Memory Bonds

It was Wednesday. The start of Harmoni's work week. She came into the spa before it opened. Udo had only ever asked her to work the afternoon shift once.

It was Ferren's day off, so that was nice. Just her, Fleck, Udo, and Aqua. Then Udo went out to get soap supplies.

Aqua grumbled about that a bit. She fancied she was better at getting supplies than Udo.

"But I have to stay, and help our customers," Aqua said, tilting her head back and forth. "Even if Udo learned to understand our language perfectly, dragons couldn't understand him."

Fleck paused. "Wait," he said, with a frown. "Can riders learn Draconish?"

"I mean they could try, the same way we could try to understand Standard. But some differences are hard for them to parse out. And never mind the scent part of the language."

That was fair. A lot of the sounds the rider species made sounded similar to him, and sometimes when he heard differences, that turned out to be tone, not words.

Fleck and Aqua were interrupted from the, genuinely interesting, conversation when the bell up front rang.

Speaking of languages, the rider who entered seemed to only know Gnomish. If she knew Standard, she certainly wasn't using it.

But Harmoni was surprised to realize she understood a word or two as the gnome looked over the brochure and talked, either to herself or to her dragon. It was sort of like Elvish, but not. Like if you took a sappy romance song, and turned it into rock.

Luckily, it was more important that they could understand the dragon.

The one that had come in with the gnome was bright red, like a ruby. She had orange eyes and some trailing orange hair. Her body was snake-like, with four relatively small legs. It was a bit like Aqua, but without any aquatic traits. (The webbing was not there.)

Light flashed across the dragon's eyes, like someone had thrown a spotlight across them. She turned to Harmoni, glared, and took a step forward.

Both Aqua and Fleck slid between them. Aqua more placating, Fleck stomping his feet again. Even the gnome raised her hands in a stopping motion.

"No need for that," Aqua said. "She's one of us. She's good."

Ah. Of course. All the dragons could smell the magic on Harmoni. This was just the first time one of them had acted on it.

Because it didn't mean anything on its own. And if she was in this store, she either wasn't evil, or you probably shouldn't be a costumer. This dragon was just being rude. And she seemed to know it, because she pulled her head back closer to her feet.

With a derisive snort.

"Of course," she said. "I wasn't going to do anything untoward."

Ha. She was probably embarrassed.

Harmoni took a deep breath. That was enough standing there feeling sorry for herself. And Fleck had done enough back talk too. She should get to work.

She turned around and headed for the open space out back. She had to make sure any water that spilled out there was actually draining, and not just pooling into gross sandy puddles. Especially with more rain clouds rolling in, now was not the time for water to build up.

~~~

The next customer pair included a dwarf rider with dark skin, and a thick black beard. Cembra was right. The braids in his beard were clearly different than the zig-zagging pattern on Cembra's head. So not part of the same group.

The dragon that came in was wider than he was long. He was large, but not particularly tall. He was gold, about the same shade was Fleck and Glimmer. But his belly and eyes were black.

'A relative?' Harmoni asked Fleck.

She hadn't seen a gold dragon who wasn't.

Fleck wouldn't know. He was raised in the creche. Many baby dragons lived and grew up in the same cavern together, with a few adults to see to them. They were so good at it, even dragons with living parents spent a lot of time in the creche. And Fleck's parents were dead. And part of the reason he and his siblings were so close was because Glimmer made sure they were.

It wasn't like family was unimportant. The dragons with parents loved them. Some of them couldn't shut up about them. And he'd been told Glimmer and Glow were his sisters, so clearly the adults considered that important to know.

But, well, it wasn't the same as the riders. At least, not some of them. They didn't live in individual spaces away from anyone not related to them. And most dragons didn't know their extended family.

Fleck looked at the black and gold dragon.

Still, it might be nice to know. He had his sisters, and Harmoni, and Aqua. Oh. And Moon. It might be nice to know a man some time.

~~~

Fleck watched Harmoni scale up a pipe to the roof with a mixture of awe and fear. He was impressed she could climb so well. If Fleck tried that, either his claws would poke holes in the gutter pipe, or his weight would make it fall off the wall.

