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Aurin holds his mother's hand as she leads him from the street to his aunt and uncle's house. He's been here only a couple of times, and can't remember most of them distinctly; they're sort of awkwardly related, his dead father's half-brother and the wife thereof. But now they have a baby parunia, and that means there is a dragon related to Aurin who is not too far from his age, only thirty-one years younger. This is apparently the sort of relation that it will be particularly enriching for Aurin to meet. They can do this now instead of waiting a month, because parunias don't die when they're babies; this one is safe, unlike the miscellaneous cousins on his mother's side he's never met because they are all in too much danger to get attached to (and have all succumbed to that danger). So here they are. Even though it was a very long flight and he couldn't ride his mother for takeoff and landing when she had to be a heron, only for the middle part.
Alys knocks on the door.
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Mial gets kind of exasperated with him about it.
"Oh my god, Aurin, do you think about anything that's not girls?"
"Oh my god, Aurin, do you think about anything that's not girls?"
"I have to do homework, sometimes," says Aurin. "Uh, and..." Pause. "No, not really, it's mostly girls, girls are nice."
"What about - nutmeg rice, rhubarb tarts, winning at board games, flying, fire, has every nice thing you know about just been replaced by girls, is this going to happen to me when I turn a hundred twenty-two, because if so I might just stay ninety-one forever," says Mial.
"I still like those things," says Aurin. "But I've liked them for a very long time so there's not as much to think about anymore. Also I haven't fit in the fireplace for ages."
"Get a bigger fireplace," he suggests.
"Mom said no."
He grins. "Convince her."
"She doesn't want to remodel the house and it'd annoy the neighbors and anyway it'd only postpone the issue," recites Aurin.
"Get a really big fireplace and put it - oh, you can't teleport I guess," says Mial. "Well, learn to teleport and get a really big fireplace and put it somewhere else."
"Uh... where?"
"Some side of the world. Some part of the bottom of the world very far away from where I go to burn newspapers. The Taavlas Isles," lists Mial. "There's lots of places."
"If I learned to teleport I could just go to the big firepit on Dragon Island."
"I guess. It wouldn't be yours though."
And there might be girls there and that would be contrary to the point of this exercise.
And there might be girls there and that would be contrary to the point of this exercise.
"It's really, really big though."
"If you built one on the bottom of the world it could be bigger," says Mial.
"I don't even know how to build one. And there wouldn't be any firewood on the bottom of the world. ...I'm not sure if they do the big firepit with firewood or something else, but there isn't any something else on the bottom of the world either."
"I bet you I can learn how to make you a fireplace that'll work on the bottom of the world," Mial says cheerfully. "Or the side or wherever."
"I mean," says Aurin, "I wouldn't mind if you did that, but girls would still exist."
"And then you wouldn't go to your nice fireplace because you would be too busy looking at girls," he surmises.
"And talking to them," says Aurin. "That part is pretty important. Some people in my class haven't figured out yet that you also have to talk to them."
Mial snorts. "Well, talking to people is more fun than looking at them generally, unless they're really obnoxious for some reason."
"Yesterday a girl in my art class let me braid her hair," says Aurin dreamily.
"You are mystifying," says Mial.
"Am not, I'm just older than you."
"So maybe when I'm older you'll be less mystifying, but you sure are mystifying now!"