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ice-cap-k · 11 months

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Just Gold CH 1

Didn't have time to think of a better title.

Cross-posted to AO3 Here: Just Gold

Chapter 2 Here

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Tango was a dragon.

That's not to say he was very good at being a dragon, but that was what he was. Unlike most dragons, he was not content to sit in a cave all day and hoard gold.

Sure, he didn’t mind sticking to one place for very long, but he enjoyed company. He enjoyed going out into the world on occasion to see how the world grew and changed. The idea of slow-roasting knights and hunters didn’t have much appeal to him.

He cared not for precious metals or diamonds either. Gold's value didn't account for much more than pretty trinkets and jewelry. It was too soft and flimsy. The metal itself could conduct heat and electricity, but there other materials that could do it far better. Diamonds had an impressive hardness but were difficult to shape.

He would much rather hoard iron and this interesting crystal that appeared to glow red in the depths of his mountain. They were useful if you just took the time to learn about it. As a dragon, he was immortal. He had all the time in the world to learn and tinker and create.

And oh the things he could create. His lair was built of redstone powder laid out in intricate networks that sent signals around his home. He had discovered automated doors and electric lights long before humans could have. With iron, a highly conductive material that was both durable and easily shaped, these components could be rearranged to make just about anything possible. As a bonus, he could venture out into the world to find it.

Unfortunately, Tango was still a dragon.

The gold and red scales were kind of hard to miss. And dragons had reputations.

When humans saw Tango, they didn’t stop to get to know him. They didn’t take the chance to realize he wasn’t interested in burning down towns or kidnapping unsuspecting victims. They drew their swords so they could attack him first.

Some were just afraid. Some wanted the glory of slaying a dragon. Some just thought he had gold to steal.

He supposed he might have ventured out a few too many times. There had been whispers among the human villages of a dragon exploring the cliff sides with eyes as red as burning coals and a fire in its belly that wilted the plants as it flew past. Where there were rumors, there were those willing to bet on their truth and capitalize on it.

One day, while roaming the base of a nearby mountain, Tango stumbled into a trap. He was there checking the mountain for anything of use: be it coal for burning and lighting spaces, iron to shape in his forge, or even a copse of trees to cut down and fashion into tools. There hadn’t been any humans nearby for days and he thought that they might have finally forgotten about him until he stepped under an overhanging granite ledge. It was a quick fuse trap that was built to go off when something as large and warm as he came in close proximity. The moment he passed under the rocky outcropping, the fuse lit. There was one small moment where he heard the sizzle, his heart stopped as he realized his mistake, and then everything went white.

The blast tore a hole into the very side of the mountain. Fire and ash hit his side. It burned his throat and lungs as he instinctively drew in breath. The obliterated stone bounced off his scales. The force of the explosion knocked him rolling down the mountain to the valley below. He batted his wings in a vain attempt to slow himself down but only managed to catch them painfully against the sides of the trees as he rolled past.

Tango passed out before he had even come to a stop.

__________________________________________________

“Hey, are you alright?”

Tango was most certainly not alright. Everything hurt. His eyes felt heavy. Please, just let him sleep a little longer…

“Oh man, don’t go to sleep now. Not when you’re hurt like that. Geezus, can you even hear me?”

Yeah. He could hear that voice, but he wished he didn’t. He wished he could go back to the sweet, oblivious darkness. However, whatever that thing was poking at his shoulder wasn’t making it easy.

Tango rolled slightly, hoping to knock whatever it was off of himself. That slight motion sent dull aches rolling throughout his back and legs in waves. He groaned and braced himself against the pain, all his muscles tensing against the awful feeling.

“Alright. Good. You’re waking up. You’re pretty hurt, but maybe you can move. Can you move, huh?”

Could Tango move? He tried opening his eyes first. Just cracking open the lids felt like an uphill battle. The world outside looked blurry. At first, he was afraid maybe the blast had gotten something in his eyes and blinded him, but to his relief, the smear of colors began to slowly sharpen back into focus.

He was lying at the bottom of a valley out in the open. There weren’t any trees for miles. Just rocky outcrops and grassy patches. From this position, he could make out the scar in the Earth leading from where he lay to the crater halfway up the mountain.

“I’m fine.” The dragon’s voice sounded shaky to his own ears. He flexed one arm to reach out with a claw and winched as the motion sent shocks of pain up his shoulder. Gold ichor dripped down into torn-up soil beneath him.

“No, you’re not. You are most definitely not fine.”

Where was that voice coming from? Tango looked back and forth, careful not to pull on the open wounds on his side. Turns out, he had a lot.

“Look, I’ll admit I don’t know much about dragons, but I don’t think anything with wings is supposed to come crashing down a mountain so violently.”

Tango’s red eyes snapped to the place over his shoulder where the voice was coming from. To his surprise, the only thing that was there was a small yellow bird. It sat on the place where his arm met the shoulder. The yellow feathers along its back and head were puffed up and its wings splayed out in distress as it hopped around a gap in Tango’s scales large enough for the little bird to fit into. The gold blood around its feet streaked down Tango’s side. “Hey, shoo! Shoo!” Tango snorted, sending a breath of hot air at the little bird to scare it off. He didn’t want it getting too close to the open wound and making it worse.

“Rude!” the bird squawked.

Tango nearly jumped out of his scales in surprise when the bird spoke, which he instantly regretted when all the bruised and sore muscles screamed in protest. Some of the charred scales on his back even fell away, looking more like withered black petals than the lustrous armor they had once been. “You can talk!?”

“Of course I can talk,” the bird snapped, hopping further up Tango’s shoulder. “Just like I can see, and even a blind man could see that you’re in a bad spot here. What happened?”

The bird was talking. The bird was talking and he wanted to know how a dragon had gotten itself hurt. Tango answered, too baffled to do much else. “I was going through the crevice, and then something exploded behind me.” The dragon’s eyes went back up to the gouge in the mountain where he had been standing not long ago. “There was no avoiding it.”

“Right, well, you definitely crashed into my nest.” The bird’s feathers began to smooth themselves. It spread its wings further before beating them down in unison, flying up to Tango’s horn in a flutter of bright yellow.

“I’m sorry,” Tango said almost instantly, fighting the urge to shake his head. The bird didn’t weigh much, but it made his head feel ever-so-slightly off balance.

“It’s alright. You have bigger things to worry about, like that human village on the other side of the valley.” With a crick in his neck, Tango turned to where the bird was pointing with a wingtip. Sure enough, he could make out a few rooftops poking up out of a spruce-covered edge of the mountain lining the opposite side of the valley. Now, mountain ranges have a tendency to make things seem closer than they actually are. That village was probably half a few hour’s flight from where he lay at the bottom of the valley. Maybe a few day’s travel if he were to go by foot, but there wasn’t much cover down here. Someone had probably seen him by now. And if they hadn’t seen him, they would have heard the explosion.

One of the people from that village had probably set up the trap.

“Oh, man. Not good. How long was I out for?”

“Maybe half an hour, but about five minutes ago I saw someone climbing down that cliff. A human. If I remember correctly, humans and dragons don’t really mix.”

