they'd heard by the time they reached the rest of the Eat Mint Be Cool corporation off to a side of the assembling council meeting. Thirty of them, all human except for the sibling founders, huddled near one tunnel that was in the process of being drilled into the bluff as a home for itinerants of all species.

"The favored ones have graced us with their presence," rasped a middle-aged woman wearing a gaudy assortment of jewelry and an ill-fitting business suit that looked misplaced on her. Blowing smoke between her quirked lips from the cigar in one hand. Acorn, having delivered his friends into what he considered to be a safe environment, took off to ram another hatchling roughly his size. A chase developed that soared into the air and then out of sight.

"The time is not now for your sandpaper attitude, Diamond," Be Cool snarled, quite in contrary to his name. The woman had that effect on people, Kevin and Camila both knew. Instead of being cowed by the elephant-sized dragon, she broke into husky laughter and flicked ash on the ground.

Which, Kevin indignantly noted, was not how you treated a rare and expensive stogie like the one being waved about in her hand. One of the gifts the twin dragons festooned upon her to keep her tractable as the face of their company. Little as they spent on themselves, besides those eye monocle things that a large proportion of the Children in the crowd had. Dragons could not serve as corporate executives in private or public companies. As an escort of... considerable experience in the nation's capital, she knew where a good many skeletons were to grease the wheels of the twin's network of troubleshooters. Which was how she'd come to their attention.

"I have a meeting with the Minister of CIRNAC in two days, Eat Be," she reminded her employers, cobbling together their names in a way she knew irritated them but saved her from having to speak the whole things. "Where is that emerald you promised me?"

"You will get it when the agency has given the school we are building for our Constellation its charter," Eat Mint told her firmly.

"And no more side hustle of falling on phalluses right and left, down and up, yeah?" Be Cool admonished her, to her immediate ire. "We pay enough for food in belly, roof overhead, and little trinkets. What good is more, when so many not have even that? We want you better than this."

"Fuck you, eh! It's the world's oldest profession and I have needs that you won't give me money for."

Be Cool threw his head up with a trumpeting call that was echoed by other dragons around. Kevin could feel his low appraisal of their chosen front woman. "You mother that never deserve to know own child for only wanting more to quiet addiction you refuse our help with," he said, lowering his head to fix one slitted eye on her.

Kevin doubted the harlot mouthpiece employed by the young dragons would ever know how much of an insult what they'd just spoken was to a Child of the Egg. The saying was akin to telling someone that they shouldn't exist.

"Whatever," Diamond said and blew a column of smoke from the cigar that cost more than she'd make in a year on her own into Be Cool's recoiling face. When he sneezed, his exhalation shoved the woman on her ass two meters away from where she had stood.

A position she belonged in if Camila had anything to say about with her mischievous smile. "La perra con derecho."

"No smoking around us. Allergic to nicotine, like we tell eighty-seven times!"

A titanic roar of warbling and snarling complaint chased the woman away from the mixed crowd of humans and dragons on the bottom of the mine. Cracking tails, bristling fins, and flared wings, seeing her off. Diamond ran between the hands as thick as her waist was high and tails broader than she was, stomping or slapping the ground around the in-calling, with her cigar clamped doggedly in her mouth. Kevin, next to Camila, laughed as Diamond breathed a smoky sigh of relief after reaching one of the habitat tunnels. Only for one last carefully aimed tail to knock it out of her hand before she doubled over, breaking into the hacking coughs of a lifelong smoker as she shuffled after the dropped cigar.

The riot of conversation between dragons and humans resumed. With the comparatively silent human voices largely being lost among the resonating basso of the dragons. Camila fell into conversation with some of the social engineers from one of Eat Mint's projects, leaving Kevin looking through the crowd hopefully for someone still dear to him. He spotted his daughter Catherine, a nurse practitioner, at the mobile clinic working in the shadow of a large Child currently sniffing at a cast on a woman's arm. Kevin waved his hand and mentally called out his intent to reach out to her. He felt Bruce, somewhere in the skies above, boost him. Even though she wasn't part of any Constellation, her gaze snapped right to his, and then immediately away with her back turned. In his mind, a door slammed shut.

He sadly dropped his hand. She still blamed him for the death of the rest of their family. He hadn't been with them, instead working with the dragons, when the Human Front out of the United States had attacked Calgary for its petrol, and instead burned the city to the ground. What Kevin could have done besides die with them, in his daughter's estimation, he still didn't know, to his haunted torment. She had never spoken to him again, not even at the mass burial that had been their funeral.

To take his mind off the impossible of what might have been and the dismal hole he felt Bruce nudge his thoughts away from, he pulled out his ancient but venerable tablet, and called up news coverage of the UN general assembly hoping to see something about the standardization of health care to benefit those like his daughter. Instead, getting the same airing of grievances from one of the thirty and growing body of countries whose economy had collapsed since oil wells had started discharging water last year. The Golden-Eyed alien lying prone on a table in the middle of the assembly with tail dangling off the edge was unrepentant in the face of the haranguing tempest.

"We gave you ten years, which you squandered, exactly as we knew you would. The correct thing for you to say, that we repeat every time you cover this ground, is to thank us for the clean water that has replaced the geologic hydrocarbons. Is there anything else? Wasn't there something about medical care on the docket to discuss today? Did you forget? You humans are rather pathetic when it comes to your memories and intentions when money is involved."

Kevin turned the feed off when the representative from Kuwait tried to vault the table in front of him and rush the alien. Only held back by the ambassadors on each side of him from the Quixotic goal of attacking an entity that didn't fully exist in their universe.

"Where is the sample?" Be Cool asked, fidgeting with excitement. It was his project. One of his human team members wheeled the large pot forward as the dragon watched hungrily. A checkerboard lattice of dowel pegs had small wooden stems weaving themselves in and out of the frame. An organic growth controlled, stimulated, by Children of the Constellation using Be Cool as the guide to show how they wanted the plant to grow.

"Remember Data humans. Pitch needs to be tied with local peoples and local what is left. So, make much stress of growth rates of local timber wild critters, and ease of place and time for harvest. Last survey returned," his pupil jiggled and the tablets they all had pinged as he distributed it. "Very versatile, only need talking and thinking too by Children with tiny little hand human hands to weave. We have much stiff competition for grant, so knock them into exosphere!"

A colossal banging came from the center of the pit. The black and grey-eyed, middling-sized, Child with a leadership choker around his neck had his tail wrapped around a boulder and was rapping it on the ledge wall behind him.

"The meeting will come to order!" he said at full, prodigious volume, hushing everyone in the mine. Kevin rubbed at the ringing in his ears. Maybe there were some people in Alaska that hadn't heard him.

"We ask those without business with the council to keep the volume down. Especially you up there, Atiqtalik Okalik. Or should we be calling you Ogopogo now?" The council dragon raised his wing to point at the Dreamer, who now had a human wearing a climbing harness attached to one of her frill spines doing something near her brow. Kevin thought she was trying to feign innocence when she laced her whiskers under her chin and batted her second eyelids.

"Moi?"

Kevin could only shake his head with some bemusement at the dragon humor with stomping feet, thumping tails, and chuffing howls of laughter echoing within the quarry. He felt like he was living out an episode of the Twilight Zone with their matched emotion in his head inciting him to equal amounts of amusement. The rest of the council climbed a scaffold containing a long table and chairs for them next to the council dragon's head.

"So that who's been getting spotted in the Bear?" Camila realized out loud. "What those fishermen have been blathering about?"

"Thank you, Minister Blankenship." The man in the center turned to the gathered crowd with a bullhorn. "Today we convene the third semi-annual economic forum for development of the Northwest Territories. I am the chair, Minister of Dragon Affairs Sam Archer."

The irritation and outcry this drew from the Children, Dreamers, and Diggers in the crowd rocked Camila and Kevin. They staggered against each other, Acorn struggling to protect their minds, until Aretha and Bruce, along with the other guiding lights, took notice of all the human's plights within seconds, dampening their connections with an apology. A message passed over Kevin's senses. One with the singular peculiarity of an individual. The scaly crowd members cut off their rancorous protest like a switch.

