Page 100 of Nine-Tenths

"Nice," I comment as I enjoy the sight of Dav walking away. "You didn't engineer it so we're alone so you can give me a shovel talk, did you? Because like, Sarah already did that with her eyes over breakfast."

Luiz sticks his hands in his pockets, and offers up a shit-eating grin. "Tell me more about these Green Farming grants?"

"Very subtle subject change," I praise, and I proceed to do just that.

The crunch of boots on gravel gives me enough warning to face Dav as he approaches, and boy am I glad I did because it is asight.

"There," Dav says, holding his arms wide. He's wearing a ratty wide-brimmed straw hat, like something fromFar from the Madding Crowd.He looks sostupid. I love it immediately.

A lifetime of stupid, happy moments like this spool out before us; busy days filled with farmyard chores, and early morning porridge, and grapes. All of it meaning ultimately nothing, but at the same time are the fabric from which theeverythingof a contented life is woven.

Content.

Yes.

That's what I feel.

Aside from owing Hadi an apology, and my family an explanation, I'm content.

Can I be content with being owned?

Dammit.

The hazy golden bubble deflates.

No. I amhappy,goddammit.

And I am going to stay that way.

Dav plops a similar hat, though newer, on my head. "You don't have the advantage of scales."

Luiz tugs a bottle of sunscreen from his chest pocket, and I attack the back of my neck, my pokey-outey ears, and my nose.

"If you had that, why did you…?" Dav starts, but then realizes he's been played. "Shall we start with the chickens, Mine Own? Seeing as I've just delivered their breakfast."

"Sure." I toss the sunscreen and a goodbye over my shoulder to Luiz. "I thought you weren’t allowed to labor in front of humans."

"It’s different when it’s my own farm," Dav says. "It’s not for them, it’s forme."

"Sounds like splitting hairs bullshit to me."

"Hmm," Dav agrees, without agreeing.

We spend an hour at the coop, watching the calculated head bobs of the feathered menaces. The way they move reminds me that birds were once dinosaurs.

Some people think that the first dragons were actually dinosaurs, but like the way that some species will always evolve towardcrab, it's been proven that humans and dragons evolved separately from some common ancestor millions of years ago. Us towards furry and mammalian, them towards scaly and reptilian, but in such a way that we became compatible enough again that, likehomo sapiensandhomo erectus, we can interbreed.

Although, like,how exactlydragons make babies—eggs?—is a guarded royal secret.

Maybe it's ugly,I think, imagining a big-ass egg squeezing out of a human-sized vagina. Ouch. I try not to imagine what it would feel like if a contraction shattered a shell.

Thinking about eggs makes me wonder if Dav has siblings. And baby photos. Or… babyportraits, I guess, seeing as he was born before cameras.

What did my forever-person look like before me?

Putting it like that, it seems immediately and vitally important that I've never seen his dragonshape. I try to recapture the sense-memory of his wings stretched over my head, his tail wrapped around my ankle, even the stab of his claws in my arm; every moment I glimpsed the other half of my other half. I've gotten into what amounts to a marriage without even having the important pre-cuffing conversations like if Dav wants to combine finances, or have kids, or whether he has horns.

We meander to the barn, where I'm distracted by Dav's gentleman landowner menagerie: a couple of grand old Clydesdales who still work the plows in the areas the electric tractor can't reach, a fat old sow, and a small gaggle of geese with a horrible leader who tries to steal my new hat. Dav lets half adozen goats out of the barn to do their duty keeping the weeds and grass around the base of the vines cropped, and the low-hanging fruit eaten so the upper grapes develop sweeter. They also provide excellent fertilizer. We follow the goats down the path toward the back patch, dodging examples.