Tango sighed. “No. No they don’t.” He had to move. He didn’t want to, but it was better than waiting and risking the alternative. So he dug his claws into the ground and heaved. The bird fluttered with the motion but managed to hang on to his horn. The burn on his back flared up like a bonfire. The gouges in his scales left shallow glittering pools of his blood along the ground. And when he finally managed to right himself, he finally became aware of a dull throbbing sensation along the arm of his wings.

He attempted to spread his wings. The motion sent pins and needles running down the muscles of his shoulder and wing fingers. It was so sharp that Tango had to immediately pull them back to rest against his back.

“Oh, mate…” The bird ran one of its own wings along Tango’s head comfortingly.

“It’s Tango,” the dragon huffed, trying to keep his nervousness from leaking into his voice. When he looked over his shoulder, he realized that he wouldn’t be flying for a long while.

The forearms were misshapen, bent at wrong angles where they had been broken in different places. It was harder to tell with the wing fingers, but by the throbbing coming from at least two of them, it was likely there were a few bones broken there as well. The membrane stretched between each finger was ragged, ripped, and bleeding.

“I can’t fly. I can’t fly!” Despite the soreness, Tango nervously shuffled his feet. He looked all around as if expecting angry humans to start appearing all around him. “How am I going to get back home?”

“You live far from here?”

“On the other side of that mountain.” Tango tilted his head back the way he had fallen for the bird to see. That explosion was uncomfortably close to the mouth of his cave. His thoughts went to his own hoard of red dust and hoppers and dispensers. The ice-cold cavern felt good against his warm scales. A cozy dip in the stone worn smooth from centuries of him curling up to sleep. It would take days to get back there on foot.

“Well, I know a place you can go to stay until you get yourself healed up, Tango.”

“You do?”

It hopped down onto Tango’s nose and pointed with one wing towards a grassy shelf reaching out from the east side of the mountain. “Yeah! There’s an abandoned building large enough for you to fit inside nestled between those rocks over there. Trust me, nobody goes there anymore. It should be fine until your wings can heal up a little.”

Tango nearly went cross-eyed trying to meet the bird’s gaze. “How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve been there before,” the bird trilled. “Now come on. You gotta get a move on before that human comes back.”

It had a point.

It was a bird. A talking bird, but still just a bird. He had no reason to believe it would be leading him into another trap.

“Okay, okay, I’m going. You’re right.” Tango stopped his nervous shuffling and started off in that direction.

The bird looked pleased with itself as it waddled its way back up the bridge of Tango’s nose to its previous perch on his horn. It wrapped its toes around the ridges and settled down, looking content to ride along. Finally, Tango’s brain stopped to wonder why. “Why are you here,” he asked as he plodded along.

“I told you, you crashed through my nest. I was already here.”

“Right. You did say that. Sorry about that again. But I’m still confuzzled. Why aren’t you mad? Why are you so worried about helping me?”

“I guess I sympathize,” the bird twittered. “Between the broken wings and that nasty fall… I couldn’t just fly away. You know?”

“I appreciate that.” Tango nodded slowly so as to not startle the bird. “Do I also take that to mean you’ve broken a wing before, uh-”

“Jimmy,” it offered quickly. “The name’s Jim. Heh, and yeah. Something like that.”

___________________________________________________________

The abandoned building Jimmy had mentioned turned out to be an old farmhouse and a barn. It looked like nobody had been there in years. The grassy shelf it stood on was lined with a collapsing fence that circled the overgrown field. The wood barn was greyed with age but had been built sturdily. It didn’t so much as groan when Tango bumped against the massive doorway with his tail.

It smelled musty. The soft hay lining the ground had been there for years and was half rotten, but it was dry. When Tango settled down at the back of the structure, he found it oddly comfortable.

As soon as he laid back down, Jimmy leaped from his place on Tango’s horn. His yellow wings caught the air and carried him to the post marking the corner of a nearby stall. “Now what did I tell you? This ranch is perfect for you to hide in.”

“It is really nice,” Tango rumbled, taking in his surroundings. “If I stay here for a while and get my hands on some iron and oak, I could really make something out of this place.”

“You know how to build?” Jimmy sounded shocked at that.

“A little,” Tango admitted, suddenly feeling a little sheepish. “You pick up a thing or two over the centuries.”

“I didn’t know dragons did that sort of thing. Is that something that the rest of your kind do?”

“Oh, not really. Not that I know, at least. But I find it fun. There’s something really nice about making things that others will enjoy.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, like a library.” Tango’s thoughts turned to old memories made fond from nostalgia. If he closed his eyes, he could see rows and rows of books stacked under a dome of glittering stars. “I made one once, a long time ago. Back when I lived far from here. It was supposed to be a massive collection of everything. There were glittering lights and sweeping archways, and massive wings that seemed to lead from one side of the world to the other. When I was done building it, I moved on and people moved in. Humans mostly, but I remember seeing them from a distance. They had such big smiles on their faces when they first stepped through the doors. It was nice.”

“It sounds like it. Did those people know who made it?”

Tango shook his head. “There’s no way they would believe a fire-breathing beast built up a place for books. I don’t need the credit anyway. They’d probably just come after me.”

“Well, that’s a shame.” Jimmy readjusted his wings and narrowed his bright little eyes as he thought about what Tango had just said. “At least you sound proud of it. I’m no builder. I’m trying my best to get better at making things look nice, but I’ve still got a long way to go.”

“What about your nest?”

Jimmy’s head twitched back up. He tilted his beak to one side as he looked at Tango questioningly. “What about my nest?”

“You’ll have to rebuild it, won’t you? That’s a good place to start.”

The feathers on Jimmy’s head puffed up. “I suppose it is. Ey, would it be alright if I set it up here?”

“At this ranch?”

“In this barn! With you. I could keep you company, and help you find materials. I can try to help you build too, but no promises that what I make will turn out nice. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from you.” The words spilled out of his beak quickly as the little bird got caught up in his own excitement. He flitted from one stall to the other as if he couldn’t sit still. “If that’s okay with you, that is,” he says a little more nervously as he glides past Tango’s nose.

Tango chuckled. “Sure. You can show me what you’ve got. Maybe there are some tips and tricks I can teach you.” He said that, but he wasn’t sure how that would work. Jimmy was a bird. Tango was a dragon. How a bird built with wings and a beak and claw-tipped feet would be vastly to what a dragon could do with claws and fangs and a tail. But Tango could appreciate the company. It had been a while since he had someone to talk to.

Well… someone who didn’t want to stick a sword in his side, at least.

“But are you sure,” Tango asked, starting to fiddle with a strand of hay caught under one of his scales. He didn’t want the bird to stay here out of pity or guilt. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. I’m sure a bird like you has a whole flock of friends waiting for you somewhere.”

“No way!” Now Jimmy shook his head. Despite everything Tango had ever thought he knew about beaks, it almost looked like Jimmy was smiling up at him. “It’s not every day someone like me gets to know a dragon like you.”

__________________________________________________________

Life on the ranch was peaceful. Idyllic, even.

It was the first time in a long time that Tango had been out in the open so much. Jimmy had been right, humans didn’t really come near here. That meant Tango had free reign to explore the stretches of tall grass and the gravelly side of the mountain behind them.

Jimmy often came with him on these long walks. The odd pair often found themselves talking about what they could do to fix the place up. And those conversations often spiraled into stories from their past.

