AraDove

AraDove was an assassin, plain and simple. She was a simple Pearlcatcher otherwise, enjoying some light gossip and alchemy. She hadn't thought much when her father had called her to some out of the way town, it wasn't the first time she'd ended up in odd places for jobs. She hadn't thought much of their client though, he was a pampered rich brat with daddy and mommy issues like she hadn't seen that before a million times. Though once the two of them laid out the full plan she found herself revising her opinion a little, but only a little. If they could pull this off it might be the score of their lives. Watching Kayden, the spoiled Tundra, get use to 'commoner' lifestyle was a bonus, it reminded her of the old days. But there was little time for reminiscing as they set up their cover and laid the groundwork.

She'd been worried at the start, when her father said he'd be posing as an inventor, that was a painful blast from the past. But maybe painful in a good way, it reminded her of when she and her family had lived simple lives with simple goals and not planning to topple a evil empire in the making. There had been quiet words and fragmented sentences in the middle or between the frenzied supply runs, information gathering and integrating themselves with the locals with no suspicions. At the end she is actually grateful for this chance for her father to do what he loves again. Posing as a humble shopkeeper and apprentice to him is a small price to pay, the break is almost welcome. Dragons shouldn't like a job like hers as much as she does, but she'd taken to her father's training like a duck to water. She'd always been rough-housing with her brothers who'd always been on the more cowardly side of things until you riled them up and when she wasn't rough-housing she'd always been with her parents, learning cooking and sewing and basic machine repair over playing with any of the other hatchlings in the clan. She'd especially loved her mothers forgotten Alchemy for Beginner book that she must have read backwards and forwards and earmarked hundreds of times.

Back in the present though everything was almost set up for the first move to be made against Kayden's parents. They'd been sitting quietly one day, as they had many times before, eating a plant dish Kayden had made after only three tries to get it right when she'd looked up over her mug and it suddenly hit her that she liked this. She liked sitting with these two dragons over a meal, she liked watching her father tinker with some gadget since he didn't eat plants, she liked talking about alchemy with Kayden, she liked that the looming future full of unknowns felt a million miles away and for a split second, hated herself for having this epiphany. She shouldn't like this because this would never be her life. She was fooling herself, she was an assassin, her father was a thief and Kayden was a displaced noble they were helping for profit. She shouldn't like Kayden this much because he would leave them in the dust once he could go back to his mansion or castle or whatever he had with no fear, even if he gave them fond farewells. But just as her dark thoughts swamped her they were gone because her father looked up and met her eyes and in no words at all told her that it was okay to like this and like Kayden and suddenly want to take the both of them as far a way as possible because she could lose this so easily and......and a lot of other things that passed in a brief moment as she felt determination harden like a mighty glacier in her soul. Those thoughts can be put off for a little bit longer, the first pawn hadn't even been moved yet, there was time to think and plan and prepare for all outcomes. She had at least one night.

Done by IornPen