Tungsten paced back and forth, back and forth. Her mother had always told her it was an ugly habit, one more befitting of a shrew than a dragon. Right now though, she couldn’t bear to sit still. She felt more like a shrew than a dragon, waiting for a house guest with such impatience. Logically speaking, she should have been calm. She was a beast, ancient and terrible. She could crack deer’s skulls in her jaws. She was the kind of creature ordinary people had nightmares about. Those same ordinary people had guests all the time, and were not nervous at all. That was part of the issue though. Tungsten was not an ordinary person any more than she was a shrew, and she had never had anyone over to her home before. She knew some dragons liked to gather kobolds, or even goblins, to serve them, but she had always prioritized privacy over luxury.
Now though, she could have done with some servant, to help her polish her hoard. When in her own company it had never concerned her that much of her silverware was tarnished, her stalactites overgrown. When she tried to imagine it through Pelly’s eyes though, she had been thrust into a fit of polishing and trimming. Somehow she had been both panicked to get it done in time and certain that no matter how hard she worked the cave would still be a complete disgrace by the end of it. In the end she had done it, though, with effort and a fluttering heart, and now all that was left was waiting for Pelly to arrive. Tungsten had never been good at waiting, but with the help of one of her hoard’s grandfather clocks, she knew she had done it well enough. It was 12:34 PM, precisely 34 minutes after Pelly had been supposed to arrive. Tungsten had considered that she was dead, but immediately laughed at the horrible thought. Pelly might not have been a dragon, but she was nothing as easily killed as a shrew. She was a witch, not ancient but still old, and not terrible but still powerful.
Then her well-trained predator ears picked up on the sound of—was that panting? Definitely a disruption in the mountain air. She stopped her pacing and stood still as one of her hoard’s seven statues. Was it just an imagining? No! It was real! She nearly scurried outside of her cave, nearly bowled Pelly over, but managed to contain herself enough to wait at the entrance. The old woman grinned at her through dentures from atop her steed, not a broom like witches had ridden back in Tungsten’s day, but her modern vacuum cleaner.
“Good afternoon Tungsten! I’m so sorry I’m late. Flying up a mountain is harder on these old bones than I thought it would be. My soul is too young is the problem, I forget the age of the rest of me.”
Tungsten rumbled in the back of her throat. Dragons, as a general rule, only smile as a social cue for others who do so more frequently. When dragons have true joy to express, they do it through rumbling growls. She ordinarily wouldn’t, not in front of a human, but she knew Pelly wouldn’t be intimidated.
“Oh, don’t waste our visit on apologies, just come inside already! I’ve seen your hut too many times for you not to see my cave.”
Pelly parked her broom outside and Tungsten led her in. All the statues were free of cobwebs, the grandfather clocks were moving in unison, and the silverware glimmered in the firelight of the candles Tungsten had lit with her own fire for the occasion. A table was set and laid with venison, one of the few foods both dragons and human witches could eat. Tungsten’s fine brass and copper wasn’t strewn across the floor but collected into an impressive mound.
For a visit they had planned only three days ago, Tungsten thought she had done a good job preparing. Pelly was a witch, though, and witches often see things differently than other people. They notice things you would rather they didn’t. Pelly herself had spent a few years in her thirties being a private detective and excelled at it. So of course, she had to notice something Tungsten hadn’t been thinking about and all.
“Why my dear, what a lovely and peculiar rock collection you have here! Wherever did you get it?”
Tungsten’s eyes bulged out. She wasn’t sure she even could explain the rock collection, even if she wanted to desperately, and she didn’t know if she did. To be fair to Pelly, it was a peculiar rock collection. The rocks were not smooth, or shiny, or any of the other characteristics a dragon appreciated in their hoards. Some were large enough to fit in a claw, while others were more like pebbles. Tungsten considered just refusing to say anything—she knew Pelly would understand. At heart, though, Tungsten really was a dragon. And dragons are honest beasts. She decided to give a brief summary.
“When I was young, my mother owned this cave and some of the things now inside it. She was quite ancient indeed when she had us, we were her last clutch, you see. She knew she would give up on being a dragon soon, and become stars instead, and she could not bear to have the cave get overtaken by nature, as is common practice. She decided she would give it to one of us, but instead of just choosing via coin flip as is common practice among dragon inheritance, she decided to hold a contest. She could never abide by people getting things without earning them.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt, but…Had she done anything to earn becoming stars rather than just dying like a normal person?”
Tungsten was so surprised by this question she almost laughed even though there was nothing funny about it, “No, I suppose she hadn’t, unless you count living a very long time. She always was a bit of a hypocrite.”
“Most people are. Please though, go on, what happened next?”
“She had us go through many trials to determine who would inherit her possessions. The trials were dangerous and unpleasant to the point that many of us didn’t even want the cave anymore.”
