Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) by Nicole Conway Page A

were… huge!
    Or at least, they were a lot bigger than they had been before. I started wiggling my fingers to make sure they were actually my fingers, and not some kind of illusion.
    A surge of adrenaline made me forget all about Beckah and the soup. I got out of bed and almost fell flat on my face. My legs were still weak. I could barely walk, so I leaned against the bed as I staggered across the room toward the mirror.
    The young man looking back at me was barely recognizable. I didn’t believe it really was me until I saw him moving whenever I did. It just didn’t seem possible. It couldn’t be real.
    The man in my reflection looked a lot like my father, with a squared chin and piercing pale blue eyes. His hair wasn’t black, but it wasn’t white like a gray elf’s either. It was somewhere in between, like the color of ash. All traces of boyhood were gone from his face, and when he narrowed his eyes back at me… his gaze was disturbingly piercing. It made my skin prickle because it was the same harrowing, fierce look my father had on his face almost constantly.
    Slowly, it started to sink in. That was me. I wasn’t a puny, half-stuffed scarecrow anymore. I actually looked older than I was, maybe nineteen instead of sixteen. I didn’t look like a kid, I looked like a man!
    I must have grown out of my clothes because I was basically just wearing underwear and they definitely weren’t mine. I guessed I was borrowing some from Sile, which was kind of embarrassing and awkward. I didn’t dare take them off, though. I wasn’t wearing anything else.
    I looked down at my arms, my legs, and it actually got me choked up. I wasn’t a skeleton. Well, at least not as much as before. I was still lean, still skinny compared to someone like Felix who was all brawn, but now I looked mature. I looked healthy. I was so grateful for every single ounce of muscle I could get. I still wasn’t totally convinced this wasn’t some kind of dream. It seemed too good to be true.
    “Jae?” Beckah said my name.
    I turned to see her sitting up on the bed, wide-awake, and staring at me with eyes as big as saucers. She almost looked scared of me. I tried to speak but it came out as a bunch of excited sounds.
    “Is that really you?” she asked shakily.
    “I-I’m not sure,” I stammered as I glanced back at the mirror to make sure. My voice sounded different, too. It was deeper. “I think so.”
    She put the bowl on the nightstand and started creeping toward me cautiously. When I turned to face her, she jumped back a little. I noticed she was looking up at me—way up. I was a lot taller than her now. She was trembling a little as she eyed me up and down.
    “Beckah.” I hated to see her be afraid of me. I wanted her to know it was still the same me. On the inside, I didn’t feel any different than before. “It’s okay.”
    She didn’t look convinced, even as she started to inch toward me a little. At any moment, I half expected her to bolt out of the room screaming. I could see her looking me over, like she was searching for traces of the scrawny little Jae she’d known before. When she finally met my eyes again, the corners of her mouth were twitching at a smile.
    “Well, you’re definitely not a lamb anymore,” she said uneasily.
    I smiled, and before I could think about it, I hugged her. Probably not the best idea since I wasn’t exactly wearing much in the way of clothes. But I knew she was the reason I was still alive and breathing. I had survived because she never gave up on me. I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to find some way to repay her for that.
    She didn’t seem to mind if I was mostly naked or not; she put her arms around my waist like she always did and hugged me tight. She wasn’t strong enough to choke me anymore, though. The hug was a lot different from before. I was so much bigger than she was now. Her head only came up to my chest, and I could easily swallow her up in my arms. She felt so