I whined and slunk lower to the ground as Jean slid the needle underneath one of my scales and through my skin. The piercing feeling hurt. "Owww..."

"I'm sorry; it'll be over in a second." There was a strange sensation of pressure in my shoulder while something red began to fill the tube at the end of the needle. It continued for a few seconds while I tried to stay calm through the pain in my shoulder, even as my headache began climbing back up to a three again... then Jean pulled the needle out, and the pain faded to an annoying soreness. "There, all done. You did good; here's your sucker."

Jean slipped her free hand into one pocket and pulled out a green sucker. Green wasn't the best flavor of sucker – those were red ones, though not every red one, and I couldn't tell if it was a best red one or just an okay red one until I actually started eating it. Which was kind of dumb, since I could usually smell if something would taste good or not before trying to eat it... but it wasn't dumb the way forks were, since they were still yummy either way. And this green sucker would still be yummy.

I took it happily, yanking on the stick until the candy came free of the plastic, then stuffed the candy in my mouth. My teeth closed around the flavorless stick, twisting it out of shape a little, but the important part was the tasty part of the treat in my mouth. I half-spread my wings at the sweet taste and gave a quick little dance. Suckers tasted yummy.

The empty plastic wrapper crinkled in my hand as I tried to hold onto it and enjoy the sucker – Steffie was very clear that I was supposed to find a trashcan and not leave trash lying around – but Jean just held one hand out, even as she avoided looking back at me. "Do you want to go flying next?"

I passed the trash back to Jean, then rolled the shoulder she had stabbed me in and looked upwards. Steffie had needed to put the cake away and clean up a few things before I could open the present, so she had told me I could go with Jean to play outside while I waited. There were clouds in the sky this morning, and it made the glass slope easier to see. It would be so easy to run and jump into the air, flap my wings a few times, and then slant upwards until I could touch the glass...

"Nawt persed fai lef Steffie owl ear wafflemah."

Jean just blinked, actually looking back to stare at me after my horribly mangled words.

I dropped my wings in a pout, then moved the sucker to the side of my mouth and tried again. "Not supposed to fly unless Steffie's out here wif me." I moved my shoulder again to try and relieve the sore feeling left by the needle. The hurt feeling in my side was already fading, along with the dull throb in the back of my head.

"Why not?" Jean frowned as she looked up at the glass canopy high above us. "She said you could go play, and that would be more fun than just standing here. Is she worried you'll get out?"

I shook my head. "No. The people who take cawe of the trees are worried I might do something to hurt the trees, or that I might break the canopy. Steffie says they are worried dwagons might be dangerous. It makes them feel better if she's awound when I fly, and I don't want them to be scawed, or for Steffie to get in twouble." My mouth started to feel funny from trying to talk so much, and I opened and closed my mouth a few times before looking away from Jean. From where we stood by the door back home, I could just barely see where the glass sloped down to connect with a small wall in the distance. Trees were neatly arranged in the field, but there was enough space between them for me to spread my wings all the way out and still not touch one... and the workers didn't mind if I played on the ground, so long as I left certain trees alone. "I'll just be over dere?"

Exploring through the trees, even on the ground, would be more fun than waiting by the door and going crazy wondering what Steffie's present was.

Jean glanced in the direction I had pointed to with my wing, then nodded. "Okay. I'll just put this in my car and wait for Stephanie; she shouldn't be much longer." She put a cap on the needle and pulled the gloves off of her hands, then walked over to one of the cars parked nearby.

I knew what cars were – Jean always had a red one when she came to visit, even though it was much too small for me to do anything more than peek my head into, and Steffie had one that she used to go to school in – and even though they were pretty to look at the first time I saw a new one, they got boring fast. So I turned away from Jean as she opened her car and started messing with the boxes on one of the seats, and I instead turned my attention to the waiting trees.

Steffie had told me we lived in something called the "Pandora Arboretum". 'Arboretum' was just a fancy word for 'forest', and that was why we had all the pretty trees. And 'Pandora' was the name of some kind of research that Steffie and Jean helped with. It was supposed to be a reference to some kind of story – Steffie had told me that the story was much too boring to read, but that the important part of the story was that no matter how bad things got, there was always hope to be found.

She had told me that all of the trees that grew here were ones that things had gotten very, very bad for. Outside the dome, Steffie had said, there weren't any more of them at all. Not in the whole wide world. So the Pandora Arboretum had been built to fix that, and to make sure those trees still had hope.

