- Whisperpeak Academy for Wayward Dragons - Ch.13 P.2 - Dying Tears -

Instructions

(+) Before I knew it, he had dozed off, and Iris was sleeping too, and then I couldn't help but join. "Gott sei Dank. Wake up, guys. Home sweet home..." A jerk as rubber met solid ground made me open my eyes. The small, squared orange nightlights glowing above us dimmed. I crawled by Henry to look outside. We were back in the large, gaping underground harbor of the Resistance. "Oliver... Iris..." "I know." Oliver yawned and straightened, rolling his broad shoulders and making Iris snuffle in annoyance. "Princess, it's time to get up. Better rest awaits." "Mmph." She blinked a couple times before returning to a strange jittery state. John unbuckled and flicked some switches till a low hiss released the air pockets keeping our car doors from flying off. Almost all of us tumbled out at once. Oliver inhaled deeply and murmured, "Freshwater. Missed it." Iris raised an eyebrow at him as patches of greenery sprouted by his feet. "What?! That lab probably had the lowest humidity possible on Earth! Can't I enjoy being home too?" As they started discussing how they would offload everything, I lingered on his words. "Home". My toes wiggled in their worn boots as I tried to feel through them and touch the gravelly tile scaling the whole harbor. This place was too strange to call home. It had pitch-black underground beaches that acted like illegal trading ports and aquamarine falls that glowed like movie-style radiation. That just led to the same thought. Oliver's adaptability. His creativity. His ability to trust, even after what he's been through. I can't do that. A little bubble of resentment invaded my chest, bloating my heart like an illness. The pressure ran down my body and chilled my legs as frozen particles encapsulated the ground around my boots. Calm. Down. By the time the anger had cracked and melted into irrelevance, John had slowly made his way out of his truck. Now, our friends had returned to unpack the bajillion cases strewn and cascaded all over the back of the truck. Oliver popped the thick plastic tailgate, climbed up with ease, and started wading through the sea of materials till he was at the extra storage cavity. "Where do you want me to start, mate?" He called down to Alex. The Swiss man shrugged and sized up the packages after struggling quite a bit to get to Oliver's side. "What are you doing, freund?" John interrupted my staring. He ran his calloused fingers along his beloved truck, searching for some error in the metal, even though every slit of paint was shimmering and waxy with high-tech warp-resistant something. "I could ask you the same." I broke away from the chatty group of actually sociable people and followed John in tentative steps as he went to the hood of the vehicle. With a thrust and awkward clunk, its insides rolled out on display for us. I watched silently as John sorted the parts only with his eyes, eyebrows drawn in faint suspense. "We're good. A little wear-and-tear is nothing surprising to see; in fact, it's more shocking to see a perfect engine. After all that milage, too! Sometimes I wonder if someone actually put magic in my hound's fuel." He laughed softly and clapped the hood shut. The oily, smoky scent curled out into the enclosed air. "We just have to wait for Oliver and the team now, then we can pull the truck up in my personal garage." John folded his arms and glanced at me expectantly. "I think what you do is really cool. I wish I had the courage to design a truck that could just laser a path through the universe. I can't imagine how painful the test runs were." John agreed, "Yeah. It's a good thing Henry's here now to do some math before I go chugging around on some new invention." More silence. "Hey, enough about me. Aren't you related to Oceane? Like, her dragonet son or something?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I clearly remembered when Alex fussed over the fact Oliver was a dragon in the car that got us to the base originally, but I didn't realize it was that prominent in us. "Hah, no. I'm not the child of a god or el(+)