Sitting at the circular wooden dinner table, Shane surprised even himself by taking his sweet time with his spaghetti rather than passionately inhaling them. Mostly ignoring the rest of the family, the confused young man could only tentatively pick and poke at the noodles with a fork and idly roll a meatball around the plate like a toy. Making the behavior especially rude, it was no secret that the most of the other three souls at the table were all waiting patiently for an attempt at eye contact with the boy, if only he would just look up. It wasn't that Shane didn't notice them; rather, he was declining their nonverbal calls for his attention in favor of staying lost in his own head. The only one who could not bring himself to try and get through to Shane was Ali, who had resigned himself to silently yet intently consuming his dinner without the usual conversation to go along with it.

After Ali had brought his friend back inside, he immediately began defending himself. "I had to show you, right? I had to show you before I told you, or you would've just thought I was messing with you."

"No, that part I get." Shane remembered barely containing his fury as he reluctantly conceded that fact. He was sure he was still visibly fuming. While it generally wasn't like him to mouth off to bigger people, he was by now dangerously close to blowing his top.

"Look, you don't have to see him again, OK? That's your choice. No one can make you," Ali had again tried to preempt, "Just- just think about it for a bit, OK? He just wants to be your friend."

"Oh, you bet we're gonna get around to that. But we're talking about you right now. You, and your mom, and your dad, you all knew." Shane vividly remembered clenching his fist at this point as he let his indignation and frustration become known. "Every single one of you knew exactly what was happening to me. Six months in, you decided now was the right time?" He accused, "You let me think I got what Grandpa had for months! You sent me to- to that piece of crap for 'therapy,' for what? Jesus Christ, do you have any idea what kind of violation that is?"

Ali then stepped in to insist, "We didn't know, OK?" Shane wasn't ready to give up his soap box, but the older boy was ready to talk right over him . "I swear- Shane, I swear we didn't know, OK!" Ali had needed to repeat this line several times before he was able to get Shane to be quiet long enough to listen. Once he had the freedom to explain, Ali spoke quickly so as to mitigate the risk of interruption. "OK, here's our perspective: you came to us, talking about your head. You wanted to see someone, and Mom knew someone. You didn't wanna tell us about it at first, and we didn't ask. I get it, but we couldn't have known then."

"Bull!" Shane cried, "You knew there was a freakin' dragon, and you knew he was talking to me."

"No, man, it's like this: we didn't find out about it for days after. The dragon hatched and just started taking care of itself. They can hunt really early, and he was gone for days before he came back. When he did- man, I swear, when he did, we didn't think it was you, OK? We thought it was me!" Ali frowned and began to lower his voice solemnly. "Look: his egg had an-" Ali began to bite his lip before deciding, "-screw it, might as well tell you now. His egg was enchanted." The taller boy waited for Shane to show any reaction to that word, but at the moment he seemed to be in no mood. At least he was accepting of that right now, Ali figured. "And when dragon eggs get a special enchantment, they don't hatch until the right time. Dragons are picky. So we figured, who would've been around it? Maybe Dad. Maybe me. Maybe some trespassing neighbor kid - oh, yeah, we spent months asking around town if they knew any kids who like to wander around and play on the farms without asking."

"But he wouldn't talk to us - any of us. Whenever we wanted to talk to him, we had to do it through Sitra." Ali thought that he needed to clarify, "Uh, Sitra is-"

But it seemed there was no such need. "-Sitra's another dragon, right?" Shane stated flatly, as if he only wanted to establish that fact and move on.

A bit surprised by the other boy's ease of acceptance of these facts, Ali continued, "Er, right. You can meet her later, if you want!" Ali forced out his best attempt at a friendly smile. "So he was fine talking to Sitra, but he couldn't tell her who he hatched for. He never saw you, and we all assumed you kept your promise and stayed out of that barn." This time Ali's smile was more like a smirk. "But he knew the right person was out there. He's been restless as Buster when he sees a squirrel. Again, we didn't know, but he was looking for you - searching for you, calling for you, trying to make you notice him."

"Well I noticed."

"And he noticed you. At some point, he told Sitra, Sitra told Mom, Mom told the rest of us-"

"-And that's when you decided to spill the beans?" Shane would probe.

"Yes!" Oh. That wasn't the answer Shane had expected. "She only told us, like, yesterday." He backed down a little. "Look, the whole dragons thing- it's Mom's deal, OK? She's in charge of all that, and she said you had to wait. Tonight at dinner, she said she was gonna explain everything, but I didn't want you to wait that long. So I showed you now."