The Pandora Arboretum was built alongside a really tall cliff that covered it in shade for most of the day. Several homes were built into the cliff, like the one Steffie and I lived in, for the workers who took care of the trees. And up near the top of the cliff – at just over one thousand feet, according to Steffie – was the start of the annoying glass ceiling, which curved down until it reached a small wall just a little taller than I was.

Everything underneath the glass was all very carefully controlled. The cliff blocked most of the sunlight, allowing the workers to use bright lamps and shiny tents to provide an individual tree with the exact amount of light it needed. The glass canopy kept out rain, which let the workers use sprinklers to give each tree the perfect amount of water. And the wall, along with the glass ceiling, kept out any animals that might hurt the trees – bugs that could carry diseases, rodents that would chew on the tree and kill it, or even other people who might not understand how careful we had to be with the trees. The whole thing was set up to protect the trees and give them hope – so that one day they might be planted outside again.

I hoped 'one day' wasn't too far away. The trees were all very pretty, and it made me a little sad to know that their beautiful leaves and flowers couldn't be seen by anyone else.

My wings twitched as I walked along the ground beneath the overhanging branches – even though I knew I was supposed to wait for Steffie, it would have been fun to spread my wings out and fly above the trees instead – but I held them close against my side. The trees were still pretty from the ground, even without the feel of air under my wings, and the slower pace meant I got to enjoy the sight of them for longer. The branches all had lots of leaves on them, and many of them had pretty flowers dotting the various shades of green that made up their canopies. And there was one tree in particular that I could remember, which had started growing pretty blue flowers a few days ago... but where had it been, again...?

The sucker was gone – and I made sure to throw away the leftover yucky-tasting stick in one of the trashcans spaced around the Arboretum, just like Steffie always told me to do – before I finally found the tree I was looking for... and my wings sagged in disappointment when I saw it. The flowers were exactly the color I had been hoping for – about two-thirds of the blooms were short clusters of bright blue petals, with the remaining flowers being orange with blue splotches – and they would have been perfect to give to Jean. But a bright purple circle had been painted in the ground around the tree.

Steffie had given me rules about which trees I could bother. Most of the trees were healthy, and nobody would mind if I took flowers or fruits from them. But when the workers needed me to stay away from a tree they would put a bright purple circle around it to let me know not to bother it. Those trees usually seemed very sick, or at least they would in the next few days after they got a circle – their branches would droop, their bark would flake in huge swatches, and most of their leaves and flowers would fall to the ground – but after a few weeks they would become healthy again.

I had remembered that this tree had been marked the last time I had seen it, and that it had a pile of leaves and orange flowers on the ground around it, but that had been a few days ago, and the tree had already started showing healthy blue flowers then. I had really hoped the workers had finished helping it by now, and that it would be okay to take one of the flowers for Jean... but it looked like they hadn't just yet.

Oh well. Maybe it would be ready the next time Jean visited, and I could get her a flower from it then. The bark looked like it was all grown back, actually, even if it did seem a different shade of brown than what I remembered the tree had before... so it shouldn't be too much longer before the tree was safe to take flowers from. In the meantime, there were still plenty of other trees in the Arboretum, and I was sure I could find flowers that were still close enough.

It only took a few minutes before I found another tree with flowers that I was happy with – they weren't quite the shade of blue that I wanted, but they were still very pretty. And more importantly, this tree didn't have the purple circle telling me to stay away from it. I sat up on my back legs and searched the tree for the perfect blossom, then carefully plucked it free with my claws.

My hand curled gently around the plucked flower to protect it as I returned to all fours and moved on from the tree. It was awkward to walk with something held in my hand, but I had figured out a trick to it. The front edge of my wings had a tough spot near the middle, and if I angled it into the ground I could rest enough of my weight onto that spot and my back legs while I walked forward on my other hand. My wing didn't support my weight in the same way my feet did, and it caused me to wobble a little to one side when I tried moving like that. It was a lot slower than trying to walk or run on all fours... but it was still a lot faster than trying to wobble around on just three feet.

How Steffie or Jean or the workers here managed to walk around using only two was still a mystery to me.

I had plucked three more flowers and tucked them protectively in my hand before I heard a familiar sound – the horn from Steffie's van. I turned away from the tree I was smelling and looked back towards the cliff wall. I had wandered a good distance away from our home – Steffie had painted a bright yellow flower on the cliff just above our doorway, so I always knew where we lived at and could easily find it from anywhere in the Arboretum – and it would take a good bit of time to walk back on foot if I tried to carry the flowers with me...

