By then Bird had joined a small group. As he approached, they were in the midst of saying goodbye. He watched her turn, her polite smile flashing to delight when she saw him, but immediately it dimmed to mere politeness, shadowed with doubt.
The little fire dragon woman is correct, Mikhail’s dragon commented. (For him, the highest compliment was to equate humans with dragon-kind.) There is a wound on our mate’s spirit.
Mikhail sensed it as well. As her mate, it was his privilege and his pleasure to heal it. But first he had to figure out the intricacies and hidden pitfalls of human courtship. Beginning in a safe public space had not been as easy as he’d thought.
Perhaps getting her alone, just the two of them, but still in a place she felt safe?
“Bird,” he said, stepping closer. “I am new in this town, and know no one. You have lived here for a time, yes?”
“Twenty-seven years,” she said.
“What is your favorite place at which to dine? I would like to invite you to dine with me.”
Bird’s lips parted and her gaze darted wildly. He could feel the intensity of her turmoil, and cast about for something easy and safe. Then he remembered his mission, which he’d almost forgotten in the immediacy of this life-changing discovery.
Why not combine the two? He hesitated half a heartbeat, remembering the intensity of the empress’s dream. But he had not sensed any immediate danger in that cavern. And he would never send her in there alone.
We will protect her, his dragon hummed.
Bolstered by his new courtship plan, Mikhail said, “I was reliably told that you are responsible for the excellent art in this bakery here. The paintings are very fine. The attention to detail in particular impressed me.”
Bird’s lovely face pinked with pleasure. Inside Mikhail, the dragon hummed like a contented beehive, now times a million.
He could do this! “I believe I mentioned I was here in part in an investigative capacity. Might you be interested in executing an artistic commission for me? I am convinced that your skills are precisely what I need. We could discuss it over a meal.” He remembered hearing somewhere that contemporary culture favored the midday meal for business and the evening meal for pleasure, and added, “We could meet for, ah, luncheon.”
He watched the tension in her smooth out, replaced by a glow of pride. His beehive hum ratcheted up to ten million.
“I—I, lunch would be wonderful,” she said, and delight filled him at the happiness in her voice. “I would be very interested in hearing what you propose.”
“Excellent. Are you free tomorrow? I can arrange for a vehicle—”
“I can meet you anywhere,” she said quickly.
If she felt safer that way, it was his part to agree. “Tell me where you recommend, and I will be there.”
She suggested a restaurant with an ocean view, and then they parted. He watched Bird get into Doris’s car, and realized that he would have to get one. Then he stepped around the corner, drew invisibility out of the air and rainwater, and shifted to dragon form to drift over the rooftops toward the sea.
Did you mark that? Our mate chose a place of eating that looks over the water. Our mate loves the sea, the dragon bugled triumphantly. Our hearts have chosen well.
Chosen or been chosen? Mikhail had never had occasion to think about the mate bond before. It seemed all the more mysterious now that it had happened to him, taking him—who was so very cautious—entirely by surprise.
As he soared skyward he listened to the bond singing through his blood with possibility. Just the memory of Bird’s presence shimmered in his nerves, and the memory of her voice ignited a sun in his heart.
Until now, he had believed that he had flown through his lifetime to the peaks and depths of the entire range of emotions, enjoying the satisfaction of success, the fire of triumph, the pleasures of things as simple as a good meal, and as exalting as the music of t
he celestial sphere when the empress calls all the dragons home to celebrate the lunar new year.
At this state of his life, he had achieved a hard-won serenity, regarding himself as one intended for the solitary life. Until now he had never thought the happiness found in love would ever be his.
It will come when she is with us, his dragon insisted.
But she isn’t with us yet, Mikhail snapped back. It’s all very well for you to be smug. You’re not the one trying to learn courtship.
To learn human things, of course you must go to that human-thing, the words and pictures in the frame boxes.
Of course! The computer! He ought to have thought of that. But where to find one? Then he remembered his phone was one.
Mikhail flew to his motel, shifted back to human form, and turned on his cell phone. With a sense of triumph—he had finally learned to use these modern machines—he typed in the word “courtship.”