“No way.”

“Yes, way.”

“No way. There’s just no way a little bird like you survived getting hit with an arrow.”

“I did so! I am perfectly capable of handling myself, thank you very much.”

“Sure you are,” Tango snorted hot air, suppressing a chuckle at the indignant way the little bird turned up its beak at him.

“I am. Those feathers didn’t grow back along my side for a week. It nearly messed up my ability to fly.”

“Well by the sound of it you weren’t the best at that either…”

“You take that back!”

Tango let himself laugh at that one.

Despite the odd start, the dragon found himself growing fond of the yellow bird. Jimmy was bright and cheery and took himself a little too seriously. He was also brash, forgetful, and had the worst luck Tango had ever seen.

It wasn’t just you’re typical bird hijinks, though Jimmy was guilty of that too. It wasn’t just his odd need to bob in place, peck at something incessantly, or even pull at Tango’s smaller horns like they were some sort of toy. It was like he was accident-prone.

The first time Jimmy had accidentally flown into the broken window into the side of the barn, Tango had chalked it up to bird eyes. He couldn’t blame Jimmy for not being physically capable of seeing glass. But then Jimmy had done it again. And then Jimmy had jumped off one of the stall posts and forgot he could fly. And then Jimmy got his foot caught under one of Tango’s scales. And then he hit the window again…

After about a week of rest and recuperation, Tango decided the main reason was that it was just Jimmy being Jimmy. Who was he to judge? It wasn’t like he was some sort of bird expert.

It was Jimmy who first came up with the idea of making this place into a real ranch again. There were other animals that called the mountain home. Sturdy goats traversed the most sheer cliff faces. Mountain cattle with long horns plodded along the scrubby terrain. They could be raised for beef, milk, and mutton. Tango thought it was a great idea. He was already having difficulty hunting them on foot. Keeping plenty in a pen sounded much easier.

So they set out.

Jimmy went ahead and got a bird’s eye view, then returned to Tango’s horn to point the dragon in the right direction. He circled around the goats and cows. The animals already feared the growl of a dragon, so it was easy for Tango to spook them in the direction of their fields. Then Jimmy would step in, alighting from his perch to circle around goats and cows they had managed to get running in the right direction. They worked well together, running and flying along the herd, driving it down the mountain to the gate waiting open on the shelf.

________________________________________________________

The ranch was beautiful.

Jimmy felt he was learning more every day he spent with Tango. The dragon was such a good builder! It made Jimmy’s jaw drop to see what he was capable of. The farmhouse now had an entire tower built up along the back, and a newly minted storage system lining what used to be a living room.

And the dragon was so nice. Jimmy hadn’t wanted to do much building once he saw what Tango was capable of, but Tango insisted Jimmy work alongside him. He was grateful for the dragon’s coaching. As small as he was, it was difficult for him to lift some of the timber boards with his two wings, but Tango would be there to help him with the heavy lifting as soon as the dragon saw him trying. He talked Jimmy through the harder points, and explained why he thought different types of stone were good for decorative purposes and how you could follow certain patterns to create depth when layering wooden planks.

Jimmy felt like he was actually learning something from Tango.

But there were also times when Jimmy had to wonder if Tango did things because he was a dragon, or because he was Tango.

He seemed to have a tendency to get caught up in big projects. That shouldn’t have surprised Jimmy, considering all the stories Tango had told of the buildings he had made, the inventions that had taken years to put together. He was patient. But Jimmy was surprised to learn that when Tango threw himself into a project, it engulfed him.

“Tango, are you sure we need this?”

“Of course! With a new shed, we can start housing more tools and milk buckets.”

“We don’t have any milk buckets.”

“We will once I make some.”

“But Tango, I can’t milk a cow. Can you even milk a cow?”

The wings on Tango’s shoulders shifted. His version of a shrug. They were healing nicely after two weeks of being grounded. The homemade splints lining the bones up were holding strong but looked a little dingy from all the wear. “We’ll figure it out as we go.”

And with that, Tango had walked off. Sometimes, it seemed to Jimmy like Tango couldn’t even hear him when he got like that.

But when he finished work for the day and trudged back to his bed of hey in the barn, it was back to being all laughs and jokes. They bounced wild ideas back and forth off of each other, turning the silliest things into something impressive in their own mind.

“That’s it,” Jimmy said, puffing up his chest feathers. “We’re going down to the valley tomorrow to find you some iron.”

“For a monument?” Tango sputtered, laughing so hard his tail was sweeping back and forth. “I love it. It’s so ridiculous, and such a waste of iron.”

“We can afford it,” Jimmy insisted. “And we’ve got the time to work on it. It’ll be fun. I’ll dig it up, and you’ll carry it.”

“How, pray tell, are you going to dig up iron, Jimmy?”

Tango’s red eyes went down to Jimmy’s clawed feet still wrapped around the wooden post. Jimmy nearly shrunk into his own feathers as he realized he might have gotten ahead of himself. “Ah, well, I will help dig up the iron.”

His friend chuckled. “That sounds about right.”

______________________________________________________

The ranch was under attack.

Tango threw his side into the barn doors, keeping as far away as possible from the flames licking at the corners of the building. The boards buckled under his weight, but didn’t budge. The human’s outside must have blocked it.

They must have been spotted when they went on that mining trip in the valley. That was the only explanation he could think of. He should have known better. His gold scales would have stuck out like a sore thumb to anyone passing by amongst all that green and grey.

Jimmy flew in through the broken window and landed on his horn. “Come on, Tango,” he shouted. “You can do it! They’re right outside. If you can just get out of here-”

“I’m trying,” Tango hissed as he threw himself at the door once more. The freshly lacquered wood started to splinter and crack. He could hear shouts outside of the men with their pitchforks and torches at the ready.

“You should fly, Jimmy. It’s me they’re after.”

“No way. You can’t fly yet. I’m not leaving you.”

“I’ve got my fire and my claws.”

“And you’ve got me!!”

With that, Jimmy shot like a yellow bullet out the window once more. Tango didn’t like the way the little bird had said that. It put a bad feeling in his gut. Once more, he threw himself against the door. Gaps appeared between the warped wood as it split further apart. He could see his attackers through them. Some tried poking iron swords and spears into the gaps, hoping to catch his side with their points.

He couldn’t throw himself against the door like that anymore with those blades poking out. So he switched tactics. He leaned back onto his tail and kicked out, careful to hit his heels against the parts of the door that didn’t have sharp objects pointed at him.

Suddenly, some of the weapons fell away. They clattered to the ground on the other side of the door as shouts of anger turned into shouts of surprise.

When Tango peaked through one of the gaps, he saw a little yellow blur dive-bombing some of the men’s heads.

“Jimmy!!”

“If you want to get at him, you’ll have to go through me first,” the little bird was crying.

Tango had had enough. Now that there were no swords in his way, nothing stopped him from flinging himself against the door one last time. The ruined hinges finally gave out, and the massive doors fell outward. There were screams as they landed on some of the humans outside. Tango could feel the uneven lay of the wood and the people underneath through his claws.

As soon as he was out, Jimmy returned to his horn. “We have to get to high ground!”

“I can’t climb the cliffs! They’re too steep!”

“The tower!”

The tower.