"And Mr. Dan? Why did we all make me keep seeing him?"

Ali bit his lip. "Well you wanted to see somebody. Mom went with him 'cause… she knew he'd never figure out the truth."

"And that was really a better option than being honest with me?"

"You'd have to ask her."

Shane wanted to. Oh, he had some choice words for Mrs. Rashid, if only he could summon the courage. But now as he sat across from her, he found it difficult to even look her in the eye. It wasn't that she was an intimidating person to approach; after all, in spite of her ageless face and body build fit for an MMA fighter, Shane had always known her as someone with whom he could trade crass jokes or seek out for personal advice. While she did wear a hijab, the boy could never mistake her for stuffy or conservative in the general sense. Yet, the suffering through which he now realized she had put him - making him believe he was hopelessly mentally ill - felt gratuitous, unnecessary, and intentional.

Even now, Mrs. Rashid did not show any obvious remorse. While Shane finnickily poked and prodded his spaghetti in an active effort to avoid eye contact with the woman across from him, she seemed content to let her dinner grow tepid in order to watch the boy like a hawk. She bore down on him heavily with her eyes, quietly yet obviously demanding that Shane look up to meet her gaze. By this point it was a contest of wills.

"Mmm," Ali eventually pierced the tener air by interrupting with a mouth still full of pasta. It would have taken some effort to decipher among his sloppy chewing and impaired diction, "Did you use a new sauce recipe? Best one yet!" The attempt at tension diffusion was transparent to all the parties involved. Shane, Mrs. Rashid, and even Ali's father all put their differences aside long enough to shoot looks of various levels of scorn for seemingly misreading the room. However, the taller boy only smirked back at his accusers. "Now that I have your attention, would you two -" he gestured between his mother and his friend with his fork, "-please talk it out? This is kind of important. Also, I wasn't kidding. I love this sauce."

Shane was just irritated enough to lose the contest and wound up facing the family as a whole. However, he was not the one to finally break the stalemate. It was Ali's mother. "Shane. Do you know when a dragon's egg will hatch?"

"Nadia, it's OK," her husband attempted to moderate.

"What?" Nadia defensively shrugged, "I am only trying to educate the boy." No one at the table was convinced. Even Shane, who didn't know where this was going, was now suspicious. "Do you know?"

"No."

"Correct." The praise confused the boy at first. "No one knows. In the wild, dragons would just hatch when the time was right for them. They could sense when food was available, when the temperature was right, when larger predators were far away - the babies are small and frail, at least for a short while. However, there are no more wild dragons, at least not that we know about. For their own safety, the egg of every dragon alive today is enchanted." Nadia paused there, waiting for a look of surprise or a skeptical question that did not come. Shane had met a dragon earlier that day; he would not be so easily floored by claims of magic. "We still can't control when they hatch, but now we can control the condition. It's a long and boring history lesson why we started doing it, but when certain spells are said over an egg it will hatch under a specific condition: the dragon inside chooses a person to bond to and will hatch only in their presence."

Just as Shane prepared to reach out to the dragon with his mind - he still felt the creature's eyes on him, even now - Nadia forestalled him. "Don't ask how they choose. They'll never tell us. But it's an honor and a privilege and exceedingly rare. A dragon's Rider doesn't have to be a young person. It doesn't have to be a human." Nadia did not elaborate on what other 'people' there may be besides humans. "It doesn't even have to be someone who's been born yet. The chance he would bond himself to someone was a hundred percent, but the chance that person is you is less than one in eight billion. But I digress," Mrs. Rashid interrupted herself. "More to the point: since a dragon only hatches in the presence of their Rider, you must have snuck into the barn."

Shane wanted to rebut he was not the one who really messed up this situation the most, but he knew that wasn't much of a defense. He didn't think it would help him to claim he would do no such thing because it would be a lie in which he seemed to be caught. The truth was the boy had long suspected something was off about the family with how protective they all were about the barn.

Explicit instructions to stay out of some place only made a Shane six months younger want to investigate more. He never expected anything important to be in the barn until someone told him to keep out of it. It wasn't just that; the family used to get oddly defensive against the very idea. One day while helping Ali feed the chickens, the bag of feed had run low. Originally, Ali had requested, "Could you get more chicken food? The bag looks just like this one." In answer, Shane glanced at the edifice and visibly hesitated. This prompted Ali to realize and hastily amend his mistake. "Nevermind, it's fine. I got it."

