Her communication crystal from the miracle contingent chimes.

She picks it up with her non-writing hand. "Hello?"

"Hello," says Libby. "Lazarus has found a way to stop dragons from dying of old age, but none of our current sizes of coin can pull it off. Do you want to try making a bigger one?"

"...I can. Right now?" Write write, press crystal to ear with shoulder to free hand, fold envelope address fling into the air watch it vanish.

"Well, soonish. He has temporary measures in place to stop any dragons dying of old age while we look for bigger coins, but he's not sure exactly when the temporary measures will wear off."

"I'm disastrously busy today but that's not likely to change for the next month. I'm between immediate tasks at the moment. What's your guess as to what it will take to add a button to my device?"

"I'd expect a five to be able to do it; I'd be surprised if a four could."

"Lazarus specified that if it can be done at all, it will be done in a single wish. So if you successfully made one, you can transfer the coin to his storage and we'll find out if it works."

"Thanks. I'll leave you be." Libby deactivates the crystal.

She calls the dragon council - Piro answers - and she reports that Lazarus has solved death by old age.

"Hello, Alys."

"Hello, Avar. More council news. The miracle-workers have reportedly solved death by old age, in the dragon case."

"...In the... I suppose you wouldn't know," Avar sighs. "Whether or not the dragon case... extends to outliers."

"I'm afraid my representative didn't know. Do you want me to ask her to call the miracle workers about it?"

"Do you have it or does he? He's in the living room playing board games with Aurin."

"Finnah, actually."

"Ah, I see. Well, that's all the news I have at the moment."

"Thank you, I appreciate it."

Avar goes looking for Finnah, who should probably know this information.

Finnah is outside! Flying! She had a short shift at work but she is expected back tomorrow so she can't go to the sun yet. She is just flying. Around. Breathing fire.

"Well, damn," says Finnah, pausing to hover for easier conversation. "I'll call them and ask I guess, I can do that, direct line to the miracle-workers. I have never seen you in natural form before, this is weird."

Finnah grins toothily, and dives, and lands, and shifts. And pulls the crystal out of her pocket and calls.

"Hello."

"Hi, miracle worker, sorry to bother you, uh, but I hear you solved old age for dragons? There was one shren who didn't take the miracle, what about him, does it work for him?"

"It should. I'm sure Lazarus would've mentioned if it didn't. But I can ask him to confirm when he comes back from distributing miracles."

"Okay, good, because that's kind of important to know. Thanks! For that and the miracles in general!"

"You're welcome. Speaking of the shren who didn't take the miracle, do you think he would mind talking to me about his decision at some point? I had previously been getting the impression that no one was going to do that, and I'm curious. But I'll understand if he declares it none of my business."

"I can ask him. Bet you he'll talk to you about it."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome," says Finnah, and she pockets the crystal again. And goes and tells Avar, "Miracle lady thinks it should extend just fine to Mial but she'll make sure and call back."

"What a helpful miracle lady," says Avar.

"Yep! Uh, come get me when Mial comes home if I'm still out flying by then?"

"Sure," he says agreeably. "Have fun."

"Will do," she beams, and out she goes.

"Thanks!" She turns cardinal for fine maneuvering and flies to the scoot's domicile.

There is Mial's scoot, and there is Mial, fiddling with it.

"Hey Mial," Finnah says, sitting on his head, "did you hear about the no more dying of old age thing, I asked and it works for you probably they'll check and get back to me, also miracle lady wants to hear all about the weirdness that is your head about staying a shren."

"And so it begins," he snorts. "Hi, Finnah. Yes, Alys mentioned that."

Finnah rearranges a bit of his hair with her beak. "Do you want to call her now?"

"Maybe. I dunno. What was she like?"

"Miraculous, a lady, polite, curious about your weird head?"

"Well, 'polite' is a good sign, I guess..."

"She was very polite. I mean, we didn't have a super long conversation."

Finnah flutters off his head, shifts, and hands over the crystal. "Should I leave?"

Finnah stays put.

"Hello."

"Yes," she agrees. "Am I?"