The humans were already starting to regain their footing as Tango made a break for the tower looming over the rest of the ranch. The one he had added to the old farmhouse.

The humans were in hot pursuit when they reached the base.

With a great leap, Tango launched himself up. His claws snagged on the uneven wooden planks as he hauled himself up.

“They’re gaining on us Tango!”

“I know! I know!”

Fiery arrows flashed through the night sky and buried themselves in the side of the farmhouse. The whole ranch would burn at this point. But the humans wouldn’t be able to get to them through the flames. If the structure could hold out until they left, Tango could hold off against the fire. Jimmy could always fly away to avoid the worst of the heat.

Tango hauled himself to the top, sides heaving from the effort. He almost didn’t notice Jimmy fly from his horn.

“They’re still here, Tango,” the bird twittered. “They’re circling the bottom. They’re burning the ranch. And our goats! They’ve taken the goats.”

Tango’s eyes followed the path of glowing arrows streaking through the night sky as he caught his breath. His lungs were burning from the effort of all that climbing. “Jimmy, get back down,” he managed after finally finding his words. “It’s dangerous along the edge.”

“But someone has to keep an eye on-”

The arrow hit Jimmy in the wing.

There was a burst of yellow feathers. Broken primaries and secondaries caught the rush of warm air coming from the blaze below like a puff of smoke, and then Jimmy fell from sight.

“JIMMY!”

Tango crawled to the edge of the tower wall just to watch the little bird drop into the patch of fire eating at the roof below. He didn’t even notice the arrows streaking past him as he dared poke his head over the side. He watched the little bird until Jimmy disappeared in the bright flicker of yellow and orange.

And then the yellow and orange faded as Tango saw red.

He dug his claws into the wood as he leaned out over the ledge of the tower. A massive roar built from the bottom of his belly and echoed out over the valley with all the ferociousness of a dragon out for blood. With it came a column of fire that lit the night and caught a forest on fire the next mountain over.

Tango ignored the arrow that buried itself in his arm as he leaped down from the tower with claws outstretched. He was breathing so hard that he was wheezing. The fire in his belly burned bright when he opened his mouth. Fangs and claws glinted red from the light of the midnight fires as he lunged forward with more single-minded focus than he had ever had for a given project.

He was going to make them pay.

__________________________________________

“Tango…. Tango!”

He was breathing so hard that his chest hurt. Or was that another arrow? No, he couldn’t feel that yet. The adrenaline had yet to wear off. But the red was fading.

“Tango, stop! It’s over.”

It was over. Tango stood with claws dripping in blood. Red from the humans. Gold from his own wounds. There were charred lumps scattered across the front yard, no longer screaming from the burns.

So much for avoiding humans.

Tango was vaguely aware of something pulling on his horn. When he rolled his eyes back, his stomach dropped at the sight of a familiar yellow bird.

“Jimmy,” he breathed. Red-hot tears of anger, relief, and confusion welled up in the corner of his eyes. That couldn’t be possible. Even if the arrow hadn’t killed Jimmy, the fall or the fire would have. “That’s not… I didn’t… How… How? You were dead.”

“I’m fine, Tango. See. I’m right here. You can stop now. I’m ok.”

“I don’t understand…”

“I’m a phoenix, ok?!”

Tango reached up, and Jimmy let go of his horn. The little yellow bird hopped onto the dragon’s wrist so Tango could hold him out and they could look each other in the eye. Jimmy looked flustered and a little scared. Scared of Tango, or scared of what he was about to say? It drove a stake of guilt through Tango’s own heart. He looked around the charred bodies littered around the yard, but not with shame. He wasn’t ashamed of his anger and what it had wrought. But he felt bad that he might have scared Jimmy.

“So… when you fell…?”

“I died,” Jimmy said shakily. “Wasn’t pleasant, I’ll tell you, but I came back. I always come back.”

Funnily enough, Tango believed him. So many of Jimmy’s stories involved such horrible mishaps, and on one or two occasions the little bird had hit the barn window so hard Tango had been surprised that he had been able to just shake it off.

It was strange to think about, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing Tango had ever heard of.

“I always thought Phoenix's were supposed to be big and fancy,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “You know…” He wiggled the fingers of his free hand as if that could help illustrate his point.

“I’m big,” Jimmy huffed indignantly. “And look at these feathers. They’re gorgeous!”

That got a real laugh out of Tango. “Sure thing, buddy.”

Jimmy ruffled his feathers and pouted, but didn’t try to argue any further. Instead, his bright black eyes turned to the charred remains of the farm house smoldering behind them.

“The ranch is gone, though. They’ve gone and burned it to the ground.”

“Well then,” Tango said, raising his hand back above his head. Jimmy hopped off so he could sit on his usual perch on Tango’s horn. The dragon began plodding towards the smoking remains of the barn with a smile on his face. “I suppose we’ll just have to rebuild.”

#whumptober 2023 #prompt no 28 #“you'll have to go through me”#trafficblr #double life #life series #creative writing #implied character death #dragon tangotek #tangotek #jimmy solidarity #canary jimmy #the ranch #team ranchers #dragon hunting #alternate universe - fantasy #alternate universe - dragon

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ice-cap-k · 8 months

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Just Gold: CH2

Soooo, I forgot to cross-post here that I've written a chapter 2 for the team ranchers au fic I wrote up back in October. Tango's a dragon. Jimmy's a bird. Good fun.

Read it on AO3: Just Gold

Chapter 1 on Tumblr

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Jimmy was a Phoenix.

That's not to say he was very good at being a phoenix, but that was what he was. Phoenixes were supposed to be all about death and rebirth and eternal life. It’s hard to be good at the ‘eternal life’ portion of the job, though, when he keeps dying all the time.

Not like most phoenixes, though. There was almost never a cycle of burning to ash at a ripe old age and emerging as a newly hatched chick from the ashes. Even when he literally burned to death. He never got that far. It was more like he just woke back up having never aged or unaged a day. That wasn’t normal for his kind, but he supposed that after so many repeated deaths so close together over such an extended period of time, he must have somehow stunted his growth. Ungrowth? Aging, maybe? Whatever it was supposed to be, it was messed up for him.

It had its ups and downs. Dying wasn’t necessarily pleasant, but at least he still came back. He always came back… eventually. And unlike other phoenixes, he didn’t have to deal with the crippling discomfort of old age, or the helplessness of reverting back to a chick. But he also could never grow back the brilliant plumage that people associated with his kind. The bright yellow feathers he was left with made him look no different than a larger than average canary.

To be honest, he was a little self-conscious about it.

It was partially his fault, as much as he hated to admit it. He was pretty accident-prone. Bird brains, ya know? It was hard living in a world with glass windows. You’d think after all these years he would have learned a thing or two about self-preservation.

But here’s the thing about immortality, when you know that nothing can actually do any permanent damage, you start to lose sight of the inherent threat. And when you don’t notice a threat, it’s easy to underestimate the world around you. And to overestimate yourself.

Case in point, Jimmy’s newest friend was a dragon.

Dragons are meant to be big scary beasts with razor-sharp claws and fangs. They were meant to be merciless, and prideful, and very very dangerous.

It never really occurred to Jimmy that Tango could be all of those things… Well, at least not until he watched Tango burn over a dozen people to ash. So yeah, now he supposes Tango could be all those things.

