#precious.

God I love their dynamic

"What happens next, Sebek? Is the dragon really going to be able to save the farmers?"

Silver stares at him with wide eyes as if Sebek's next words mean the difference between bated breath or a sigh of relief, the shared quilted cover drawn close to his chin against the whispering chill of a Briar Valley spring evening.

The human boy bests him in many ways that sting— in age, in height, in blossoming magical abilities.

His mama says there's no rush to these things and chucks him gently under the chin with one elegant talon, cajoling him into helping her make his favorite salmon dish. Her words and the comforting flavors soothe the ache in his stomach for now; later, the river's babbling voices will hide his frustrated cries as he tries as hard as he might to produce the most meager of flames from his fingertips.

But there's one area in particular that Silver readily concedes to him without challenge, and it's with no small amount of preening that Sebek turns the page with all the air of a small king holding court to his awestruck followers.

Warm moonlight, the color of spilled fairy milk, filters through the bedroom window and illuminates the words before him, complicated jumbles of syllables that the other boy would struggle to parse out on his own.

"You make the stories sound so real," Silver had confessed earnestly to him, pressing the heavy tome of folktales into Sebek's arms that he had brought over during his visit. "Don't tell Papa, but I think you read even better than he does."

With praise like that, how could he have refused?

"Don't be ridiculous, Silver," he snipes back at the older boy with no real heat, just as eagerly invested in the story as they huddle close from the darkness of the woods outside. "Of course he'll save the farmers, he's a dragon, isn't he? Now stop interrupting, you're ruining the flow! Where was I . . . ?"

"With dark scales that sparkled like liquid coal against the starlight, the all-mighty dragon cast one fierce eye down upon—"

"But how could they have known what color he was if it was night—"