And We Will Raise Hell

Jack had been simply minding their own business when Keshet lost her mind.

They’d been hard at work, deciphering a runic text that had fallen through the Chronoscape to find if it contained anything useful when they heard a series of worrying clinks that only got faster as the minute dragged on, accompanied by absolute pandemonium inside their skull.

Jack was not great at tuning out their dragons. They got better at it, as time went on and as more voices joined the cacophony, but feelings and voices would hit loud and fast at random times, and right now, everyone was upset.

They emerged from their study, stomped deliberately down the stairs, and were abruptly blinded by the morning sun.

“She stole the curtains,” one of the smaller dragons helpfully tattled as Jack rubbed their sensitive eyes.

Jack quickly finished their descent and swung towards the side door that would take them down an already-overgrown stone brick path to the building that most people would mistake for a barn.

“Keshet!” Jack called as they stepped inside. Up on the second floor, they heard some muffled but heavy noises, and they quickly ascended the ladder.

There she was, wriggling in a bed of thick, navy blackout curtains. She was oblivious to Jack’s presence, trying to use her wings to scoop the curtains into a fluffier configuration and her teeth to make minute adjustments. But with every change came a ripple of displeasure, a sense of something wrong that not only bothered Jack but the rest of the network of dragons.

“Keshet,” they said again. Bright blue eyes turned up to look at them, their muzzle buried in the curtains. “Care to explain?”

“I’m making a nest.”

Jack bit their tongue. “I noticed.” They leaned against the post that cordoned off Keshet’s room from the rest. “Are we expecting?”

“We have the eggs inside.”

“We do.” Jack had been keeping them warm for at least a year now. Something in them pulled when they were around the two; something that told Jack they were theirs. They just had to wait a little longer. “How were you going to get them up here? Can’t carry things in your hooves.”

She snorted up at them. “You could help.”

“They’re fine where they are.” Jack nudged the pile of curtains with their boot. “Why the curtain?”

“Didn’t have anything else.”

Jack laughed. “Oh, that’s a lie. There’s the forest; we could run to town; you could get some feathers from Chione.”

Keshet’s eyes narrowed into something flat and angry, as if they weren’t getting something obvious. “No.”

“No, of course not.” Jack crossed their arms. “Then why?”

Keshet rubbed her snout on the curtains again, then made a gesture with one of her wings as if she were sweeping away errant dust. “My eggs deserve better,” she mumbled, ears swiveled flat. “The best. I deserve the best.” She glared at them as she sat up, braced on her wings.

Jack’s face softened despite themself. “You do.”

“We,” she said, “will be the best.”

It wasn’t a new sentiment from her — pride was a shared trait — but there was something else to it, now, something demanding. A challenge.

Jack swallowed thickly. Keshet was ready for a change, for something more than the quiet life they’d been living. Jack knew. Jack felt the same restlessness and knew it well, but they’d been choking it back, carrying the discontentment in their chest, as if they had ever been made for something normal or mundane.

“You’re going to be a terrible mother,” Jack said, trying to deflect from the enormity of the feelings that were being shared between them.

“But I will have a soft nest,” she crowed and flopped into her nest. Jack rolled their eyes and tried to leave, but a leathery wing pulled them down, and Keshet put her head possessively over them, pinning them to the cushy nest. She grinned with sharp teeth. “And we will raise hell.”