Lacey

While they waited for Lewis's parents to come back Annabelle felt his tail scales. They were smooth to the touch, but occasionally there were soft patches.

"Why are some of your scales soft?"

"When a dragon is born, they don't have scales. It takes years for them to come in, right now my scales are still coming in."

"So, you're a baby dragon." She couldn't help teasing him.

"Relatively I'm fourteen."

"Sure, sure."

"Humph." He snatched his tail away from her.

'I've been manipulating a brat…' She was suddenly hit by that revelation.

"I doubt you're very old anyway." He stuck his tongue out at her.

"If we're going by relativity, I'm seventeen, three years older than you." She rolled her eyes.

'No way in hell I'm telling him I'm stuck as a seventeen-year-old until I go through the awakening. Which considering the amount of energy I feel on this planet might be never… What did I do to deserve this…'?

She was so close to saying screw it, and just acting as if she were insane.

"You certainly don't act seventeen." A voice sounded behind them.

They both jumped off the couch and into the middle of the room.

Laughter followed their sudden movement. "I can't believe I finally got you Lewis!"

"Really Lacey?" Lewis was exasperated, seemingly torn between laughing and cursing.

"Aww, don't be like that lizard man. I came all this way just to hang out with you. Can't I have some extra fun? Don't I get some leniency?"

"As if it's so hard for you to get here? All you have to do is think about my living room, and pop, you're here." He thought for a second. "The hardest thing for you is probably getting permission to come. Which considering your parents are under the impression I'm a good influence. Isn't that hard."

"Psshh, what good influence? More like constantly playing hooky, leaving the house at night to go 'adventuring', and overall doing reckless crap that could get you killed. Yeah, sure you're a good influence. One that might get me killed!"

"You're the one that came up with most of our 'adventures'. Also, I always have permission. It's not my fault your parents are helicopters."

Lacey's green eyes glinted, pointing her small snub nose in the air she declared. "My parents don't hover. If anything, it's yours that do. For example! That year we were supposed to go camping. You weren't allowed to go because of how many humans were attending. Whereas my parents didn't care and let me go."

"That's because you inherently look human. I have to focus in order to appear human. I didn't have full control of my transformation, so mom and dad decided it was too risky."

"Sure…" She rolled her eyes. "Anyways who's this. So sorry we completely ignored you. My name's Lacey Drial. What's your name?"

"Annabelle, it's nice to meet you Lacey."

"And?"

"And what?"

"What clan are you from? Since your sitting in here with Lewis's tail out, I'm assuming you aren't human. It's only polite to exchange names and clans."

'So, the different races are clans? That's interesting.'

"I'm sorry, but I'm not too sure about that myself."

"How can you not know what clan you're from?" Lacey couldn't believe her ears.

"I'll explain later Lacey, for now let's all just hang out till my parents get back."

"Fine." Lacey plopped down on the couch. "Were you going to watch a movie? Or are we doing something else now?"

"We could watch Predator?"

"Oh, hell no Lewis. I'm not watching one of your weird thrillers, plotless creepy movies again."

"Then what else is there? You don't like boardgames, you aren't patient enough to just sit around and talk. What do you want womannnn!" He said the last line in a groan that bordered on wailing.

"We could explore, it's not dark yet."

"Hell no. Are you kidding, I can't drag Annabelle around outside. Dad would kill me. Even if it isn't dark it's still dangerous."

"Pfft, maybe to a baby dragon, but for me it's a piece of cake."

"Yeah, coz you can basically teleport wherever you want. If something goes wrong, you can just disappear back to your house. I have to outrun whatever we find. Not that easy. Last time I almost lost my foot."

"You're exaggerating. It nibbled your left foot."

"Nibbled? Nibbled!" Lewis was a bit red. "The thing took a chunk out of my foot. I had to keep it elevated and even with advanced healing it still took a month to heal. As if that wasn't enough, I got grounded for half a year!"

When Lacey looked as if she was about to argue he steamrolled over her.

"No! You disappeared and left me to run away from it on my own. I forgave you because there wasn't anything else you could've done, and you had told your parents as soon as you got home. But I still got in a lot of trouble covering for your *ss, I told them it was my idea because you were already in trouble."

"That meant my parents not only took me to school and brought me home. They had my older cousins babysit me. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it was when dad took me to a clan meeting and had me apologize for giving them more work?"

Lacey was mortified. She had no idea that he had gotten into that much trouble for her. "I'm so sorry Lewis. Why didn't you tell me what happened? Of course, I knew about the injury, but why didn't you tell me about your punishment?"

"Because it was embarrassing." He had tears in his eyes.

Annabelle had been watching the whole debacle from the sidelines. 'I'm so freaking lucky that I didn't get eaten when I was wandering around… Why the heck does John allow such dangerous things to live near his house? Is it for protection?'

When she was done thinking to herself, she realized that both the kids were about to start crying.

'Oh no. No please no. I'm not good with non-sibling kids that cry. Just no…'

She was about to walk out of the room when they both started bawling. Just as John and Shelly walked in.

"Um, hi." Annabelle waved at the two from her spot in the middle of the living room.