But what he first saw when the golden dragon came crashing through his nest at the base of the mountain, after the initial annoyance began to fade, was someone suffering from the kind of bad luck he was all too familiar with. Someone who wouldn’t come back from the fraying edges of death like he would have.

Fortunately, Jimmy was still a phoenix.

He had a long memory that reached back eons across his many previous lives. And in one such life, there had been an old ranch not too far from here. One large enough that the dragon could hide indoors. One that was out of sight of the nearby village. One that Jimmy knew had been left vacant.

Someone with a healthy dose of self-preservation probably would have kept their distance until the dragon awoke, so as not to startle it into attacking. Or maybe they would have pointed the poor beast in the direction of shelter and been on their way. If they were feeling really reckless, they might have tested to see if the dragon would have let them help it get up, or bandage some of its many wounds.

Not Jimmy. If Tango had burned him or clawed him off or rolled over and crushed him, he would have just come back anyway. And cleaning wounds or helping the dragon leverage itself up wasn’t in the phoenix’s wheelhouse at the moment. Tango was so big compared to the phoenix that Jimmy could fit in the palm of his hand comfortably. And what would he stem the blood flow with? His feathers? He didn’t have nearly enough to go around.

Of course, Tango didn’t do any of those things when he woke up. He had done nothing to hurt Jimmy, except maybe the Phoenix’s pride when the dragon tried to shoo him away like a common pigeon.

And while he didn’t have to go with Tango, Jimmy wanted to go back to the ranch with the dragon. The old building housed a lot of fond memories. That was one reason. The other was Tango himself.

The truth was, Jimmy had been setting up his nest at the base of that mountain because he knew that people were nearby. Maybe not necessarily a giant gold and red dragon, but the humans of the village weren’t too far away. Phoenixes worked best in a flock. Especially Jimmy. He could handle being on his own, sure, but he thrived amidst others. And what a ‘flock’ looked like to Jimmy had changed over the lifetimes. Sometimes that meant coexisting with humans. Sometimes it meant flying with large groups of your more typical, non-magical birds. Sometimes a flock was only him and one other, and sometimes it was a large group of friends and family. He had been looking for his next flock. Had been planning on finding a nice family to settle down with for a while and play the part of a typical pet canary.

And then came Tango.

Really, dragons and phoenixes were pretty similar if you think about it. Depending on how you define immortality, both species were technically immortal. Dragons could live forever as long as they weren’t killed. And sure, Jimmy died all the time, but death wasn’t permanent for him. A phoenix couldn’t breathe fire, but they still had the same fire in their belly that dragons did. They both could fly. They both could burn. They both could bleed gold…

According to that train of thought, dragons were practically big scaly phoenixes in their own right.

And as the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together.

______________________________________________________________

“Tango Tango Tango TANGO TANGO TANGO!!!”

The lump of stone is heavy in Jimmy’s claws. He’s not used to feeling so imbalanced while flying. Not for this long. He kept having to remind himself that it would be worth the effort once he saw the look on his buddy’s face.

That doesn’t make the uneven strain on his wings better, though. It’s so bad, he nearly missed the window entirely. The backside of his wing brushed against the wooden frame. A stray splinter caught at his coverts. There’s a painful twinge as a few feathers are pulled loose and he over-corrects, sending him spiraling to the floor inside.

The little bird lands in a messy heap on the floorboards, losing his grip on the pretty rock. It went rattling across the floor in front of his beak.

He tested his toes, gingerly flexing each one to make sure he hadn’t broken anything in the crash. Nothing appeared out of place outside of a few wisps of broken yellow feathers. That would probably leave a bruise or two, but nothing more severe. Jimmy wasn’t about to die this time around. Even the rock looked completely intact after its little tumble.

He had landed in the old ranch house kitchen. It looked warm and inviting in the late evening haze, despite the unused furniture strewn across the floor. The smell of smoke still clung to the walls and floor. Enough time had passed that the uncomfortable burn of brimstone had begun to fade. The ruined walls had been stripped away and patched up with new oak and spruce timber. The smell of the hewn wood boards mixed with the lingering scent of ash. It almost reminded him of sitting alongside a nice warm bonfire under the stars on a cool summer night.

“Tango?”

The dragon wasn’t answering, but something was creaking nearby. Floorboards groaned. Hinges squeaked. Jimmy had a good idea of where his friend could be, but he wasn’t about to go flying around indoors while carrying that stone around. So he hopped to his feet and took flight. The kitchen floor was as good a place as any to leave it for now.

“Can you hear me, buddy? I brought you something?”

With the slightest shift of his wingtips, he banked around an open archway into the living room. Sure enough, there was Tango. The dragon had his back to him. His claws scraped at the inside of a makeshift hopper he had managed to fashion out of an old shovel head and a little fire-breath metalworking. Looked like something had gotten stuck in the sorting system again.

“I can’t believe this. This is ridiculous,” Tango was saying as Jimmy landed on his favorite perch; one of the ridges of the dragon’s right horn. It was just so nice and warm; glossy and easy to nestle against. It shifted as Tango tried to look up at him, his head tilting to compensate for the slight weight change. “Oh! Hey Jimmy.”

“Hey, I’m back. How’s the progress coming along?”

A wisp of smoke wafted out of Tango’s nostrils. He turned back to the funnel in his claws. “Well, it was going pretty fantastic for a while there until this thing decided to jamificate the whole operation.” Jimmy tightened his grip on the horn as the dragon beneath him let out a sigh. The delicate swirls of smoke turned into a turbulent stream as he breathed in then out. “These quick fixes just aren’t cutting it.”

“Quick fixes?” Jimmy chuckled. “Tango, you know you can take all the time in the world, right? Automatic sorting will be nice and all, but we don’t absolutely need it right now. We barely got the house patched up. The barn’s not even rebuilt yet.”

If anything, the sheer amount of work that he had managed over the last few days had been impressive. With the barn gone, the two had taken shelter in the farmhouse. In that time, Tango had thrown himself into making the place as easy to live in as possible. The ruined portions of the wall had been stripped away and replaced. A door had been renovated so that there was an entrance large enough for the dragon to pass through. Bedrooms had been ransacked and rearranged so that they had a place to sleep at night. For Tango, that meant a padded stretch of floor space for him to curl up in. For Jimmy, a simple shelf with a nest he had put together all on his own.

And then there were the projects! The redstone projects were in every room. The sorting system, a trash dispenser, a line of automatic cooking furnaces. Whatever materials he and Tango had gathered into a tiny hoard while the dragon had been grounded were gone, put to use in whatever idea his friend had thrown himself into.

But they hadn’t touched the barn.

Jimmy could tell that the memory of the attack was still a bit of a sore spot for Tango. Sometimes, the barn served as a reminder. Even after all the bodies had been cleared away.

The stream of smoke coming from Tango’s nostrils petered out. He could hear the dragon's claws clicking against the shovel head as it turned in his claws. Gold wings still trussed up in their splints stretched ever so slightly, nearly knocked over a dusty grandfather clock they had shoved into the corner of the living room. The contact was enough to make Tango wince beneath him.

“You’re right,” Tango relented. He placed the funnel down on the hardwood floor at his feet. It rolled unevenly away to bump against one of the chests. “There’s not enough room for us here.”