Kevin would have thought the outrage of the gathered mass assembled against one small human would be enough to deter most. But not this Minister Archer, whose face only briefly became pinched and mottled before his calm resettled. Kevin, the veteran of countless sales calls and market assessments, felt a pit form in his stomach. A new presence shocked him when it temporarily outshone all the other guiding lights combined and nudged at his thoughts. His suspicions settled for a time when the foreign interloper emitted sensations of discovery and patience. Bruce, Aretha, and the other guiding lights gave deference to this outsider. Leaving Kevin relieved that something was being done. That someone who could act in a way that settled so many great minds was taking charge.

"On my right is Veronica Lively Minister of Employment and Workforce Development, Justin Marsh Minister of Small Business, and Gilles Levesque Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry. On my left, General Patterson of the Canadian Self-Defense Forces, Colonel MacNamara of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Blankenship the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources." Archer introduced the panel.

"Before you go any further, Minister." Colonel MacNamara said, standing up with his hand out for the bullhorn. "I know some among you are Americans or other nationalities, and I must request copies of your visas to document that your crossing into our sovereign nation was done properly." He looked right at some dragons who suddenly seemed to be interested in looking in any direction but his. Next to the Colonel, General Patterson coughed into his hand and shook his head slightly when he had the RCMP officer's attention.

"Right, I guess I and my country's laws will just go stuff ourselves." The frustrated colonel plopped down with his arms crossed and leaned towards the general as he whispered to him.

Archer took the microphone back with the look of a politician and spoke the honeyed words that came so easily to those of that cast. Not so different, really, from what Kevin did. But with far different goals in mind, especially lately.

"I hope you will all join me in thanking the noble creatures," Kevin was close enough to see the cynicism in the man's face as he swept his hand skyward. "Making this meeting possible by protecting us in the sky and on the ground under the direct supervision of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police."

Where the RCMP was, Kevin could not tell. But the number of dragons orbiting the pit above, centered on a communication balloon providing an internet uplink, was very plain to see. Extending at evenly distributed intervals until they were so high up they looked like little more than strangely shaped birds.

"And now the floor is yours, citizens of Canada." Archer announced, back on track and raising a beckoning hand. "What proposals do you have for us today? We were told that there are five groups with professional projects in mind, but this is an open forum. In this new world, there are no ideas not worth exploring."

"The Russians!" A man shouted immediately. "What about the Russians? I heard they have fifty thousand troops marching on Fairbanks!"

General Patterson scowled and shot a dark glare at Atiqtalik before turning it to one side of the crowd. His gaze sent to a clothed Child with a sleek black and white passenger capsule on their back and two humans sitting on their forelimb. He recognized the two who'd been questioning him earlier. From what he knew of the meeting, he now recognized they were one group there to submit a petition. All the way from the United States and through the border conflict zone. The dragon tilted their head almost imperceptibly in acknowledgement as the two humans with them put their heads together. Camila caught the exchange as well.

"This meeting is more than what it appears, isn't it? They just sent you a message. Is that what I felt?"

"I don't know," Kevin said. Frustratingly blind to the information that Camila thought he had. "Someone else, a guiding light not even here, conveyed answers would come later. I think... we continue as we were."

"Where the Russians have landed, their invasion forces are seventeen hundred kilometers away in Alaska. We are monitoring the situation and will only act if and when the Americans request assistance. Believe me when I tell you, the Russians have chosen the wrong part of the world in attempting to conquer what is a roadless wilderness. As citizens of Canada, you have nothing to worry about." General Patterson handed the bullhorn back to Archer with one last look at the Child and the Dreamer. Once he sat down, he drummed his fingers agitatedly on the desk before him, looking decidedly sour. Kevin knew the look of someone who wished they were somewhere else.

The question was, where did he want to go, and do that involved the dragons there?

"Eat Mint Be Cool Corporation," Minister Levesque said into the bullhorn passed to him. A short man who appeared to have recently lost a great deal of weight, he had a rather heavy French accent and did not seem thrilled to be addressing a mixed crowd of dragons and humans. "I understand your proposal involves a novel way to grow trees as a construction material?"

The 'data humans', a team of analysis specialists, started with the observations of accelerated growth rates seen in tree rings and an increase in average mature biota sizes across all documented species since Zero Day. Then, Kevin directed they wheel out the sample, and interest across the board picked up as he leaned into selling the idea of growing structures. Questions about labor hours, watering and nutrient requirements, and time investment in rate of growth. What Kevin hadn't expected was the keen look the American dragon sharing secret glances with the Canadian General had expressed. Bringing her head down, she conversed with her companions, and then brought it back up with both perched atop to get a better view of the plant. He could feel their burning interest in his head. A bright flare directed his team's way. The world swam as he leaned on Camila, who bore his weight with a grunt. Two emerald eyes dominated his vision for an instant before they vanished.

"The eyes are on us," he gasped. "The eyes..."

"Kevin" Camila pressed. "What are you seeing?"

Kevin didn't answer immediately, rubbing his head. Images flickered through his awareness. "We are in danger," he said, once sure. "Danger from the sky, and the trees. I... I... feel... their minds..."

Camila stomped her foot and slapped Eat Mint's tail. Not liking what was happening to Kevin.

"Stop this!" she demanded, deciding the nearest dragon must be responsible. "He's being hurt!"

"What?" Be Cool yelped in surprised. "Who is hurting our Kevin?"

The fine hairs on Camila's arms stood up, and she watched static discharges dance from one filament to the next with a numbness that soaked into the skin beneath, leaving her arms tingling. Be Cool and Eat Mint relaxed, their pupils dilating the slightest bit.

"This is a plan," Eat Mint said dreamily. Alarmingly so. He nuzzled Camila and Kevin. "A Great Mother speaks, even in her sleep. We will stop them. All of us, Camila, Kevin. Our children. Numbers far beyond here will rise and join with the outsiders."

"Who is speaking to us?" Kevin asked, thinking he understood what Camila did not. "Who has taken our friend from us?"

"I am here, friend Kevin," Eat Mint said. "I am there." Now Kevin really understood. The dragon was splitting his awareness between two places, an unsettling trick the human had seen before, but still couldn't wrap his head around. Then, Be Cool and Eat Mint shared a look and continued, as if nothing had happened. Kevin and Camila both opened their mouths to object, but Aretha and Bruce quelled them with a touch.

"Camila," Kevin said, confounded by the sequence. "No matter what happens next, I will do everything I can to protect you."

Camila, looking at the dragon in front of her whose legs were taller than she was, and had more mass in one hand than she did entirely, doubted the practicality of his affirmation. If not its noble intent.

"As will we, friends. Our purpose is not forgotten, no matter how scared you are of our weird," Be Cool said, him and his brother corralling all their employees together into a circle that they lay themselves around. Even Diamond, wherever they had gotten her back from. Cooing, they nosed at each human in reassurance.

The warning they had gotten was not limited to them, thankfully. The dragons in the skies above had changed their swirling flight into groups of five that crisscrossed each other at regular intervals. All the while calling out to a chirped cadence. Even the dragons attending the in-calling grew agitated, and some of the humans along with them. Arguments broke out between those wanting to leave and those who didn't.

"No matter what the dragons may think on this matter," Archer said, minimizing their agitation. "There have been no reports of danger in the area. They are just jumping at figments of their imagination."

"You're a figment!" A dragon screeched at him, flying so low that the wake of his passage sucked the Minister's jacket up over his head. Kevin knew what he felt, and he wasn't the only one to take the impending sense of doom hovering in their minds seriously. Several RCMP officers that Kevin now saw as the crowd roiled, including Colonel MacNamara, and even General Patterson, were talking animatedly into walkie talkies while making expansive gestures at the sky.

"We will now hear the proposal from the Granite Mining Consortium." Archer said after getting his clothes straightened. Determined to go on as if nothing had changed.

"Thank you, Minister Archer," a man of foreign appearance in a crisp business suit said, leading a team of five other nearly identical men. Others in their group deployed a large white backdrop from the rim of the mine, and a drone buzzed to life out of a suitcase one of the speaker's companions placed on the ground. The tiny, expensive machine rose to place itself level with a screen unfurled from one tier to project the details of their project. A very sophisticated presentation that Kevin had seen no one outside the government use in the past few years.

If they were worried about getting the favor of a crowd who hadn't had been able to buy anything remotely new like what was being shown off in the past five years, and looked noticeably gaunter than those presenting, they had just blown their shot.

Their proposal was for a potash mine two hundred kilometers north of Fort Norman. Before the council even started to ask questions, there were already problems.