This had prompted Shane to half-jokingly probe, "Can I at least get a hint?"

"That's where the alien sleeps," Ali humorously deflected, "You wouldn't wanna accidentally wake it, would you?" Shane found this answer unfulfilling, even more so than the other dozen similarly silly answers. But he didn't press. This time, the curious young man had recognized there was no point. But he wouldn't give up, either. Something worth hiding , Shane had reasoned, must be something worth finding.

Shane had waited for the dead of night. Bedtime for the boys was generally regular when work began early, but that only helped Shane predict the best time to sneak out. The only minor complication would have been slinking out of his and Ali's shared room undetected. The door creaked; its ground floor window did not. Crossing the horse pastures alone had been scary and undesirable, but the animals had Ali gone to sleep, presumably in the stable attached to the pasture and separate from the barn. All it had taken to sneak past them was not yelling and screaming on his way.

Shane thought he would have to be more cautious just outside the barn doors. He meant to inspect the area for cameras, but he dared not use a flashlight even in the dark in case one could pick up its light. Ironically, he needn't have worried. So far as the nosy boy could tell, there were no cameras watching the door's exterior. Maybe they're inside, Shane alerted himself, or else whatever the big secret is, it's not big enough to be worth guarding with a camera. Shane suspected the latter; it seemed the barn wasn't even worth guarding with a padlock. It was even unbolted so that the doors could swing freely open with only a push! If there were any animals inside, it would have been no trouble for them to simply walk right out or for a strong enough wind to send them flapping.

One of the wide double doors creaked even more loudly than his own bedroom door despite Shane's caution in opening it. That shouldn't have mattered - why would anybody be in there? - and yet, the noise made the intruder swing the door back mostly shut and pause. Shane listened from behind the door for any signs that there may a living thing on the other side of the door after all. Twenty seconds of silence, however, suggested that Shane was indeed being overly cautious. After a breath, he finally decided to emerge and explore.

Bang! Whoosh! "Whoa!" Without warning, the double doors had exploded open and outwards, making the boy involuntarily yelp. The speed of it was enough to catch the boy without a chance to react. The force of the near door was enough that when it smacked the entire front of his body, the intruder was flung a couple of feet back. It was only sheer chance that Shane's arms had already been up to shield his face from the blow. He blurted, "Oof!" as his rear came down onto some somewhat loose, soft dirt. The back of the boy's head slammed into the ground frightfully hard, but by luck he had missed any rocks or debris. Nevertheless, the blunt impact forced him to shake and clear his head and several seconds to regain his bearings and balance after being momentarily stunned.

"Urgh. What the heck was that?" Shane mumbled as he rose back to his feet. His immediate thought was that some startled animal had just flung the doors open, so he immediately whipped his head about and surveyed the field. It was still dark; Shane was not able to spot any movement, silhouette or sign of an animal despite his best effort. He wasn't entirely sure of himself, but the next best guess he had was, Rogue wind, maybe. As Shane once more opened the door after its momentum swung it shut (hanging onto it by two hands this time) he nearly yelped again at what he had found.

On the inside of the barn door, there was a clear and obvious sign of blunt force impact. Something had crashed into it and crashed hard; the crater of splintered and deformed wood had a diameter longer than his forearm. Oh, my god. Was that always there? Shane had pleaded to himself at the sight of the nonconformity, God, I hope that was already there. Visual inspection of the inside from the entrance didn't give away anything obvious; from here, it just looked like an ordinary empty barn. If it held a secret, it would require walking inside, and right about now Shane was not inclined to do that. He chickened out.

The young man almost secured the door after closing it before he remembered that he had found it unlocked. So he left it that way instead. Snooping was no longer on his mind; the priority now was damage control and plausible deniability. He'd done enough damage as it was. He had never been here, Shane decided. If the family discovered a lone cow running around the next day, he had nothing to do with it. So long as Shane crept back into the house without getting caught, it should have been easy to deny that he was in a place where he was not expected to be.

The nosy young man was confident he had gotten away with it. No one ever brought that night up with him, nor had he heard mention of a missing animal or the damage he saw. Now it seemed his getaway wasn't as clean as he'd thought. Able to see this conversation was going nowhere good, Ali intervened yet again. "You can't be too mad at him, Mom. If he didn't do what he did, that egg never would have hatched." Recognizing both sides of this conflict, Ali switched to address Shane. "And Mom did her best. I don't know why she did what she did, but-

"Dishonesty, disregard for privacy, and defiance of the rules," Miss Nadia interjected, undoing much of her son's hard work, "are all defective traits for a Shur'tugal. I gave you months to come forward, and you didn't."

