"Come on, come back," Remi whispered, pacing the clearing as Brother watched with evident concern. Her bare feet had long since toughened against the rough stone, but she kept moving more from nervous energy than any real purpose. "Just bring him back safe. Please." Speaking aloud helped maintain some connection to her humanity, even if the words were meant for no one but herself.

The clearing felt eerily quiet in the aftermath of the attack. The remaining siblings—Brother, Forge, Slate, and Ember—had positioned themselves in a defensive formation that spoke of instincts far older than their few weeks of life. Their father remained partially submerged in the earth at an unusually distant position, his massive form creating subtle ripples in the ground that Remi's growing sensitivity could easily track.

"Some guard you turned out to be," Remi muttered, eyeing the father dragon's distant form. She pressed her palm against the sun-warmed stone, focusing on the vibrations that pulsed through the earth. "I can feel you skulking over there, you know. Trying to look busy now that everything's gone wrong." The father dragon's slight shift suggested he could at least interpret her tone, if not her words.

A distant tremor caught her attention—not the smooth rhythm of their mother's movement, but something more chaotic. The father dragon's head lifted slightly, his ancient eyes fixing on the forest's edge. The siblings tensed, their tails raising in unconscious coordination.

"Something's coming," Remi murmured, falling naturally into a crouch between Brother and Forge. "But it feels... different." She could sense multiple patterns of movement, like overlapping ripples in a pond. The father dragon's low rumble carried notes of recognition rather than alarm, though he maintained his defensive posture.

The mother dragon emerged from the forest with deliberate grace, her massive form moving with surprising delicacy for her size. In her jaws, held with infinite gentleness, was Flint's battered but living form. She placed him down with exquisite care, then began the process of cleaning his wounds with her massive tongue.

"Flint!" Remi's cry was equal parts relief and concern. She started forward, but Brother's tail blocked her path—a gentle reminder to wait. The mother's work needed to be completed first, ancient instincts taking precedence over emotional reunions.

Remi forced herself to stay still, though she couldn't help providing running commentary: "Easy there, buddy. Let Mom fix you up. You're going to be okay." Her voice cracked slightly. "You scared us pretty bad, you know that? What were you thinking, trying to burrow when that thing was so close?"

The mother dragon's work was methodical and thorough. Whatever injuries Flint had sustained seemed to respond to her ministrations—whether through some property of her saliva or simply the comfort of maternal care, his breathing steadied and his trembling gradually ceased.

Only when the mother dragon finally stepped back did the siblings move forward as one, surrounding their wounded brother with chirps and gentle nudges. Remi joined them, her hands finding the spaces between Flint's scales that she knew he enjoyed having scratched. "There's my curious boy," she said softly. "No more solo adventures, okay? We stick together from now on."

The mother dragon's sudden growl cut through the moment of reunion. Her head turned toward the father dragon with a sharpness that made even Remi flinch. The growl carried notes of pure fury, accompanied by forceful mental images that even Remi could interpret: patrol-guard-protect, repeated with increasing intensity. The message was clear - if he couldn't properly guard the clutch while resting, he could make himself useful by patrolling their territory instead.

The father dragon's form seemed to shrink slightly under her fierce glare before he extracted himself from the earth and slunk away into the forest, properly chastised. Remi could feel the vibrations of his movement growing more distant as he began what would clearly be a long night of enforced vigilance.

"Wow," Remi breathed, watching her father's retreat. "Guess some things really are universal. Dad—my old dad—he used to get the silent treatment too. Though Mom never actually sent him out of the house to do perimeter checks." She shifted position, leaning against Brother's warm scales as she processed the family drama unfolding around them.

The memory of her human mother's disappointment surfaced unexpectedly sharp and clear—one particular afternoon when Rachel had broken something valuable and Remi had taken the blame. That same mix of hurt and protective instinct felt surprisingly relevant now, watching her dragon mother's fierce defense of her clutch.

"At least dragon moms are direct about it," Remi continued, her voice dropping to barely more than a whisper. "No passive-aggressive sighs or 'I just think it's interesting that...' Human mom was big on those. Though I guess technically she still is. Present tense. She's still out there somewhere, isn't she? In that other world..."

Brother nudged her gently, perhaps sensing her emotional turmoil. "Thanks, big guy. Don't worry, I'm not having regrets. Just thinking about how families work. Like, Dad—dragon dad—he messed up, yeah. He should have been more alert. But Mom's reaction... it's not just about him sleeping through the attack, is it? It's about trust. About knowing someone is supposed to protect you and then they don't."

As the sun began to set behind the mountain peaks, casting long shadows through the ancient pines, Remi found herself watching Slate and Ember's reactions. Despite their own evident disappointment in their father, they kept shooting worried glances toward the forest where he'd disappeared. "Some things stay complicated no matter what," she mused. "They're mad at him too, but they still care. Just like Rachel used to get mad at me but would still stick up for me when Dad was being particularly rough."