"And how much money will there be to remediate an existing mine, and to ensure no toxins will enter my waters, before you dig?" Atiqtalik Okalik, far from the conversation but not able to be ignored as a being that was nearly seventy meters long. Children of the Egg immediately piled on, wanting to know the length of the access road and the area of the forest cleared. Details conspicuously absent from the proposal. Along with where the equipment, and what would fuel them, would come from and their costs as well.

"This is exactly what we need to happen!" A man wearing threadbare denim coveralls yelled. "We are loggers, and miners here. We make our ways through the sweat of...."

"No..." A Child said, slashing their tail in finality. "The story you want to tell does not matter. We know that no family starves under our wings. What you want is the world of before. Where humans sure of path and count us on it. But I here to show you not possible! Before is not now, and not tomorrow. What say you to that?"

"For four generations my fathers have been..."

"Killing us to make numbers for others at the health of everyone else! Speak your madness no further when the only claim you have is your right to work yourself to death in same fashion your progenitors have because you know nothing else! Humans come with demands to expand more and more without revealing any of how it good! Not one word about where these metals go, what they used for, or how you benefit as they pay to poison and dig! But look at you jump. You willing to take all humans to death with you because what father do! Job re-training center is on second flat place of pit if you need reminding where find help for making monies."

The Child whirled and bound towards the mining advocates with his tail slapping the ground. "What will you do for forest? Chemicals, bad gases, dead trees and soil! How you fix? Where is your monies coming from? Where equipment?" The Child grew even more agitated when none of his questions were answered. Information flashed across the display he wore in a blur, and the dragon added new, sharper, questions.

"Three mining projects in Asia, abandoned after resource exhaustion! One more in Australia! You dirty, broken-winged company! Tell crowd about slaves you used to mine iron in Chile. Or river you poison in China!"

The mining consortium did not engage the dragon or anyone else. Instead, the representatives of Granite Mining, which Kevin vaguely understood to be a consortium of a kind, simply packed up their equipment. They left a paper copy of the draft, making several dragons hiss at them, informed the council that their team of lawyers and the foreign ministers of seven countries would be in contact, and began the long walk out of the mine. A naked threat of force that had its intended effect on at least one of the council.

"Dragons!" Archer said into the bullhorn. "These are not decisions that are going to be made by any group other than this panel."

"You are in error, Minister Archer." Minister Blankenship said, his tail twitching with agitation. "Resource management is the mandate of the Children, as directed by Parliament and reflected in my title. And are we not representatives of the people?" He stood on his arms and legs, forcing his co-counselors' heads up as his shadow grew to eclipse them all. "Are we not here to canvas their thoughts as well?" He turned to the crowd. "Tell me, how many believe as this miner does? How many think what came before is what must come next?"

The crowd was roughly split, but those on the side of the dragons carried the day by force of volume, and the reminder their bodies served as, if nothing else. There were a few brief scraps between the miners and their detractors. But none that lasted long in the presence of so many guiding lights, hatchlings, and diggers. The last two of which were indiscriminate in how they used their strength and more than a tad excitable. The juveniles seemed to have turned the most violent of the humans into frisbees, throwing and catching them until the game left them stumbling and vomiting. A few diggers even attacked the walls of the mine for daring to have metal. Kevin laughed in disbelief.

"Look where the General and the Colonel have ended up." Camila told him, pointing over the hand wrapped protectively around them after the scrum. Both officers had left the dais of their peers to engage heatedly with the American dragon and their two humans in hand waving agitation. It was good she had remarked upon them. He had been more keenly watching the arguments between the humans who demanded the immediate extraction of resources for money, and the dragons with eyes toward the future with what the cost of that money would be.

The RCMP Colonel returned to the platform as Minister Blankenship shattered his rocky gavel into pieces, trying to restore order. "Where is the group representing Chloe Rockford? You have a proposal for a community project, I was told?"

"Minister Blankenship, I must object," the silver-haired woman, whose title Kevin had already forgotten, turned in her seat and raised her gaze slightly to the dragon's. "All matters of employment and within the workforce are my purview. Whatever this proposal is, it should have been brought to my attention."

"Of course, Minister Lively," he said with a bob of his head that brought it too close to Colonel MacNamara. His eyes grew wild with alarm. "I only have the vaguest details of the plan yet, and I may offer some manner of paid employment. If so, we will, of course, need your authorization and my own before we can make any official approval." Blankenship said smoothly, mollifying the woman who'd felt her precedence being usurped.

"We're here, Mr Dragon!" a tiny voice said. Coming from a bright-eyed girl wearing poorly mended clothing at the front of a small crowd of children. A single adult stood reluctantly behind them with terror in his eyes as Blankenship lowered his head to peer at them. Several other Children taking that as a sign to sidle closer and snuffle at the group.

"Ah," Eat Mint said sadly, with his fins drooping. "Motherless ones from our school." Be Cool thrummed and nosed at his brother. Kevin felt the sympathy of others. He sent some himself, bracing the pair. They were orphans, all of them. A state far too many beings of all species had found themselves in. Although somewhat easier for the dragons, who took care of any juvenile as if they were their own.

"Indeed, you are, little Ms Human."

"My name is Chloe!"

"And mine is Blankenship," he said kindly, attempting to offset the natural intimidating rumble of a dragon that made every word seem a scolding reprimand, with his fins and scent announcing his friendliness.

"Okay!" she chirped, and then she and the boy next to her dragged a sack forward, filled with something that meant a great deal to Blankenship. Kevin could not see what it was, but he heard metallic clanging from the bag.

"And this is what people and dragons can do." the boy said, holding up a drawing. "It was Chloe's idea, but I drew the picture!" he proudly exclaimed. A dozen fledglings swooped from out of the swirling dragons above and landed around the children in a precisely choreographed circle with a vow to protect and assist the humans for as long as the community project required.

"Aww..." the watching crowd breathed out a sigh of adoration. Kevin, from personal experience, had his doubts the attention spans of the juvenile dragons would allow for any such thing. A hatchling ambling past him at that moment curled their head up to hiss in affront at his thought.

"What? It's true!" Kevin said defensively. A butterfly flitted within sight of the orange-eyed dragon and off they went, proving his point.

"I won't subsidize the feel-good mission of a bunch of children and baby dragons going around telling everyone what an excellent job they're doing." Minister Lively said severely. "No one needs a participation trophy right now."

"Then I will dedicate funds out of my budget for it if you wash your hands of involvement. The morale and spirit of a community is a natural resource as surely as any mineral that could have come from this pit, and marginalizing the value of what they are embarking upon is a mistake." Minister Blankenship said, confidence coming through in his thoughts.

"That you won't let us excavate," the miner from earlier said loudly, now nursing his arm after the fight. Kevin thought he remembered him being put into some kind of wrestling move that seemed to have left him injured.

He sat down and said no more. Instead pulling a hollow-eyed boy, who might have been his son, close. Kevin noticed that neither of them looked like they'd had a nourishing meal lately. Like so many others, their frames were thin, and their belongings tattered. The human cost of what the aliens had demanded, to stop trading their future for their present. Kevin thought he'd read a statistic just the day before that malnourishment and famine had returned to being the cause of over a hundred deaths per day in some territories.

"You're right." Blankenship said, smacking the ground with one hand and dragging his claws through the rock. "Eleven years ago, I remember my humanity being torn from me as clearly as if it is happening right now. Taken by a power that is beyond our comprehension. I also remember that that same power is still here, and the threat to end humans remains. Did you find that convenient to forget because the aliens are not right in front of you to remind you?"

"No," the miner said in a surly manner. "How can I forget when you scaleheads never miss a chance to remind us."

Blankenship snorted his disapproval as Eat Mint and Be Cool joined hundreds of other dragons in sitting up to make boisterous protest at the pejorative. Archer silenced them all with feedback blasted out of the speakers when he held the microphone up to one. The complaints of all the dragons turned into hisses of pain as their heads jerked. The humans of the Constellations drunkenly wobbled as the pain was broadcast, yet Archer did not stop for several more seconds. Kevin felt anger burn in his chest, not liking the self-satisfied look on the man's face one bit.

Kevin was glad to see that smirk get wiped off his face when some of the Diggers head-butted the scaffold at the same time baby Children threw their masses against it higher up and pushed by flapping their outsized wings, dangerously tilting the whole framework. Blankenship steadied the structure with one hand, and the Guiding Lights restored enough order for the session to proceed. Somehow even convincing Atiqtalik Okalik to settle on an unused stretch of a tier instead of completing her journey to add her incised input.

