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FATHOM

Indigo soared over to the tree branch that the others were perched on, and Fathom promptly followed behind her. It was early in the morning, and despite the fact that it was well past bedtime for him and his NightWing friends, he felt wide awake. Adventure was in the air. The light from the sky warmed his scales. The birds were tweeting their morning songs.

A gentle breeze swept him up in the air. He was amazed by how sensitive his trajectory was to even the lightest bouts of wind. Being tiny forced him to surrender a lot of his control in the air.

The tree branch gave slightly when he landed on it. He gripped the bark with all four of his talons, keeping his wings outstretched until his center of balance was over his footing. Nervously, he looked over at Listener, who was running this whole operation.

"Alright, now look right over there," Listener said, pointing at a wooden hut in the distance.

Fathom leaned forward to look when a bluebird fluttered over and attempted to land on him. He shouted in panic — partly because he lost his balance and started falling over, but mostly because he was not used to bluebirds being larger than him.

He opened his wings and managed to take flight before he could hit the ground, but his heart was pounding once he lifted back up into the air and returned back to his friends. By now they were all in the air, giggling nervously, while the bluejay confusedly flitted off to another branch.

"You alright there, Fathom?" Indigo asked, taking her part in the dying choir of snickers.

"I'm fine," he said, finding a spot to land again.

"Aww, are you afraid of some little birdies?" Darkstalker teased.

"Evidently so!" Fathom tried to say unashamedly, though he felt himself flustering up. "That thing can hurt me. If we get injured here, do we get injured in real life?"

"This is real life," Darkstalker said, perching on the branch again. "So yes, you most certainly will."

Fathom moaned. "I'm starting to regret this."

"Don't you dare!" Listener said. "You've never seen scavengers like this before. It's the most awesome and adorable thing ever and you will not have the right to regret it when we're done here."

"I can attest to their awesomeness," Darkstalker said. "Clearsight almost got expelled trying to save some of them."

"Excuse me?" Clearsight said. "What are you mentioning me for? You got punished just as much as I did."

"Well, we wouldn't be very impressed if something motivated Darkstalker to get himself expelled," Indigo said plainly.

"Exactly, Clearsight!" Darkstalker said, nodding. "If scavengers are cool enough that you decide to break the school rules in order to save them, then that just goes to show how cool they really are." He shot a friendly smile at Indigo.

Fathom had his eyes on Indigo to see if she'd smile back. And she did smile back. But it was the smile she wore when she got the right answer in her geography lessons, not the smile she wore when she was sharing a joke with Fathom.

Nonetheless, Fathom saw it as progress. He wanted Indigo to get along with Darkstalker as well as Darkstalker got along with him. And she was definitely moving closer to Darkstalker, even though that wasn't really saying much. Any step she took was an improvement on her old implicit desires to murder him the next opportunity she got.

She had been so consistently suspicious of Darkstalker that it was actually starting to get on his nerves. He remembered the day that Darkstalker made them the soul reader to prove his good intentions and how he and Indigo had responded so differently to it.

Fathom was so relieved. He and Darkstalker were at the same level — mostly good, with about one quarter of the sand being white. Clearsight had acted as something of a control-dragon: when the soul reader was pointed at her, there was only slightly less white sand in the hourglass than there was for either of them. As far as Fathom was concerned, that confirmed it: animus magic hadn't taken over their souls.

Indigo, however, only grew more suspicious of Darkstalker after that. "He's trying to get you to let your guard down, Fathom. Can't you see that?" she'd said to him later that day once they were alone.

"He might be," Fathom admitted. "But is that really such a bad thing? I think he's just trying to get me to loosen up a little."

"We're not here to loosen up! We're here to make sure he doesn't do anything dangerous, and now he's one spell closer to losing his soul."

"Maybe not," Fathom said. "He doesn't have animus magic in his body anymore. He put it all in that scroll."

"That doesn't change anything, Fathom," she protested. "We don't know how this magic works. It could still be eating away at him."

"I know, but still — the soul reader said he was still good. Doesn't that prove he has good intentions?"

Indigo shook her head. "I think it proves just the opposite. If he did care about his soul, he would have made that reader a long time ago. He just made it to make you feel more relaxed around him."

"I want to feel more relaxed around him, Indigo!" Fathom said, his fins flaring a bit. "He's our friend. What's so bad about trusting him for a change?"

Indigo let him have the last word with that. Fathom noticed that she did that whenever he started to raise his voice. He also noticed that he did that whenever she started to raise her voice. Whenever they had this argument — which they'd had many, many times by this point — it always ended the moment one of them began losing their temper.

