something wild calls you home

[Neverwhere]

Fire bursts from Scorch's chest and it draws Neverwhere's eye downward until the burnt mare snorts her reply, and as her gaze rests there fitfully, it finds Aletta's, grasping onto the brief flash of dismay and distrust in her eyes. It wins rare points for the grey mare as Neverwhere turns her attention again to the hard ridges of the former Amazon's face. A dragon.

"Yes, as I said." She dismisses it almost casually, a dragon is a dragon and they all leave the same taste of singe and sulfur on your tongue. It doesn't matter to her whether it was Ghaul, or Castile, or some unnamed beast she hasn't met. She's had quite enough of the lot of them, yet Beqanna's blood seems to crawl with dragons, to pulse with the rhythm of their reptilian hearts, and it's a strange thing to her, yet perhaps it is simply the nature of them. They hoard and they flame, and their blood does the same.

That isn't quite right, though, she reminds herself. Leilan is a dragon now as well, though one of ice rather than fire. And yet, the cold can burn, too, something she knows intimately to be true. Her ears drift back for the space of a breath and in that moment she feels a phantom pain in ear-tips long since lost. They throb, but the memory is a dusty and distant one, and Eurwen's bright greeting awakens her, the familiar introduction. The Nerinian queen blinks away the ghosts of her ears, and lightened of the weight, the rounded halves that remain turn forward again, cloudy eyes alight with a new consideration. Grandmother. One mystery is solved.

"Aletta," another remains, "Yes, Scorch, tell us if you recognize her, because I certainly don't."

@[Scorch] I am sorry this took so long, and I'm sorry if it sucks. My internet had a stroke and deleted everything halfway through so I had to rewrite it