"Yep."

"It's nice to meet you. My name is Libby. You might be glad to hear that Lazarus confirms you won't be dying of old age either."

"That is pretty nice to hear. So what exactly did you want to talk to me about?"

"Well. 'Why' might be a reasonable summary."

"I have a feeling I'm going to be getting that one a lot, yeah."

"I hope you're not tired of it yet."

"Nah. Okay, so how much do you know about Draconic?"

"Virtually nothing."

"It's a language. It's magical. Dragons and shrens speak it, sort of automatically, as part of our magic. And it really has it in for shrens. When it comes to most things, there is a wide range of vocabulary available to account for desired connotations. With shrens, the available connotations are that we are bad and horrifying and probably shouldn't exist. It's just not an option to talk about us as being acceptable, let alone positive. Despite the fact that any reasonable person would categorize us as an unfortunate kind of dragon, Draconic completely refuses to entertain the idea. There is a specific word that means 'awesome in exactly the way that dragons are awesome', and it applies to dragons and definitely not to us. And so on. I'm sure you get the picture."

"With extreme clarity, yes," she says. "It doesn't sound comfortable."

"It really isn't," he sighs. "But, look, I'm a hundred and seventy years old, I've had a while to figure out how to deal with it. And the way I deal with it, mainly, is by disagreeing with the premise. I disagree that shrens are not awesome. I think shrens are pretty great. It's kind of difficult sometimes, because, again, Draconic has it in for us, and there's not really a way to get a break from being a Draconic-speaker. But I have a lot of practice."

"...And so," she says, "now that you have an opportunity to stop being a shren, you... disagree that it's the obvious choice?"

"Yes. Exactly."

"I suspected this was going to be interesting. I'm pleased to know how right I was," she says. "And I think Lazarus might like to talk to you about that language of yours."

"...Oh? I mean, yes, absolutely - is Lazarus the really tall excitable human with strong opinions about communication crystals?"

"Yes. Yes he is."

"Then yeah, sure. But, um - in case he gets strong opinions about Draconic before I get a chance to talk to him - please tell him not to mess with it directly," he says. "A lot of people like it the way it is, and while I may privately opine that they're a bunch of lizards, I don't actually want to pull it out from under them."

"I'll pass that along," she promises.

"Thank you."

"It's no trouble. Lazarus will probably come by to be excitable and opinionated with you sometime soonish."

"I look forward to our excitable and opinionated conversation."

She laughs.

"I'll let you get back to - whatever miracle workers do with their time, then, I guess."

"I'm more of a miracle coordinator, personally. But yes. Although - and excuse me if this is too personal of a question - it occurs to me to wonder, what do you think you would've done if you hadn't been a shren, when the miracles came around?"

"You are a very interesting person," says Libby. "I think you might get along well with Lazarus. And I have no more invasive personal questions for you, so goodbye for now."

"Yep," Finnah agrees.

"And good practice for the hundreds of reporters who will no doubt be asking me," he makes a dramatized gesture of emphasis, "why. Although I bet a lot fewer of them will ask me what I would've done if I hadn't been a shren."

"It wouldn't've occurred to me to ask. Pretty interesting answer, though."

"I wouldn't dream of judging anyone else for that - I wouldn't even let other people join in on judging hypothetical alternate Mial, I don't think, if there were any who had the urge for some reason. But I think I get to hold my hypothetical alternate self to a different standard. After all, if things had turned out differently he could've been me."

"Yeah, and if I'd hatched a degree earlier I could've caught Aurin," Finnah points out, pensive, "think his hypothetical alternate self is judging him?"

"I doubt it. Does Aurin strike you as the sort of person who would have been The Last Shren, if things had turned out differently? I think I am probably unique in my weirdness, or if not precisely unique then the next thing to it."

"He does not strike me as that sort of person," says Finnah. "But I didn't really expect it from you either till you told me."

"My mother wasn't surprised."

"Well, your mom's your mom," shrugs Finnah. "I'm not - floored, but I didn't expect it."