...but Steffie was here now, so I didn't have to walk.

I turned away from the tree and snapped my wings out, curving them upward to make sure they wouldn't hit the ground, and started running. The air rushing under my wings began to push me upwards, making it easier to run without the hand holding the flowers, and I pulled my hands protectively beneath my chest as I pushed down with my wings in slow, shallow 'scoops'. There was a brief moment where I could feel my weight being supported evenly by my legs and my wings... then the balance shifted, and I knew my wings were supporting me entirely.

One last kick against the ground was all it took to launch me into the air.

My wings flapped again on instinct, pushing me higher, but it was an afterthought. I was flying! All but the tallest of trees were beneath me, even though they were still close enough that I could reach out with a hand and brush through the leaves if I wanted to. The air was all the support I needed, and it formed a cool breeze over my scales as I straightened out my wings and shifted into a glide.

Flying was so much nicer than walking. My body felt light, and moving was effortless. A lazy flap of my wings every now and then was all it took to keep my speed up. A subtle tilt of my tail or angling of my shoulders was all it took to turn or dip lower. Having air all around me was nice, so much nicer than moving around on the ground...

I hummed to myself while I glided over the trees, until I drew close to Steffie's van – or her 'minivan', as she called it. It looked the same size as all the other cars and vans I had seen, though, so I wasn't sure what was 'mini' about it. It was a white van that looked a lot like all the other vans and cars in the Arboretum, and at first it had been a lot of trouble to tell hers apart from all the others, until she had painted a pretty yellow sunflower on the top of it. She had made a few other changes to the van for me – taking the back seat out so I had plenty of space to stretch out in, adding strips of something solid and heavy along the walls so I didn't hurt anything with my horns or the spikes on my tail, and even replacing the carpet with something that was a lot less scratchy and uncomfortable for me to lay on – but my favorite change was still the sunflower painting. I smiled and banked towards that familiar sunflower, smiling wider as I spotted Steffie and Jean standing beside the van.

The van was parked in a row of a bunch of other cars, and I didn't want to hit those when I landed – some of the workers had been very unhappy with Steffie the last time that had happened, and I didn't want them to be mad at her – so I wheeled over the row of cars and angled to land a short distance away. I kept the hand with the flowers tucked against my chest as I landed, shifting into an awkward run to use up the rest of my momentum, and turning back towards Steffie and Jean as I slowed down...

...and then my right hind leg didn't move quite the way I expected it to. My body was suddenly dragged to one side, and I flailed with my wings and tail to try and recover my balance. I caught a glimpse of the flowers flying ahead of me as I flung my hands out to try and catch myself, doing my best to keep my footing... but it was too late.

I fell to one side and bled off the last of my momentum in an awkward slide that carried me a few paces closer to Steffie and Jean.

"I see what you mean." Jean looked down at me, and I saw that flicker in her eyes before her face hardened a little. "She was very graceful while she was flying to us, but I haven't seen her trip like that in a while."

Steffie nodded absently at Jean's words, but she was already walking up to me. She paused to pick up one of the flowers I had dropped, smiling a little as she did, then knelt down beside me. "Are you okay, Joy?"

"Owie." I snorted, exhaling into the dirt in front of me. I didn't feel like getting up just yet, so I stretched my wings out to the sides instead. My body didn't hurt, exactly, aside from the faint headache that was growing worse in the back of my head, but there was a hot feeling on the side of me that had been dragged through the ground. "I'm okie. The gwound is just dumb."

I scooped up a bit of dirt in one hand and flung it back at the ground. There. That should show it to be dumb.

Steffie giggled beside me. "It is dumb, sometimes." She knelt down beside me and began petting along the back of my head.

I started to feel better right away. I began to push myself back up to my feet, only to pause before getting all the way up. "Does Dok Tor Jean need to do the blood test?" I hated the idea of being poked with a needle... but Steffie and Jean had talked about needing one, which meant it was going to have to happen, so it might as well happen while I was already hurt from the landing.

The frown on Jean's face grew a little deeper as she glanced at her car, then looked back at me. "I already took the sample I needed. Don't you remember? I gave you a sucker after."

"...oh." I tried to remember when that had happened... and thinking about it, I could feel a faint soreness in my shoulder, where Jean usually liked to stab me with needles. And I could remember getting a sucker, too – it had been one of the green ones, which wasn't the best flavor of sucker, but still yummy. And Jean only gave me a sucker after she was done with her checkup. But when had she done that? I could remember the idea of Jean taking blood from me, but... we had just come outside after the cake, and... and then I had gone looking for flowers, hadn't I? When had she taken a blood sample?

