Their End

Chapter 4 | Fifi's Home

FIFI

I held my hands over my ears. Remi shook and spun her little copy around, but it wouldn’t stop crying. The other little copy was my favorite. He’s quiet all the time.

“Fifi, can you give Callum his toy?” Remi asked over the screeching. She was so calm even though the copy had been going for an hour.

I sat in front of the good little copy in his tiny chair. It was soft and bouncy. I looked around, trying to find his toy. Using my tail to keep my ears covered, I picked up a ring with little balls on it. “This one?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she smiled, shaking the noisy copy around. “Just hold it close to him so he can grab it.”

I lowered it in front of his face. His grabby paws moved around until he finally got it. I watched as he shook it around and started to smile. The little balls on the ring moved around. Huh, it does look like fun.

I uncovered my ear and let the incessant wailing in as I grabbed the toy back from the quiet copy. I held it up toward the sky. The colors were so pretty. Most of the rocks back home were grey; there were very few pretty colored ones. With one finger, I poked the circles. It made them spin. This was a fun toy.

Then, the quiet copy started to cry. I dropped the toy and covered my ears again. “Fifi!” Remi hissed. “Why did you take that from him?”

“It looked like fun. I wanted to see,” I said. “Make it stop!”

Remi bent down between me and the formerly quiet copy. She grabbed the toy and gave it back to him, then made his tiny chair bounce. After a minute, he calmed down and stopped crying.

Remi sighed as she stood back up. The loud copy finally stopped crying too. “Fifi, you can’t just take things from their hands. It’s rude and will upset them,” she told me.

“You have so many rules,” I groaned. “Can I go play with Sammy now?”

“Sam and Gentry aren’t here,” she said. Remi put the loud copy in her own chair next to the quiet copy. I scooted closer to look at her. I liked her like this. Her eyes were closed, and she wasn’t shrieking. She had dark spinny hair like Remi, but it was very short.

“Fifi?” Remi asked. I looked away from her loud copy. She was watching me. She or the big copies were always watching me when I was near their little copies. Sammy said it was because of the little copies and because her baby was fragile. “Do you not have a lot of babies where you come from?”

Remi asked me lots of questions, probably almost as many as I asked her about this place. They didn’t know just how different it was here in their realm. “Not really,” I shrugged, looking back at the loud copy. If you looked hard enough, the copies weren’t exactly the same. Remi said the loud one was a girl, and the quiet one was a boy, but they still looked alike. She put them in lots of different clothes too. The big copies looked exactly the same, and the wolfies couldn’t tell me otherwise.

“Are there few dragonborn then?” she asked.

“Mmmm. I guess so,” I shrugged again. “Less than the wolfies, for sure. There are so many around here.” The quiet copy dropped his toy. I picked it up again to give it back, but he didn’t grab it. His eyes closed, so I set the toy on his lap instead.

“You haven’t even met them all,” she laughed. “But yes, there are lots of us because we are the biggest pack in the realm.”

“The dragonborn only have one clan,” I told her. “I’m the youngest.”

“You’re the youngest in your whole clan?”

“Yep,” I nodded. I stood from the ground and stretched. I wanted to move my wings. Sammy let me chase her wolfie around. It was one of my favorite games. “What do we do now that the copies are sleeping?” I asked Remi.

“Well,” she said, sucking in a deep breath. “As long as we stay close and don’t get too loud, we can do just about anything. It’s a beautiful day out.”

I looked up at the sky. Everything was so bright here. There were so many colors everywhere. I liked it more than the rocks that made up my home. “Can I fly?”

“Sure,” Remi smiled. “Do you remember where Calder and Cullen told you to stay away from?”

I nodded. None of the wolfies had ever met a dragonborn. Some of them were scared of me even though I just wanted to taste them. The big copies didn’t want me to go close to where the rest of the wolfies lived.

“Have fun then,” Remi said. “Sam and Gentry will be back for dinner if you want to eat with us tonight.”

“Meat?” I asked, my mouth already watering. This realm had delicious meat. Gentry tried to get me to eat plants, but they were gross.

“Of course,” she said.

I waved and took off at a run into the grass. I let my wings out wide and jumped into the air. Wind rushed against my face. The wind smelled better here. It wasn’t heavy, either. I could fly much higher, and my wings didn’t have to work so hard.

I zoomed up high in the sky until Remi was as small as her copies. Then, I angled my body toward the trees and let my body fall away.

I like this place a lot. Sure, Sammy used lots of magic, and that was bad. But she had been so good since. Sammy wasn’t bad, and her magic was yummy, although it always made more smoke come out of my belly.

I wondered if I could maybe convince Father to let me stay with the wolfies. I could tell him everything would be fine if I kept eating some of Sammy’s magic! That was our job anyway.

Remi said the little copies would grow up big like her other copies. Sammy’s baby, too. I used to be smaller, but I don’t remember it much.

I liked all the wolfies, even when they cried. Sometimes, late at night, they sang songs to the sky. When they were done, they would turn back to normal. It was fascinating.

There was so much to see and do and taste in this realm. I didn’t want to go back.

Hopefully, Father forgot that I was gone so I could stay with the wolfies a little while longer.