Likely to the destruction of everyone who couldn't fly out of her way. Kevin could feel a vibration in the ground with each fall of one of her feet and her body was so long that she stretched across three tiers. He wondered how many species of fish they had already depleted to feed such massive bodies. And there were thousands of others, governments thought, but did not know, just like her. Kevin mused idly if anyone had thought of developing a market for them yet. Something stylish to go along with those sensor packs they wore. Something aquatic. Clamshell necklaces, perhaps.

"I think we need to lower the temperature here, please," Minister Marsh said. A small man, with a small voice, he still had the resolve to stare down all the fiery eyes turned his way with calming implacability. His words were sensible, but already the situation had moved on with the Guiding Lights dissolving the misplaced aggression of the crowd.

"As the Minister with the longest tenure on this panel, I was given provisional authority to speak for the office of foreign affairs after Minister Julia's dreadful passing in the car bombing at the UN in New York two weeks ago. Let us hear from our American guests, who have braved the lawless danger of the Border War to aid our local population. I believe your names are Irma, Lucy, and Luke Schwarzkopf, correct?"

The three turned towards each other and held up their hands, one in a fist on top of the other held flat, except the Child held her hand palm down, as opposed to the human siblings. Kevin was confused until they simultaneously tapped their balled hands against the other three times and then flashed a sign.

The dragon extended two clawed fingers in the sign for scissors, with the two humans holding their hands flat to indicate paper. Kevin laughed as the dragon resettled on their hands to rise with a grin, having won.

"As smart as you two are, you still think dragons will only play rock," the Child chortled, nudging their companions with their nose. The twin humans huffed and called out to the council that they were ready to upload the details of their proposal.

"I am Irma Schwarzkopf, or Moon Chaser, and these are my siblings, Lucy and Luke, or Book Seeker and Word Scribbler. Together, we are the daughters and son of Kim-Tom McConnor-Schwarzkopf or Silver Scale. We represent her and the Lake Coeur d'Alene Enclave."

She paused as the commotion their mother's name brought rose. Kevin himself had heard some stories about the Matriarch south of the border, who was wanted by the Army of the United States Supreme Court.

"Do you know some of the names she has?" Camila asked Kevin. Anyone with ears had, by this point. Every Great Mother, as the dragons called them, had become a kind of celebrity either by word, deed, or prosecution. Kevin thought there might have been a score of them in the entirety of the North American continent.

Kim just was the one currently wanted by an entire army from the country with the most well-equipped military on Earth.

The Bane of the Pentagon. Savior of Boise. Kim the Mother. The Hero of the Salient. Terror on Three Legs. Just some of the names Camila gave had heard. With all his connections, he'd heard all that, and more.

They weren't the only ones to have heard of this Matriarch. Acorn had returned to eagerly bop heads with the two humans and Eat Mint and Be Cool as well after sensing their anxiety. Many other humans, and a few Children, were less enthusiastic. Kim the Mother's reputation had long preceded her. For better or worse. For Kevin's part, to have a light like The Terror on Three Legs shining on him was more than he thought he could bear.

"What we propose is the construction of a research outpost on permafrost in the northern reaches of your territory. The research will be a collaboration of Canadian and American scientists, but the construction and supply will be provided entirely by local beings. We plan for the need of fifty Diggers, a hundred Children, and a thousand humans for construction. With a tenth of that number in addition to one Dreamer being needed for weekly maintenance, resupply, and consultation."

"We intend," Irma continued, extending, and then lowering a wing in a quelling gesture, "to find helpful, or dangerous, organisms exposed by near-term warming. The Spokane National laboratory and Luke here, my exceptional brother, have postulated the existence of algae dormant in the permafrost that might be of use in the presence of elevated CO2 levels. Eighty percent of the profits gained by any discovery or development will be the for the usage of the local communities, subject to any and all Canadian law."

Lucy, the young woman standing near one of Irma's legs, tapped it twice in signal, and her tail twitched in answer.

"Hmmr?" Irma grumbled questioningly, swinging her head to look at her leg. "The message? Haven't they gotten it, egg sister? I thought it had been sent. It was your task."

"Watch those people over there," Camila nudged Kevin when his attention lingered too long on the siblings arguing. "In the tunnel. The ones wearing those armor things."

"In addition!" Irma declared. "Our Mother is swearing that our enclave will provide the assistance of volunteers for any emergency that may arise with regards to recent security developments. I have a message for you from her that may help inform you of our intents." Irma stretched her neck out, opening and closing her mouth. When she spoke again, it was in a different Child's voice.

"I have four hundred guardians ready to volunteer to go up your way to save your pasty asses and fuck some shit up. If the Russians are making you sweat as I figure they are. We've curb stomped the Aryan Way of Wyoming in Missoula last week and taken their arsenals. If you stop demanding that we get microchipped like fucking dogs, we'll show you something that will have whatever military you have left shitting themselves with joy. I'm getting wet just thinking about the death blossom waiting for those degenerate bipeds trudging through the arctic myself. Might just have to come see it."

"You'll have to make allowances for our mother," Irma finished in her own voice, stretching out her throat again and making some humans that had gotten too close to her shy away from her outstretched head. "She takes some getting used to."

"It is the height of irony!" a new human voice declared, as a large group marched out of an unlit tunnel on the tier nearest the pit's exit with a bullhorn. "That agents promising more of their own mongrel hordes are the ones to recognize and speak of the clearest danger we all face!"

Human and dragon forms alike turned their heads to the militia that appeared, unarmed yet still threating, near the mine's uppermost layer. Acorn reappeared, with an unfamiliar fledgling alongside him to corral Camila and Kevin into Eat Mint's wings. Be Cool stood before them, hissing violent promises at the latecomers. The men and women, all looking suspiciously ethnically identical, wore a mottled array of camouflage clothing, making it difficult to tell which among them were deserted military or not. What was obvious was the heavy armor sleeves made of dragon scales protecting their bodies, the empty holster and slings, and the quantity of ammunition magazines still on their load bearing vests. The guns they had were absent, but Kevin was certain they were just outside of view in the forest beyond the mine. The question was, how many else were out there?

"Cossacks raiders from the north! American anarchists from the south! And aliens from above!" a swarthy man enunciated into his megaphone. "What will it take to stop the invaders from stripping the resources of our homelands?"

Atiqtalik Okalik burst into wheezing laughter through her gills that was fit to deafen everyone in the quarry. She held up one hand as her whiskers lashed into a frenzy.

"Did you just complain about having the land of our ancestors stolen out from beneath your feet?" the dragon with the aboriginal name exclaimed in gathering outrage. "How dare you!"

"Did you just complain about someone else taking away your right to steal the land of the bears and the salmon from them?" an unseen Child piped up from the crowd. With the eerie way the dragons spoke without moving their mouths, Kevin could not tell who it was.

"Save the salmon!" another shouted. This time, the speaker beating into the air in a whirlwind made it easy for Kevin to identify them.

The group ignored them all, carrying on with their message. "And now the invaders from the south propose bringing more of their kind here, with their weapons and their beasts. My brothers and sisters of Canada! I ask where will it stop for humans if we don't close our borders and our communities to protect ourselves?" How many more dangerous elements, how many more threats, how many more living weapons must we stomach before we've had enough?"

"That is enough!" several humans shouted, but the man and his group weren't to be deterred. Already, it might have been too late. The responses to his rhetoric were making the divisions worse. The humans of the crowd drew tighter together, and their dragon guardians grew snappish at anyone they didn't recognize. A problem with the number of humans who refused to join any constellation.

"When will you learn..." was as far as he got before piercing shrieks of alarm came from the guardians overhead.

Pandemonium broke out as people scattered beneath the spreading umbrella of the Children's wings snapping open.

Kevin's heart raced and his mind spun, overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of an attack. A pair of hands grabbed his and yanked him towards one of the shallow tunnels nearby. Just before Be Cool's wing hid the outside world away, he saw the flight of airborne dragons throwing weighted nets at small dots zipping through the sky. One net made contact, and the target exploded, emitting burning shrapnel that traveled short distances before also exploding. Blasts rippled across the sky and in the woods. The ground shook as Atiqtalik Okalik made her way to the top. Not using the ramps, she ran up the tiers like the rungs of a ladder.

