Page 5 of Dragons & Dumplings
Sighing, I shoved another bite of my chicken alfredo pasta into my mouth. It was exactly the way I liked it: lukewarm, with barely any garlic and nice and creamy. But for some reason, it didn’t taste quite right. Almost like it was missing something.
I quietly scoffed to myself. What was wrong with me? I had been eating food like this my entire life and loved it right up until… Golden eyes flashed through my mind, accompanied by the sensation of searing heat and a spark of magic.
I held up a hand to flag down my waiter. “I’ll take the check, please.”
After paying and forcing myself to finish the rest of my lunch, I packed up my laptop and left the restaurant. I wandered along the main street, pausing when I caught the scent of coffee on the wonderfully chilly November breeze.
I followed my nose to a coffee shop called The Broom & Bean, which must have been owned by a witch, given the shop’s name. Sure enough, when I went inside I spotted a young witch brewing coffee and manning the till. She was pretty, with long raven hair and vivid turquoise eyes, but she didn’t have the unpredictable intensity the fire drake waitress had possessed.
Shaking my head to clear it of such ridiculous thoughts, I joined the line and waited for my turn to order. The place was certainly eccentric, with overstuffed armchairs and strange enchantments all over the place. The roaring fire made the interior rather stuffy, but if I could sit outside on the patio and still use the shop’s wifi, that shouldn’t be an issue. Though for some reason, the black cat in the corner kept staring at me. What was it with felines and their judgmental stares?
“I can help the next in line!” called the witch.
I stepped forward, and scanned the menu briefly. “I will take an iced pumpkin spice latte with extra cream.”
“Coming right up.” She gave me an icy smile, and purple magic glowed as she made my order while I paid.
Now that I got a closer look at her, I was fairly certain I had seen this witch at the diner yesterday. Wasn’t she friends with Mei? My spine stiffened. She probably remembered my little outburst, then. Perhaps coming in here had been a mistake.
“Here you are.” She handed me my drink, and I took it cautiously. She wouldn't have…done something to it, right? To get back at me on behalf of her friend?
“Thank you.” I took the cup gingerly in my non-bandaged hand, and went to find a seat on the patio.
After I sat down, I popped the lid to take a look at the drink, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I didn’t sense any magic coming from it, either. I put the lid back on and took a tentative sip, only to be pleasantly surprised. This was probably the best iced latte I had ever encountered.
I opened up my laptop, ready to get to work, only to discover that the shop’s wifi connection outside was so terrible that my device couldn’t hold the connection. I tried moving it as close to the wall of the building as I could, but that didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
My only two options were to sit inside by the fire and possibly irritate the witch or go elsewhere in search of better wifi.
I huffed in frustration and slowly closed my laptop, returning it to my bag. The very first time my brother had caught up to me, I had learned the hard way that saving my work to the device itself and even to a flashdrive was meaningless if both were destroyed at the same time.
Now, I only ever used writing tools that saved to the cloud. No device? No flashdrive? No problem. Finding steady wifi could be inconvenient, but it was much better than losing all of my work and having to start over from scratch—again.
And fortunately for me, my family was still living in the stone ages, so they assumed destroying the devices themselves was all they needed to do. If I acted devastated enough, I could usually slip away while my brother was gloating and purchase another inexpensive laptop.
I scowled and tapped my fingers on the tabletop. If I didn’t want to melt inside The Broom & Bean, then my only other option was to go back to the Hearthstone Diner. The food was spicy, but at least they had both air conditioningandwifi.
My mind made up, I stood, grabbed my bag and my iced latte, and walked along the main street to the diner. As I walked, I told myself that theonlyreason I was going back to that den of fire drake food was for the wifi.
And for nothing—or no one—else.
Chapter three
Regulars & Rumors
Mei
“He’ssshereagain,”Nalinihissed disapprovingly.
The naga, or snake-woman, had been working as a waitress alongside me since the beginning. I had learned early on to hop over her trailing snake tail, and to keep my toes a healthy distance away from her trunk as well, to keep them from being squashed under her heavy muscles and thick scales. Her curvy figure and hypnotic yellow eyes often afforded her generous tips, but even though I had informed her Yuri was a generous tipper, she refused to serve him. Something about how his natural frost lowered her body temperature, which made her feel sluggish and uncomfortable.
“What a surprise,” I muttered.
For some reason, the ice dragon had shown up every day for the last week. But what was truly surprising was that he had been painstakingly polite. So much so, that I was starting to wonder if he had just been having a particularly terrible day when we first met. Though he did still let a few snide comments about fire drakes and their spicy food slip through.
“Be careful of that one, Mei-Mei,” Nalini warned. “The rumorsss about him have been ssswirling around town, that he isss one of thossse emotionlesss, tradition-bound hermitsss.”
“I will.” I tried not to let her words rattle me. Yuri was strange, but he didn’t strike me as the kind of dragon my parents had warned me about.