"My mom is indeed my mom," he agrees. "It's a notable characteristic of hers. I don't know, it seems reasonable that you wouldn't have seen it coming, but... I think I would see it hypothetically coming, if anybody we know was the type to be the same way. If, I don't know, the whole mess had happened a generation earlier and it had been my dad and Grandpa had shipped him off to a shren house, I bet he would've grown up really mad about people being lizards but I don't think he would've turned down the miracle."

"Was Aurin floored?" wonders Finnah.

"Um." Mial hangs his head slightly. "I kind of told him while he was kissing his girlfriend and he coughed all over her face. I am appropriately ashamed."

Finnah bursts out laughing.

"So he was definitely startled. But, y'know, then he walked her home and came back with 'Mial you inconsiderate ass, may I ask why', and I apologized for being an inconsiderate ass and explained my reasoning about staying a shren and we played board games for a while, he is not still sitting on his couch hyperventilating or anything."

"Huh."

Mial shrugs.

"I keep almost rhapsodizing about breathing fire and then remembering that you are, one, silver, two, not miracled, and then I remembered that you aren't contagious. But you're still silver so you probably wouldn't get that much out of it. And you make those little newspaper burning trips anyway."

"Yeah. I breathe about as much fire as I want to. Although I'm increasingly tempted to shift natural without stringent precautions just because I can now, and Alys said the dragon council confirmed what the miracle worker told us about somebody dropping a shren into the middle of a council meeting and no one getting infected, so I'm definitely not contagious."

"If you were red-group - actually, wrong question. If you were white-group. What d'you think you'd do?"

"...Quite possibly still stay a shren," he says. "But judge my hypothetical alternate self less harshly on the subject."

"Ha." She turns into a cardinal and sits on his head again.

He giggles. "Is it comfy up there?"

"Yep. Your hair is nesting material. Very cozy." Preen.

Giggle.

Nest nest. Also giggle.

Finnah continues to be on Mial's head, curious about the conversation about to ensue.

"Hello! I'm told I am about to get excitable and opinionated about Draconic," says Lazarus.

"Okay, so first of all, I reiterate that I don't want you changing how Draconic works for dragonishes in general," says Mial. "But, given that you're a miracle worker and all, I wonder if you can't manage something. Um. Did Libby explain...?"

"She explained quite a few things. I am moderately offended about Draconic now. But I don't speak the language, and I'm not sure I want to even if I could. So there may be intricacies I'm missing. I do see magic, though, that's some help. I wonder if seeing someone actually speak Draconic would give me any new information?"

"This is a sentence in Draconic," says Finnah helpfully.

"Interesting," says Lazarus. "I'm pretty sure one of those was the name of the language. It's very... itself."

"Sirasiad," repeats Finnah. "Is Draconic for Draconic."

"Yes, that's what I thought. Um. Which means that I can detect features of Draconic words by hearing them..."

"So I can demonstrate the problem more clearly by saying, oh... 'Shrens are not siaddaki'?" says Mial.

"Do you actually understand it?" marvels Finnah. "Or just - I don't know what you'd just."

"When you're actually speaking Draconic and not just using the words as loanwords in other languages, I see what the magical properties of the words are. And the magical properties of whatever Mial just said are... offensive. 'Shren' has constrained connotations in a complicated and terrible way, and the rest of the sentence seemed to be... an obnoxious celebration of the connotational superiority of dragons over shrens. I could probably learn how to understand Draconic reasonably well by watching the magic when people speak it, but I'm not entirely sure I want to bother because Draconic is terrible."

"I mean, most of it isn't that. Although I suppose we could have some huge blind spot that we haven't noticed because it's not about shrens and is instead about evergreen shrubbery."

"Well. I think I would like to solve this problem somehow."

"You look like you're contemplating editing Draconic. Don't edit Draconic," says Mial. "But, I don't know... could you design an alternative? To apply to, say, me. Since I am probably the only remaining shren by now, or I will be soon, and I am therefore the person most substantially affected by the ways in which Draconic is terrible."

