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Author's note - Illustration

This picture of Nate was a gift by Pheonix for a cover image.  I love how it came out - thank you again, very much!

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I ambled through the forest and ate various fruits to silence the hunger in my stomach, then found a tree branch to sprawl out on for a nap as the day warmed up. I slept for several hours, waking only when the sun was high overhead. I yawned and soaked in a few more minutes of warmth, then slid from the branch into a glide towards the river.

I spent the rest of the afternoon swimming in the river. It had been a few days since I had taken care of myself, and even though the water was cold, it felt good to splash and play in it. Dust and dirt muddied the water in my wake, and I felt a little guilty at just how long I had neglected giving my scales proper attention. Now that I was finally taking the time to pay attention my body gleefully informed me of itchy spots, and I spent a lot of time rubbing against underwater rocks to massage and scratch at parts of my body that my claws just couldn't reach.

I deliberately caught an extra large fish to make up for the loss of the other two. I withdrew to the shore as the afternoon turned to evening, making sure to leave plenty of time to bask in the sunlight after spending so much time in the cool water. When I felt nice and warm again I cleaned the fish, then took off towards Susie's grave.

My nose alerted me to the scent of Kymari as I drew closer. It was a fresh scent, not left over from the morning group or from random groups passing throughout the day. I slowed and perched on an upper branch, balancing carefully with my wings so as to keep hold of the fish, and glanced down at the ground below.

Two Kymari stood in the clearing. One seemed vaguely familiar, though I couldn't place him. The green-skinned creatures were several times my size, and had features alien to most things I was familiar with, so I didn't really have any good way of telling one adult Kymari from another.

But the second Kymari was the child I had seen a few days ago. The day Susie...

The girl was looking up in the trees while the adult glanced at the ground around them. She held a yellow ball in her hands, but she wasn't bouncing it this time. Instead they both just seemed to be waiting for something.

I shifted nervously on the branch and glanced at the mound of dirt. The pinecone rested against it, still where I had left it. I had hoped to kick it around a bit...

...but there was no way I was going down to play while that child was there. Not with what I knew the adults would do to protect one if they were startled.

And if my firsthand experience hadn't been enough, the encyclopedia in my head provided me with one simple fact of knowledge: Kymari did not tolerate any threat whatsoever to one of their children.

I looked back at her. Why was she there? She wasn't even playing...

I watched her as the evening wore on. She looked at various trees, but didn't glance my way. Finally she sighed and looked up towards the adult.

"Are you sure he's coming?" I felt the tufts at the side of my head rise as I tried to make out the sound of her voice.

The adult shook his head. "No, Lyzel. It came here last night, but that does not mean it will come back again tonight." The adult glanced towards a spot on the ground near the grave and stared for a moment. "It may not ever come back."

The adult's voice finally allowed me to place him. It was the older adult, the one who had stopped the other Kymari from shooting me.

"I think it will. It's like in the stories about a Kymallata, when a bond animal lives longer than its handler." The child - Lyzel? - looked back up into the trees, searching in the dimming evening light. "He knows his friend is here, so he's going to come back to be with them again."

The adult smiled slightly at the child's words. "Maybe. And it may not be a 'he', sweetie. There is still a lot we do not know about them."

Lyzel giggled and clutched the ball a little tighter in front of her. "I think it's a he." She nodded determinedly, then looked back at a different tree. "How much longer can we wait?"

The adult glanced towards the sun setting on the western horizon, then shook his head. "Not long. It had already been here for a while by this time yesterday, and it is starting to get late. You have classes in the morning."

The child pouted and looked back into the trees. She scanned through them, and her gaze pointed in my direction... and continued onwards, not noticing me. She turned in a slow circle until she had looked everywhere, then looked down and sighed.

Then she looked up with a sudden grin. She took a deep breath, inhaling deeply... and yelled out at the top of her lungs. "MISTER FIRE LIZARD!"

I squawked in surprise at the loud noise, and instinctively threw out my wings in preparation for flight. I gripped down with my feet to steady myself in an equally instinctive reaction, but my instincts didn't account for the fish still held in my forelegs. I wobbled, and tried to balance on the branch...

"Lyzel!" The adult looked down at the child with a disapproving look. "That is only going to frighten it away; I told you-"

I flapped my wings to try and get my balance back, but it was too little, too late. I withdrew my claws from the fish and tried to lean forward to catch the branch... but my hands were slippery from the oils of the fish.

I slipped forward into a tumble and flailed my spinning wings and legs as I spun down to the ground, struggling to get everything lined up properly in the short distance I had...

I landed with a thud that winded me.

"-that you have to be quiet." The adult looked at me.

Something landed next to me, and I felt my body try and jump in surprise. I tried to take flight again, but I was lying on my back, and all the air had been driven from my lungs with the impact with the ground.

"There he is! See, see, he came back, I told you! Hi Mister Fire Lizard!"

I hissed and rolled to my feet as I dashed towards the nearest tree. I passed the fish I had been carrying - that must have been what had fallen next to me - and scrambled up the side of the tree, digging my claws deep in the bark to cling to the far side of it. I panted for breath and tried not to panic.

"No Lyzel, wait here." I heard a scuffling, as if the adult had grabbed the eager child. "Remember, it is very scared of us. We have to be careful, or we will frighten it even more."

"I'm not going to hurt him..."

"It doesn't know that, sweetie."

"Oh... because of what happened to his friend."

The adult's voice sounded very patient. "That is a part of it. We need to be patient with it. But I think it is still here, just nervous about us. Just give it a minute to calm down and we can see what it does."