A woman shouted. "My balloon!" and the last thing Kevin saw outside was the floating device broadcasting an internet uplink for the meeting collapsing and plummeting before a Child snagged it in their talons.

"Kevin!" a much closer shout came from Camila and others he didn't recognize.

The feeling of Aretha and Bruce's presence flushed through him. Then the Emerald green eyes, once more in his thoughts. He felt Camila hug him, terrified.

"Breathe with us," a man spoke, trying to calm the dangerously stressed Kevin. He felt a large human hand press against his chest over his slowing heart. "Breathe..." a woman said. Kevin looked and saw that the twin humans also each had a hand resting on Camila's trembling shoulder as well.

"Today is not a good day to die," the unfamiliar woman said.

When is it ever? Kevin thought sarcastically.

From this close, he could see that she was every bit as beautiful as he'd thought before. Her braided copper hair catching the dim light filtering through the dragon's wing covering the refuge of the Eat Mint Be Cool company. She used her maimed hand to sweep some of the reddish bangs that had gotten loose away from her eyes before returning it to Kevin's chest.

They were an intimidating pair, even if Kevin had not been an old man. Both moved one hand to place on each of Kevin's shoulders. A force flowed through them from beyond, and his confusion abated. He warmed as the community of hundreds of minds embraced him with worry and relief. Mental caresses of many lifting and supporting Kevin, Camila, and all the others.

More explosions came from outside, and now the sound of gunfire from far above them led to more screams. Shrill outrage from hundreds of throats announced itself with the young feeling presence of fledgling's minds. The sound of an uncountable number of wings filled the air as they launched aloft.

"We fight as one and none will stand! Our flight against those who hurt us is now!" Voices far too young to be speaking like that screeched. The anger of the babies had been aroused, and with them their parents.

"The little ones go, so will we! Harm to all who set against them!"

Sunlight flooded the short tunnel to reveal Be Cool and Eat Mint standing shoulder to shoulder with Irma. The three facing away so that the only thing the humans could see of them were their twitching tails and hips. Their musk was overpowering in the confined space for Kevin. They held their heads nearly straight up, watching something in the sky. Without warning, Irma dropped to her belly with the brothers raising their wings to conceal her from above.

"C'mon!" Lucy ordered, tugging Kevin with shocking strength towards her sister's tail. Almost bringing the man clean off his feet. He felt the imperative to make haste urging him on, Bruce and Aretha begging them to get to safety.

Luke had already scrambled up his sister and was opening the clam-shell rear door of the cabin mounted to the harness covering much of her body. "She can carry two more!"

When no one else had moved to volunteer after Lucy helped Camila up, Irma slapped the ground with her tail tip. An irritated scent and a pulse of impatience both emanating from her.

"You and you," Lucy pointed at the two nearest her at random. "Let's go," she turned her head to look at the others, beginning to protest. "Your protectors are coming back to get the rest of you. We'll meet at a safe location."

Before anyone could make objections to an emergency plan that they knew nothing about, Kevin felt pressure around his waist and under his seat as the ground fell away from him. Irma deposited him into Luke's arms, who directed him to crawl to the front of the capsule across from Camila and fasten the harness attached to the small but comfortable looking seat there. They were joined by the two random strangers Lucy had chosen. Then Luke was there checking their restraints and handing them each a couple of paper bags as Lucy sealed the hatch. She flipped a series of switches, and two light strips came on. Kevin heard a hum and then felt a breeze strike his face.

Camila's hand found his and held on with desperate force. When he looked over, he saw she was crying.

"Where is Acorn? Where is Acorn?" The only thing he could do was squeeze her hand. The situation was beyond their control. A distant ping from their young friend let them know he was alive, but moving away, leading to an additional source of worry.

"Talk to me," came the rumbling speech of a dragon from an unseen speaker. Irma, Kevin guessed. Lucy pulled a headset on and spoke into its microphone, but her words were lost in a thunderous roar while she pecked commands into the tablet in her hands.

"Tighten your straps and keep those doggy bags handy. There're six swarms in the air and it's about to get interesting." Irma's voice came again.

"We're good, big sis!" Luke called out into his own headset. Kevin looked back and saw that he had spun one of the low chairs around to watch through the large back window. He heard a loud rustling and when he looked out the side window, all he could see was the dark red of Irma's wing membranes. Then the cabin lurched up and down as she bound forward. With a spring that had Kevin's stomach plummeting, her wings came down, revealing a scene of smoke and chaos, and she was into the air.

Then Kevin learned what a dragon meant by 'interesting'.

*****

When the adrenaline wore off, it left Kevin susceptible to the soporific rhythm of Irma's beating wings. The gentle bobs between strokes made the effect worse. He was strangely tired, and his chest hurt something awful. It was even more difficult to breathe, and he felt detached. Like this should worry him. But he couldn't bring himself to.

They had been flying long enough to range beyond the reach of their Constellation. He and Camila both had held each other as a crushing sense of loss, of quiet and isolation, overwhelmed them. Irma, her back just beneath the floor of the cabin, rumbled with a purr of consolation. She wasn't a Matriarch, but she could sense the distress of the two that were only a few short meters from her head.

Kevin nodded off despite the difficulty he had breathing after the contortions involved in their escape. He woke when he felt Irma bank. Looking out his window, he saw her wing tipped downwards as she circled around a handful of dragons lying so that it was hard to tell how many there were on the ground. A herd of grazing deer surrounded the Children as they lay in a sparse meadow cut through on one edge by a dirt road that disappeared beneath the trees. Around them was nothing but unbroken forest.

Even though Kevin and Camila had long left the comfort of their family's Constellation, a new connection danced at the edge of his awareness that felt welcoming and patient, even though he did not know who it was. Like looking at the sun on a heavily overcast day through a dirty window and a blanket. A dormant power beyond Kevin's desire to understand. Unfamiliar minds and thoughts nipped at the limits of his awareness. At the edge of the field, a finned tail disappeared into the trees.

"Here's what's going to happen when we land," Luke said, stowing his rear seat and facing the others on his knees. Lucy continued tapping away at her tablet, ignoring her sister's passengers. "The landing will be bumpy, but once it's finished, Irma will detach this capsule and set it on the ground. And then you," he pointed at those who'd vomited in the first stage of the flight. "Will clean your mess. While you," Luke clasped Kevin's arm, "will take it easy. A doctor will be meeting us. Now that we're safe, there's no point in doing anything that might kill you. Irma pulled 5 G's dodging some of those UAVs and, not to put you on blast, but you are like ninety years old. She thinks you might have bruised your pulmonary organs."

"30 seconds to landing." Irma's voice came from the speakers. "When I undock the capsule, get those strangers out of my gear. Their feel is making my scales twitch, and I don't like that one human woman on me, you should have left her behind. 15 seconds."

"Damn your scales! You don't get to pick whether I live and die just because you can sense I hate your kind. And slow down, you almost killed one of your masters," the young woman roped into being saved said. It shocked Kevin when Lucy slapped the woman, causing her head to rebound from the wall of the cabin. Lucy waved one finger in her face scoldingly with her other hand pinning the woman in place by her neck.

"You will not speak to my sister like that while you sit on her back. Or anywhere else! Is that clear? She does not deserve your hate. I am perfectly willing to stand in her place for your misguided contempt."

The exchange ended as Irma gave her final warning. Lucy had braced herself, and Luke had braced Kevin, but the other passengers jerked and slammed into their harnesses as Irma bounced to a halt. There were heavy thuds and clicks, and then the cabin rose away from the folded wings Kevin saw outside his window.

When Luke opened the hatch, Kevin saw the deer outside bound away at the sight of the humans exiting the capsule. The dragons hadn't stirred, locked in slumber around the dragoness on her back with her legs in the sky. Kevin remained sitting and wheezing in his seat as everyone else departed. He found himself unable to move until Lucy and Camila carefully brought him outside to rest against the capsule, away from the smell of vomit inside.

An unfamiliar, teal-eyed Child brought an equally unfamiliar man cupped in their hands. The human deployed a stethoscope, and the dragon their mind as she brushed one finger against Kevin to diagnose his injuries. Kevin couldn't catch his breath as Camila held his hand. He was afraid and so was she, despite the assurances given him by the unfamiliar Constellation.

"You're stable for now, but you need to be admitted." The man, Dr. Henrison said. The dragon, Dr. Lars, was more precise in her diagnosis as her mind touched Kevin's through the new Constellation he had allowed himself to integrate with. The one with a sleeping pulsar at its core. Dr. Lars' probing attention to what his body felt made him feel warm.

