What had he done to justify her leaving the house so suddenly? He removed his clothes in her absence and slunk out into the snowy day to follow her as a dragon once more. As clueless as she was of her old life- he worried she might get into some sort of trouble. Mostly he watched her bond with the countless dragons though, at least until she ran into some humans instead. He dropped down from the rooftops and watched from a distance until she had taken notice of him, gesturing his way. He dipped his body closer to the snowy bank and creped over.

“I’m Calder” the boy introduced, leaving off surnames for the sake of not over complicating things. “That’s Darby.” He said with a gesture towards the girl with more muscle than fat and then onward to the other boy “that’s Arvid and the girl with way too many questions… that’s Maginhild.”

“You can just call me Mag.” The girl imputed. “We use to play together before you disappeared.”

“Boy, you’ve really shaped up since we last saw you. You actually look like a girl.” Arvid said with some pride for noticing but Blizzard emerged from the white snow like a specter. Spreading his wings and leering over the boy. The moment Arvid noticed he stumbled over himself, falling in the powder. “Son of Loki! Don’t do that!”

Blizzard pushed shamelessly between them, rubbing his snout against Ava as Darby muttered “that’s got to be Ava. That dumb lizard never treats any of us like that.”