She hadn't thought about her sister in what felt like ages. The memory brought a complex mix of emotions: annoyance at Rachel's dramatic tendencies, appreciation for those moments of unexpected loyalty, worry about how she was handling whatever had happened to Remi in that other world. "I wonder if she misses me. If she knows what happened. Or if time even works the same way between here and there..."

The mother dragon's tail curved more protectively around the clutch, responding perhaps to the melancholy in Remi's voice. "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere," Remi assured her, reaching out to pat the nearest scaled surface. "Just figuring out how to be part of two different kinds of family. Or, well, how to remember one while being part of another. It's complicated. But then again, when is family ever not complicated?"

The night settled around them, the clearing quiet except for the soft sounds of breathing and occasional chirps from the siblings. Flint had drifted into a healing sleep, the others arranged protectively around him. The mother dragon's massive form curved around them all, her protective presence now the clutch's sole guardian. In the distance, Remi could occasionally feel the vibrations of their father's patrol through the earth—a constant reminder of his punishment detail.

As Remi began to drift toward sleep herself, cushioned by Brother's warm scales, she felt the mother dragon's consciousness brush against hers—the lightest of touches, carrying impressions of safety-warmth-family that required no translation. She smiled, letting the contact wash over her. She was changing, becoming something neither fully human nor fully dragon, but perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing. Perhaps she was becoming exactly what she needed to be.

The next morning brought a subtle shift in the clutch's dynamics. Flint's recovery became a focal point of their collective attention, with each sibling taking turns checking on him. Remi noticed how their communication had become more nuanced—a complex language of chirps, tail movements, and barely perceptible earth vibrations that conveyed more information than words ever could.

Flint's experience had changed him. The once-curious dragon who would eagerly explore the edges of their territory now stayed closer to the center, his movements more cautious. Remi recognized the signs of trauma—the same hesitation she'd seen in bullied classmates back in her human life. "Hey," she found herself saying softly, running her fingers between Flint's scales in the spot she knew he found comforting, "you're safe now. We've got you."

The mother dragon observed everything with her ancient, gold-flecked eyes. Remi was beginning to understand that her watchfulness wasn't just about physical protection, but a deeper form of healing. When the siblings became too anxious or Flint too withdrawn, she would emit a low rumble that seemed to reset their emotional state—a frequency that vibrated through the ground and into their very being.

Remi's own sensitivity to these vibrations continued to grow. She discovered she could now differentiate between the emotional states of her dragon family—Brother's protective hum, Forge's steady groundedness, Slate's analytical calm, and Ember's burning determination. Flint's current emotional signature was a mix of fear and a desperate attempt to return to his previous curious self.

During one of the quieter moments, as the afternoon sun cast long shadows through the pine trees, Remi found herself wondering about communication. "I wonder if I could..." she muttered, pressing her palm against the ground and focusing on Flint. She wasn't sure what she was attempting—some hybrid of the empathic communication she'd seen the mother dragon use and her own human language.

To her surprise, a fragmented image flickered through her mind. A flash of the forest, the terror of the attack, but also an underlying current of defiance. Flint wasn't broken—he was processing, learning, adapting. Remi gasped, drawing the attention of her siblings and the mother dragon.

"I think I just... talked to him?" she said aloud, more to herself than anyone else. "Not with words. But with... something else."

The mother dragon's head tilted, those massive golden eyes fixed on Remi with an intensity that suggested she was seeing something far beyond the physical form before her. Another mental brush—gentler this time—pressed against Remi's consciousness. Approval. Curiosity. Something that felt like recognition.

Brother nudged closer, his scaled form a constant source of comfort. Remi leaned against him, her rust-red hair tangling with his brown scales. "We're becoming something new," she whispered. "All of us."

The father dragon remained at the periphery, his earlier shame transformed into a vigilant patrol. Remi could feel his movements through the earth—methodical, precise, determined to prove his worth to the mother dragon and the clutch. His absence during the attack still hung in the air, an unspoken tension that would take time to fully resolve.

As evening approached, Remi noticed something else changing. Flint's curiosity was slowly returning. Where he had previously huddled close to the center of their group, he now began to peek toward the forest's edge. His movements were more tentative, but the spark that had defined him was not extinguished—merely tempered.

"You're going to be okay," Remi murmured, more to herself than to Flint. She understood something about survival now—about how trauma changes you, but doesn't define you. Her own transformation was proof of that.

The mother dragon's tail curved protectively around the clutch as night began to fall. In the growing darkness, Remi felt the boundaries between herself and her dragon family blurring further. She was becoming something neither fully human nor fully dragon—a bridge between worlds, a new kind of being entirely.

And somewhere in the depths of the mountain, as the earth continued its ancient rhythms, a transformation was taking root that would eventually reshape the very understanding of what it meant to be family.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

End Chapter:

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