Letting out a shaky exhale, she momentarily wondered if she could risk sneaking back out to cover the dragon in a few blankets — or twelve — but begrudgingly dismissed the idea. If a dragon could fly at the same altitude as an m-jet, they could survive a December night on her deck.
She didn’t like it, obviously, but the risk of disturbing the dragon’s much needed rest outweighed her nagging need to care for him.
Paloma reluctantly stepped away from the door and turned to make her way to her bedroom. Grabbing a fistful of her knit beanie, she pulled it off as she walked down the dark hallway that once separated her half of the house from her father’s. A man who believed in autonomy and privacy, he’d built the home so that she had her own little wing, complete with a microscopic sitting area and her own bathroom.
The home was built out of an old miner’s shack, but only the kitchen retained any of the bones from that original structure — mainly in the rustic beams and old slate floor that, despite being a bitch and a half to clean, Paloma loved. Being part research station, part home, and part shack, it wasn’t the most cohesive structure in terms of design, but she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Up until tonight, she couldn’t imagine having a massive, fully grown dragon on her deck, either.
Shaking her head, Paloma closed her bedroom door with the heel of her boot. The lights came on automatically, casting her old, much loved furniture in a soft golden glow. After a long day sitting in front of her screens, she preferred the gentle warmth to the harsh brightness of a cold light.
Paloma shucked her thick jacket and began preparing for bed. There wasn’t much else she could do, but a part of her felt the strangeness of doing something so mundane when a dragon lay just on the other side of her wall. Her mind whirred out of control even as she slipped into a comfortable pair of sleep pants and a soft nightshirt.
Sliding under her covers, Paloma passed her hand over the panel on the wall by her bed. The room plunged into the familiar blue-black darkness of a winter night.
She stared at the ceiling for several long moments. Would she hear the dragon if they moved? Would she wake up to find a huge, ruby eye staring at her through her half-parted curtains? Would she wake up to her home burning down around her?
Paloma twisted onto her side, her hands curled under her pillow. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she squeezed her eyes shut and imagined the huge creature outside, the poor lost soul she had nearly condemned to death. Would they be alright out there all night? She had to think so, but worry bit at her all the same.
She turned onto her other side. The house seemed terribly quiet. Even when she strained to listen, all she could hear was the faint whirring of fans and the whistle of wind through the trees. No growling. No hard, pained breathing. No crackle of fire. It was like the dragon wasn’t even there.
A spike of alarm sliced through her.
Sitting up abruptly, Paloma scrambled onto her knees to peer out the window over her bed. A portion of the deck wrapped around the outside wall of her bedroom, giving her a partial view of the gorge and the mountains beyond it. Paloma scanned the darkness, looking for a sign that the dragon hadn’t slipped silently into the night when she wasn’t looking.
Squinting hard, she was just able to make out the vague shape of a spiked tail.
Breathing a gusty sigh, she sank back down into her twisted blankets. It gnawed at her, this inability to do anything for the dragon. She couldn’t help him, and if the dragon got it into his head to fly off in the morning, there was nothing she could do to prevent it.
Paloma swallowed the bitter taste of helplessness in the back of her throat. Pulling her blankets up over her shoulders, she tried to find some comfort in the fact that she’d done everything she could for the dragon. If he stayed, she’d figure out how to do more. If he didn’t…
That, like so much of life outside of her lab, was beyond her control.