“Hello?”

I shifted drowsily on the sand and reached up to brush at whatever was bothering my ear.  It was too earl… okay, it was probably the middle of the day by now, but I was tired.  I hadn’t slept well, and I still wasn’t sure what to think of the Kymari’s decision.

“Hellooooooo?  Is anybody out there?”

The strange voice repeated itself and I warbled a tired ‘Go awaaaaaay’ before rolling over in the sand.  I was vaguely aware of the Kymari lifting her head up to look at me from the couch - she had been doing something on her tablet when she heard my noise, and she looked much more composed than she had been in the morning - before I dropped my head against the warm sand and closed my eyes.  It felt so nice, especially with how sore my wings and leg felt…

“...just a guideline, but so far this has worked well for the wild ones.  We might have to adjust some things since he already seems tame, but it should still be a good starting point.  I’ll be available any time if you have any questions.”

I yawned and grumbled again at the unwelcome noise.  It was still so hard to get real rest, at least unless I wanted to try and drink the water laced with the sedatives, and I didn’t appreciate being woken up by whatever was making the noise.  It sounded like a male voice, one speaking the Kymari language.

“Are you sure?  Some of these… I have to get rid of the cage?  What if he gets outside?”

Her voice that time.  I snorted.  Of course she would be involved in ruining my nap.

“He will need to get comfortable being around you.  The cage is an extra bit of separation between the two of you.  If it comes to that we can get a tracker on him, but you shouldn’t have to worry too much about him getting out.  They aren’t as fast on their feet as they are in flight, so if he does try to make a break for the door it really won’t be that hard to catch him.”

“...feed him by hand?  He’ll just bite me!”

Bluh.  Whoever she was talking to, they obviously weren’t going to go away any time soon.  I yawned again and slowly opened my eyes.

I closed my eyes again, rolled over, and shook myself off until the sand that had gotten in my eyes was gone.  And then I brought my hands up and rubbed at my head a bit more just for good measure.  Why was I sleeping upside down?  That was pretty stupid…

I opened my eyes again and glanced towards the sound of the voices… then stopped at what I saw above me.

“Well good morning there, sleepy head!”

I instantly recognized the lyrical chirps and whistles.  They were identical to my own.  And just like with the Kymari language, there was an understanding wrapped up inside the sounds, with the strange knowledge in my head automatically assigning meaning to each of the musical syllables.

I also recognized the shape sprawled out on top of my cage.  The same long wings, the same arching ears ending as feathery tufts, the same slender tail, the same yellow-amber eyes.  I would have thought I was just seeing a picture or reflection of myself… if the scales of the creature staring back at me hadn’t been a rich green in color.

I gawked at the only other living dragonet I had seen in eight very long years.

A million questions crowded through my sleepy brain.  Where had she come from?  How had she survived for so long?  Had she once been human, like I had, or was she some 'original' creature that the human scientists had tried to copy?  What was her name?  Did she even have a name?  Was green the color we normally came in?  Was silver a color we normally came in, or was something wrong with me for not being green like her?  Were there others like us?  Could she understand me, the way that I could understand her?  Did she know why I could understand her?  What was she doing here now, and how had she gotten past the Kymari that had captured me?

The questions collided and all fought to be the first one I asked… with the end result being that I just stared up at her in shock and asked nothing at all.

We watched each other for a long moment before she finally chirped down at me again.  “Not much for words, are you?”

I blinked again and remembered my manners… from when I had last used them, nearly a decade ago.  I sat up in the bowl of sand and tilted my head up at her.  “I’m sorry; I’ve never seen anyone like me before.  My name is Nate.  What’s yours?”

“Oh.”  Her chirp sounded sad.  “We were worried that might have been the case, but we weren’t sure.  My name is Ivy.”  The green dragonet rose to her feet and tucked her wings against her side, then hopped down to sit on the table by the door to my cage.  I noticed her scales were more vibrant on her back than her belly - she would probably blend in very well against the leaves of a tree, or in the grass.  “May I come in?”

I blinked, still feeling a little caught off guard.  “Um… I can’t open it.”  I stood up from the warm sand and shook myself off, only cutting off the gentle ‘tinktinktink’ of my scales when my leg started to hurt.

She warbled in a gentle giggle, then glanced over her shoulder to look towards the couch.  I followed her gaze and realized there were two Kymari sitting on the couch - the Kymari who lived here, and a slightly older male Kymari.  Both were watching us.

“Trenil, can you open the door for me?”  Ivy sang up at the male Kymari.

The male Kymari - who I assumed must be Trenil - glanced at the other Kymari.  “I think she wants to go inside.  You should be the one to open the cage; he needs to get used to you being around him.”

I looked back at Ivy, feeling a slight panic.  “Did he understand you?  Can...”  I glanced towards the male and watched for a reaction.  “Can he understand this?”

“Nah.  We might as well be a pair of birds chirping at each other right now for all they can tell.  He’s just used to me, and the Kymari are fairly smart.  If you sit in front of a door and make noises at them, they’ll figure out you want the door open pretty quickly.”