The two Kymari grew silent for a moment after that, leaving me only the sound of my panting breaths. I finally calmed down and tried to think.

"Why did he have a fish? I thought the fire lizards liked fruit?"

"We think they do. But the coyotes like to eat meat. It may have been trying to bring it for its friend."

"But... his friend is..." Lyzel's voice trailed off, and I had the feeling she was looking back at the grave.

The older Kymari spoke gently to the child. "We have learned that the fire lizards can be very, very loyal creatures once they bond. Sometimes animals will get into habits, and will keep doing those habits even after they no longer have any reason to, or even though we cannot understand the point to it. If it was used to bringing fish to its friend every night, and playing with it, then it might come back here to keep doing it, even if its friend is gone. Animals do not understand things the way we do. We think this one might have been bonded to a human along with the coyote - it might not be able to fully understand or handle those losses, and it might need to keep doing things it knew made its friends happy in order to help cope with what happened."

"Oh."

I closed my eyes, remembering how I had thought much the same thing when I had first met Susie, when she had refused to leave through the front door until I had clipped the leash to her collar. I could still remember clinging to her back with that useless leash held in my mouth, as if a creature my size and weight would have any chance of holding the much larger border collie back from doing anything it wanted to at all.

I took another deep breath and tried to focus on the immediate situation.

The encyclopedia in my head told me that the Kymari were known to be very patient when they wanted something. Lyzel was a child, and she obviously hadn't developed that trait all the way, but if she was here for something... she'd probably come back here tomorrow to try and get it, too. And then the day after that, and then the day after that, until she did. I could fly away, but I didn't think that would solve anything.

The adult...

The encyclopedia knowledge reminded me that the adult would kill me in an instant if he thought I was a threat to the girl.

That thought alone almost made me take to the air right then and there, but I had calmed down enough to give that a second thought. No, that wasn't quite right. He would defend the girl - what had happened to Susie was proof of that - but he had also stopped the other guard from shooting me. For whatever reason, his hair trigger response was delayed when it came to me. If I was careful... If I was careful, and didn't do anything that seemed threatening, then maybe I could find out what the girl wanted, and get her to go away. Or at least get her to not come back again.

I took another deep breath and pulled my wings tight against me.

I slowly leaned my head around the tree trunk.

The adult was standing behind the girl and holding her in place by her shoulders. She lit up as I came into view and slowly lifted one hand to wave at me. "Hello Mister Fire Lizard!"

I stared back at the girl as she waved... then tilted my head up to look at the adult. I felt a sense of foolishness - I was clinging to the side of a tree like a squirrel and talking to a far-too-excited child who wouldn't be able to understand a single word I chirped. The adult just seemed to watch me carefully, and his expression gave me no clue of what I should or shouldn't do, so I glanced back to the girl.

I chirped a greeting back at the girl, and flexed my wings in preparation to flee in case somehow that would trigger the adult to attack me. "Hello."

The adult didn't move, but Lyzel's expression grew even more excited, and she brought her hand down from the wave. "See daddy! He said hi!"

The adult nodded slowly, but his eyes never left me. "It did. Do you have something you want to say to it, Lyzel?"

"Oh, right!" The girl brought her hand back to the ball and looked down at it. "Um... I wanted to say... about the other day, when Aunt Minna shot the coyote. She didn't know it was your friend, and she thought it was trying to attack me. It happened so fast, but she was only trying to protect me. She didn't mean to hurt you, and she's been really sad about what happened."

The girl looked up from the ball and met my eyes. "And thinking back about it, I don't think your friend was trying to hurt me. We've seen you playing out here, and the way you throw things, and I think... I think your friend just saw my ball and wanted to play with me like it must have played with you. And I'm very, very sorry about what happened, and... I know it's not the same, and doesn't make up for what happened to your friend, but I wanted to give you this, to try and say I'm sorry." Lyzel held the ball up in front of her for me to see, then slowly lowered it towards the ground.

I looked from both of the Kymari to stare at the ball. I... didn't know what to think. My stomach twisted into a knot as several different emotions all hit me at once. I just imagined how happy Susie would have been to have finally had a real ball to play with like the yellow one the child held, instead of the pinecones and sticks I had always tried to make do with. I felt myself let out a low, sad warble at the thought.

Lyzel frowned at the sound and looked sad as she slowly pulled the ball back. "Dad says you're scared and don't understand me, so I'm just going to leave the ball here, and you can play with it if you want. I know it won't be the same as playing with your friend, but I hope you'll still enjoy it." She stared down at the ball for a moment, then looked back up at me. "I'm really sorry about what happened. I hope you won't go away because of it - you're really pretty, and we all like seeing you flying in the morning."

The girl watched me with a hopeful expression for a moment, as if waiting for something from me, but I just wasn't sure what to do. She wouldn't understand anything I said anyways, and... I couldn't really think of anything to say in response.

It was just too much.

I shook my head and let out a half-strangled whistle, then jumped off the side of the tree to fly back to my burrow.

Lyzel's ball was resting against the dirt mound when I arrived at Susie's grave the next morning. Even more Kymari were in the area, and even more cameras were immediately pointed at me, but the towering creatures were all a good distance away, and they all watched quietly.

I had a few seconds before the sun would start to rise.

I walked up to the ball and slowly nudged it, sending it rolling to the tree, then flared my wings and bounded after it when it bounced and rolled off in another direction. I caught the ball and pounced on it, rolling underneath it with the momentum... then launched into the air when it carried me back up, soaring and twisting through the opening steps of the Morning Song.