"That's sad."

  It wasn't. But it felt like the right thing to say. It was more annoying, really.

  "It is what it is, I've become used to this human form anyway, and flying on you is certainly more convenient than flying myself."

  It took a long, long time to fix the mess the turtle made. Moving it was just not going to happen so I just kind of... left it there. To be someone else's problem in the future. Maybe humans could live there or something. I wonder if some day some caver is going to explore the veins of the turtle.

  "Are you thinking about something silly?"

  "I'm thinking about humans doing silly things, does that count?"

  "Yes, humans are silly."

  Aqua is at least feeling chatting, which is nice, as we slowly cruise through the sky. We had gone a lot further north than I would've thought, and at the slow, sedate and nice pace we were flying at, it would be a couple hours before we even got within view of anything other than the endlessly vast expanse of tundra and glacial plains.

  Or maybe I'm wrong, some pockets of greenery started showing up, though I guess tundras aren't exactly void of life either.

  There was also an absolutely massive herd of woolly four legged animals that were roughly Bison-like, but they had horn mohawks instead of one on each side, and huge boils growing out of their bodies filled with some sort of liquid.

  Aqua had been standing on top of my head for most of our leisurely flight, but as I watched the distant herd of bison with massive acne running towards the distant southeastern horizon under me, she sat down, adjusting her seat as she worked with her upgraded human body.

  We had needed a more streamlined, more powerful human body for her since she needed to use a lot of power to fix the mess that the turtle had left as it died, which was totally not my fault for not killing it earlier. For the most part, she looked mostly the same, but she had hidden almost all of her draconic features.

  Her first idea was a very compact body, using almost none of her power to form it, and instead, creating it entirely as a conduit to connect to her full greater self... but I drew the line.

  There are times and places for all sorts of clichés, and I was not giving up my big muscular girlfriend just because she thought the form of a small girl would be more economic. We were dragons, what kind of weaksauce limitation is that?!

  At least she'd be getting back her scales, claws, tail, horns and fins in a couple days once she finished regenerating.

  "You're not paying attention to me."

  She punched my scales on top of my head and then scooted forward, putting her hands on the ridges just above my brow, she had more than a few spots to grab from, but she was testing which was the most comfortable. My horns' curves made them less than ideal unfortunately.

  "You're right I'm thinking about you," I spoke. "And your muscles."

  "I've considered making it so mine can decay as humans do, a lot of humans seem to enjoy the act of working on their maintenance so I wanted to see if I could satisfy my boredom by training as they do," she explained.

  "Maybe you should. Having more hobbies is fine."

  "So you say, but your hobby appears to be sleeping," she pointed out. "You could use a more economic, smaller form yourself, that would reduce the amount of time you need to sleep as well. I really didn't think we were as wasteful as we are until I started using this humanoid form on a permanent basis."

  " You know you're very talky today."

  I didn't mean to snap.

  "I'll be quiet if that's what you-"

  "No sorry I didn't mean to snap like that," I immediately interrupted her, "I just- I'm a little-"

  She hummed. "You're sleepy. You need to sleep."

  Goddammit I feel absolutely pathetic but, yeah, it's true. "Yyyeahh I kinda do, been up for a while, had a big fight," I said, thinking that this would be a good time to yawn if there wasn't someone riding my head. "My bad."

  "I understand," she responded. "I believe it is common among humans to sing to each other to help them sleep."

  "That is something mothers do with their children," I pointed out. "Not quite what our relationship is like. Can you even actually sing?"

  There was a moment's pause.

  "I am a dragon. I can do anything I set my mind to," she said, confidently, though I could hear a distinct tremble in her voice that told me that she did not believe what she was saying, not even for a second.

  "Aqua I am happy that you would want to sing for me and I appreciate the thought but singing is not something you can just do," I spoke. "Oh hey is that a dragon?"

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I pointed with one of my arms, bringing it forward and towards the west.

  "That is not a dragon, that is an unnecessarily large bird."

  That wasn't a proper name, that was just her calling it what it was, for a change.

  "Do you think it'd be tasty?"

  I wonder if it tasted like chicken. It probably did. I mean, do chickens even exist in this world? And how many would I even need to eat to be satisfied? Thoughts for later.

  "Is it coming this way?" I asked, looking at the dot in the distance slowly becoming larger.

  "It would have to be a remarkably foolish creature to perceive a dragon in the skies and attempt to challenge it," Aqua explained. "Even the biggest brute among beasts, the Beast," oh for fuck's sake, something has a name that translates to Beast and now I don't know what it actually is, goddammit you stupid ass translation power, "knows not to attack its superiors."

  "Well it's coming towards us for sure," I said. It was also getting bigger and now I could definitely tell it was a bird, it had feathery wings, it had a long beak, and that beak had a hole at the front, actually it was more like a tube, why was it a tube? The bird's feathers were a glossy black, and it had actually three sets of wings, two where its feathery tail would be, two where a bird would have feet, and the standard big pair. Each set of wings also had a pattern as if they had eyes growing on them.

  "It must not have noticed us. Even if birds have extensively gifted sight, their senses should not compare to ours," Aqua pointed out. "Surely, if and when it detects us, it will alter its course and try to flee before it catches our notice-"

  "I think its beak is glowing, it might actually want to pick a fight."