"I will not edit Draconic," Lazarus promises. "I... could design an alternative, yes. What properties should the alternative have? It seems like the main problem with Draconic is that it insistently decides your connotations for you, at least in this particular case..."

"Often with regular words about evergreen shrubbery or whatever it doesn't do that and will work approximately the other way around," says Finnah. "Sometimes it will even pop up with new - as far as we know, anyway - words if we have things to say that need exact shades of meaning that didn't ever come up before. And new words when things are invented, although those often work like ordinary loanwords at first. The problem is that it hates shrens."

"Yes. I could design an alternative that does not have opinions of its own," he says. "So it wouldn't insistently decide your connotations for you."

"And we could insistently decide our own connotations, instead? Or, well, I could. Finnah, do you want in on this too?"

"I have no idea how miracle language conjuration works. I wanna know more about how miracle language conjuration works before I lodge it in my skull."

"It doesn't exactly work in a way," says Lazarus. "I have miracle magic, which lets me accomplish nearly arbitrary things as long as I have enough of it. If I use it to do something, then the thing happens. Turning a shren into a dragon, or a dying dragon baby into a dragon baby who isn't going to die, or making shrens not contagious, or making dragons stop dying of sudden magic failure - that is what dragon death by old age was, is all of a sudden their magic would just up and vanish and you need that to live - I have been fixing a lot of dragon-related problems since I came here."

"Well, then I want to know more about what exactly the plan is here," says Finnah. "I mean, probably I'll be able to speak the language even if you don't specifically do anything to me, right? What's the extra step?"

"Draconic is... attached to you, magically. I could attach the other one to you instead," he says. "And then the thing that happens where Draconic insistently decides your connotations for you would... be less. It would be a feature of some language you happen to speak, instead of a feature of your language."

"Yes, that is exactly the thing that I want," says Mial.

"...I might want it after I've gotten a taste of the new language while it is not yet attached," says Finnah.

"That seems perfectly reasonable," says Lazarus. "Hmm. Is the lack of opinions the only revised feature the new language needs? It also needs a name, but I expect it will take care of that by itself once it exists."

"I think a mere lack of opinions should do it," says Mial. "I'm also perfectly willing to be an ongoing test subject if it turns out not to work right on the first try."

Finnah chirps agreeably.

"I will also," Lazarus decides, "make it a feature of the new language that anyone who has the capacity to speak it can choose to attach themselves to it anytime they want. Or switch back to regular Draconic if they decide to do that for some unfathomable reason."

"Very convenient," says Finnah. "For some reason I'm reminded of my manager rearranging the displays to increase 'shoppability'..."

"I would like this language to be available to anyone who wants it. People should not be stuck with Draconic," says Lazarus. "Okay. Ready, Mial?"

"Yeah, go for it."

Finnah giggles. "No unanticipated disasters? You can still think straight about shrubs?"

"Shrubs are totally unaffected—holy shit," he says. "Oh my God. Finnah. Finnah. Shrennaki."

Finnah falls off his head and lands lightly on the ground.

"This is the best thing that's ever happened to me. ...Uh, are you okay?"

"Yes, you just startled me!"

"Okay, great, awesome. Shrennaki! Fuck walking around obnoxiously in my natural form, I am going to get a shirt that says 'shrennaki' on it and wear it every day for the rest of my life!"

Finnah sporfles and changes to human shape, sitting on the ground with her hands over her mouth, to more fluently express her amusement. "Of course you are. Good luck finding a decent calligrapher to design it for you, the field's flooded with dragons, Mial."

Lazarus beams.

"I will have great fun finding a decent calligrapher to design it for me. And if they all turn out to be lizards I will design it myself."

"Of course. What the hell, I'm taking this language too." She tilts her head and giggles. "Oh man, you probably want to startle Aurin yourself, don't you? I'm so tempted but I'll let you if you want."

"I am going to go startle Aurin immediately, but I'll take you with me if you want so you can watch him fall over."

"I wanna watch him fall over," agrees Finnah, grinning and holding out her hand for teleporting.

