Chapter Nine

Fred

The trip took a few months longer than Castor originally estimated it would. Not that I noticed until they woke me up. I kept my promise to sleep the whole trip. I woke up to Teddy shaking my shoulder and shoving a pepperoni roll into my mouth.

"Huh?" I huffed through the bread.

"Eat up!" he grinned from ear to ear. "Castor is looking for a place to land!"

"It's real?" I asked, taking a bite.

"As real as we can tell. Took us a minute to see it," he shrugged. "Okay, took us more than a minute. We had to keep going lower and lower. Whether it's space fog or magic, there's this dense purple fog all around it and then when you go under it there's like three of them! Seriously! Three planets! We saw some sort of light, but we're not sure it's a sun. Starscale Search always thought there would be a sun to give them away, but who knows!" he laughed. "It's like these dragons broke all the rules and still are and it's working!"

"Did you get footage of the search?" I yawned, sitting up and stretching.

Teddy babbled on about the footage he and Sunny managed to gather up and how there must've been a difference in measurements between them and us because it took a few months longer than expected. Besides that, everything had gone fine and they hadn't even come close to running out of food. That was the real concern on a ship full of dragon shifters, most of whom were alphas. No food would likely mean fights.

"I'm going to take a shower," I yawned.

"Not right now you're not. Castor said we all have to head back to the lift-off room and buckle up. I guess it's the landing room for now," he shrugged. "Come on! He's waiting on you!"

After stretching again one more time for good measure, I got up and glanced around the bedroom as my body adjusted to being upright again.

"He's tidy," my dragon commented on the bedroom. "Besides a few wrinkles on the bed and the book on the nightstand, without sniffing him out you'd never know he was here."

"He could probably say the same for us," I shrugged back at him. "Probably why he really picked us. Knew he'd technically have the place to himself."

"Come on, Dad," Teddy said, playfully pushing my shoulder.

Yawning, I walked the path back to the lift-off room and strapped myself in. I wouldn't have minded a few hours' warning that we were about to land, but this was it. We'd traveled through space to find alien dragons. The others chatted about what we might find when we landed and how besides the Starscales we were the first dragons to ever go so far from Earthside. I opened my mouth to tell them we didn't know that for sure but stopped short. Just because I'd done all the things I considered amusing in my life and now was waiting to die or for Lotus to come back, I shouldn't rain on their space parade. Especially, since I only agreed to the trip for Teddy.

"You excited?" He glanced at me.

"As much as anything can excite anyone at my age."

"You're not old," Sunny laughed. "My parents are still----"

He stopped short when Izora the Medwin 2's doctor shot him a warning look.

"He can say it," I shrugged. "His parents are older than me and still fighting wars."

"Bite your tongue and swallow your scales," Izora shook his head, letting his dark locks fall free around his face. "No war talk out here. That's all we need. Go down and find out they wanted help with a war or some bullshit."

"It's always some bullshit," I laughed. "It's all bullshit really."

"Do I need to prescribe you an antidepressant? We have some in the ship's pharmacy."

"No," I shook my head. "No pill will solve being realistic."

The red light next to the intercom speaker came on. In the next room Castor and Casimir were preparing the Medwin 2 for descent.

"Stop bickering," Castor said. "We want to present a united front when we disembark from the ship. We've already discussed this, but since one of you were taking the best nap I've ever witnessed, let's go over it again, quickly. Fred and Casimir are going out first. Fred, because they want to see him. That's how we're proving who we are. We're counting on them knowing what you look like, Freddie. Casimir because he's had two decades of martial art classes for fun and he's the tallest of us. We're not looking for a fight, but if they give us one, I expect we can get you two back onto the ship and get out of here. Then the other three of you. I will stay on the ship ready to leave at a minute's notice if you run into trouble. Yes, I do want to see the whole new world, but not at the price of my life, before you ask, Fred. Everyone got it? Good!" he answered himself without waiting for us to reply. "Everyone's strapped in. I'm locked in on the lit landing field. It's almost like they have a lighthouse for spaceships. I hope they're not cannibals or something, because I'd really love to meet with some of their engineers."

"Here's to them not being cannibals!" Teddy cheered and the other guys laughed.

"Oh, and Freddie?"

"Yeah?"

"We'll wait until you change clothes before we leave the ship. Just try to be quick, so they don't think we're hostiles, okay?"

"You got it," I rolled my eyes.

They were lucky I came at all. They should be grateful that I uprooted what could've been another nap or a year spent with my grandkids to fly through space and pay them a visit.

"Because they might know something about Lotus," my dragon reminded me.

Scaley guys was right, but might never got me anywhere.