Chương 7: “Mr. Grumpy Has Opinions”

Grumpy Has Opinions" On Saturday June decided he needed to experience things. She read to him. She showed him her drawings. She asked him questions he didn't answer and then answered when she looked at him with an expression that turned out to be harder to hold out against than he would have predicted, which was a strategic vulnerability he was still in the process of addressing. She showed him the dragon drawing. He looked at it for a long time.

"What?" she said. He did not respond.

"Do you not like it?" He did not respond.

"You don't like it." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. He could not speak. He could glow. He could lower the temperature. He could press his awareness into small objects and displace them a bit.

None of these were adequate tools for communicating that her dragon had six legs, which was two too many, and a neck that would make it structurally incapable of lifting its own head, and wings positioned in a way that suggested she had never observed anything attempt to generate lift. She studied him.

"You think it's wrong, don't you." One glow. Yes.

"How do you know what a real dragon looks like?" He had eaten one, forty years after he first woke, but this seemed beside the point. He glowed twice. This was becoming their shorthand. One for yes, two for not exactly, or you're missing something, or I'd rather not.

"You just know," she said.

"Okay." She looked at the drawing.

"Draw me a correct one." He had no hands. He could not draw. This was obvious. She found this very funny. She drew him instead. A purple oval. Two dots. A small frown. She worked on it with serious focus and then she held it up.

"Is that what you look like?" He looked at the drawing. He looked at it for a long time. He glowed once. She put it on the wall above her desk with a single drawing pin, in the center, where it would be the first thing visible from the door. He looked at it from the windowsill after she fell asleep. He did not think about it. He thought about it.