And here is Aurin's house, just beyond his doorstep, where it usually is. Neither Aurin nor Alys is immediately visible through the window.

Mial knocks.

"Shrennaki," Mial says gleefully.

Aurin does not fall to the ground, but this is because there is a doorframe in his way. "Ow! What! No! Ow!"

Mial cackles.

"I'm sorry. I'm probably not as sorry as I should be," Mial admits. He can't seem to stop grinning. "But you were going to encounter that word one way or another, because I'm going to be obnoxiously wearing it on a shirt for the foreseeable future as soon as I find a calligrapher who's willing to design the shirt. At least this way you heard it for the first time under controlled conditions, eh?"

"Thank you for letting me put down my carrot juice, otherwise we'd all three be wearing it," grumbles Aurin.

"You're welcome."

"You're going to put that on a shirt? And just, what, wear it everywhere?"

"Yes."

"You will cause - scoot accidents and mayhem," says Aurin. "I'm not even sure that the shirt is any better than traipsing around in natural form."

"I won't terrify any small children with the shirt. And scoot safety has improved by leaps and bounds since I started racing."

"Okay, granted, terrified is not the likely experience," says Aurin.

"I admit I don't know what the experience actually is for the rest of you. For me it's profound fucking relief."

"Sorry. Honestly, if I had had the faintest idea how to actually prepare you to hear that word, I would've tried," he says. "But I really couldn't think of anything. It's just so - I mean, Reform Draconic exists now, if I'd started trying to explain it to you it would've just popped into your head anyway. Um. By the way, if you feel like it, although you probably don't right now, you can switch your primary language to Reform Draconic. Finnah has already. I'm the first native speaker, she's the second."

"I do not feel like it right now! I feel like a vial of hofis right now. Just a second." Aurin lurches to the potion cabinet.

"Sorry."

Aurin quaffs a vial of hofis. Three ticks elapse. Then he does not look like he has such a nasty headache anymore.

Well, that's better, then.

"I am done surprising you for now. Drink your juice."

Aurin looks at him suspiciously, then drinks the rest of his juice.

Mial does not do any surprising things!

"It's obnoxious as hell, I will readily grant you. But I have a strong urge to be obnoxious as hell about this."

"Why," says Aurin.

"Because I have spent a hundred and seventy years being a shren in Draconic, and being a shren in Reform Draconic instead is like - is like for the first time in my life suddenly not having someone standing behind me whispering in my ear that I am awful and should hate myself. So now I want to go around not hating myself as loudly as possible. When it was just that I wasn't contagious anymore, I felt a little like this but I didn't really... understand the extent to which it was possible to feel like this. I probably would've been okay that way, but now I'm not just okay, I'm great. I'm - my new favourite word."

Mial beams at Finnah. "You bet I will."

"Right. Sure. Ialsafei... that," says Aurin. He can't quite say it.

"Thank you, Aurin."

"You're welcome. Have you even told Uncle Avar?"

"Nope, that's next. He might not even fall over, my dad's pretty even-keeled about this stuff."

"He really is."

"I'll quit pestering you and go tell him now, I guess." He offers a hand to Finnah.

Finnah takes it, waving cheekily at Aurin. Aurin rolls his eyes.

"Ialsafei siaddaki," Mial says cheerfully, and he teleports himself and Finnah home.

Meanwhile, Mial is looking for his father.

There he is!

And he's sitting down! How convenient.

Finnah turns into a bird again. This time she sits on Mial's shoulder.

"Hi, Dad. So the miracle workers made me a new language that doesn't hate me! It calls itself Sirasiahr."

"And what," inquires Avar, "is the punchline?" There has to be a punchline, with Mial smirking at him like that.

"The punchline is: shrennaki."

"You can also switch your primary language to Reform Draconic if you want," Mial adds.

"I did!" chirps Finnah. "It's neat."

"You know what, I think I will."

"Aurin didn't, but I think he was annoyed about being startled into hitting his head on a doorframe."

...Avar looks at Mial.

"I made sure he put his carrot juice down first! I would've made sure he was sitting down if I'd expected him to literally fall over."

