Ficlets

None of those questions mattered right now. Really, the question of my ancestry wasn’t foremost on my mind at that moment. What really mattered?

“Mom, what are you doing here?” I asked. The answer was bound to be complicated and I probably shouldn’t have asked. A smarter person would have run screaming out the door and never returned, seeing their long-dead mother strangling a Pepsi on the couch. I wasn’t smart, and I was dead bored with my job.

She sucked a breath in and gave me a remarkably apologetic look for someone who’d seen my housekeeping. “I need help. Inconspicuous help. I couldn’t think of anyone else.”

I nodded slowly, painfully aware of my own stupidity. Fuck it, it’s my MOTHER . “What kind of help?” I inquired.

She smiled, the first time I’d seen that smile since I was ten. “I need you to find the five half-bred children of a dragon.”

I nodded, feigning comprehension. She provided the only leads she had, and left her number.

It turns out demi-humans are a lot more common than you’d guess.