The feathers along Jimmy’s shoulders puffed up. “Us? Excuse me. I find this place rather cozy. I think what you meant to say is that there’s not enough room for the two of us.” He almost tented his wings to make himself bigger. A show of fluffed feathers and bravado as if he could square up against the massive creature beneath him, but his friend wouldn’t be able to see that. Not as long as he was perched on the horn. “I’m a big man. The big man!”

There was a jolt below as Tango shook his head. The sudden movement knocked Jimmy’s feet out from under him. With a shrill cry, he went tumbling down the glittering gold slope of Tango’s head until he skittered to a halt hanging halfway from his nose. Yellow wings stretched and pressed against scales as his feet dangled uselessly over open air. “TANGO! HELP!”

“You know you can fly, right?” the dragon huffed, a smile evident in his voice. Still, he reached up and scooped Jimmy up in his claws.

“Y-yeah. Of course I do,” he sputtered, adjusting his jostled feathers back into place. It took a bit of time, considering how ruffled they were from the tumble. The wave of embarrassment washing over him did not help.

“Sure thing, buddy.” The corners of Tango’s mouth pulled up for a moment, before his head swung back and forth to take in his surroundings. “You’ve got a point, though. This place isn’t big enough for us. I should just settle down until my wings finish healing. It’s not like I have to wait much longer.” As if to illustrate his point, he shuffled his wings against his back. He didn’t recoil from the movement. His eyes didn’t crinkle at the corners from strain. He seemed fine.

The only apparent problem was that there wasn’t enough room to risk spreading them out. Just that little motion knocked a faded family portrait off the wall with a thumb claw.

It had been more than Tango had been able to manage without wincing in pain a couple of weeks ago. The membrane between the wing fingers had healed over a while ago. Dull scars pitted the skin, stubborn reminders of how badly the dragon had been hurt. The bones were less obvious, but beneath the scales and muscle, they were well on their way through the healing process. Tango had been good about keeping them still and letting them mend. And when he had been tempted to put pressure on them early and take a risk, Jimmy had made sure he was there and ready to give him a solid peck upside the head to chase those thoughts away.

“You… you want to leave?” The question hung in the empty air. There was a moment of silence. Not even the grandfather clock ticked with the passing seconds. They had never bothered to wind it.

Eventually, Tango shrugged. “It’s an option. Beats accidentally busting this joint up. Feels like I’m trying to put a square peg through a round hole, and I’m the peg.” He held his claw up to his head for Jimmy to hop back up onto his horn. The small bird gratefully settled down against his perch while Tango reached down to scoop the picture off the hardwood floor. He watched the two smiling faces centered in the frame as Tango hung it back up on the wall. One a woman. One a man. Both familiar to the phoenix.

When the dragon’s claws pulled away, the frame was crooked. “This place is made for humans.” There was a sad note in his voice. Something distant. Something angry. A shiver ran down Jimmy’s spine as he thought of men on fire. People rendered down screaming smudges of light on a dark night.

He didn’t like where that train of Tango’s thought seemed to be going. “Or human-sized people,” Jimmy blurted in a rush, trying to bring the conversation around to something more his speed. Something that didn’t involve Tango leaving. Or humans. “Or me-sized birds.”

“Or that,” the dragon agreed with a snort.

“You know, we could get back to finishing up the barn. It was a lot of fun. You know, before it burnt down… And there was a lot more room for the both of us.”

Tango’s head swayed thoughtfully. Jimmy rocked along with him, shifting with the movement instinctually. “Yeah, we could do that,” Tango hummed. They turned towards the door. “That’s another option.”

“I say we just focus on getting the roof back up and then worry about the walls after.”

“That’s not going to protect us from much.”

“I’m not concerned.”

“Well of course you’re not, mister ‘I can’t die.’”

“Hey, I don’t appreciate that coming from you, mister ‘immortal.’ You very well know I can die.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“EXCUSE ME?!”

By now, Tango had lumbered back into the kitchen. It was the only way he could go to get to the only door big enough for him to fit through. There was the stone in the middle of the floor, right where Jimmy had left it. “Here I am, all excited, bringing you a gift, even,” he twittered, alighting from his perch. This time, the little bird landed on the floor with much more grace and intention next to the glittering red gift. “And you’re bad-mouthing me. I will not stand for such slander.”

Jimmy watched with satisfaction as Tango’s eyes glittered. He had just noticed the large chunk of redstone. “Wait-a-minute…” The dragon had to hunker down, practically resting his head on the floor so that they were eye level. “Where did that come from?”

“I found it.” Pride warmed Jimmy over from head to tail tip. Chest feathers puffed out as he pushed the rock forward with one foot. “Had to go pretty far out for it to. We’ve picked the nearby valley and mountain clean, but I know how much you’ve been wishing for more. You practically used up everything we were using for your temporary hoard, so I brought you back the biggest piece I could find.”

There had been more past the villages, but Jimmy hadn’t been physically equipped to tackle an entire ore vein, even if it was on the surface. Mining was out of the question, and what was readily available was usually no bigger than fine grains of dust. What was he supposed to do with dust? Sweep it up with his wings? But this! This he could bring back on his own.

“And it’s for me?!?”

He gave the rock another tap with his clawed toes. It rocked, then rattled and rolled to its side. “Well, I sure ain’t gonna use it.”

“Oh my gosh. I don’t even know what to say.” With careful claws, Tango plucked the stone off the floor. He held it gingerly, like he was afraid he was going to break it. Knowing Tango’s strength, it was entirely possible he could have crushed it to dust if he wanted to. “Thank you, Jimmy.”

It felt good. It felt good to see Tango smile like that. “Don’t worry about it. Just use it towards something cool, ya hear?”

He nodded. “I don’t even know what I’d do with it. Or if I’d even do anything with. I think I’m just gonna hold onto it for now.” Then, to Jimmy’s horror, he tucked it into one of the folds of his bandages.

“No!”

Tango whipped his head around, eyes wide, pupils shrunk down to hairline slits, thrown utterly off guard by Jimmy’s outburst.“What- What? What?? WHAT?!?”

“No. No. NO,” he repeats unhelpfully. “You’re not putting it there,” he chirped. “That’s just asking to aggravate your injury. I’m not letting you go and do that.”

The phoenix hopped towards the dragon, who scrambled away with wide eyes. Considering their size difference, it would have been a comical sight to see the little bird scaring the dragon. But Jimmy wasn’t laughing. He was too concerned for that.

“But I-”

“No buts!”

“Fine!” Tango still looked a bit baffled as he pried the rock back out from a layer of gauze.

It had only gone beneath the first layer of clean linen. There were plenty of layers that would have separated the rock from skin and scale. There were also plenty of spare bandages to replace it if necessary. As far as the phoenix was concerned, it still wasn’t worth the risk.

“I’ll just stash it in my nest or something instead,” the dragon huffed. “Just gotta find a spot where I won’t roll over and crush it first.”

“You don’t have to do that. Why don’t we find you something to help you carry it? A safe place to put it until you decide.”

The sharp scales making up the ridge of his eye raised in a way that Jimmy thought looked uncomfortable, what with all those sharp edges. Tango made no sign that it was uncomfortable in any way, though. “You’ve got something in mind?”