On the other hand, he was worried the same thing would happen to her, especially as she reached the roof, and had to vault onto it. Udo's roof was metal, ran at a slant, and there was no wall on one side.

'Be careful,' he urged.

'Don't be paranoid,' Harmoni scolded.

Compared to everything else she'd done since waking up with amnesia, this was nothing.

'I think we've got different ideas about what's nothing.'

Harmoni had this. She swung a leg onto the roof, moved an arm further up, and dragged herself on.

Once that was done, she carefully got to her feet. She stood slowly, stooped with her arms spread out, until she was confident she wasn't going to go rolling down the slope. She scanned the roof.

There! In the corner, at the bottom of the slope, a frisbee had gotten stuck on the gutter.

A boy and his dragon, even younger than Fleck, had tossed it up there on accident. Harmoni was pretty sure the dragon was related to one of their customers, waiting for her to finish.

Of course Harmoni would've offered to help anyway.

She shuffled towards the frisbee, more sliding across the roof than stepping. She'd just reached down to grab it when the wind picked up. Harmoni closed her eyes against the sand, wobbled, and suddenly her feet weren't on solid ground.

She spun through open air for a moment, feeling herself flip. She made a little noise, but didn't have time to scream before teeth sank into the collar of her shirt, and she stopped.

Fleck had been coming around the side of the building. He let out a huff of relief to see Aqua up on her hind legs, holding Harmoni near the roof in her jaws.

'Well I'm glad one of us can see.'

Harmoni still had sand in her eyes. She started rubbing as Aqua lowered her to the ground.

"That was a dangerous thing to do," Aqua pointed out. "Why didn't you go for help? I can fly you know."

"I didn't want to be a bother." Harmoni could tell Aqua was skeptical even without Fleck's help. She further defended herself. "You were busy."

Aqua had more to do than she did, after all.

Aqua shook her head. It seemed sort of pitying. Fleck wasn't sure how he felt about that.

"We're not that busy. You could've at least let one of us know what you were doing."

"I'm not mad at you," Aqua elaborated. Fleck didn't think she needed to. There was no hostility in her voice at all. But clearly, she wanted to play it safe. "I just think you can rely on other people."

~~~

Harmoni sat at the front desk of the spa. Fleck sat ON the front desk of the spa. He was staring out at the pools, sort of pouting.

It was raining outside. It seemed it really did rain more this half of the year.

She’d barely seen the dry part of the year. The wet part was pretty short. She could properly appreciate the dry part soon. Sort of.

It sounded like Fleck preferred it when it was hot and sunny and dry.

‘Yes.’

“Hey Harmoni! Hey Fleck!”

Fleck’s head shot off the desk as he swiveled towards the door.

Harmoni’s gaze wasn’t far behind. Cooper had walked in. He was smiling widely, carrying Moon. He had her cradled in the arm with a metal exoskeleton. That left the fully flesh hand free to stroke her, like she was a particularly silver cat.

“Cooper.” It could be a greeting, but it was really more of an observation. Harmoni was surprised.

Fleck tilted his head. “What are you doing here?”

“Spa day!” Moon cheered, bouncing a little in Cooper’s arm.

His strength in that arm was impressive.

Cooper nodded along. “We’ve saved a bit of money.” He laughed a little sheepishly. “Some of it . . . was from betting on the fights.” Moon nudged him. “But either way, we’ve got enough to Moon to take a bath. Figured I’d treat her. Thanks to you two, I know about this place.”

Harmoni looked at the spa. Udo and Aqua were further down, talking to a dragon costumer and his rider.

Harmoni had never worked with customers before. She cleaned, took inventory, and was learning how to make soap from Udo. Sometimes Fleck talked to the guests, as he was the dragon. But they were separate when that happened.

But today Udo had asked her to watch the desk. And was Cooper really a customer?

No.

He was a friend.

And Moon was the customer.

Harmoni was surprised. She was so taken aback by the odd, but correct, logic, she started laughing. She covered her mouth, but it didn’t help, giggles escaping between her fingers.

Fleck grinned. Cooper and Moon looked pretty confused. He would fill them in. Maybe.