“Bigger than I expected,” Flea said with a sniff. It looked cute from the outside, whitewashed walls with exposed wooden supports and a slate roof. Scalla struggled to get the old key in the lock. We all flinch
ed as the tumblers made a horrible screeching sound as she turned it, the door finally popping open.
“Hopefully you’ll enjoy your...” Scalla coughed as she opened the door. We were all hit by a wave of musty air. Scalla waved her hand, trying to force fresh air into her lungs.
“Well, you’ll be glad you kept us,” Jez said, having taken a step inside. It wasn’t tiny, but it was obviously old and hadn’t been maintained. Dust lay in a thick blanket over everything. Flea went to pull an old dust cloth off a nearby piece of furniture. Jez and I yelped for him to stop, a cloud already exploding around it.
“Is there somewhere we get bedding and towels from?” I said.
“Send one of your porters to the laundry. It’s in the big building with the red door on the right-hand side. Now Mizzy, is there anything else I can get you?” Scalla said.
“I’m very hungry and I’m tempted to make you my first meal if you persist in calling me that,” he said.
“Oh, well, you just help yourself from the fields. Don’t go into any of the sheds, that’s where the prize breeders are. Master Fallon will be most upset if you eat one of those. But will you be able to hunt OK? Do we need to find you an itty bitty little beast to fill your tummy-wummy?”
“Who fucking knew talking like an idiot translated so well,” Jez said, looking on with horror. We all went outside, ready to stand between Scalla and Miazydar’s epic temper. My dragon just glowered, then shook himself, growing bigger and bigger right in front of her eyes until he was definitely larger than the other beasts. One dragon opened an eye, then lifted its head to peer down at us.
“Oh, my apologies, Great One,” Scalla stammered out.
“Keep trying to tell you, size matters,” Jez said with a chuckle.
Scalla just pointed to the fields beyond where placid, solid-looking beasts with big pale blue eyes and shaggy pelts grazed.
“Much obliged,” the dragon said with a nod of his head and flew off to feed.
“Does he...? Is that...?” Scalla said.
“Well, thanks for giving us the keys and showing us around,” I said. “See you in class tomorrow?”
“Hmm? Oh yes, see you.”
“So what do we have here?” Jez said, walking through the cottage. She tested the kitchen taps and saw that water ran, though it did splutter a bit. “Running water’s good.” She opened a kitchen cupboard and then shut it instantly. “You’re going to need to take care of that,” she said to Flea.
“Why? What is...oh shit!” He cracked it again gingerly to see a spider the size of a bread plate just chilling there. “What do you expect me to do with that?”
“Kill it with fire, nuke it from space. I don’t care, but get rid of the bloody thing!” I said. “Look, it’s just sitting there, plotting our destruction. Eight beady eyes of doom.” All of our heads jerked up when we heard the sound of an animal’s scream. I winced, “I think Miazydar’s served himself dinner.”
“Yeah, well, he can shrink down to puppy size and knock that fucking thing on the head.” Flea said. “That’s not a ‘smack it with a thong’ job, that’d take a truckload of thongs and a flamethrower.”
“Wow, so not going with the whole alpha male thing to get the girl?” Jez said with a smirk.
“I didn’t realise smashing alien spiders got girls hot these days,” Flea replied. “I thought it was mind-blowing sex and deep pockets.”
Well, he definitely meets one of those criteria. The two of them turned to look at me and then Jez burst out laughing. Fuck, I said that aloud.
“Yeah, ya did, which brings me to my next point, what’s the sleeping arrangements here?” Jez said and walked down the hall. “Oh no.”
“What?” I followed her down and looked into the bedrooms. One was little more than a narrow strip, a small walk-in wardrobe would occupy the same space, but instead, there was a single bed topped with a thin mattress. In the main bedroom, obviously designed for the prospective dragon rider, there was a king sized four-poster bed, complete with curtains to create privacy. There was a large picture window behind it, giving us all a great view of the paddocks beyond where Miazydar was patiently scissoring the meat from the corpse of a beast with his teeth, then swallowing it.
“So I guess it’s just us girls in here,” I said brightly. This wasn’t ideal. I was well aware of Jez’s ‘extra-curricular’ activities and how cranky she got if she couldn’t indulge on a very regular basis. Hopefully, we had plenty of hot water and she could enjoy a whole lot of ‘girl time’ there.
“Oh no, if I’m gonna be pulling my forelock and cleaning up after your arse, I’m taking the single. No Netflix, no Instagram, no Spotify means I have a lot of time on my hands, so to speak.”
“But the shower...?”
“If you want to ever have a warm shower again, you’re gonna agree to this. You’ve already seen each other naked, so what does it matter? If you don’t want to fuck, make a blanket wall between you or act like adults. Anyway, I’m hoping there’s a bit of big, brawny and buck worthy in amongst the porter population and if most are staying in the dorms, I need somewhere to bring him back. You guys take the main room, it’ll be fine.”
Flea shrugged, walking past me to open one of the wardrobes and placed his bag inside. “It’s not a big deal for me.”