"Two fractures of his right ribs, and contusions on his lungs, liver, and stomach. He's lucky to be alive, at his age."

The human doctor went to examine the woman who had been the subject of Lucy's wrath.

"I'll have you in court for this!" the injured woman said, wincing as the doctor felt the discoloring blob on her cheek. "I know your names!"

"You'll have my goddamned fist in your teeth next time, that's what you'll have," Lucy said darkly, not even bothering to face the woman. "For speaking to my sister like she's an animal."

"Is that true?" Dr. Henryson asked the aggrieved woman.

"Yeah, so what? Who cares what the geckos at the zoo think about the people tapping on the glass of their cages?"

Kevin had to stifle his amusement for the pain it caused him when the doctor lost interested in helping the woman any longer. Instead, reaching up without looking to rest one hand on the snout of the dragon behind him. "My wife will see to the rest of your needs. Isn't that right, Doctor Gecko Lars?"

The dragon Doctor made a point of scratching herself with one foot, showing a particularly dopey expression by letting her tongue loll out of her mouth. "Dragon not know how human head work when rattled. Turn off and on again to reset? With rock?" she held a boulder dug out of the ground and still raining dirt up over the woman's head. "Human holds still or dragon misses reset button?" The woman made herself scarce in the trees. No one bat an eye when an impulse of draconic amusement immediately preceded her shrill scream amongst the screening timber.

"Idiocy," Doctor Lars said, scathingly, dropping her rock back into its hole with a thump. "Ten years, and still this nonsense."

"Why..." Kevin tried breathlessly. "Why have you brought us here..."

"Our mother wanted to speak with you," Luke said, looking at the dragon with a larger example of the cabins next to her and tattoos etched across her scales. "We all did, Kevin. You are one worth noting. Even Thumper and Prometheus have mentioned your name. Although you will quickly realize that those two noticing you is nothing good."

So, the dragon in the midst of all their attention was Kim the Mother, as he'd heard she liked to be called. One of the most feared creatures on an entire continent. Asleep and still, she didn't look that intimidating, despite the fearsome size of her muscles. Even one of her legs was nothing more than a rudimentary prosthetic paw. The faux forelimb ending in three metallic claws that opposed each other like a bird's foot.

One of Kim's hind limbs kicked the air, and then a trumpet blast of air erupted from between her legs. Embarrassing her children, who quickly shifted around until they were upwind of her. The birds that were perched on her upraised limbs erupted into cawing circuits before resettling on their living roosts.

"Can't she even show some decency when she's asleep?" Irma complained, walking past her siblings to nudge her mother's legs over with her snout, bring her thigh across to cover her crotch. "Why doesn't she wear the skirt I gave her for Christmas? She better not have re-gifted it like the cross I made her!"

"Grrrr" Kim said, intelligibly, stirring to life as all her limbs shifted. Her eyes opened blearily, revealing an all too familiar green to Kevin as her presence flared to a frightening luminosity. "Mrrrkidsss?" She tried again with more success. "Our kids!"

Rolling away from her stirring companions, Kim deftly gained her footing and stretched. With her tail and nose tip extended away from each other, a cascading series of pops travelled up her spine. Irma saved the last remaining rescued human from death at the last second with her tail when he wandered beneath the Matriarch as Kim collapsed with eyes spinning in ecstasy.

"God damn! That almost feels better than a good fuck between my selves."

"Mom!" Lucy cried in exasperation, joining her brother in holding a scented cloth to her nose. There was a heady scent in the air, pouring off Kim's latter half, that Kevin was terrified to ask about. "For once, can you just...not?"

"And for once," Kim retorted. "Can we not wake up to find one of our children bleeding?" She nosed at Irma until her daughter opened her wing for her examination. Kevin only then realized that there were streaks of blood sticking the folds of her wing together. Irma settled to the ground with her eyes closed as her mother licked her wounds clean. Luke and Lucy were unpacking a kit under the doctors' watchful eyes to stitch patches on both sides of the biggest of the holes in their sister's wing.

Kevin realized with a start that having humans, and him in particular, on Irma's back could have made her limit her own flying abilities. He'd seen some of the aerial games and maneuvers they were capable of. They could almost bend their bodies at right angles mid-air when they weren't spinning furiously. Her injuries might have been entirely avoidable.

"We haven't seen you in weeks with this Supreme Court nonsense. Our children! Our children? Where is..."

Kim suddenly rose onto her hind feet to make a long ululating cry that vibrated in her throat. From every point of the compass, other dragons took up the call as heads appeared above the trees. An entire armada of them jumped into the sky and formed a linked chain, all facing in one direction. The sound of the thousand odd wings masked the sound of another approaching horde. It was the baby dragons, and they flew right into the wings and arms of their older species mates while their families chased after them from behind. An orchestrated round up.

There were so many dragons in the sky overhead, all moving chaotically to corral the young, that the whole clearing fell into the shade of their wings. There must have been over two thousand dragons, the most Kevin had ever seen at once.

The apparent mastermind behind at least some of those forces fell back on to her hands, and roared in agony as her amputated limb gave out. Her chest crashed to the ground as she toppled to her side. In seconds her children were there to help.

"Mom, is it the nerve pain, or our prosthetic?" Lucy asked with real desperation in her voice.

"Irma says it's her nerves," Luke replied just as urgently, not waiting for a verbal answer. In his hands, he had a tub of car wax he slathered over his mother's arm just above the prosthetic to numb the seizing muscles there. The mechanical device spastically twitched in and out, causing its wearer even more pain.

"The amplifier is feeding her muscle spasm back into the receiver!" Lucy cried. "Pull the leads!"

"No!" Luke objected. "She needs to..." their mother cut them off.

"I... will... control... this..." Kim ground out before sighing with a breath that rustled the grass. Her family was next to her in support with their hands on her. With each beat of her heart, Kevin felt his own resolve grow, aided by Camila's touch. He didn't want to die, but if he did, it would be among those who he felt he'd known his entire life. Kevin felt those in touch with him draw close. Family. Belonging. Community. Kevin relaxed. If he had to die, this would be a good way to do it with his blood relations lost to him.

Irma pounded her fist against the capsule laying next to her still recovering mother, driving it a few centimeters into the ground.

"Mother says to come out here and meet the group."

"We'll come out when we are ready, not her," a woman's voice came from within the cabin. Kim lost patience and stirred from her convalescence long enough to shake the capsule with her natural hand, bringing out shouts of fear instead of the occupants. Kevin felt like losing her patience was a common occurrence.

"That's not helpful," a woman wearing a Canadian military uniform said after emerging. She had a cluster of two subdued maple leaves on the rank insignia in the center of her chest. With the General were four men in military-style dark clothes with no names or ranks. The last man to exit was wearing an American army uniform with four stars in a column on his chest.

"We agreed to stop making plans without your input," Kim rasped heavily, her pain still manifest in the slowness of hers and her children's movements. "I expect the same from you when it involves my children. All of them." She pointed to the sky with her wing claws.

Her passengers looked inclined to argue, but Kim did not seem to be in the mood to listen. Her head had risen far above to watch a pair of fledglings flapping towards them. She grunted in pain as Luke did something to her prosthetic, but that didn't stop her from making a loud chirruping whistle, which was repeated by Irma and one of the small dragons approaching them.

"Acorn!" Camila waved her hand wildly. Kevin could see now that the smaller of the two babies was indeed their friend. The injured man's head buzzed as thoughts and rapid-fire conversation passed over his awareness.

"First Friend Kevin is hurt!" Acorn exclaimed in alarm, setting down with a gust of wind as his smaller companion careened right into Kim's embrace. Acorn's head immediately slewed to Irma with his eyes narrowed as he understood in an instant. Camila put a gentling hand on his neck to soothe the agitated rattling of his spinal fin. Irma did the best she could, the young woman explained, they hurt her rescuing us.

"Our wayward children are with us again, it's nuzzle time!" Kim declared with joy, trapping her children with her neck against her side beneath a wing. The twins protested they talked to her all the time, but Irma and the unnamed sibling matched their crooning mother with equal fervor. Kevin felt himself cry when the Matriarch did. Her euphoria at being reunited with her children, after he didn't know how long, overwhelming.

