Chapter 11 #3
“I brought some cake. Pras took the book with him through the door. All of it. I think the other dragon is gone too or at least he’s someone else’s problem now. Sermon’s gone downtown with Bernard to pick up some stuff. So I thought I’d check on you. If you’re busy, I can come back later.”
“He can have cake,” Jade yawned.
“How do you feel about working in social media again?” I asked Gaia.
“Me?” she huffed as she sat down in the grass with a plate of wrapped cake in her lap. “I gave that up years ago. Too many trolls and ads. It’s gotten better or so they say but everyone wants to sell you something.”
I waited for Jade to bite me or to tell me to mind my own business as I explained the problem to Gaia. Halfway through my explanation the smaller lion, I thought his name was Claw, shifted back into his human form and helped fill in the details about everything they’d done so far.
“The internet is a weird place,” Gaia wrinkled her nose. “But also, if you find some of them and beat them up, it won’t help because then the others will feel justified that you’re the big bad. I think things like this should go under terrorism charges, but no one asked me.”
I rubbed Jade’s back. Gaia was probably right. Short of hunting down and killing every last person who left a nasty comment there probably wasn’t much we could do about it.
“Anyone who’s said anything threatening here has been talked to by Ty or Feral,” Claw said. “Most of it doesn’t even come from the GGB.”
“Why do people care so much?” Gaia asked.
“Because it’s the internet and everyone is entitled,” Claw shrugged.
“But this can’t go on forever,” I said.
“Some people have suggested that Jade should close Flight School for a while,” Claw said.
“I’m not letting them win,” Jade said. “Those kids deserve to have somewhere to go and enjoy themselves just as much as other kids.”
“We have them in London,” Gaia said. “They’ll have signs like ‘Flyers Only.’ It’s a safety regulation thing.”
“This isn’t London,” Claw said.
“I don’t know if that’s an insult or not,” Gaia blinked.
“It’s neither,” Claw shrugged.
“I’ll start screening comments if you want,” I whispered to Jade who didn’t answer.
Somehow in the midst of the conversation, he’d fallen asleep.
My scales were definitely going to chafe if he stayed out long, but what was I going to do?
Holding him close was the best thing that had happened to me in decades.
Eventually I dozed off too. I wasn’t sure what the others’ plans were, but I wasn’t going to let go of Jade.
While I slept, I dreamt of being a little kid again.
I was in my scratchy little school uniform holding my lunch box handle with both hands.
Mum wasn’t late but I was impatient. I had things to ask her about.
“Mum, the kids said I didn’t have a dad.”
“Well, you do have a sire,” she said. “But he’s not with us.”
“He died?” I asked, because that made the most sense.
I must’ve been five or six because something very similar happened in my first year of school.
Not everyone had a mom and a dad but most of the kids in my class had at least two parents.
I only had Mum. It had never occurred to me that I should have anyone else.
I had Mum and she had me. We had some friends and we flew to lots of places.
“No, he’s not dead. Mummy wanted you so badly that she found someone to help her make you.
We went to the doctor and did some tests to make sure you’d get big and strong.
Then we went to the judge, and we signed some papers that I wouldn’t ask him for help and that he could never come and take you from me. ”
“He didn’t want me?” I asked.
The blood ran from Mum’s face. It was the palest I’d ever seen my mother.
“Mummy wanted you very much,” she said, answering in that way adults do to avoid answering their children’s uncomfortable questions. “I planned everything out for you and now you’re here with me.”
I would go on to ask her a few more times over the years, but by the time my age hit double-digits I dropped it.
I tried looking up the court records years later, but they were sealed.
By sixteen I realized whoever he was, he really didn’t want anything to do with me.
No wonder it hurt so much when Jade walked away from me.
“Shhh…” my dragon whispered into my thoughts. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
I blinked my eyes open to bright afternoon sun. Gaia and the lions were gone, and I lay half-dried in the sun with Jade still napping on top of me like I was a tree branch.
Mum must’ve gone far away to find someone to sire me because hatchlings recognize their parents if they come into close contact with them. To ensure that never happened she probably had to leave the territory.
“Don’t start wondering about this again,” my dragon said. “We have Jade now. He’ll be enough.”
I let out a long, slow breath and tried to fall back asleep. Why go digging up those things now? It would only lead to disappointment. I’d talked to other ‘donor conceived people’ over the years and a lot of them had run into the same roadblocks.