Chp.30: Parents and children

In the middle of the forest a small hut made of wood and straw had been built, nothing too complicated in short. It had been a job that was completed in less than an hour. It was draughty and poorly suited to protect against the elements, but that wasn't a problem since that wasn't its purpose. And the fact that it had two entrances placed exactly on opposite sides certainly couldn't be a coincidence.

The hut was silent, but it wouldn't be for long. Soon two groups of people approached it, each from opposite sides of the other; one consisted of a pair of adult tigermen, while the other consisted of a tigerman girl and a dragon who controlled her as if it were a guard dog. When they entered the cottage, they found it was totally empty, except for a couple of tables with a strange object resting on them. The two groups were divided by a glass that prevented them from any kind of physical contact, but the impossibility of embracing didn't prevent the tigermen from shedding tears of happiness. "Stephanie, my starlight" the female tigerman said in a choked voice.

"Mom! Dad!" the little girl exclaimed putting her hands on the glass as if deep inside she was convinced she could break it, which was impossible since it was built to resist shocks. In response, the two adult tigermen each placed a hand on the glass, where their daughter's hands met. Stephanie realized she could almost feel her parents' touch.

"How are you?" her father asked in a warm voice, sporting a smile. "Are they treating you well? Are you eating right?"

"Yes, yes!" Stephanie smiled back. "And you? Are you all right? How are things in the village?"

"Oh, things in the village are… good. The situation is slowly improving" her mother answered; for a moment she seemed uncertain whether to continue or not, but then she decided she didn't want to hide the truth from her daughter. "Your dad got sick a couple weeks ago"

Stephanie froze. "What?"

"Don't worry! I'm completely healed now!" her father told her, then flashed his pecs and did some silly arm movements. "See for yourself! I've never been more energetic than this! Sure, I lost a few muscles due to the fever, but don't worry, I'll be back in shape in no time! A disease that can defeat this great hunk of a man that your mother married hasn't still arise!"

Stephanie didn't laugh at her father's joke, even though it was funny enough; rather, she carefully scanned her father's body as if looking for any sign that he was ill. Luckily it didn't seem like her father was trying to reassure her and that he was actually fine. Suddenly the dragon (who had barely managed to get her head through the door) said: "Don't worry, they're telling the truth. I smelled them on our way here, they're both as healthy as you are"

Finally, the smile returned to Stephanie's face. "Thank you, Miss Maleficial" she said. After weeks of living with dragons, she knew perfectly well that they could smell people's health, so she had no more doubts now.

Maleficial let out a satisfied snort. She was glad to see Stephanie smile again. She barely looked up at the little girl's parents, who seemed pleased that she had reassured her.

What was happening was Haku's latest stunt to get even more gratitude and bring the villagers closer to the dragons. If they had come to thank him just because he had invented a way for healthy and sick people to talk to each other, why not make more use of that invention? Why not take it to the next level? As he had seen many times before, the bond between newcomers and their children was extremely strong; and while they had agreed to let them go and live at the dragon cave to protect them, they were not happy about the separation. Therefore, since he already had a way to prevent healthy and sick people from touching each other, why not also use it to allow parents and children to meet? This way, the amount of gratitude he would get would be higher… and also, since their children would have to be accompanied by one of his siblings for safety reasons, the presence of dragons would be constant and therefore people would get more used to them. Furthermore, their mere presence would have reminded the parents of the situation and would have led them to ask more questions of their children about how they were treated, and after they told them how kind the dragons were, the parents couldn't help but thank them. It was a perfect system that would go a long way in changing the mentality of the village people.

That plan had proved successful. Before, every now and then there had been some children who, moved by nostalgia, had tried to leave... and even more parents who, moved by some desperate frenzy, had tried to approach the cave to see their children again, and who had obviously been immediately removed by the dragons. This obviously wasn't good for their reputation... but now, the situation was reversed: parents who wanted to meet their children only had to submit their request to Zamor, who then established the time and day of the meeting by drawing lots. This had greatly improved the morale of the whole village... and of course Haku had benefited from it in every possible way. Now people had become much more malleable and open towards dragons. There was still a lot of hostility, but it was slowly starting to wane. Small successes were the way to the ultimate big success: Haku was sure of it. Some of his siblings didn't really appreciate him using the kids like that, but in the end he was just making them and their parents happy, so it was a win-win situation where nobody lost out, so they had turned a blind eye and accepted that situation. After all, even if there were ulterior motives, if everyone was happy why complain? The important thing was that nobody got hurt, the rest didn't count. And then it was also convenient for them that people change their mentality towards them, so in fact they too had an advantage.

"Tell me, what are you doing here?" Stephanie's mom asked her daughter. "How do you spend your days? Do you enjoy yourself?"

"Oh yes!" the little girl replied with a smile. "It's hilarious! Mister Darbi is always inventing new games for us to play. The other day he tied a bunch of grass to his tail and we had to catch him! And the day before that we were playing catch! And sometimes Mister Darbi lets us jump on his belly; he's so funny and comical!"

