I put my arms around Lois (this was getting harder and harder) and she started to hum one of her soothing hums. It sounded like a lullaby. To be more precise it sounded a lot like one of the Arkhola lullabies I sang to her when I first noticed that she was trying to mimic human speech. I sang that one because the melody only had about four notes in it which is about the limit of my capability. Or Lois', although she was probably mimicking my singing ability too.
I sat there listening to her and thinking how Gulp had been almost completely silent around us, after that more-than-terrifying initial roar, and I wondered all over again if that's because dragons, or grown-up dragons, usually are silent, or whether she was still trying not to scare us (after that more-than-terrifying roar). Even at a whisper, the voice out of something that size was probably pretty extreme. Or was it that living with humans had taught Lois to make mouth noise which was now so totally ingrained a habit that like all the other ways she was growing up wrong, it was going to be one of the reasons Lois never fit in with other dragons, despite Gulp's best efforts (maybe Gulp was as dragons go soppy and sentimental and any other dragon would know better than to try) and maybe dragon culture or dragon safety or something required silence and . . .
It took several minutes for it to occur to me that Lois had asked me to sit down and let her get in my lap, and that I'd done it and hadn't thought twice about it. Or that she was humming a recognizable human melody (in fact she carried the tune a lot better than I did) — and I had recognized it.
A lot had happened in the last month.
So maybe my plan wasn't totally impossible and deranged.
Gently I dumped Lois back out of my lap again, and for some reason picked up the two-way too and clipped it on my belt. Usually I left it at the cabin, but it was some kind of token that morning — or my only source of breaking news. Then I led her to the meadow. Dad hadn't said that anyone was coming to rescue me. Would he know? Would they tell him? Would they let him tell — warn — me? What kind of warning would he have? How would they come? If they hiked in and they started now and they were in a hurry, I had maybe six days. But if they thought I needed rescuing, they might choose something else. The meadow would serve perfectly well as an emergency set-down for a helicopter.
Smokehill was supposed to have dragons. And I checked in every day! Leave me alone!
That morning, while we waited for Gulp to show up (I'd never waited for Gulp before, merely steeled myself for her arrival), I tried to teach Lois the idea of stay or go with or go that way. She already knew a kind of stay because we used it to make our races after the stick more interesting. She found my jogging along beside or behind her kind of a snore, if we started even, and I'm sure she knew I was faster than she was. So she'd learned to wait – stay somewhere while I went a little distance from her and threw so that the stick was nearer her than me, and then we could both tear after it. It was more fun for me too. It only occurred to me that morning that maybe the reason it was more fun was because I was putting out more, fun vibes as I hurtled after her trying to catch up.
I wasn't putting out any kind of fun vibes that morning, which is probably why my attempt to teach her something new was a total disaster. It was a great big drooling object lesson in "I'm not going to do what you say when what you're doing is way big-time something else." Also to the extent that anything I taught her — or she taught me — was based on vibes, it was doomed. Any kind of teaching, you have to keep your mind on business, and maybe she could even pick it up that I was worrying about her safety, and her safety had always and only ever meant one thing to her: me. She wouldn't stay in one place at all but glued herself to my leg and wouldn't listen to anything I was saying and that began to make me angry, except it wasn't her fault.
When Gulp showed up I was lying on the ground with Lois draped over my legs, humming. This time it was one of her own hums. (Very Winnie-the-Pooh-ish. Similar waistlines too, although Lois was built that way. She was also growing too fast to have any slack to get fat.) Lois would have been sitting on my chest while she hummed only I couldn't breathe if she sat on my chest for more than a minute any more, so I'd shoved her farther down.
I had an arm flung over my eyes so I didn't see Gulp land but I felt her. I felt — and smelled — the wind of her coming, and the faint — tinily faint — tremor of her landing. Maybe it was because I was lying down that I felt it this time. And I felt the shadow — and the wash of heat — when she . . .
My eyes shot open and I moved my arm. She was standing right over us. She'd never done that before. An adult dragon is big enough that when you're lying down you might as well be a beetle. My first instinct was to get up and run like hell . . . but if she'd been going to eat me, she'd've done it weeks ago. I didn't think my lying down was likely to be some kind of irresistible come-on. Dragons aren't carrion eaters if they have a choice.
And then she lay down beside us, like she had that first day, when she was apologizing, if that was what she was doing, and seeming to make an even greater effort to make herself as small (yowzah) as she could. She'd never put all of herself down next to us before, if you follow me, she'd like tried to leave most of herself at the other end of the meadow. But then we'd never been lying down when she landed either.
She curved her ridiculously long neck in an arc, so that while her body was already really close to us (really close), her head was too. (Well, comparatively. There was still fifty-feet-plus of her relative to six-feet plus of me.) Once she got herself settled, Lois and I were the center of a spiral, and the spiral was all dragon. Maybe it was just as well I was preoccupied with Dad's check-in because if I'd panicked and tried to run, there wasn't anywhere to run to, except into the dragon. The hump of her body, especially with the spinal ridge plates, pretty well shut out the sun. It had started to get chilly lying on the ground (except where Lois was on my legs), but being that close to her body heat was something else — although adrenaline surges kind of warm you up too. I had noticed her being hot before, of course, but this was another something or other. Degree. Dimension. I noticed Lois' body heat because she was usually pressed up against me. I know, why would dragons waste their fire heating their surroundings? But Gulp was close. I could hear her breathing. It sounded like wind in a cave, and one in-and-out breath took several minutes.
On a whim — a whim I didn't dare even recognize as a whim — I stretched out an arm. I did it quickly so I wouldn't lose my nerve, which is never a good idea with a wild animal — doing something quickly I mean — but I did it anyway. Besides, what was she going to be afraid of? It would be like having a toothpick attack you. I wasn't quite close enough, so I hitched myself over a little closer to her, trying not to dislodge Lois (still humming). I put my hand on Gulp's jaw. I could touch my baby dragon without gloves (except on her belly), as long as I was careful that only the palm stayed in contact. I assumed I could keep my hand against Gulp's greater heat — and probably her thicker skin helped.