He never liked getting mad at Indigo, so he was always grateful that they were both able to agree to damper down discussion before he could ever get truly upset. But at the same time, he worried that they were forcing themselves into an impasse. Was Fathom ever going to actually convince Indigo to be less suspicious of Darkstalker if he stopped arguing with her the moment she started shouting at him?

Maybe Indigo had to decide that on her own. About a month had passed since Darkstalker made his soul reader, and Fathom had only been feeling better and better about him — and better and better about himself. His misery turned into joy. His loneliness turned into excitement. He started actually going outside and hunting and playing. Darkstalker, Clearsight, and Listener were starting to convince him that he deserved to have friends, and that it was okay for others to trust him. And the more he convinced himself of that, the more he believed it was okay to trust Darkstalker.

But nobody could have convinced Fathom that Darkstalker was trustworthy except for Darkstalker himself. Maybe Indigo was the same, and she just needed a bit more time to open up to him.

"Look!" Listener said, pointing a talon at the hut. "One's coming out!'

Out from one of the huts emerged what was undoubtedly a scavenger. It was wearing leather garments over most of its body, including a crude pair of deerskin covers around its feet. Are they covering the bottoms of its feet too? Fathom wondered. Wouldn't that make balancing more difficult? They're on two feet all the time for crying out loud.

What he also found curious was its chin, which had several little hairs on it. What were those for? Were they like the barbels on SeaWing chins, which were meant to help taste the ocean water and pick up the location of prey?

The creature was holding a metal jug. It walked over in their direction, where there was a crude water well. Before putting down the jug, the scavenger squinted up into the sky, opened its mouth, and sneezed.

Listener squealed delightfully. Okay, that was pretty cute, Fathom admitted to himself.

"That one's a male, I'm pretty sure," Listener said. "The males are stronger than females, so they tend to do more of the active labor. Although this one right now is just gathering water."

"How interesting," Darkstalker mused. "Are males usually the leaders in their tribes?"

"I haven't been able to tell if this tribe does have a leader, actually," Listener said. "But if they did, it wouldn't surprise me if it was male."

"So, you've just been watching them like this?" Fathom asked.

"When I can," Listener said. "They're asleep most of the time that I'm awake, so I miss out on a lot. But I did sneak in on them having breakfast one day. They all eat together in that big house over there behind the trees."

"Do they know that you're watching them?"

"Nope," Listener said. "They haven't noticed me yet."

"You should let them," Darkstalker suggested. "Once they know about you, you can start doing some things for them. Maybe you can give them gifts, and they'll start making traditions and rituals about you."

"No thank you," Listener said. "I would much rather observe them in their natural habitat. Which means that until I've seen enough, I have to stay out of their way."

"And you haven't seen enough already?" Darkstalker asked, raising his ears.

"Not at all! There's a pregnant woman in this village. At the very least, I want to see what it looks like when she gives birth. They don't lay eggs, you know."

The scavenger by now had a jug full of water, which he was taking a long drink from. Darkstalker used his tail to grab a branch behind him so he could lean forward and get a better view. Suddenly, the scavenger looked up at them. Fathom felt his heart jump. "Darkstalker, you said that they can't see us, right?" he asked, shrinking a little as if trying to make himself invisible.

"They shouldn't be able to," Darkstalker said, keeping himself incredibly still. "I think he's just alerted by the branches."

"How about you stop alerting him, then?" Listener suggested. "I've kept them from suspecting me so far; I don't want you to ruin my cover."

"We'll be fine," Darkstalker said. "As long as I don't move, he'll forget about us and move on. It's not like he can get us from up here anyway."

"It's not a matter of if he can hurt us, it's a matter of if he finds out that there are invisible dragons spying on his village."

"Which won't happen if we're out of his reach," Darkstalker retorted. "Just don't move; he'll lose interest."

The scavenger set his jug onto the ground. Then he lowered his head and started picking through the grass.

"Listener, what's he doing?" Fathom asked nervously.

"I … don't know," Listener answered. "I've never seen a scavenger do that."

Clearsight suddenly stiffened up. "Um, guys? Don't ask why, but I think we should get out of here."

"What? Why?" Darkstalker asked. "I'm still having fun."

"I don't know," she whispered, sounding extremely nervous now. "A bad vision flashed through my head, with a lot of panicking and shouting. I think we're better off playing it safe and leaving now."

"I don't see anything like that in my futures, Clearsight," Darkstalker told her. "But alright, if you say so." He raised his front talons and put them over his head …

… and then got clocked in the head with a flying rock, knocking him off the branch and sending him to the ground.