A whole lot of sad and overwhelming stuff spilled out of me from the last time I'd seen a mom dragon and her babies, and as it went a whole lot of lovely warm live dragon stuff came pouring in . . . like that what I'd been guessing about the "midwives" wasn't quite right: Mom knows how many babies she's got, and chooses an escort for each one — almost like a godparent sort of thing — to help each tiny little dragon droplet from her womb to her pouch. Usually the escorts are all female, although sometimes Dad is invited to be the last one. Dad had been invited. That was Bud. And Bud said, I think it should be Jake. And Gulp said, Great, I thought of that, but it seemed a little way out there, even for us, but it's the next step, isn't it? And Bud said yes — or something like that, I don't know what they said.

Lois was there because she was an escort.

Gulp had six dragonlets — and I could feel these tiny soft glowing blobs in my — I have no idea my what — somewhere. Somehow. Faint and fragile but there. They were a kind of orangy maroony themselves. They were . . . like coming from somewhere and going to somewhere, and I'm not sure I just mean from one piece of Mom to another. But it was almost like someone — Gulp? — had me by the elbow (the dragonhead-space elbow equivalent) and was saying, Here, look right here. Otherwise it would have been kind of a huge stupendous glittery fireworks display and I'd've just kind of stood there going, Uh, wow.

Five of the dragonlets were already in her pouch.

The moon, I swear, paused and hovered while for the second time in my life I picked up a smudgy, wet, blobby, just-born dragonlet, and felt its little stumpy legs moving vaguely against my hand . . . but I knew the difference at once, and grieved all over again for Lois and her mom and her dead siblings, because this one wasn't confused or bewildered or terrified; it was just waiting for the next thing to happen; it was borne up comfortably by what was supposed to happen, even if it was happening a little slower than it was expecting, and I imagine my hands didn't feel a whole lot like whatever a dragon dragon escort does. I don't know if I was being borne up too — like someone helping me "see" the six dragonlets — or whether any fool, having got that far, could see what to do, but the slit in Gulp's belly that was the opening to her pouch was perfectly obvious, and Gulp had curled herself around and stretched out a foreleg so her last, pygmy dragonlet-escort could scramble up it (cradling a sticky dragonlet against his own permanently-scarred-from-previous-dragonlet-experience belly) and reach far enough.

The dragonlet — my dragonlet — was a very specific orange and maroon blob in my mind's eye/somewhere/whatever even though the little thing in my hand was only a bulky shadow — surprisingly heavy for its size the way almost all baby things are — could I just see an edge of that bruise-purple color that poor Lois had been? Or did dragonlets only turn that color if they were living down someone's shirtfront and eating deer broth?

It was already hot. So if this was the time when baby fire-stomachs get lit up, at least the escort isn't expected to do it. Not this escort anyway. I put the blob at the lip of the pouch and made sure it got in it, and then stumbled down the foreleg and leaned against Gulp — and watched a lot of shards of memory and grief and fear toppling and tumbling over one another, some of them bursting like sparklers and spinning like Catherine wheels. Lois came and pressed herself against me like she was remembering too.

And — snicker if you want, I don't care — I talked to Lois' mom, talked to her, to Halcyon — and she told me that yes there had been some doubt about the keeping-the-human-up-there part of the Lois-and-Jake highwire act (let's try a parasol for balance but I don't think he's ever going to be ready for the unicycle): I hadn't been so far wrong, guessing that being only fourteen when it happened and still a bit squishy myself was part of what made it possible, and even so it was only just maybe possible. Halcyon had like watched my brain shimmy with the headaches — but the, um, markers she'd left (remember "shouldering aside your gray matter and putting up signposts for other travelers, eeeeek") had given Bud somewhere to start — and some warning about human fragility. She'd worried about the burns too; even young healthy fourteen-year-old human skin is eventually going to get tired of being reburned all the time and refuse to heal. It was maybe true, what I'd said to Eleanor, that you get used to it. But some of it was Halcyon, who was unhappy she hadn't been able to do it better, that I still had headaches, that the "eczema" had left scars. I could feel her worry and her care, and hey, moms are moms, however many pairs of limbs they have. And she'd been all alone, really alone, much more alone than I'd been.

All this so that there would be some future for dragons after all, and there was some future because Lois and I — and Halcyon — and Gulp and Bud and Dad and Martha and the rest of us on both sides — were making it.

Halcyon was talking to Lois too — I could feel that — but I don't know what she said. Some of what she said was the same as what she'd said to me, I guess, but she'd've been saying it differently. What I could feel was Lois shivering like a frightened puppy — Lois had never shivered in her life that I knew of — and I put my arms around her neck (although I couldn't reach the whole way around any more), thinking, Halcyon had a choice. It was a horrible choice — she's the one who died, who knew she was going to die — but she did make it. She was a grown-up, and she decided. I was only fourteen, but I'd had the life I'd had, including that if there was a live baby orphan anything I had to try to keep it alive (and that I was nuts in this case enough to try) — but I was still old enough to make a choice, and I made that choice — that impossible choice — and while I've already moaned and whimpered about how the loss of my own mom had kind of removed the "choice" part of my choice — I was still, you know, responsible, and I still made it.

But poor Lois had never had any choice at all. Or not much of one. She'd chosen to stay alive. She'd fought like anything to stay alive — and her mom and me may have been helping her as much as we could — but she was sure in there herself, struggling like gosh-damn-and-how to keep breathing. And then again . . . if you're going to believe me about Halcyon, then maybe it's not such an enormous leap of credibility or imagination or hope or what you like, to think that maybe Lois did have a choice. When the souls were all lined up that day in the recycling center, the head angel came in and rapped on the desk to make everybody pay attention and said, Okay, gang, we need a volunteer, and explained what the volunteer was going to have to do. There'd have been dead silence for a minute, maybe, and then the Lois-soul put its hand-equivalent up and said, Yeah, okay, me, I'll do it. . .

I hope Lois' siblings all got a good go next time around. A real life. An adventure or two. True love. Whatever.

Whatever else a dragonlet escort is maybe supposed to do, I hope some of it got sucked out of my strangely shaped wrong species (and as YOU might say nontraditional gender) self because after the sixth blob went to join its brothers and sisters in Gulp's pouch and Lois and I had our "conversation" with Halcyon I literally fell down where I stood and slept. (And felt ninety years old and arthritic when I woke up.) But Bud and Gulp must've been braced for Jake getting most things wrong when they decided to have me there.

I've told you that you pick up dragon stuff when you're sleeping that you can't when you're awake. I probably soaked up more in that one short sleep than I had in all the years before, and while I damned forgot most of it again when I woke up, like you forget most of your dreams, still, something changed. I don't pick up "words" any better than I ever did — nothing I can revolutionize my dictionary with, unfortunately — but my brain has learned how to handle dragon space!!! It's like there's a whole new lobe grown on my brain: the dragon lobe. It CAN be done! Even the headaches are better!!! Wow. I mean, wow. I hadn't even realized how gruesomely awful the headaches — the Headaches — have been the last seven years — seven years — almost EIGHT — till they lightened up. They're still there. But they're easier. Martha says she doesn't feel like she needs to use a hammer when she tries to rub the tension out of my neck and shoulders any more.