“Did they quit then? How many siblings did you have in the first place?”
The problem with telling stories to a former detective, Tungsten mused, is they can’t let anything be vague. They chase after the details as if they are clues for how to solve a problem, even when the problem has been put to rest long ago.
“Ordinarily dragon clutches have around twenty eggs, but as my mother was getting on in years, my clutch had only fourteen. None of us quit, though there was certainly talk of wanting to.”
“Why not?”
Indeed, why not? This was not a question Tungsten had spent a great deal of time thinking about. The past belonged in the past, not her waking thoughts. It was not a hard question, the answer came simply, but she didn’t share it immediately. It seemed such a childish motive that she thought she could dig into her memories in search of something more rational. Unfortunately, Tungsten and her siblings had been children, a group of people quite susceptible to childishness.
“I can’t say for certain about the others, but for me it was never a serious possibility, just a dream. I thought I couldn’t bow out because I hated my mother and wanted to win just to spite her. My siblings likely felt the same. Perhaps if I had quit, that idea would have been broken, and the whole contest would have fallen apart…”
Tungsten watched her friend wait patiently for her to continue the story. She didn’t quite want to, but she didn’t want to stop either.
“The cave used to be much larger than it is now, with a long series of unexplored catacombs beneath it. I think I was eleven when my mother sent us down there, and told us we could only return when we found something truly impressive. The one who brought the least great thing back would fall out of the competition. Dragons are meant to fly but we went down, down, down. The catacombs were unstable and ended up collapsing atop all of my siblings. I only survived due to luck.
“I took some of the rocks that killed them back to her and demanded she leave my cave. As I was the only one who survived, I won by default, you see. I couldn’t bear to see her anymore, not after she had doomed my siblings with her petty competitions. She was too frail to move very quickly by this point, but she did as I demanded. I don’t know if her papery wings ever really managed to get her high enough to let her become stars…”
Pelly stared at Tungsten in abject horror. Humans could be quite emotional creatures, even when it came to things they had never actually experienced. Tungsten felt bad for her—it must be hard to live with so much emotion inside such a small body.
“This was centuries ago,” Tungsten reminded her friend, though her throat felt raw. She let out a trickle of fire into the air in an attempt to cook it.
“Of course.” Pelly nodded. “But when we met, one of the first things you told me was that dragons have excellent memories.”
Tungsten could not argue against this, in part because her attempt at cooking her throat had only left it feeling dry and incapable of speech.
“We need not say more of it if you’d prefer not to, you know my snooping days are far behind me. For me, once you do a hobby of yours professionally, even if you quit, the hobby is never as fun afterward. It’s just too caught up in ideas of work. Sometimes, when people are paying you they seem to think it’s fine to treat you terribly. It couldn’t help that the people who hired me had usually suffered some kind of injustice, or at least believed they had.”
Pelly was lying, Tungsten could see it in those watery and oddly expressive human eyes of hers. She truly wanted to hear anything and everything about Tungsten’s life. It wasn’t out of a desire to snoop like a detective or hoard knowledge like some dragons did. Pelly just liked learning about the things she cared about, and she cared about Tungsten. Despite this, she was giving Tungsten an easy out, a reason to chatter on about detective work over venison and leave the past in the catacombs. Tungsten was immensely grateful for this, but it got her wondering something.
“You know my friend—” Dragon voices do not shake, but if they did, she thought hers would have. “I live in a cave that is also a tomb. I do not believe in ghosts, which makes me entirely alone here. I spend most of my time hunting prey in the brisk mountain air and tracking down new additions to my hoard. I cannot hibernate, but when I get truly bored I often simply slumber. My life is not an unhappy one, but nor is it entirely thrilling. You are the first friend I have had in a very long time.”
“Human long or dragon long?”
“Dragon long. You, on the other hand, belong to a coven of other witches who you have known for ages. You run a thriving potion business. You play the piano and the electric guitar. Your life is a very full one as it is. Why did you seek to add more to it and befriend me?”
For a moment Pelly stood silent, and Tungsten realized that perhaps some of her friend’s witchy skill at noticing things others would rather you didn’t had rubbed off on her. Pelly moved to sit in the ornate human oval-backed chair. Humans always made the best furniture. Tungsten ordinarily didn’t bother with the stuff but for this meal she had procured a large chair for herself made by Everest giants which she could more or less comfortably curl up on. It made the table look comically small in comparison, but it was made of strong wood, strong enough for Tungsten to rest her chin on it while Pelly gathered words.