"Mial, I fell off your head when I heard it and I was a shren, what'd you think Aurin was gonna do?"

"...Not... fall over? I don't know. I probably should've taken a degree to think about it first."

"I thought he'd fall over but I figured he'd land on the carpet."

"But, unfortunately, doorframe. Yeah."

"But he had hofis. So it's okay."

"I do feel bad about the doorframe."

"Maybe he'll switch languages later when we've demonstrated it doesn't cause us to leak unappealing green slime from our ears?"

"Maybe. I will forgive him if he doesn't."

"As opposed to appealing green slime?" says Avar.

"...If it were, I don't know, lime-scented? I guess that doesn't really close the gap."

"No. No it does not."

Finnah giggles.

So does Avar.

So does Mial.

"Yes?"

"If you were considering waiting until the miracle workers were done, and then doing something along the lines of healing your bonds with your family, don't bother."

"...Excuse me?"

"Don't look at me like that. Anyway, if you need to skip the next meeting to process the disappointment, my other news item is that the last shren has also invented something called 'Reform Draconic' and got the miracle workers to -" Vague gesture. "Instantiate it."

"'Reform Draconic'?"

"Cimalaikal didn't give me a lot of detail about it. Sirasiahr."

"...Assault?" says Iftha.

"Ugh. I won't subject you to it. Don't think too hard about shrens in the vicinity of Reform Draconic," he advises.

"...I'll take your word for it. Anyway, that's all I know, do your own job if you have any questions." She turns on her heel with a little wave.

Piro slams his door.

The council notes-taker (a copper some thousand years old) nips over to his house after the meeting he skips. "Pirodeynan, sir? I have the meeting notes for you to look over."

"Ifthaeumee said to add that nothing new to you came up."

He growls under his breath, but nods. And, because it is actually his job, he actually looks over the meeting notes.

"Uh, yeah," says the notetaker, shuddering delicately.

"No one's blaming you," the notetaker says.

"...What?"

"...Do you want my empathic assessment, sir, or should I just leave?"

"I don't know, what is your empathic assessment?"

"...You seem slightly proud, among more expected things."

"Slightly!"

"And there's plenty of, you know, more the sort of thing one would anticipate -" The notetaker drops into specialized empathy words. Babbles them, rather.

"Yes, do that. Thank you for bringing me the notes."

"Hi," says Miracle Lady, in the language miracle workers speak. "Is Mial around?"

"Oh! Miracle Lady! Hi! Yeah - MIAL IT'S MIRACLE LADY HERE FOR YOU!"

"'Libby' is fine," says Miracle Lady dryly. "I came to offer you a job. Creating miracle magic, to be specific. Shrens and former shrens are uniquely qualified. Interested?"

"...Quite possibly!"

"Mind if I teleport you to my miracle coordination office to talk about it?"

"Sure, go right ahead."

Poof.

"Hello," he says, possibly trying for 'mild' but arriving more at 'sullen with a hint of desperation'. "I'm looking for Avar."

"And who is looking for Avar?"

"Pirodeynan."

Avar is reading a book.

"Uh," says Finnah, "your dad is pulling a My Mom After My Brother Learned To Shift. At least that's what it looks like."

"...He's what?"

"He showed up on the doorstep pretty shortly after shrens were declared non-contagious, what else would he be doing? I told him to wait," she adds smugly. Usually Finnah does not tell visitors to wait, she just yells.

"Well. I guess I'll go talk to him," says Avar. "...I'm surprised, though. I wouldn't have expected him to budge merely because shrens were declared non-contagious. I wonder if anyone's told him about Mial...? Perhaps I will have the pleasure."

"Can I watch?"

"Piro. Something to say?"

So's Finnah. She gapes from her vantage point sitting on the bottom stair.

"I'm sorry for how I treated you. I've... had an opportunity to realize that my grandson is worth more than I ever gave him credit for, and I want to meet him. Would you like your line name back?"

"I'll think about it. So that's what did it, eh? I was wondering."

"I might not have realized so soon if the note-taker hadn't told me I kept being proud every time I saw the words 'shren alyemi'."