Shane narrowed his eyes, hesitated, and finally inquired to Ali, "Did your mom just insult me in Arabic?"

"Nah," Ali reassured his friend, "the insulting parts were in English."

"Alright, look," Shane preambled as he prepared to plead his case, "I'm sorry, OK? There's, like, one rule, and I broke it, and I violated your privacy and found out your secret. I didn't even see much of anything, but that was still wrong. I messed up." The boy made no disguise in his tone of the coming but he wanted to skip to. "But now I'm involved, I've been involved, and it sounds like there's no getting un -involved. Something's going on here. I don't understand it, but I know there's a dragon in my head, and I just-" Shane visibly shuddered. "I-I just don't understand what all 'having a dragon' means or entails or- or what to do with that, or how I got picked , and I really, really want to."

Shane had done his best. Now all he could do was sit back, face front, and await the verdict. It didn't come swiftly. During the tense silence, the boy felt a familiar probe at his consciousness, only now it seemed just slightly less frightening and intrusive. It was only an expression of curiosity. She's pissed, Shane updated the inquisitive creature. A wordless token of support and sympathy followed that.

The woman in hijab impatiently huffed out her deep breath nose, then adopted an air of reluctant resignation. "Du Shur'tugalar," she began to elucidate, "have a long history that would take too long to teach you about just tonight. To put it shortly: we are whatever we are needed to be. We are scholars. We are teachers. We are mediators. We are counselors and guides and - when the need arises - we are militants. But you are not a Shur'tugal just because you've been acknowledged by a dragon hatchling." Nadia emphasized that last point. "However, there are certain changes that come with knowing a dragon. No matter what you do from here, dragons affect people in ways that are noticeable and unavoidable, since the bond between you is unbreakable in the most literal sense. I will tell you some things you need to know anyway, so listen close."

Shane couldn't remember a prior time seeing Mrs. Rashid so serious. He knew it would behoove him to pay attention to her words. "You will become physically more able - faster, stronger, and tougher than any human should normally be able to. Your lifespan will be much longer than any normal human's, assuming you don't mess it up by being stupid again." The addendum came as Nadia reached across the table to give Shane a shove in the shoulder. It didn't endanger his balance in his chair; Shane recognized it for what it was, her attempt to keep the mood at least a little lighter.

The boy was skeptical. Checking for exaggeration, he asked to clarify, "How much longer, would you say?"

"That depends on you. Dragons are what you might call 'biologically immortal,' though there's nothing natural about it. But it seems they will just never die unless they get sick or injured. The same thing is now true for you." The earlier shove wasn't going to knock Shane out of his seat, but that claim nearly did! The young man made no disguise of his incredulity. "It's true. Dragons are surrounded by magic and mystery." As Shane's eyes narrowed all the further, his skepticism only dug in deeper. "Which leads me to the next point. We don't normally tell this to initiates because it's dangerous for them, but I'm scared it'll be more dangerous for you if you don't know: you will have the ability to harness magic for yourself." Shane meant to verbally object just then, but this time Nadia allowed no interruption by holding up a finger. "Let me be clear: unless you are properly trained you will never, ever, under any circumstances, attempt to use magic. Don't experiment, don't ask how, and definitely don't go sneaking around thinking you can learn about it behind my back. If the slightest thing goes wrong - you mispronounce the spell, your connection to the magic is unstable, you try to cast magic over distance, maybe you just reach for it in a rage without thinking - you will instantly, inevitably kill yourself."

"That doesn't make me sound very 'immortal,'" Shane quipped.

"And you better remember it," Nadia punctuated. "No jokes. No shortcuts. If you attempt magic, even by accident, you will die, and I will have a very hard time explaining your death to your parents." Shane didn't expect that to be a problem. He didn't think he needed to be convinced to meddle with a power as she described it that he didn't understand, if it was even real to begin with. "Du Shur'tugalar won't be happy I told you, but we can train you in magic safely if you choose to join us."

"Do I really have a choice here?" Shane hedged, "It sounds like that decision was already made for me. That dragon, he locked me into this."