“I’ve got an idea.” Jimmy bounced forward, craning his neck so he could see past his friend through the kitchen door. There was a trapdoor in the hallway ceiling. Cobwebs dusted the corners and the wood looked warped and faded from years of disuse, but it was still there. “If memory serves me correctly, I bet ya there’s something in the attic we can use.”

“The attic?” Tango turned, following Jimmy’s gaze to the hatch in the ceiling. “Oh no way. I’m never going to fit through that.”

“That’s why you’ve got a big strong man like me to help.” With a sweep of his wings, Jimmy took off. “Mind lifting the door for me a smidge, though?”

He was too busy circling the hall to get a good look at Tango’s expression, but he could still hear his friend’s voice. “Will you even be able to see up there?”

“Sure I will.”

A golden tail snaked its way to the ceiling, pushing the trapdoor open a few centimeters. That was all Jimmy needed. With a twitch of his tail and a twitter, he pulled his wings in tight and swooped through the opening. Almost immediately, he crashed headfirst into the long thin wires of an old bird cage.

Bam!

“What was that?! Is everything alright?”

“Fine! It’s fine Tango!” It was fine. There were a few more bruises added to the number he already had from crashing into the kitchen, but his wings weren’t broken and he hadn’t hit his head. Another potential death avoided. Another win in his book.

The birdcage was ruined, though. It had toppled to its side after the impact and rolled into a forgotten rat trap. He looked it over as he settled feathers back into their places. There were massive dents in the wires now. One gap was big enough for someone his size to easily pass through.

The sight sent a twinge through his chest. What a shame.

“Could you hold the door for me, Tango? I need a minute to look around.”

“Yeah. I got it.”

“Thank you!”

Well, there was no reason to dwell on an old cage. It hadn’t been used in years anyway. Instead, Jimmy turned his attention to the rest of the attic. Trunks and boxes and chests, oh my. The space was piled high with more junk than he recalled. The abandoned items were dusty from years of neglect. It made what should have been a brightly colored, overstuffed room feel dull and hollow.

Again, there was no reason to dwell on that now. The old inhabitants were long gone. It was him and Tango now. So Jimmy flew, passing over a dress form with a long wedding gown and a crate painted with a hot air balloon. He instead began his search with the piles of boxes on the other side of the room.

_____________________________________________________________

Night had fallen.

Jimmy felt nice and snug in his nest. It was perched in the Y-bend of the support beams holding up the newly built barn roof. If you could call it that. Slats of timber had been screwed together and raised onto the supports at an angle. There weren’t any shingles or insulation to keep the water out if it were to start raining. There definitely weren’t any walls. Tango was right, it wouldn’t protect them from much. It wasn’t much, but it was still a lot for a day’s work.

At least it was a nice night outside. Almost like they were sleeping under the stars. The twinkling lights were just visible through the spaces where walls would eventually go up. And it was spacious. Jimmy didn’t have to try very hard to coax his friend into sleeping there for the night. He had a feeling that the dragon hadn’t been excited about spending another night cooped up in one of those too-small bedrooms. In a show of solidarity, he had even helped the dragon carry his nest out. That is, if ‘helped’ meant ‘asked Tango to do it.’ What could he say? Tango could carry the whole thing in his claws. If Jimmy had tried doing it himself, he would have had to carry it twig by twig.

Still, the dragon hadn’t seemed to mind. He was in good spirits, curled up beneath Jimmy in the bedding they had pulled from the linen closet. The leather coin pouch Jimmy had found in the attic was tied around one of his wrists, the redstone rock nestled inside.

“Okay, my turn,” he was saying. With one claw, he traced a line from one star to another, to another, and another as if connecting the dots.

Jimmy followed the motion, trying to find a pattern in the movements. “Looks like a triangle with a line down the middle. Is that supposed to be one of your hoppers?”

Tango shook his head. “I was going more for a cross shape. I’m also ninety-nine percent certain that it’s a real constellation I’m pointing at. Come on. Try again.” He traced the line of stars once more. Jimmy’s head twitched, following its path intently. Left, right, center, a small swipe up, and then a long trail down. A real constellation, huh? He’d never been very good with those. He wasn’t some lowly pigeon that had to worry about keeping track of directions.

Wait a minute…

“Is it a bird?”

“Ding ding ding! We have a winner!” With a grin, Tango knocked his tail into the base of the Y-beam. The shockwave made Jimmy’s nest shiver around him. “Pretty sure it’s supposed to be a hawk or something, but I don’t remember the name of it.”

“Well, don’t look at me,” he said, pushing the twigs back into place. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about that sort of thing.”

“Really?”

Jimmy peered over the edge of his nest. There was Tango, staring up at him with red eyes brimming with curiosity. His friend tilted his pointy head as if seeing him from a new perspective would help him understand. “Well, yeah,” he mumbled. “I’ve never really needed it.”

“Then how’d you navigate?”

He didn’t. Jimmy shrugged his wings, a motion that probably wasn’t visible to the dragon below. Not over the ledge of his nest. “Usually my other flock mates handled that.”

“Flock?”

“I’m a bird, Tango. That shouldn’t be so weird.”

“I don’t know! You’re the first Phoenix I've met. For all I know, you’re all meant to be hermits.” With that, Tango pushed himself up to a seat in his makeshift bed. Bandaged wings trailed at his sides as he craned his neck back to get a better look at Jimmy. “Besides, you’ve never talked about a flock before. Where are they now?” Scales scraped the bare dirt as the dragon worried at it with his claws. “I’m not keeping you from them, am I?”

“Of course not,” Jimmy exclaimed. He almost laughed at the thought. “Far from it.”

Those big red eyes narrowed at him. “I don’t understand.”

Jimmy wanted nothing more than to sink further into his nest out of sight. Of course Tango wouldn’t get it. It's not like Jimmy had ever talked about it. It was his own fault of course, but had his reasons. The main one being that it had simply never come up in conversations. Another one was that he had gotten his hopes up about Tango sticking around, and with it came the fear that if he voiced his feelings about flocks, it would only make things awkward and ensure Tango would leave. Now he wasn’t sure what to do with the sudden rush of self-consciousness. “Sorry. I guess this is kind of confusing. What I mean is, I don’t really have a flock right now. Not anymore.”

“Oh…”

A shadow passed over Tango’s eyes and Jimmy realized that his wording probably hadn’t been the best. “It’s not like anything bad happened to them,” he quickly added, trying to set the record right before his friend got the wrong idea. “It’s just, every so often, time passes and you’ve gotta move on. Kinda comes with the territory of being tangentially immortal when everyone else around you isn’t, you know?”

Tango blinked. “So it’s not a flock of phoenixes, like you?”

“Nah.” Jimmy waved his question off with a flick of his wingtip. “I haven’t flown with my kind for a very long time. I guess flock might be the wrong word for what I’m trying to say. I’ve lived with flocks made up of birds, sure, but I’ve also stayed with people. Humans. All sorts. Could probably call it family, or friends, but ‘flock’ feels right. Like it works the best for what I mean.”

