Barnabas Greenbloom twirled the cord attached to the phone between his fingers as he waited for his wife to pick up on the other side. Biting down on his lip a little harder with each ring of the phone, he thought to just how he was going to word this. He couldn't think too hard on that for seconds later his wife answered.
"Hello?"
"Vita, love!...Darling..."
"Barnabas, what did you do?" Vita asked without skipping a beat.
"Um well, Darling, it's not what I did...More or less what I'm probably going to do before you meet me." He said with a slightly awkward laugh near the end of his sentence. He could just feel the growing glare on the other side of the line.
"Barnabas if you even think about bring another fairy into my home, I want to remind you how big of a mess it made the last time!"
"Vita, I don't want to bring a fairy home...What I want to bring home is...bigger..."
The sigh on the other side just spoke a thousand words.
"Barnabas, we've talked about this, you cannot bring home a baby dwarf, they bite and they belong in the mountains."
"No, No darling, not a dwarf, Vita...Now before you say no you must hear me out...I was thinking of adopting a small...child..."
There was nothing on the other line, pure unadulterated silence.
"Darling? You still there?" Barnabas asked after a couple of harsh seconds of the unbearable silence.
"A-A child? Barnabas...did I really just hear you right? You want to adopt a child?...Why? I mean you've never wanted to adopt before, and if I even so much as bring up as wanting as second child you always say-"
"Vita, please just hear me out! I know what I've said about having another child it's just...Well, this child isn't that much older from Guinevere, he's really polite and he really doesn't have a place to call home...He's traveling..." The professor breathed out, as he started to twist the cord even more violently between his fingers.
"Him? It's a boy? A homeless boy? Barnabas...What do you even know about this child?"
With a heavily sigh, the professor bit down on his lip and stopped twirling the cord.
"Well, Darling, he has no family to speak off, he's a nice boy, polite, and the dragon rider..."
"What did you just say?" Vita asked, obviously surprised by the last comment.
"Vita...He's the dragon rider... I am not making this up, I met the dragon up close. darling...We are talking about the real dragon rider, just a kid. I know this is probably a awful thing to say, but, darling, we could adopt the dragon rider...imagine it."
There was another pause on the other side as his wife stood there thinking heavily on what her husband just said.
"...Love...We have to think about this, and I mean really think about this...It coast so much to adopt..."
"Yes...But he's the dragon rider..."
"Good point..."
"Vita?"
"Yes, Love?"
"I sold you at dragon rider, didn't I?"
"...Yes..."
Barnabas had the biggest smile on his face and silently cheered.
"Barnabas, I can hear you clapping." He heard Vita on the other side, straightening up, he coughed and put the phone back up to his ear.
"Why darling, I don't know what you mean..."
"Right...Look, I'd still like to talk about this a bit more, are you planning on meeting him again?"
"Yes, at the monastery near the Himalayas, you can meet the rider, the dragon,...Vita, there's a Brownie with them."
"REALLY?!" Vita yelped out happily, but quickly regained herself. Barnabas heard her cough and then, as calmly as she could muster, she muttered a soft. "But what about Guinevere? She still has school."
"Oh, she could miss a couple of days. I mean she should meet her new brother."
"Barnabas! Stop it! And I mean this, don't you dare tell that boy he can live us until I had a chance to get to know him!"
"...He's the dragon rider!"
"BARNABAS!"
"Ok...Ok...I swear. I won't tell him a thing."
"Good. So...Tell me about the Brownie!"
With a happy chuckle, Barnabas told his wife all about Sorrel and Firedrake, as he talked to her, he knew he had already won the battle between if Benjamin could live with them or not. Right before it was time for them to say their goodbye's, Vita asked one last question.
"Darling, I just realized...You never gave me his name..."
"Oh, how foolish of me. Benjamin, his name is Benjamin."