Chapter Five: Growing Up
Jacob: Amanda grinned at Fabian as she stuck her head sleepily out from under Amanda's hair. Dion looked up at me and chirped his curiosity at Fabian's odd behavior. I reassured him.
"Don't worry, Dion. Fabian is just tired. You will be, too, when you have a growth spurt." Immediately, I felt a mixed emotion in my head. I saw a picture of Dion growing rapidly, and then a clouded white color.
"No, not that fast." Dion lowered his head, examining the carpet. Suddenly, he pounced. He came back up with a silverfish dangling from his mouth.
"Yes, I guess you may eat that," I said in answer to his questioning noise. "I don't see why you can't."
That night, with Dion curled up beside me, I slept well. I woke in the morning to find Dion bigger. Well, not much bigger, but an inch or two wider through the chest.
All the dragons were relatively the same size, and they got along nicely. They were troublemakers as well, as toddlers will be. Once, I found them chewing up Mom's tissue box. I tapped each of their noses and took away the cardboard. They got into all sorts of pickles as well.
Dion was the most unpredictable. I found him more than once hanging from the ceiling fan, not able to get down. I raised an eyebrow the first time, grinned the second time and laughed outright the third.
Dion glared.
I reached up and grabbed him, rescuing the poor guy from the evil fan. They were a proper band of miscreants all right. Little Arra seemed to be the ringleader. Trahern took charge a lot, but Arra was always in the thick of things.
Javis seemed a little wary of Trahern at first, but when he saved her from falling off the couch by grabbing her tail, she decided he was all right. By the end of the first week we had them, they were fast friends.
By the end of the second week, they were as big as a large dog, and the third they could barely fit out the door. After that, they were sentenced to living outside.
Luckily, only people who believed in dragons could see them. That means that the neighbors wouldn't notice them other than the occasional large footprint. And those could be easily explained, most of the time.
However, the six cows that went missing each month were harder to cover up. The dragons eventually started eating deer instead.
When they were two months old, they could look through the second story window while standing on their back feet.
When they were three months old, they could look through the second story window by lowering their necks and putting their heads next to the windows. That's when Alina decided to try something. She locked herself in her room with all her sewing supplies and stayed in there all day, only coming out to eat.
When she came out the second day, she was holding a bundle of leather. I deduced she had taken apart her old leather jacket, the one that didn't fit and was terribly out of style. It had gone down to the floor, and there was plenty of fabric from it. She went outside and called Javis with a sharp whistle.