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“Oh, well then maybe we should just give her a shovel and have her dig in random spots,” Murtagh argued with me pointedly.
“That would work better than any map,” I snapped tersely at him.
“And that’s been…” Zazie looked at her cellphone. “Five hours since your last argument. New record.” She grinned up at me. “It’s ridiculous—you’re basically the same person from my point of view.”
“Oh?” I asked with a snort. “Really? The same person?”
“Your goals are the same, your values are the same, and you’re both older than spit. I mean, way older than Ben Franklin’s spit. Older than the spit of Leonardo Davinci, as well, if I’ve picked up enough hints. Like, how old are you, exactly?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“About 1007,” I replied, and she whistled appreciatively.
She straightened slightly, surprised. “You look good for your age,” she mentioned, looking me over, and then Murtagh. “Both of you do. Did you come out of your realm hunks?”
I could tell that Murtagh was going to let this compliment go to his head, which was stupid. He was going to change his looks probably before we returned to Daconia. We did it about as often as we molted our scales in our dragon form. “Well, we come from a shape-shifting species. You can’t choose what your dragon looks like, but you sure as hell can choose what you morph into. I feel we’re attractive dragons, though. Still, honestly, what’s considered attractive has dramatically changed through time, not to mention depending on where we live. We don’t want to stand out. It’s better to blend in.”
“Why didn’t you decide to look like average shmoes, then?” she asked, her head cocking to the side.
“Because then they couldn’t get laid as easily,” Miles interjected frankly.
She gave a laugh and then looked at me, like I was going to disagree, but I shrugged. “He’s not wrong. Not to mention that it’s easier to be successful and intimidating to other males if you look attractive, we’ve found. Both sexes respond to this. Is this fair? No; I can’t tell you how much talent is wrapped in plain or less-than-desirable packages, and thus lost to time.”
“How often can you change your looks?” she asked, peering up at me; well, she was looking at my entire body as if analyzing my choices.
“Not as often as I can change my jacket, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I smiled at her. “But over time, we can change our looks.”
“Slowly as hell,” Murtagh complained; he had stolen back the book and was now flipping through it at a much slower pace. “And it’s painful. But we do it.”
“I just cut my hair and it seems fine. Takes me from one decade to the next,” Miles added. “Although I’m looking a little distinguished now.” He brushed his hair over the grey in his sideburns. “You can’t smoke on airplanes,” he added, looking at Murtagh, who was pulling a cigar out of his pocket.
“Says who? Since when?” he demanded around the cigar, still looking in his pocket for a light.
“Since forever?” teased Zazie, crossing her arms over her chest with amusement.
“Well, that’s not true,” Murtagh argued, lighting the cigar, which Miles immediately snatched away and snuffed out on the sole of his own shoe.
Miles ignored the murderous look from Murtagh and said, “What? Look, the smoke hurts the plain’s gadgetry, gets the windows dirty, grunges up the leather seats, and do you think it’s easy to get out of his suit? Well, let me tell you.” He stubbornly crossed his arms. “It’s not.”
“What do you do during the decades?” I asked Murtagh, turning my body towards his. “Find a cave to live in, away from society?”
“Like a dragon?” Zazie added playfully, as if I was the one being silly. “Honestly, though, I don’t know why you bother. Aren’t you tired of living a whole millennium? Aren’t you bored?”
Here we stopped talking because my plane’s second pilot came through to play at stewardess and collect our drink orders. Zazie asked for a Shirley Temple.
We all looked at her quizzingly as the stewardess walked away.
“A Shirley Temple?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her.
I imagined for a moment that she’d blushed, but if she did, it was fleeting. “She told me earlier that she doesn’t have any cider. She didn’t have a blender back there. I wasn’t gonna get a Grasshopper, a Pina Colada, or even a Brandy Alexander, so why the fuck even bother?”
I smirk at her.
“So if your drink actually tastes like there’s alcohol in it, you’re uninterested,” Miles told her thoughtfully as he sat down in one of the seats. “I dated a girl like you in the fifties…”
“What a grandpa thing to say,” Zazie mused at him, and Miles huffed and put his earphones on and his eye mask down over his eyes, deciding he was done with this conversation.
“See, you say you hate cats,” Zazie told me, promptly turning her body towards mine. “But then he’s your pet. A human-cat. That’s what he reminds me of, anyway.”
“Cat?” I curled my lip, disgusted, but then I sat and thought. It was true, I had been using Miles more or less as a comfort companion. I could almost call it a friendship, only that we took care of each other in ways that friends more often did not. “No. Not a cat. Pet…?” I shrugged. “That would be debatable.”