The female Kymari stood up from the couch and walked towards us.  I hissed and took a step back as she got close, moving towards the far edge of the bowl of sand.  I glanced from the Kymari to Ivy, wondering how each would react to the other.  Ivy fanned her wings and took a few steps away from the Kymari, but otherwise didn’t react.  The Kymari unlatched the door and let it fall open, then returned back to the couch.

Ivy hopped into the cage and began looking around at the various objects inside it.  I watched her from the bowl of sand as she explored.  I had never truly gotten to see myself move outside of reflections in the river, and it was fascinating to see clearly.  She kept her wings close against her sides, but with just the slightest gap, which I recognized as something I unconsciously did when my balance was a little off.

The glass floor didn’t offer the best of grips, and I saw her feet slip slightly as her claws tapped on the hard surface.  Her neck bent to an alarming degree as she sniffed at my blanket, then the food dish on the other side of the cage, but I knew I could stretch and bend my own neck even further without any discomfort.  I felt a strange mixture of both familiarity and surprise as I watched her poke around my temporary home.

It didn’t take her long.

She sidled over to the food bowl and glanced back at me.  “Do you mind if I have some of your food?  I haven’t eaten in a few hours; Trenil got a bit of a last minute notice to come visit you and Minna, and there wasn’t any food on the shuttle.”

“Oh, um… sure, of course.  Oh - watch the bowl of water in the corner; it’s drugged.”  I carefully stepped down from the bowl of sand and sat up on the floor.  I kept my eyes glued on her, still completely unsure what to expect from the newcomer.

“Oh?”  Ivy stretched her neck a little further and sniffed at the bowl.  “Oh, phew, it is.  Why is that even here?  Are you in a lot of pain?”  She tilted her neck back towards me - that was seriously going to take some getting used to; was I as bad as that? - and glanced over my cast.

“Not lately.  I haven’t drunk out of that bowl in a few days; I think she just forgot about it.”

Ivy snorted and leaned back to the bowl of fruit.  She fished through it for a minute, then leaned back and lowered the thin ears arching out from her head.  “Is this all you have?  Dried mangos?”

I felt a little embarrassed at the tone in the other dragonet’s voice… then I remembered it wasn’t my fault that all I had was the single type of fruit.  “Yeah.  Sorry.”

The green dragonet snorted again before she reached back in to pick out a piece.  She stared at it for a moment, and I got the impression she was trying to decide between eating the dried fruit or tossing it aside and staying hungry.  “Trenil will get Minna to straighten that out for you.  What fruits do you normally like to eat?”

I thought about it as I watched the strangely recognizable creature dig through my food.  “She has these orange berries she leaves me sometimes.  The apples that grow in the forest I live in are good, too.  Though it would be nice to have a pineapple again.  That used to be my favorite fruit.”

Ivy frowned from the food dish.  “I’ve had apples and sunburst berries - those are good, we all love them - but I don’t think the Kymari have ever gotten us pineapples.  I’ll have to see what we can do about that.  So.”  She chirped, then popped the fruit in her mouth and began chewing it.  “What’s your story, Nate?”

I blinked at the other dragonet.

I was doing that a lot.

The words had just arrived directly in my head somehow.  There was no physical sound coming from a particular direction, there was nothing my ears heard, but I nonetheless still knew that Ivy had spoken to me from her place at the bowls.  Her words had lacked the melodic sound of warbles and chirpings but had somehow still carried the happy ‘tone’ of her voice.  I had simply known what she told me, without her needing to go through the step of actually opening her mouth making sounds.

“How... “  I stretched my neck to look at her from a different angle.  She was still chewing away at the fruit.  “What was that?”

Ivy kept chewing as if I hadn’t said anything.  “Wow, you really haven’t met any other dragonets before.  Mindspeech!  Mind link, telepathy, whatever you want to call it.  I was wondering why nobody answered me when we got here; I just assumed that you were either asleep or that we were too far away.”

I blinked - again - and shook my head.  I thought I could recall something like the mental ‘voice’ Ivy was using earlier, when I had been trying to sleep… was that what she meant?  I still had no idea how to actually respond with it, though.  I just stared at her blankly.

“We usually talk like this to each other, especially when Kymari are around.  We don’t want it becoming wide-spread knowledge among them that we’re smart.”  She swallowed the slice of mango… and immediately reached in for another one, which she plopped into her mouth and began chewing.  “You need to switch to it too, or they’ll start to wonder why we’re being so overly chatty.  They usually don’t see us singing so much.”

I rolled my eyes and chirped back at her.  “How?”

Ivy didn’t pause in her chewing, but her tone sounded a little caught off guard.  “Oh.  Umm... I’ve never explained how to anyone before...  I imagine a picture of somebody in my head, and then just kind of imagine I’m thinking ‘towards’ that picture.  You can also imagine just ‘talking’ without anyone in particular in mind, and any other dragonet close by will hear you.”

I stared at her for another long moment.  I did not blink this time.  That made zero sense.  But…  I was a tiny dragonet being kept in a cage by aliens, and another tiny dragonet was happily eating away at my food.  It wouldn’t even be the weirdest thing today if it turned out I was able to just think to somebody using nothing more than the power of imagination...

