Page 54 of Dragon Keeper
“But are they bats? Do they fly?”
“Oh, yes. They can fly. Right now, they’re exhausted and feeding. Notice the bits of straw that are left, the seeds that are still in the field? We leave a bit behind, you see, so that they have something to eat. There’s an old gathering place tucked back behind the mountains, back near a stream. They winter there. They eat and they rest, they have their babies, and then in the spring? They head back the other way.”
Sloan thought they looked like a combination of owls and bats. They had white feathers or fur, it was hard to tell, and huge eyes, but no beaks. But they absolutely had wings—leathery wings, four of them. One set seemed to be huge, and the other was smaller.
They walked on the tips of the larger wings and propelled themselves a bit with the wings in the back. It was fascinating.
“But they don’t bite?”
Tyr shrugged. “Well, I’m sure they would if threatened, but really, they want to be left alone. They’re just going from place to place. They don’t harm anything, they’re quite beautiful in their own way. And they eat bugs.”
“Wow. Every time I see an animal I don’t know anything about, it makes me stunned that I’m actually here.”
“That I do understand. I think the same every time they bring something new from the other world—Cosmo and Corbin and Cullen. I feel as though, how can this thing be here? How can it be so different? Like larparcas.”
Sloan chuckled. “Well, I hope that they don’t bite our larparcas.”
“No, no, no. I’ve never seen them do anything. I mean, we just leave them alone, and they leave us alone.”
Now that was a plan. “I don’t think that that’s such a terrible idea. Sometimes, I think the human world should have just left other things alone.”
“Well. In the spring, you’ll see them fly. They’ll be fat and happy and well rested. Then they fly until they’re tired, and they do this the rest of the way when they’re back in the south.”
“Oh, so they flew from there?”
Tyr nodded. “Yes, and now they’re tired and close, and so they walk because they know that this is a safe place and nothing will bother them.”
“Not even wolves?”
“We don’t have wolves like you mean, I think. I’ve met Gareth’s sister, who has shown us her wolf form. We do have predators, and some of them are what you call canids, but they have retreated away from the villages.” Tyr chuckled. “We really are the highest on the food chain.”
“I guess we are.” Sloan chuckled. “Ideally, we would be in the human realm too, but there are just so many humans and they have such terrible weapons. Even our magic can’t survive some of that. And then there are the vamps.”
Tyr shuddered. “I am so glad we eradicated those here.”
“Yeah.” Sloan paused, smiling. “Let’s not kill the mood, huh?” He clucked, and the bocapal moved on, heading for home. The big creature liked its comfortable home.
Just like Sloan did.
“You go on in, love, and make us something to drink. I’ll unload and put him away.” He rubbed the bocapal’s side.
“I won’t argue. This costume is dragging at me a little.” Tyr kissed his chin, then made his way into the house.
“We had a good night,” Sloan told the hives as he unloaded. They were so quiet now, but that was the way of the seasons. He was still sure they heard him. “And your keeper is pregnant. I bet you guys knew that, huh? I knew he smelled different, but I thought maybe I was just away too long.”
He unharnessed and unloaded and got things into cold storage before going to look for Tyr. He would stop on the way to the pool and put Tanya’s rock in the hoard to keep for Brayden.
Tyr was nowhere to be seen, so he headed for the pool. His mate did love to soak, and now he didn’t need to stop at the cold pool first. They could just make right for the heated one.
“Love?” he called when he got there, having shed clothes all along the way.
“Mmmhmm?” Tyr was already up to his neck in the water, eyes closed, a smile on his face. “I brought juice.”
“That’s perfect, sweet.” He slid off the last of his clothes and allowed himself to walk off the edge into the water. Oh, that felt heavenly after the chill of the last half hour outside.
“Is all well?”
“Yes. Our bocapal is happily in his enclosure, the bees are quiet, and I put the food stores away. Now it’s just you and me.”
