Chapter One

Katherine

Nothing would ever beat the feeling of flying, Katherine was sure of it. Being able to take to the sky and see the world from a different point of view was always rewarding. She was high above everyone else, barely a blip on any human’s radar, and anyone who saw her would simply assume she was a bird or something else since her dragon was much smaller than normal and thin.

It was a part of her that she kept a secret from everyone else, or every human, and it was thrilling to have something that belonged to her and her culture that no human would ever be able to guess was real. She should be invisible, but she didn’t want to be. The night sky cloaked her enough to be her full self, a dragon soaring above the clouds.

She focused all her energy into the flight. Something about the way the air and wind glided over her scales and wings gave her a natural high. It was like music to her, and that was something that she knew well.

Ever since her childhood, she had been drawn to music and had been playing it for just as long. If an instrument had strings, it didn’t take long for Katherine to figure it out. There was a similar sensation in flying. Once Katherine understood how it worked, she was a master, and music and flying went together perfectly for her.

Each piece of the air hitting her brown scales was like a staccato note, hitting perfectly on beat to create a beautiful rhythm on her body. When she dove through the air, she created a crescendo, the noise getting louder and louder in her ears until all she could hear was buzzing as her speed increased. And when the volume got too loud, she would rise back into the sky, and the noise became a decrescendo back to the normal volume, and the music of the sky would return back to what it once was, the staccato beat back in place. It made Katherine feel like a sheet of music, and the wind was the instrument, waiting to play her.

Katherine spotted her parents’ house and started to descend. While flying was amazing, she also enjoyed spending time with her family. They had been with her for hundreds of years, and they understood her. She liked coming home and relaxing with her blood relatives, people that understood and accepted her quirks decades ago. They were a calming force in her life, and she never turned down the offer for a family dinner.

All Katherine’s bones popped as she landed in the woods just outside of town and shifted from her dragon form to human. While everyone in her family was dragons, when they came together for meals or other gatherings, they all shifted into their human forms. It was easier for them to fill their stomachs in a human body, rather than a dragon body, since their dragon forms consumed far more calories, and this way, they could have a fuller stomach when Katherine and her brother, Henry, left home as dragons. It was slightly complicated, but this was the life they preferred living, so they did so without any complaints. Family time was important, and they would do whatever it took to make sure that happened comfortably.  

Hidden behind the trees, she shifted to fully human as all her scales magically disappeared and she was left nude in the darkness. It had been a long time since Katherine came home, though the word ‘long’ was a matter of perspective. When you lived as long as dragons lived, long could mean anything from a few weeks to several hundred years. In Katherine’s mind, ‘long’ meant a few months. She called regularly, but since taking the time to tour with her band, she hadn’t made it home in a while.

Still, no amount of time that passed could remove the familiarity she had with her childhood home. She opened the side door without knocking. This was her family, and there was no need for formalities. She walked into the room that used to belong to her and found a change of clothes, since when dragons shifted they lost whatever clothing they were wearing.

She put on a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt that she had gotten from a concert ages ago. It looked like a shirt that was produced to look vintage, but in reality, it was bought at a concert in the 70s and actually was vintage. She put on a pair of black boots. This was a look that she had perfected over the years, and it was a look that she had grown to be comfortable in. The simplicity of her outfit felt like another skin, simply another part of who she was.

She looked in the mirror and brushed her hair. The flying didn’t mess it up, but after landing on the ground, she’d been surprised by the windy day, and the quick walk to the door had created a mess of it.

When she left the room, she finally looked ready to see her family with her black hair brushed to her shoulders, and clothes neatly put together. She looked ready for anything, and sometimes with her family, being ready for anything was necessary. While Katherine loved her family, sometimes they could be a little much to handle. Because they had been together for so long, they knew exactly how to push each other’s buttons. They knew the right things to say, and the wrong things, so Katherine always had to be prepared when it came to having dinner and discussions with her family.