I pictured Ivy in my head, and then imagined what I wanted to say to her.  “LIKE THIS?”

“Yes!  You don’t have to imagine it quite so strongly, but yes, that’s it!”  She fished out a third slice and began chewing on it.  “This stuff is awful.”

“It’s not that bad…”  I replied back, partly just to practice the weird form of communication a bit more.

“Trust me.  There is much better food in store for you.  Just wait until you get to try these.”  An image of a blue-and-peach fruit appeared in my head, the same way Ivy’s words had.  She swallowed and started in on a fourth slice.  “So.  Cough it up - the entire flock has been in a tizzy since we learned there was another dragonet out here.  How’d you end up here?”

I tried to keep my ‘imaginary voice’ at a conversational level.  “I was attacked by an eagle.  She was there when it happened, and brought me here.”

An impression of an impatient sigh and a feeling of aggravation bubbled up in my awareness, and I somehow knew it had come from Ivy.  Between the image of the strange fruit and now Ivy’s feeling of frustration, it seemed the mental communication could convey a lot more than just words.  “Not that, everybody already knows that part!  We first heard about you a few weeks back; our bond handlers started coming across videos the Kymari here took of you, but we couldn't account for anyone who was missing.  We heard the story that the Kymari were passing around, about you being out here on your own with a ‘coyote’, your dog, and then what you were doing every day after she died.”

She finished her mouthful and took a bite from another piece of fruit, slowing down a little in her chewing.  “We’ve been trying to come up with an excuse to let us come out here ever since then so we could figure out what was going on, or at least to get a clear enough picture to try and mindlink you, but then you got hurt and the Elders just up and asked us to come.  What we don’t know is why you were way out here in the first place.”

I shifted a little and reached for my tail to fidget with it nervously.  I was suddenly a little nervous, and wondered just how much I should tell the other dragonet.  This… was all very odd, and very overwhelming.  I knew part of it - or maybe even most of it - was from living by myself for so long, but… talking to somebody else was a big deal.  Trusting them with what I had been through, when I had just met them, even one as friendly as Ivy was being?

The other dragonet finished up the slice of mango and turned back to me.  She walked over, and I felt myself bristle with nervousness at her approach… but she simply stretched out beside me on the floor and started making a rumbling sound of contentment.  “Come on, Nate.  I’m already out three sunburst berries - my guess had been that the Kymari had faked the death of one of us and dragged you out here before you escaped them, but since you’ve never seen another dragonet that’s obviously not the case.  The least you can do is let me know what actually happened?”

I stared down at the other person sprawled against me for a long moment, trying to think.  She looked up at me with calm, patient eyes while I tried to sort through everything.  I couldn’t imagine what I must have looked like to her, or to the Kymari - though thankfully, they had started talking to each other and weren’t paying us any attention.

It… reminded me a little of resting against Susie.

I slowly sank down to the floor and stretched out beside her.  I thought for another moment to try and decide where to begin.  I wasn’t too sure if I should tell her I used to be a human just yet.  “I hatched about eight years ago.  I was all alone; the city was completely deserted.  I didn't see any other dragonets there.  I did find a few other eggs, but they were all cold.  I left the place and found Susie - the dog - then I headed north, out of that city.  I traveled for a few months and ended up here, and the Kymari just kind of built their city up around me.”

“Oh…”  There was a sudden sense of understanding in Ivy’s mindspeech.  “Nate, were you…”  She paused a little, and I sensed she was trying to decide how to word a delicate question.  “Did you used to be a human?”

Well.  So much for not letting her know that.  Though… if she knew that was a possibility, did that mean that she…?

“Yes...  You were, too?”

“I was.”  Ivy’s tone became a little quieter and somber.  “Most of us alive today were.  We were kidnapped and brought to a lab, probably the one you hatched in, and when we hatched we were like this.  We escaped when the Votak attacked.”  The thrumming sound coming from her grew fainter.  “We did go back to check after in case anyone else was alive, but we didn’t find any other survivors.  We thought all the eggs were dead.  I’m sorry.”

I felt a sudden sense of hope.  Relief.  I… wasn’t alone.  There were other humans still out there, other people that had survived.  It wasn’t just me.  When I had heard the Kymari mention other fire lizards, I had hoped, but… I couldn’t have been sure they weren’t talking about some alien creature they had brought to Earth along with them.  Not until that moment.  “How… how many of us…?”

Ivy’s rumbling stopped entirely, and she sounded sad.  “I’m sorry…  there are only a little over a hundred of us in total in the flock.  About two-thirds of us are survivors of the lab; the rest are dragonets that were born after we left.”  She hesitated.  “The Kymari haven’t been able to find any other flocks anywhere.  You’re the only fire lizard they’ve ever found outside of our group.”

I felt the hope sink a little.  I stretched my neck out and rested my head on my hands.  Only a hundred… ten years ago there had been six billion people, and now all that was left was…

I felt something warm settle over my back.  Ivy’s wing spread over me in sympathy, and my own chest started to rumble gently.

...over a hundred more than I had known about yesterday.