Darian （SPLIT）
The dragons couldn’t fly among the trees around them, but they could sit next to them, which is what they did. Spark kept leaving for a moment to fly a circle in the clearing just beyond the trees.
Celia was sitting too far away from him, but he wasn’t sure how to get closer without scaring her off.
“He can’t hold still,” Darian said with a smile.
“Does that remind you of anyone else?” Celia said pointedly.
“I can hold still,” Darian protested.
“Can you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stand still in your life,” she teased.
Darian shifted toward her, leaning back on his hands as an excuse. “I suppose so. However, I like to imagine that the fact that I rarely stand still is helpful most of the time.”
“Oh, it is,” Celia said in agreement, smiling up at him. “It’s very handy when it means I don’t have to be the one to run back and forth to town all the time, since you’ll bring all of my supplies out here for me.”
Darian pretended to be annoyed. “See, you only need me as a pack mule.”
She was right. He did prefer to run around and do lots of different things instead of staying in one place, though he’d always stayed at the store when his uncles needed him. “I’ll have you know,” he said, “that I am good at doing lots of things that involve me staying in one place.”
“How many of them involve doing lots of different tasks?”
Darian didn’t respond. She was right.
“I don’t do it on purpose,” he mumbled.
“It doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you,” Celia said quietly.
“It just means that your mind works differently than mine, and you need more things happening than I do. It doesn’t mean you’re broken—it just means things are different, and that’s okay.
Everyone is different. The world would be a boring place if we were all the same, wouldn’t it? ”
“It would be,” Darian responded, “even if sometimes I wish my mind worked a little more like other people’s.”
“If your mind worked like everyone else’s, you probably wouldn’t be here right now,” Celia pointed out.
“That’s true,” he admitted. “I don’t know anyone else whose mind can translate dragon into human.”
Celia laughed. “That is true. You are the only one I know who can do that.”
Darian puffed up with pride for a moment. He liked being the only one Celia could rely on to do something. It meant that she needed him, even if she didn’t want to—but he was starting to think that maybe she wanted to, and that gave him hope.
“You are very helpful, Darian, no matter how your brain works. And I hope you know that you have unique qualities and talents, that you are wonderfully made just the way you are.” She sounded almost as if she was saying the words just as much to herself as she was to him.
“Everyone is,” Darian said, looking at her.
She was wonderfully made, too.
She was wonderful.
“And so are our dragons,” Celia said as they watched Spark take off for another lap around the clearing.
“If he keeps doing this, he’s going to be spotted soon,” Darian pointed out gently.
“I know.” Celia gnawed on her bottom lip. “They need to leave.”
He reached out and covered her hand with his, his heart aching for her.
“Tomorrow,” Celia said abruptly. “I want you to come and tell them that they have to leave tomorrow.”
“You need one more night with all three of them trying to sleep on top of you?” Darian teased in an effort to keep her from being too sad.
Celia laughed, but it was hollow as she admitted, “I’m going to miss that.”
Darian slid over and put his arm around Celia’s shoulders, letting her lean against him as they watched the baby dragons play in the sunshine.
“I’ll miss them too,” he admitted.
He had never expected that he would miss the baby dragons like this, but from the first moment he’d met them, they had become part of his heart, and he couldn’t imagine what it would be like without them anymore.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, squeezing her shoulders, “and someday we’ll see them again.”
How he knew that, he wasn’t sure. But deep down, he knew. These dragons were part of his destiny.
And so was Celia.