“Mom,” Katherine said, throwing her arms around the older version of herself.

Her mom hugged her like she hadn’t seen her in years, even though it had only been a few weeks. This was just the way her mother was, always hugging and loving like it was their last day together, and she loved it. To have someone like her mother, who felt so deeply, had always affected Katherine in a positive way. It made her art come to her more easily. The feelings she needed to express herself were easier to get at since she had grown up with such an emotional woman. Art and emotion needed to coexist, and because of her family, Katherine had found a good balance early on.

“Katherine, you got here just in time! The food just finished cooking. I hope you brought your appetite,” her mother said, leading her to the dining room. On the table, there was meatloaf, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and carrots, a full and delicious meal with a recipe that had been perfected decades ago.

“I always bring my appetite.” Katherine laughed as she took a seat at the table.

“Good. I’ve always thought you should eat more. You’re so small! Isn’t she small, Henry?” her mother asked, taking her seat.

Katherine sighed.

“Yeah, Mom,” her brother said, rounding the corner, and sliding into his chair. “She’s skinny,” Henry replied, rolling his eyes. Henry was younger than her, but the two had always had a strong bond, and would constantly take turns rolling their eyes at something someone else in the family would say. Apparently, it was Henry’s turn tonight.

“I’m not that skinny. I eat enough, Mom, I promise.”

“See? She promises,” her father said, frowning. “Now, let’s all enjoy some food, I’m starving.”

Katherine had gotten her dark hair and eyes from her father, but mostly she’d inherited his slight frame. He was wiry where she was lithe, but the two of them looked like miniatures when compared to her mother’s family.

They passed around the food until everyone had full plates, and then her father passed around a bottle of wine for everyone to enjoy. While they couldn’t get drunk on wine since their systems worked differently than humans, they could still enjoy the taste, and the wine complemented the food nicely. With a full plate and a glass of wine, Katherine felt comforted. Her family meant a lot to her, and these dinners truly made her feel like she was home. It was just them, and that was a feeling she didn’t want to give up.

“Katherine, Henry says you have a concert coming up soon?” her father asked.

“Yeah, over the weekend,” she started. “It’s in the city at a new pub, and I think we can bring in some new people as fans. The band is really excited about it.”

“That’s great,” her mother said, brushing her curly dark hair out of her eyes. “I’d love to go see you play again. I feel like it’s been so long.”

It had been a long time, but Katherine didn’t feel the need to point that out. Her mother wasn’t the biggest fan of heading to the city since the buildings made her feel claustrophobic and so many of the pubs Katherine played in seemed to be built on a smaller scale than what her mother and Henry preferred. She typically performed in bars and small clubs, and that wasn’t a scene she expected to see her mother in.

It used to be different when Katherine was younger. She would perform in concert halls, playing classical music, but then she discovered her love of the guitar when she learned how to play a Stradivarius guitar, and the concert halls went away, along with the violin. It didn’t help that if she played in large concert halls there was a decent chance of becoming famous, and that would have been a disaster for Katherine. If she had become famous, people might have discovered she was a dragon.

That wasn’t a risk that she could take, so now, playing in small pubs had to be enough. She could still play music and find her heart in the songs, but if she stayed small, no one would know who she really was. She could achieve anonymity while still pursuing her passion. It was the best of both worlds, and more than Katherine could have ever hoped for when she was younger.

“Well, I’m sure someone can record it so you can still pretend you were at the show, Mom,” Katherine said.

Katherine had always tried to make sure that someone filmed her shows so her mom could watch them and pretend she was in the crowd. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“It’s just unfortunate that my guitar is in the shop right now,” Katherine said.

“It’s not like you don’t have more you could use. You have a pretty crazy collection going on right now,” Henry replied.

“I know, but it’s always nice to have options.”