  I felt Aqua stand up again, and though I couldn't see, I could feel her raise both arms, clasping her hands together and sticking two fingers from each hand out, making a two handed fingergun. I felt her toes press and dig into the space just under my scales on top of my head, she bent her knees, locked her position and then-

  A stream of high pressure water erupted from the tips of her fingers, cut through the air and then suddenly the bird began to fall off from the sky.

  "Good shot."

  "I believe that should convince that bird not to bother us."

  I watched as the bird crashed to the ground. It was either dead, or stunned and knocked out so completely that it couldn't move. It wasn't even twitching. I think it was definitely dead.

  "I think it's dead," I pointed out, "I think you killed it."

  "If it died from something that small then it had no business picking a fight with us," she spoke, "I may be a bit on edge after fighting that turtle."

  "Fair enough," I agreed. "Anyway I think we're starting to get close to the forest, I think I recognize these hills."

  The ground under us had slowly changed color, from the whites, blacks and grays of the glacial plains, to the sparse smatterings of brown and green in the tundra, to sparse steppes, small woods, forests, and finally, rolling green hills.

  Speaking about rolling green hills... "What are those?" I asked, pointing at some spherical things that were rolling down one of the taller hills.

  "Those are Bugs That Roll," fucking name again, "they roll, that's what they do."

  "That is very informative, thank you for that," I said, rolling my eyes. "Too bad they're all black. I think a blue one would be nice."

  She didn't seem terribly amused about that.

  What a shame.

  "You... you realize that your lair is... not this way, right?"

  That gave me a bit of a pause. "This is, uh, this is part of our date, yeah, I'm totally taking you for a flight so we can spend some time together, chatting, yes," I said. "In theory if I were to not know which way I'm supposed to be going, which way would you say we would be going instead?"

  Totally nailed it. She'll suspect nothing.

  She sighed, grabbed me by the horns and then with a powerfull pull towards the right, she actually managed to steer me, in a somewhat hilarious fashion, towards the west. Together, we started flying towards our humans.

  It was starting to be a little bit odd that it was taking so long to get home considering even at that leisure pace we should've been outpacing the travel speed of even my kobolds.

  "I may or may not have gotten distracted by a passing herd of weird animals," I admitted. "It's not my fault, I am very sleepy right now."

  "It is absolutely your fault," she countered, "also we're here."

  That fast?

  Oh shit it's the forest. How sleepy am I!?

  "Well, uh, I guess this is the last stop of Silver Dragon Airways," I said, "if you would mind the first step-"

  She jumped off of my head, and then I watched as she cut through the air like a meteor to land near the edge of the forest, where the buildings of the by now thriving soon-to-be city that served as my humans' capital started. They had grown so much that they were actually starting to spread around the edge of the forest.

  Though it seemed that they were mostly still military buildings, outposts and walled camps, rather than proper residences or businesses, which makes sense considering there were monsters in the forest.

  Maybe I should go eat a gorilla or something before going to bed.

  But no, as I flew over the forest, I saw my cushion, it was calling to me. I was so sleepy I could hear it calling my name, calling me-

  Wait no that's not the cushion calling my name.

  "You've figured out how to fly?"

  The Dragon Priestess did, indeed, figure out how to fly, though her movements were wobbly, her wings weren't quite adapting to the currents and her power distribution was all over the place, it looked like she was more accustomed to it and that was good enough for now, she didn't need to be combat capable in the skies anyway.

  After all, she shouldn't be fighting anything other than other humans... or, er, I guess she's a Dragonewt now, not quite human anymore, but, who's keeping track?

  Obviously not me.

  She's floating towards me while calling out for me, waving her staff. "Great One, I-"

  I raised a hand.

  "If this can wait, then it will wait until I awaken next time, I need to sleep, really really badly, right now," I pointed out. "Use your judgment, and decide whether or not this is worth my time," I said, "because if it isn't I will be sorely disappointed and quite possibly even crankier."

  She stopped for a moment.

  "I'll make it fast so you can nap then," she said, "welcome home! We've prepared new filling for your bed and a tribute of these foreign delicacies, they called them, cookies and cream!"

  This is the most absurd news that she could've delivered.

  "Also we've made a purchase of a great deal of Milkgiver Extraordinarily Large Grasseaters," she spoke, "so if it is of your liking we can prepare these more often!"

  "Excellent, have whoever secured this deal rewarded," I spoke, "I'll leave it to you to discuss an appropriate reward, I'll grant it whenever I wake up," I yawned, licking my chops with my tongue.

  She followed me down until I curled up and settled to sleep.

  "Have a good one, Great One!" she said, and as I closed my eyes and began to relax, I heard her start to give out orders.

  She moved people about, and the Dragonguard obeyed.

  "Greengrass, Colorful Flower and Facepuncher, all three of you are on tail cleaning duty, Strongwarrior, you'll be the one in charge of the hard to reach spaces, and Hardworker, your task today is going to be teeth brushing... chop chop, everybody, we've only got a couple weeks at most and a lot of cleaning to do!"

  "Yes sir!!"

  I decided not to think too hard about what would happen while I was asleep, I'm sure they'd do a good job cleaning me up while I slept.