"A month without you had our teeth on edge and your brothers and sisters asking every Child they saw if they know where you were. Meanwhile, we are back at Coeur d'Alene bored as fuck while tending the regional council and laying here counting the clouds waiting for some beings to make a decision." Her eyes glanced up and then down at the children she was carping to. "There're seven hundred and thirty-four, by the way."

"Hah!" Luke barked a laugh. "You're one to talk about being bored, mom. Aren't you an international fugitive? You blowing off your subpoena to answer questions over that pact you made has been all over the news for the past two weeks. Kim the Usurper, the most dangerous dragon west of the Mississippi and the biggest living threat to The Court Authority."

"Motherfuckers like to hang titles on us like bulbs on a Christmas tree," Kim huffed, looking at the men and woman she'd brought with her, then smirking. "Anyway, we're sanctioned! And Prelate, Pretorian, Powderfuck, or whatever the hell Sparrow is calling himself these days, doesn't even have authority in half his own country, let any others. What nonsense for the Supreme Court to have an army of ultra-nationalist and humanist zealots to do their bidding, anyway. We'll answer their summons when we can't think of anything else that needs done. Like rubbing one out on a bumpy log or keeping Big Bang away from uranium. They'll probably blame us for whatever happens with her pet fast-breeder project, too. Speaking of her... ah... shit. The missing spectrometers."

"Hey," Kevin beckoned to Lucy from where he still lay, once more being fussily tended to by the human doctor, who complained that he needed to be taken to a hospital immediately. An argument Acorn took up right away. The young Child enthusiastically helping the doctor expand the pop-up shelter on his wife's back and assemble a stretcher that he thought he was surreptitiously nudging closer to Kevin.

"Can this conversation happen another time?"

"Afraid not. You'll know why as soon as Eat Mint and Be Cool get here. They have a part to play in this as well."

"Did they..." a fresh pang made him swallow before he could start again. It really did hurt to breathe, but at his age, he had no genuine desire to be placed in a hospital. People with his number of years tended not to leave them alive once there. "Did they know we were going to be attacked, like you did?"

Lucy's face visibly soured at the accusation. Her response channeled a little of her mother's crudeness. "Who the fuck do you think we are? No, you sick bastard! We did not know we were going to be attacked. The rest though..." she trailed off thoughtfully. "Call it a target of opportunity."

"You all seem to desire my help with something," Kevin wheezed painfully. "How about a little help sent my way as well?"

Dr. Henryson exchanged a glance with her husband before continuing to protest the harassment of the patient she had taken under her wing. Loudly. Making the conversation increasingly hard to have, as Kevin just did not have the strength to talk over the dragon.

"Now that Eat Mint and Be Cool are here. You will all understand what is being asked of you," Lucy promised.

So they were, and so were they very pissed off. The two of them carrying the company transport a shipping container with solar panels, industrial batteries, antennas, and an air conditioner bolted to it. They barely slowed enough for it not to be considered a crash. Once they'd cast off their wire slings, they were immediately looking for answers in the most violent way their characters would allow.

Even confronting Kim, with the two of them standing on their hind legs to stare into her eyes. Temporarily taken-a-back, the Matriarch snorted and then reasserted herself, leaving the twin Children cowering when she turned on her brand of charm. Kim then burst into a torrent of dragon-speech that only changed into English near its end.

"...so sit down and listen, before you go off half-fucking cocked about a situation you barely let anyone tell you one thing about!"

Her head turned and lowered to ground level to address her passengers. They jumped when her tail came up behind them to nudge them forward. "C'mere, biped people. Let's introduce you to everyone and explain the situation various dickbags have placed us in."

"Those of greater importance to lesser using us as a spy plane are Canadian Ambassador to the United States Annette Lancing." An attractive raven-haired woman with far fewer years than Kevin would have thought her station required introduced herself at the same time she shot a scowl at Kim for ranking them. Kevin knew a faux pas when he saw one. In a different life, diplomacy might have even been his calling.

"Just wait," Irma said to him, the beaked tip of her snout just centimeters away from his ear, startling the man at how quietly such large beings could move. Or read his thoughts, apparently. He spoke firmly in his mind to stop but the aethereal reminder that he joined willingly he got as a reply did not greatly reassure him.

"United States Ambassador to Canada Wesley Frakes."

"A pleasure" a man with a bland appearance that could serve him well in the diplomatic corps said, stepping forward.

"Canadian Security Intelligence Service Director Guy Flemming."

"Really, Kim, do go on about missing spectrometers and why we shouldn't know about some dragon going by the name Big Bang looking for uranium."

"Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Adam Rodriguez," Kim went on, ignoring him.

"You can't have her, Guy. She's a DOE asset."

"In our country!"

"And of our wing!" Kim snarled at the pair arguing over the absent dragon like she was a piece of meat, silencing them. No one wanted to argue with a being that had a head the size of a compact car. Not that the American General didn't have words of his own for her.

"At ease, Acting Brigadier General" he snapped.

"We're doing what the President gave us that title to do, managing a large combined-arms force to keep war off this continent, Johnny, so let us do our job. Big Bang is our friend, and of our wing. Not an asset, and not a resource. Unless you'd like to explain that to the two thousand three hundred and forty-six Children, eight hundred and fifty-nine Diggers, two hundred and thirty-four humans, and twenty-seven Dreamers who've agreed to join with me for this expedition. You're more than welcome to. In fact, it might be amusing to see how long you're listened to. We give you fifty-seven seconds before a Digger loses what little patience they have and twists you apart like an Oreo."

"As I was," the General muttered, not taking his eyes from Kim's. Kevin didn't think anyone could reach the rank the dark-skinned man had without having a spine. And at least some sense of self-preservation.

"Can we all agree that there's more pressing matters than what some rogue dragon is doing off by herself?" the Canadian General firmly asked the others, who couldn't find fault with her question.

"That is Major General Julia Montgomery, Commander of the 3rd Canadian Division," Kim said, identifying the trim and petite woman with graying blonde hair and a stern expression that didn't match the laughter dancing in her brown eyes. Like she was in on a joke that no one else was.

"And this last biped is Johnny. No one cares who he is."

"Cute, Kim. Did you talk to your superior officers like that when you were human too?" the miffed four-star general remarked, tapping his fingers against his arms.

"Sometimes, like when they melted entire villages of people like butter with code-word level space energy weapons before continuing the political dynasty of their family."

"Shut your goddamned mouth, Kim!" Director Rodriguez fairly well screamed. She just made a ululating laugh that shook the ground she laid on.

"What does a mentally compromised alien fucking dragon that claims to be a dead human and is hated by one and a half branches of the most powerful government on Earth know, though, right?"

"This could go on for a while," Lucy whispered to Kevin. "She's not thrilled with that government."

"You mean your government?"

"If you say so. I say divisions like that mean little anymore after Zero Day. Tell me, what are boundaries to the dragons of the air, land, and sea? Especially when confronted by situations like this?"

Kevin's impatience for answers was swiftly becoming agonizing, just when he was about to ask for a pain killer, Kim's presence increased and then the man felt his pain fade away like it never even existed. Giving him time to consider the situation being built up to here. Most alarming for Kevin so far, was the prominence of the people Kim had brought. He thought back to the mentioned fears he'd heard in the crowds earlier. Was the situation more dire than the platitudes spoken by the council led them all to believe?

"What is happening is far more imminent than they have led you to believe," Kim said, eerily echoing the exact phrase he just had in his head. "And the recent attack we believe to be an early sign of advanced forces sowing chaos to destabilize a coherent response. Those that attacked the in-calling were wearing American uniforms, which means nothing at this point. The drone swarms were off the shelf products, but the software to coordinate the swarming behavior is possibly Chinese. We haven't been able to take anyone alive yet. The Diggers are too angry at the attack on innocents to be swayed at the moment."

"So good of you to share that intel with us, Kim!" Director Flemming said sarcastically. "What about casualty figures?"

Kim's eyes flittered briefly to the direction Kevin had come from. "Other than the attackers, seven are dead, and there thirty-eight wounded. I feel..." she stopped with a shudder travelling her frame and continued with a whisper. "Nathan can't see, he hears a dragon's cry, and now he returns to the stars..."

"He returns to the stars..." the other dragons repeated, sadly with their heads hung low.

"How are you getting this information so quickly? All of your dragons are here." Kim ignored him. Perhaps that was a discussion they'd already gone over before. She had a weary feel to her thoughts.