Katherine was a… some might say, collector of string instruments, mainly guitars and violins, but if it had strings, she loved it and wanted it. She had a few mandolins, sitars, and cellos, but her first love would always be the guitar. One of her favorite guitars had broken, so it was somewhere in her music trunk in need of repair, and until it was fixed, it wouldn’t be ready for a show anytime soon. It was unfortunate, but there was nothing Katherine could do about it.

“Are you still working on a new album?” her father asked.

“Yeah. It’s still in the planning stage, but we’re getting there. We need to solidify what songs we’re going to record, and then we’ll be good to go.”

“I can’t wait to listen to it,” her mother said.

Katherine and Henry joked that her mother’s horde was actually albums that Katherine made because it seemed like she could never get enough of them.

“Not that I don’t love talking about you, Kat,” Henry started, and Katherine rolled her eyes, “but I wanted to tell you about something weird I saw online.”

“Knowing the sites you go on, anything could be considered weird,” Katherine said.

“That’s not the point,” Henry snapped back before continuing with a smile, “I saw this forum, and these guys were talking about dragons.”

“People talk about dragons all the time, Hen,” Katherine said, throwing in his childhood nickname. “They’re in shows and movies all time. That’s not weird.”

“No, these people were acting like dragons were real. They were saying that dragons were taking away jobs from hard working humans, and how you couldn’t even tell if your friends were dragons or humans. They seemed really serious about all of it, and they said that they were going to find proof of their existence and put an end to their interference. It was really bizarre.” Henry looked a little freaked out about it, which worried Katherine. Her brother rarely looked scared, so when he was, it was clear that something was up. His fear was something she had seen in her friends, though, and she couldn’t believe that she forgot about it until this conversation.

“Actually, now that you mention it, Frank, Desmond, and Claire all mentioned some weird guys that kept talking about dragons and wouldn’t let it go. They’ve popped up quite a few times actually. Maybe they’re the same guys, and there are only a few of them?”

“Maybe. It’s just so bizarre. Be careful, okay?” Henry said with a rare face clear of amusement or mischief.

“Yeah, always. You, too,” Katherine said.

“Always,” Henry said.

That’s all that needed to be said about it, because if they discussed it more, their parents might have gotten concerned, and neither sibling wanted that, Katherine was sure.  There was a chance that this was nothing, just a few people that couldn’t separate fact from fiction—that’s what humans would think of them, anyway. As far as most humans were concerned, dragons were only creatures that lived in books and fairytales. Dragons weren’t creatures that lived on Earth, and they certainly didn’t live anywhere near humans. As long as it stayed that way, Katherine, her family, and her friends would be safe.

Katherine stayed for a few more hours, but she needed to get back to her own house so she could get ready for band practice the next day. She hugged her mother, and once again, it felt like the last one Katherine would ever get. Considering the length of their lifetimes, the odds of that were low, but with the cloud of conspiracy theorists hanging over their heads, she held her mom extra tight.

She walked outside and shifted back into her dragon form. It was always easy to shift when her stomach was full, and her parents made sure of that, especially since they gave her apple pie for dessert because Katherine was still too skinny for her mother’s liking.

With a full stomach, she took to the sky, and let the music of flying wash over her once again. As far as she knew, all dragons loved flying and felt a rush when doing it, but she wasn’t sure that it was the same feeling she got. She felt the music everywhere she went and hundreds of feet in the air, the music was deafening and perfect. She didn’t know what other dragons felt, but as far as she was concerned, it couldn’t get any better than the pull she felt when she was in the air.

Safely just outside of Arkala, she was very careful to make sure there was no one around before landing and then shifting back to her human form. While she owned a fairly large piece of land, she was always careful when shifting, and now with what her brother told her, she was being extra cautious. Her home was modest and unindicative of how much wealth she actually possessed.

She lay on her bed and thought more about her album and the upcoming show. Things were falling into place. It was going to be an exciting few weeks, and she couldn’t wait to wake up and get a start on it all and make sure that the music all came together.