He expected Tango to start shooting off more questions, or to laugh at him. Maybe even squint at him with those brightly colored eyes as if that could help the dragon figure him out. To his surprise, his friend instead looked back at the farmhouse through one of the many gaps in the barn’s foundation. His wings slumped to the ground as he let himself fall back into his bedding. “Humans, huh?” While it was technically a question, there was no hint of curiosity in his voice. If anything, it sounded strained.

The two sat in silence. Tango stared out at the other building, tail-tip twitching, and Jimmy picked himself over to the edge of his nest, not sure what to do or say. Now he’d gone and done it. This was exactly the type of reaction he had been trying to avoid. At least since the barn burned down. The little bird wasn’t sure what else to do, so he decided to fill the silence himself.

“They’re not all like that, buddy. I swear. And the ones I hung out with…” Jimmy found his own gaze drifting towards the barn house as well. It had changed so much but was still so similar. “They’re long gone. I promise you. And even if they weren’t, I can also promise you that they weren’t the type to go around harassing folks like us.” He blinked and saw green eyes and a cheeky smile in the empty space behind his eyelids. “Well, not like those fools who showed up here,” he corrected himself. “Harmless. Good people living a good life and I was there helping them out. Rooting ‘em on-”

“Hey, Jimmy.”

Jimmy blinked. He shrank down against his nest a little lower. “Yeah?”

Tango didn’t look at him. Just kept his eyes locked on the farmhouse, his head propped up on a lump of fabric. “Is that how you knew about this place? When you first found me? Is this your human friends’ home?”

The little bird sighed. “Yeah.”

“What were they like?”

Oh. “Um, really nice actually,” Jimmy twittered. “There were two of them. You know that portrait in the living room, right?”

“Mmhmm.”

“That was them. The man, the- uh- the one with the green streak in his hair, he liked to annoy me. Kept reminding me I was small and rubbed it in my face, but he also threatened to punch a guy in the face for almost breaking my wing. He had a big head, but he was a really good friend…

“And the woman with the pink hair, that was his wife. She was the one who found me. I had just gotten tossed around in a nasty storm. Wasn’t pretty. I was probably just as hurt back then as you were when I found you. She picked me up and took me back here. Took care of my bandages and gave me plenty of seeds to eat while I was on the mend. We got along really well. It was just how I’d imagine having a sibling is like.”

“And they knew what you were?”

Jimmy couldn’t help the little chuckle that escaped his beak. “Yeah. Yeah. They thought I was a normal bird at first, just like you. Didn’t take them long to realize that wasn’t the case after I started talking.” Another thing they had in common with Tango. “They were good flockmates once they figured it out, though.”

“I see…”

Was that an invitation to talk more? Or a dismissal? Jimmy couldn’t tell. He wasn’t sure what to say. He could talk about old memories of this house. Of the ranch. Of the people inside. Would it help? Would it only make things worse? Tango didn’t say anything else, either. He just kept looking at that farmhouse, away from Jimmy.

More silence. More of that infuriating quiet that made it feel like time had stopped around them. There wasn’t even a breeze. No whisper of grass or whistle of wind. Empty. Jimmy hated it. And after what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a minute, he decided he had enough of it.

The little bird jumped off of the beam to glide down to Tango. At the last second, he pulled in his wings and dropped, clawed toes catching on Tango’s horn.

“Tango I-”

Jimmy cut himself off. The dragon’s eyes were glistening. Tears pooled at the corners of his eyes. Wet streams left streaks from his eyes down to his chin. As soon as he noticed Jimmy looking, he tucked his face beneath his claws.

“Tango, are you alright?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m so sorry Jimmy.” Bright little droplets began to fall from between his claws.

“For what?” The phoenix leaned down closer, patting one wing against his friend’s head. He wasn’t sure if Tango could feel the brush of feathers through the scales, but he hoped that the pressure and motion could comfort him. “What on Earth do you have to be sorry for?”

“I messed up. I lost my temper. I ruined everything.”

“What are you on about? Of course you didn’t.”

“But I did. It’s because of me the ranch burnt down. Here you are telling me that this was your home, that you lived here and had family here and they were humans, and I- And I went messed it all.”

Jimmy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Tango, you’re being silly. They were trying to kill you,” he said, exasperated. “And they were the ones who started the fires.”

“Exactly! They wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for me. They wouldn’t have shot you or ruined your home if it wasn’t for me. I led those people here, and then I killed them. Humans, just like your friends.”

This was ridiculous. Jimmy hopped off the horn. Tango moved his claws away automatically, making room for the little bird to avoid accidentally bumping or crushing him. With the space cleared, Jimmy perched instead on the end of the dragon’s nose so that he could look his friend in those big, teary eyes. “It’s fine, really. And it’s not your fault by a long shot. The ranch, the house, it’s been vacant for years. I haven’t been there for years. Neither have my old flockmates. They’re gone. This hasn’t been home to me for years. Not until I came back here with you. And it’s not because I lived here before. It’s because I’m here with you and these past few weeks have been a blast. And yeah, I’m sad it burned, but I’d rather those guys burn the place down than get you.”

Tango sniffed. The rush of air and smoke nearly knocked Jimmy from his perch. It certainly left his feathers in a mess. But he stood strong as his friend wiped at an eye. “Really?” he asked.

“Really.”

“But- but what about the humans?”

“What about them? Far as I’m concerned, they got what was coming to ‘em.”

Tango’s eyes widened. “But… but I thought… The way you’ve been avoiding talking about the fire, and we don’t ever mention the humans… I thought I really scared you.”

Well…

“I mean, I won’t lie, you’re temper took me by surprise. But you thought I was dead. And like I said, they were out to get you. I don’t hold it against you if that’s what you're thinking. I’m not scared of you.”

Tango seemed to melt beneath him. Massive wings that were once wound against his sides untensed and pooled across the ground. A massive sigh escaped his nose. It was less violent this time, though, sending the oddly comforting smell of bonfire smoke wafting over Jimmy. The guilty glisten in his eyes turned into a reassured glitter. “Oh thank goodness. I thought we were avoiding talking about all this time because I scared you. You would keep mentioning it and then dropping it right away. I felt so guilty all this time, you don’t understand.”

“What? No,” Jimmy huffed, settling his feathers back into place. “Is that really why you’ve been shutting down every time I bring up the fire or humans?”

“Uh… yeah…” he said sheepishly, trying to look away. It was a difficult task, considering Jimmy was right on his nose.

“I thought it was because you didn’t want to think about it. Every time I mentioned it you got that look in your eye and I thought you were still angry at them or something. And then you were talking about leaving today-”

Tango cut him off. “I thought you’d want me out for ruining your place and losing my temper!”

“Of course NOT!” That was the farthest thing from what he wanted. “If anything, I’d hope you might stick around for a while after your wings were healed. It was finally starting to feel like-” Jimmy snapped his beak shut, realizing what he was just about to say. Was it too soon?

“What? What what what?!” Tango asked. He pushed his head forward, trying to lean in, but Jimmy was perched on his nose. The little bird just moved with him. He blinked, realizing his mistake before reaching out with his claws to scoop Jimmy up. “What were you going to say?”

He debated. He warred within himself, thinking so hard there was probably smoke coming out the sides of his head in a similar fashion to the smoke coming from Tango’s nose. If there was ever a time to say it, now was that time.

“It was starting to feel like we were flockmates.”

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