Steffie gave me a short pat on the head, then reached for one of the flowers scattered on the ground. "Did you find some flowers, Joy?"

I forgot all about the blood sample at Steffie's question, and my concerned frown changed to a wide smile and outspread wings as I rose to my feet and picked up the closest flower. "Uh-huh! This one's for you!" I held it up to her, then frowned again as I saw the one she had picked up. "That one is 'pposed to be Dok Tor Jean's, though."

"Supposed. And okay." She handed the cluster of blue petals back to me, then took the green flower. "Thank you, Joy."

"Supposed." I repeated the word, even though I was sure I already knew how to pronounce it – it was just a long word, so it was easier on my tongue if I shortened the word – then turned back to the last two flowers still on the ground. "The one with the curls is for you, too. And the other two..." I used my wing to hobble the rest of the way to the cars, then sat up and held the blue flower I was holding out for Jean. "Awe for you!"

Jean blinked, and her face twisted before she looked away from me. One hand went to hold the long green sleeve covering her arm, and her shoulders rose as she took a deep breath.

My wings drooped at my sides at her reaction, and I took a half-step back. "I'm sowwie... do you not like the color? It looked like your eyes. Steffie says these trees only grow here, and I thought..." I pulled my hand back and curled my claws carefully around the flower. "Sowwie..."

Jean took another deep breath, then finally looked back at me. Her face looked blank, like she was trying to force it to be that way, but I could see that same flicker in her eyes as she looked at me. "It's alright." She let go of her arm and held her hand out palm up, and brought it down to mine. "Thank you for the flowers."

Her voice didn't sound like everything was alright... but I carefully dropped the flower in her hand anyway, hoping maybe it would cheer her up later. I turned to look back at the two flowers still on the ground, then shook my head. "No Steffie, that was the wrong one! Yours is that one, with the curly lines!" I pointed down at the white flower with the purple curls in the center of the petals, which reminded me of the way Steffie's hair curled at its edges, then looked back up at the one she held in her hands. "The straight one was for Dok Tor Jean." That was just common sense. Jean had straight hair, so the straight-lined flower fit her better.

Jean tilted her head and stepped past me, looking between the two flowers with a sudden interest. "Curly lines? What's she talking about?"

Steffie knelt down to pick up the flower with the purple curls. "I thought I sent a report on... oh, but you were probably still out back then. Here, let me show you." She stood up again, then moved in between us, facing Jean but with her back to me. I saw her shoulders shift a few times, then she stepped to the side, so Jean and I could both see the flowers. "Joy, which flower has curls on it?"

"Oh!" I sat up a little straighter, remembering the game we played sometimes, and pointed at the flower with the purple curls in the center of the petals. "That one!"

Steffie turned away to block my view of the flowers, even though Jean still had a view of them, and I saw her shoulders moving. "There were a few points where Joy described things about the flowers that didn't make sense. Patterns that weren't there, colors that I couldn't see. At first I thought she was just using her imagination, but..." She turned back to face me. "Which one has the curls on it?"

The flowers hadn't moved, so I pointed back at the one with the curls. Steffie nodded, then handed the flower with the straight lines over to Jean, who took it and stared down at it curiously. "It looks like Joy can see a bit further into the ultraviolet range than we can. Like some birds. I found a digital camera that captures the UV range to double check, and the flowers were always exactly the way she described. And I've asked the workers here to mark any trees with an ultraviolet marking if it's one they don't want Joy playing with, and she's always been able to tell those apart from the others. And as an added bonus, I also discovered..." Steffie grinned and pointed down at my wing. "Joy, what color issss... that scale?"

I followed where she was pointing, then grinned at the game. "Yellow!"

"Mm-hmm! Aaaand..." Steffie moved her hand to point at a spot at my back. "Here?"

I curved my neck to glance back at the stripe she was pointing at, which ran from my neck out onto my wings, then grinned up at her. "The special purple!"

Jean stared down at me. She started walking in a circle around me, looking carefully at my scales. "Ohhh... that is interesting..."

"Mm-hm! Ask about it when you get back – the other researchers have learned a few things since I told them about this, and I'm sure you'll want to know about it." Steffie adjusted the two flowers in her hand, then smiled down at me. "But for now, I think Joy has waited on us long enough. Ready to open your present?"

I nodded enthusiastically, spreading my wings out to the sides. "Uh-huh!"