"...Oh, he's going to love that one."

Despite herself, Finnah snickers.

"Where is he?"

"Miracle Lady Libby whisked him off to offer him a job."

"Good for him."

Finnah is no longer at all sure how she feels about this matter. She's sort of tempted to go call Aurin, but doesn't want to leave the room right at this dramatic juncture.

"You could come in and wait for him," Avar suggests.

"...Thank you. I will."

Finnah edges up a few stairs when Piro comes in. She is thinking about envelopes with Larotian flags on them. She is thinking about her dad, who she doesn't even know what he looks like.

"Still alive, still married to me, currently present in the house? Yes," says Avar.

"Please do."

Finnah stands and goes up the stairs and looks for Koridaar.

Koridaar is in her office, with the door open, organizing some notes.

"I don't think I completely understand..."

"...He has spontaneously turned into a completely different person?" suggests Finnah. "Who is willing to say 'fuck yeah, shren, awesome, woo'?"

Finnah goes back down the stairs and sits on the sofa and tucks her feet under herself.

"...I'm not sure you'll understand... but I can try to explain," he says. "Word reached me that there was a remaining shren, that it was Mial, that he had turned down the miracle and invented Reform Draconic. I tried to conceive of why anyone would do either of those things, and - you definitely won't understand what it is like to think the word 'shrennaki' for the first time. Wrenching, to put it mildly. But it gave me an indirect sense of... what sort of person my grandson must be."

"Well, you're right about one thing. Mial is someone you should be proud of."

"I see you haven't changed a bit," Piro says wryly to Koridaar. "I always suspected it was your influence that—well."

"Incited me to betray you?" suggests Avar. "Not nearly as much as you might think."

Piro winces, but lets that pass. It's hardly out of line.

Fancy Draconic words for "family", aside, Finnah is not quite sure enough of her relevance to comment. Piro is not her fancy-Draconic-word-for-family. Fudge droplets. Glowering at people who aren't there. Munching.

"You realize, I hope, that there's no guarantee he'll want anything to do with you," says Koridaar.

"It had occurred to me," he says dryly. "But... at least I will have regained one family member I - wrongly discarded. And maybe he'll come around in another thousand years. I can wait."

"To be fair," says Avar, "I bet he'll find your exact reasoning very gratifying."

Piro smiles. "Naturally."

"So how are the vineyards? And the maple farms?"

"Slightly more numerous," he says. "Not much changed otherwise."

...Piro glances up the stairs after the fled Finnah, but doesn't ask.

"That was Finnah. She lives with us," says Koridaar. "Sort of an unofficial adoptee. She's, what's the word, a miracle."

"I, ah... thought as much," says Piro.

Piro is sitting on the couch, chatting quietly with Koridaar about wine, while Avar sits and listens.

"Hello, Aurin."

"Hi, Grandfather." Don't say "fancy seeing you here" that would not be appropriate.

"Finnah was drunk and I was not drunk, I flew her home," says Aurin. "Uh. Hi Mial! This is our grandfather. Grandfather, this is Mial!"

"...And why is this our grandfather?" he inquires, raising his eyebrows at Piro.

Piro looks discomfited.

"Spit it out, I don't have all day. I'm a busy man," says Mial. "Just got hired as a miracle worker."

"Of course you did, you're shrennaki."

(Aurin has a very delicate flinch reaction to "shrennaki".)

"We can be a stubborn bunch in this line, you may have noticed. I had to be hit over the head with the word a few times before I paid attention."

"Well," says Mial. "I guess you can be my grandfather if you really want to."

(Aurin smiles! This is fairly low-drama, especially compared to Finnah.)

"Thank you."

"Seriously though, what the hell? You were not merely a lizard but the lizard, and then 'shrennaki' and suddenly you've switched languages - you did switch languages, didn't you, I can't imagine someone who hadn't saying the word so casually - and you're showing up on our doorstep?"

"Oh, great, you have your very own disreputable title. Is this better than winning a scoot race?" wonders Aurin.