His two parents looked at each other doubtfully; the words 'funny' and 'comical' were certainly not epithets that would have applied to a dragon. Dragons were known to be ferocious, cruel, destructive, constantly hungry, devourers of all things, deceptive, territorial, sometimes lazy and indolent, but absolutely no fun. They looked at Maleficial, who blushed slightly. "My brother… has a talent for entertaining children. We're not all like that" she said feeling a little embarrassed for Darbi. After all, it was quite humiliating for dragons to bare their bellies, and even though she knew the rules were different for newcomers, she couldn't help but feel uneasy to hear that her brother had behaved in such a sleazy way.

"That's not true! Miss Maleficial is funny too!" Stephanie exclaimed. "She always tells us beautiful stories! They are stories of beautiful princesses and brave princes, or of ordinary people who have become strong, and there are also dragons who help the heroes, even if sometimes they are also evil..."

In the stories Maleficial told the kids, the protagonists were always the newcomers for obvious reasons, but often she would add a dragon or two as sidekicks. Sometimes the dragon played the role of villain, but he was always either a secondary villain who then redeemed himself or he was the main villain but he had a good counterpart who eventually managed to defeat him. While Maleficial had no problem imagining a dragon as a villain alone, he didn't think it was a good idea to use that opening for a children's story. After all, making new generations more open to the presence of dragons was one of their goals, so Maleficial thought to use her stories to show that dragons, just like newcomers, could be both good and evil, but that they didn't just have evil natures.

"And then there's also Miss Teramon! She cooks really well and is always careful that we eat everything! And Miss Finiar sings very well, I would listen to her for hours. Miss Kialandì, on the other hand, is often elusive, many times she ran away over a rock or a tree because she didn't like us to touch her..." Stephanie continued to list all the experiences she had lived together with the dragons for almost ten minutes, and her parents listened very interested. Most of those experiences were very positive, and they were happy to know that their daughter had settled in so well and was having so much fun. Even if sometimes they almost found it hard to believe her... after all, where had you ever heard of a dragon fleeing up a tree to prevent children from touching it? But their daughter seemed really sincere when she said those things, so as absurd as some things seemed they decided to believe her.

That family reunion continued for half an hour, but then Maleficial intervened: "I'm sorry to interrupt you, but the time is up. Someone else will arrive soon, so I kindly ask you to leave the place... please"

Stephanie looked at her parents with a sad look. All three were sorry to have to leave, but deep down they knew that the time available was limited. They weren't the only ones after all who had the right to meet again, and there was a long list of people behind them, so they couldn't act selfish and ask to stay longer. "Okay. Bye mom, bye dad" Stephanie said. "See you soon... and don't get sick"

"Don't worry, I already had that experience once, I won't make the same mistake. And your mother is smarter than me, she sure won't" his father replied with a jovial smile, speaking as if he could actually decide whether to get sick or not.

"We'll be fine" her mother reassured her. "You just have to think about staying here and having fun. You don't have to be afraid for us, we won't take any risks"

Stephanie nodded, wishing she could at least hug her parents once, but she knew it wasn't possible because of the glass separating them, so she just smiled and walked back out to where Maleficial was waiting to take her back to the cave. Before the two could leave, however, Stephanie's mother called the dragon: "Ehm, miss... thank you. For everything that you are doing"

Maleficial looked at the two parents. She knew they almost certainly didn't trust her or the rest of her family completely, but just the fact that they thanked her was a step forward for her. From what Darbi had told him, those same parents only a few months earlier had taken her brother away from their daughter after he had only helped her. So the fact that they were so kind now meant that they were really succeeding in changing the mentality of the people in the village, even if only a little. "There's no need to thank me. It's my duty" she replied with a slight smile before walking away.

Meanwhile, on a nearby hill, a tigerman and a dragon were sitting and observing the scene. The dragon was holding a communication device that was probably connected to those in the cabin, thanks to which they had heard the whole conversation. "So, Tzegorn? Convinced now?" he asked.

The tigerman nodded. "Yes, Darbi. Thanks for the help" he replied, albeit with some annoyance in his voice. He had come there with Darbi's help with the excuse that he wanted to personally verify that Haku wasn't using that situation to commit illegal acts, and the dragon had been happy to help him; in reality Tzegorn hoped to find something to use against Haku, but unfortunately this wasn't the case. He had asked for Darbi's help because he knew he would never be able to get close without the dragons noticing him and he had seemed the most available of the family. "Well, I've checked that everything is fine. Now I'd better go back to the village. Zamor and your brother might need me"

"Right now they are at the lake. You will find them there" Darbi told him.

"How do you know? Oh right, stupid question… dragon hearing? Or maybe smell?" Tzegorn asked.

"Oh, no, Haku just told me earlier that he wanted to take Zamor to the lake for something!" Darbi answered, then pointed to his ears. "We're too far away from them now. I can't hear them unless they scream"

"Really? I thought dragons could hear things tens of kilometers away" Tzegorn said. At that moment they were only three and a half kilometers away from the village.

"It's like that when we're adults" Darbi replied. "We're too young now. We can clearly hear things up to two miles away, but beyond that the sounds become too dull to recognize unless they're particularly loud. Like when Zamor yelled for my brother after that lionman died of the disease"

"Oh, I see. Very interesting" Tzegorn said, narrowing his lids slightly. "You really can learn new things every day..."