“I wasn’t, really. Looking for more in my life, I mean. In fact, I think my coven had me feeling somewhat overwhelmed. Odd to hear, I know, but true. Witch covens are so very close. When we are together we join hands and dance under the moonlight in perfect step with each other, as if we are one animal. This was very well and good back in the day, when witches had to get on a broom and fly to a rendezvous spot to gossip and perform rituals. Now though? Even over great distances, the Internet now allows us to almost be in the same room at the same time all the time.
Tungsten nodded, “My mountain does not have very good wifi, but from what I have seen of the internet I think I understand what you mean. Humans have short lives and no wings, so you have had to work very hard to be able to communicate efficiently when you are far away from each other. Now the efficiency has shrunk the world for you.”
“I am glad to have my covenmates in my life, but when I am with them too much it sometimes feels as if that life is not truly mine. When you first flew overhead my hut, I was standing on the porch by myself, trying to feel like myself and failing. When I started talking to you, though, someone with scales where I had skin, I found I was able to map out some of who I was in my differences with you.”
Tungsten nodded again with the serene expression she put on when she didn’t know what else to do. Even back when she had living siblings, she had never been particularly close with them. Some of her clutchmates had gathered together to hoard secrets or promises, but not Tungsten. When she was young she sought only to soar and swim and gallop. To know the land and let it know her. She would leave scratches in the earth and choose a perfect acorn, without a single hole or hint of green, to carry away with her.
Her mother hoarded clocks and silverware, her siblings hoarded secrets and promises, but Tungsten hoarded only memories. Memories were the patchwork makings of a person. If there was one problem Tungsten never had, it was being unable to tell who she was. Sometimes it seemed that was all she knew.
“We really are very different, aren’t we? My family was taken away forever and yours was all too within reach.”
“Oh dear, Tungsten, I am so sorry. I didn’t think how my complaints would sound to you but obviously that was a terribly petty problem to bring up to someone who—”
“No.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Sometimes you humans take things and extrapolate them out entirely too much. I did not mean to say I was offended by you discussing your problems. I asked you to do so. I was just musing on our problems and how we help balance each other out.”
“Oh. Good,” Pelly cut a bite of venison, stabbed into it with her fork, then pointed it at Tungsten. “Though I will say that from a human perspective dragons are entirely too blunt.”
“Too blunt?” Tungsten teased. “As opposed to what, making people navigate a veritable maze of euphemisms and analogies just to figure out what the matter is?” Tungsten began to cut her own meat.
Pelly swallowed her bite. “My friend, you are an excellent chef. Your way of speaking, however, is liable to hurt someone’s feelings one day. Once I asked you what I thought of my new shoes, do you remember what you said?”
She quickly jammed even more food into her mouth. Witches are not allowed to eat farmed meat, and Pelly had never been particularly interested in hunting, so this was a rarity for her. Tungsten used to wonder how they got enough protein, but witches had no rule against farmed nuts, so she frequently saw her eating peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
“That they were my least favorite color,” Tungsten responded. “I really do not understand your enjoyment of neon green. Every time I glance at your feet they make me feel exhausted.”
Venison hit her tongue, it really was well made, though a bit cooler than it should have been, what with Pelly’s lateness.
“That’s the kind of statement that would make some humans think you didn’t like them and wanted to make them feel bad.”
“But you asked! What would I have been supposed to do???”
“Lie, most likely. Say that you liked them, or come up with an inoffensive and vague statement about how they look comfortable.”
“That sounds incredibly exhausting.”
“It can be, yes. I imagine so can collecting huge piles of shiny objects, but you still find it worthwhile, yes?”
“I suppose I do, though you have to remember. When it comes to hoards, think quality over quantity. Otherwise you’re just a common magpie.”
“That’s good to know, Tungsten.”
For a moment they sat in silence except for the scraping of forks against plates.
“Pelly?”
“Yes?”
“I wish I had known you when I was young. I think I would have made better choices if I had.”
“In what way?”
“If there had been someone I cared about outside of my family and it’s terrible competition, maybe I really would have just left.”
“That would have been nice. Perhaps I never would have had an existential crisis about my own personhood. Of course, everything just as easily could have gone terribly wrong in a different way. I only ever started being a detective because I couldn’t control my magic very well when I was young. Maybe I would have tried to show you a spell and exploded us both in the process.”
“Well, the past is unchangeable, so I suppose it doesn’t matter which way things would have gone. At the very least, I am glad I have you now.”
“Likewise.”
Tungsten rested her chin on the table. Somehow, with Pelly’s face lit by the candlelight, the cave felt different than usual. She wasn’t entirely sure why.
“Tungsten?”
“Yes?”
“It took me a long while to get up here. Now that I have been lulled into relaxation by this meal, I’m unsure if I’ll be able to get down again tonight. Would you mind if I slept in your home?”
Home. Yes, that was the word she had been looking for. With Pelly here this place felt like a home.
“Of course you can, at this point you’re basically family.”
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