"Yes, and no," Nadia clarified. "Let's be honest, you absolutely should join Du Shur'tugal if you want to learn to protect yourself and your dragon, if you want to know more about your history and abilities, or if you really want your bond to have a meaningful purpose. But no one will force you to. The bond is unbreakable, but what you do with it is up to you and him." With that clear, Nadia pushed, "But, again, you should. There's one more thing about your bond you need to know: when I say the bond is 'unbreakable,' I mean it. If something bad ever happened to you, it would be almost impossible for him to survive without you. And it works both ways: if your dragon ever dies..." Again, the air grew still. "...you will die with him."

Shane swallowed. He was grateful that a natural pause had taken over the conversation, because he most certainly needed time to process what he'd just been told. My life depends entirely on someone else? It was a difficult thought to stomach. I'm the man in the violinist analogy. A whirlwind of emotions came over Shane in that moment regarding the dragon: awe above all, but additionally resentment, shock, anger, and indignation, all had to wrestle with some sense of wonder, curiosity, and calling that was certainly smaller but was putting up a fight.

The dragon was concerned for the boy. His raging emotions must have alerted the beast and leaked through by pure accident. The creature was fearful and alert, his concern urgent and insistent. It's fine, the boy attempted to lie, Please not now. The dragon did not respect his wishes; instead, Shane thought he could feel a sort of mental tendril attempting to furrow its way into his brain and pry the true answer out of him. Shane attempted to fight it back, but its force was overwhelming. I said no! The young man could feel the intruder slither back and create some distance from him in response to that outburst, but he knew it was by no force of will or mental toughness that he had repelled the dragon. It was only the beast's own benevolence that had spared him... a thought which did not ease his mounting anxiety.

"I'll understand if you need some time."

"I'm, uh, just..." Ali stood up just then, and when he did he reached both arms across the table to pick up the spaghetti plated of both Shane and his mother. "...gonna reheat these for you." Mr. Rashid, too, got out of his seat to remove both his and Ali's empty plates from the table and carry them away.

Shane and Nadia paid them no mind. She continued, "It will be easier if you accept this now: you are not going to live a normal life. You are not going to UCB, you are not going to be a meteorologist, and you are not going to move to the city, marry your college sweetheart, and retire quietly. But, listen." Nadia finally smiled, if weakly and forced. "My son is right: in the end, this is a good thing. My dragon is my best friend and a part of me - a part of me I love, and who loves me. For all the ways she's changed my life, I can confidently say she's made my it better." More warmly, she took one of the boy's hands in her own. "This, right here? This is the hardest part. You should take your time and think about everything, including whether you'll join Du Shur'tugalar. I have some things you can read that might help you understand more about us. Letters, journals, historical accounts, things like that. If you do accept, I promise you won't regret it."

"I'll think about it," Shane agreed, "I'm not sure I can think of much else anyway. That Arabic word - what does it mean?"

"It isn't Arabic," the woman gently corrected. She could see Shane was about to backpedal hard and cut him off. "No, it's alright, I don't blame you. It's an old language, very ancient. It's a dead language, but it's also alive in its own way. I would tell you its name, but no one knows it."

"And no one just, y'know, gave it one?"

She smiled again, but more coyly this time, like she knew something the boy did not. "It doesn't work like that. But the word, I can tell you: Du Shur'tugalar are 'the Dragon Riders.'" Just then something caught her eye as she looked back at Shane's hand in her own. "Show me your other hand." The boy wordlessly obeyed, letting the woman see its back and front. He couldn't be sure how she knew, but she worked out, "You didn't touch him?"

"I'm gonna be honest, I don't even remember if I touched him. I wasn't really paying attention... why?"

Another coy smile. "You'll see."

As Nadia let the boy's hand go, the pair's plates were returned to them, steaming hot once again. Ali cheerily announced, "Bon appetit!" as he let the spaghetti loudly crash onto the table.

Shane pursed his lips, swallowed a lump in his throat, and implored, "May I please be excused?" A nod of the head from the woman was a good enough answer for him. He took his plate with him out the kitchen and down the hall into his and Ali's bedroom.

At the sight of this, Ali frowned. He looked his father pleadingly in the eye. "You don't have to ask," the man assured his son. And so, Ali, having already eaten, rose, pushed in his chair, and paced off in the same direction as his friend.

GLOSSARY

Ancient Language:
Shur'tugal - Dragon Rider (in the proper sense; a member of the formal order of Dragon Riders)
Du Shurt'gular - "The Dragon Riders" (plural)