"Kevin, we also introduce to you four more than are just as important, even if they don't have titles given to them by institutions." The dragons got their energy back shockingly quickly. Four of them that had been lying on and around Kim when he'd arrived arrayed themselves next to her. It surprised him that all this might just be for him. But why?

"This is Sabina Kasparov and Frosted Scales of Western Siberia, Seven Scars of Alaska, and Rosalina Hutchinson of the Northwest Territories. Guiding Lights representing each of their wings. Sabina and Frosted Scales are the reason we have hope for a peaceful-ish outcome."

"To what?" Kevin asked, coughing. Blood appeared on the hand covering his mouth, and the dragons watching him exploded into protest. At the end of the caterwauling, he was laid out on the stretcher with Acorn and Camila holding his hands. Doctor Henryson, was on the phone with a hospital, telling them to expect him, and Doctor Lars had her head, or part of it, resting in the gentlest way she could manage on his chest to listen to his breathing.

The dragon Kim called Frosted Scales replied in accented English with a shudder as Sabina twisted her twin spiked tail tightly around his in comfort.

"They knew we would fight for the children the fiercest, so they came for most harmed of us first. Taking them away even as we fought them. They tested weapons them, desiring to know how to kill us. The humans made a disease that they thought would end us all, but killed themselves. And they deserve it!"

Sabina spoke at length to Frosted Scales in dragon before making her own comment to the group. "Those that come are not willing. They are..." she spoke again to Kim in their singsong language, and she supplied a word. "Conscripts."

"Yes... conscripts. Shot if they flee backwards, and only forward they must go. The disease meant for us have destroyed crops. Many crops. All corn and wheat in Bloc of Eight. We starve much. World starves much. Ask for help. Ask for rescue of conscripts, families, and food."

"After something like ten pages of text," 'Johnny' said to Kevin, "you must wonder why you're here hearing all this."

"It had crossed my mind why I'm on a stretcher so that I could hear you all talk past me and each other instead of in a hospital, yes." Kevin said, drolly. Kim and her family snickered.

"There are approximately twenty thousand Russian soldiers, delivered by sea, surrounding the American garrison of Anchorage. There is another thirty thousand crossing into Canada as we speak. Their goal is the capture of reserves of minerals and resources housed in surface facilities prior to the destruction of fossil fuels by the Void Children." Rodriguez explained.

"We haven't had diplomatic relations with the Bloc of Eight for three years, but we are aware of their attempt at biological warfare resulting in mass famine. They have refused any help and deny the existence of a crisis. Each dragon member of Kim's forces is carrying one fourth their weight in wheat for the starving people. Those sea serpents are transporting three hundred tons each on barges towed behind them." Ambassador Wesley told them. "Not much in the grand scheme of things, but enough food for about one hundred thousand people for a year."

"A good start," Sabina said thickly. "For friends and families of Children, we will have to fight. Others take wheat for armies."

"Another consideration for those returning to Russia," Ambassador Annette added. "Are the numbers of dragons and humans that will remain here. Between Kim's forces, Sabina's, and Seven Scars', they will give every aggressor in the attacking forces that can be safely captured a choice. Return to Russia with the provided food as an inducement or be resettled under Rosalina's protection and supervision to make new lives here."

"Some of us have family still under claws of government that poisons us. Some of us never want to cast shadow on once home again." Frosted Scales said. "For those trapped behind, we will return with a wing to save." He slid under the wing of his larger mate with a rumble as they brushed against each other.

"The goal of the United States is to bleed this Bloc dry of military resources and the ability to do this bullshit again. All the hardware sent here will be lost to them, and guess what, a boon in military grade raw materials to be split between these jackals.

"Really, Kim?"

"The Dreamers have already eliminated their ability to return via the ocean without their approval." Kim said with a smirk. "They don't even know they've already marched right into a snare that has no escape. Our goal," her tail made a twirling gesture. "Is to minimize the number of people who have to die. We aim to overwhelm them. No one before has ever seen a force like the one we've assembled."

At last, Kevin understood.

"You want Eat Mint and Be Cool's connections to find work and places to live for these people and dragons. And you needed me, us, to agree to this now, not later, because parts of your plan are already in motion."

Kim smelled pleased, and Kevin felt an approving caress in his mind that made him glow despite the dignity of his age. Like a schoolboy being given a gold star by a teacher. "Exactly right, Kevin. Frosted Scales and Sabina did not come alone. There are many with them that want proof of our intentions to help. For decades they have been told not to trust anyone on this continent, the distrust runs deeper than a scared shit-less prairie dog hiding from a coyote."

"Their connections are yours, Kevin." Lucy told him. "You are the one who has impressed both species. You are the one for this chance to affect thousands of lives. And look at what you've seen in your government fighting each other for influence. You know ours, fighting an insurrection from within their own ranks to determine who is right. Children like our mom, humans like you, are the leaders we need. Beings that create bridges that don't end at borders or what others decide isn't possible because their singular interests don't benefit enough."

"His health must be first!" Eat Mint exclaimed, joining his twin in thumping his tail declaratively. All Kevin saw of the pair were their hocks and the flying grass kicked up by their spinal appendages beating the surrounding ground.

"And his health will be," Kim soothed. "The conflict to come will take weeks to orchestrate, so that it's on our terms. Even right now, the spies that were at the in-calling are reporting what we said and did and moving the pieces to where we want them. All that we are asking of you, Kevin, is to use a lifetime's worth of connections to save lives. I'm sure that these miscreants," she squeezed her tail around six of the most powerful people on the continent, "will get you what you need."

"My daughter." Kevin said, breathless. "Is she safe? Keep her safe. If the attackers of the meeting were..."

"Of course," Director Flemming promised. "Her needs are being seen to as we speak, aren't they, Kim?"

"Wilbur! Wilbur!" Her spinal fan slapped loudly against her scales as she shook her head.

"That is really why everyone hates you, Kim," Flemming said with a resigned sigh.

"Catherine is safely with Ate Two Horses at the hospital," Lucy promised, as she reached into a black plastic crate that Luke had drug out of their mother's carrying capsule. The twins both slapped boxy magazines into the wells of rifles with long barrels that ended with twin parallel prongs. They twisted dials on the weapons that produced hums of power before turning them off again and throwing slings over their heads. Both touched their sister's snout, and the took up positions at her shoulders. Like sentinels. Their mother's eyes glistened with tears as she watched, but her only detectable response was an affirming bob of her head.

"What the shit are those, eh?" General Montgomery demanded of the American General after her questions to the twins went unanswered.

"Damn you and your hell spawn, Kim," Johnny seethed. "I can't even get one of those!"

Which was not an answer, Kevin noted.

"Tell me..." Kevin said, "that this will make things better."

Kevin felt an encouragement come from Kim that, to his shock, even affected some of the high-ranking officials she carried with her. Frosted Scales, Sabina, Lucy, Luke, Irma, Director Flemming, and Johnny joined Kim in assuring the salesman.

"You and your company can save hundreds of thousands of lives, and give those betrayed by those who were supposed to protect them a new chance. You'll see, it's all a matter of give and take in a world where the only boundary that matters for now is the one that's over all our heads.."

Kevin swallowed and sank against the stretcher he lay on. His eyes were on the gray skies above as he made his choice. Acorn and Camila squeezed his hands, Eat Mint, Be Cool, Aretha, and Bruce poured healing resolve into him. Kevin warmed as the hundreds of his new family embraced him in comfort.

"Tomorrow." He promised. "Tomorrow, get me a satellite phone. I know a few people who owe me favors."

"No, friend, Kevin!" the protests came immediately to his mind and ears, the dragon ones the loudest. "You give us numbers and names while you heal." His head shifted slightly when Acorn, Be Cool, and Eat Mint lowered their heads one at a time to press the fine scales of their noses against his cheek. Being as careful as they could while their heated breath washed over his face. Camila never left his side and was soon joined by the rest of their family.

A nova detonated into brilliance in his mind when Kim used her immense strength to spread the reach of his Constellation as her wings flared wide to overlap those of the dragons to her sides. Soon the entire clearing was encircled by an immense barrier and the crooning of the dragons became a song that vibrated into Kevin through the ground. From all around, warmth came to Kevin. Every light a friend. He smiled as he fell into a restful sleep, his injuries forgotten.

His last waking thoughts were to wonder if the refugees would be interested in nesting dragon dolls.