Chapter Text
Aerion locked the door of his office reluctantly. Despite the late hour, he dreaded going home, to the silence and loneliness that awaited him there. Lately, his research had been the only thing keeping him sane, occupying his mind, so there was no space left for the visions haunting him.
He dropped the key into the depths of his fraying messenger bag and began treading towards the exit of the Natural History Research Building. The promise of crisp night air beyond the doors was a welcome one, though it meant abandoning his work and leaving himself open to the whims of his own thoughts.
A voice stopped him in his tracks. “Aerion, mate! We’re going to the pub. Come with us.”
Aerion turned and saw Duncan, closing the distance between them with long strides. Behind him were their colleagues, Raymun and Lyonel, all with their briefcases and jackets on, all too happy to leave the university complex for the night. Aerion had declined their invitations for over a week now, whether it was grabbing lunch together or getting a drink after work.
There’s no way he’ll let me bail again, Aerion thought.
“I don’t know, Dunk. I’ve had a stressful day and I should probably head home. You know-”, he began, but was promptly interrupted.
“Nonsense, we’ve all had a stressful day. That’s why we’re going to the pub. Just come with us. You could use the company, you’re turning into a fucking hermit.”, Dunk replied sternly, with a warm smile that made it hard to decline.
“Alright, but I won’t stay long.”, he faltered.
Dunk’s face lit up and he wrapped his arm around Aerion’s shoulders, holding him close in case he’d change his mind and run off. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”
An hour later, they were all squeezed around a small table at the edge of the pub, ordering another round. Aerion swirled the remnants of his beer around the bottom of the glass absentmindedly, trying to focus on their conversation in the sea of voices.
"We got a call earlier today,” Raymun told them excitedly, bracing his hands on the table. “Some kids came across a partially exposed fossil near the riverbank when they were screwing around playing pirates or something.”
Lyonel chuckled beside him and tilted his head back to empty his glass. “Well, you don’t get a call like that everyday. I sure as hell didn’t find anything in the ground when I was a kid.”
“Raymun and I are heading out there tomorrow to take a look,” Duncan replied with a small nod. “See if there’s actually something worth digging into.”
“On a Saturday?” Aerion asked, bewildered that Dunk would abandon his usual weekend routine of doing absolutely nothing.
“Weather forecast says rain’s coming next week. If it turns out to be an actual fossil, we need to assess it before the sediment turns to mud.”, Raymun replied instead, before sighing. “Let’s just hope it’s not like the last site. We trenched half a slope for what ended up being someone’s dog.
Lyonel’s booming laughter echoed through the space and he pretended to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. “Well, best of luck on your treasure hunt, then. May your finds be fossilised and not recently deceased, boys. Poor Fluffy never stood a chance.”
Aerion sat on the hard wood of his chair, listening, doing his best to seem like he was enjoying himself. He even managed a smile at one of Lyonel’s jokes, though it never quite made it anywhere near his eyes. The company was pleasant enough, always had been, but it did little to cheer him up. It simply posed a break from routine, a little noise to drown out the slump of the past months spent closing himself off, seeking solitude rather than human connection. He had grown used to shutting the door on everyone and anything that tried to reach out, though lately, Dunk had been making a pointed effort to kick that door down.
Aerion felt guilty every time he turned down his invitations to hang out, knowing that Dunk worried about him, then again felt guilty that his friend had to worry about him at all. His thoughts threatened to swallow him again, draw him back into the black hole of melancholy he’d been desperately trying to claw himself out of.
Just as he was about to retreat into that bleakness again, Dunk tore him out of them with a small bump of his elbow. It was supposed to be a light nudge, but the man often underestimated his strength, so Aerion was almost thrown off his seat.
“You could come with us tomorrow, if you’d like.”, he offered, quiet enough so only Aerion could hear. “Might do you some good to get out of that stuffy office you’ve been barricading yourself in.”
Aerion forced himself to smile, though it was weak and unlikely to convince anyone. “Thanks, but if I miss another deadline on the avialan paper, my PI might strangle me. Might have to take a rain check on that.”
Dunk’s brows furrowed in concern, but he returned the smile. “Alright, but you should tag along more often after work. I worry about you, you know?”
I know, and I’m sorry, Aerion thought, but simply nodded and drained the last of his beer, though it had gone warm and stale in his hand.
The night ended for him earlier than for the others and he left them to their conversation and their beers. Lyonel’s laugh sounded over the chatter of the pub as the door fell shut behind him.
The way home was longer than it ought to be. He dragged it out, purposefully taking detours and wandering through the streets with slow, measured steps. All for the sake of pushing the thought of sleep and all it entailed away, if only for a few minutes. He stopped every now and then to fill his lungs with the cold air of the starless night. By the time he reached the building, a weary, defeated sigh parted his lips.
Aerion contemplated staying up, editing his paper for the hundredth time, watching some boring rerun on TV or doing anything to stay awake a bit longer, but his eyes felt heavy and his mind sluggish. Begrudgingly, he surrendered to fatigue and the late hour. A surrender to the inevitable and to the dreams.
He poured himself a glass of water before padding to his bedroom and placed it on the nightstand. The wooden drawer creaked as he pulled it open to retrieve the bottle of medication, the contents rattling in the silence of the room.
“God, please work this time.,” Aerion muttered under his breath and laid a pill on his tongue, tipping his head back to swallow it with a sip of water.
They were a bandaid only, a preliminary solution to the problem that had been plaguing him for near on half a year now. In the beginning, the dreams had been exciting and fantastical, glimpses of a wondrous, impossible reality. As time went on, days growing into weeks, weeks stretching to months, Aerion had begun to despise them. They filled him with an unexplainable sense of dread.
He’d wondered if they were visions of something inevitable, a sequence in a game of dominoes in which the first stone had already fallen. The stones would continue to drop like flies regardless of him knowing of their descent, yet some faceless god had granted him the courtesy of a warning and the doom of knowledge.
Whether any gods roamed the edges of the universe or not, Aerion cursed them for burdening him with the dreams. Sometimes he’d wondered if he ought to thank them instead, in the hope that the sacrifice of his gratitude would lift him in their graces. Perhaps then, they’d find some ounce of mercy in their eternal hearts and free him of this torment.
The medication had helped initially. They'd forced him into a peaceful sleep where no ghost could breathe down his neck, where no faceless god could lay a hand on him, but that was only for a few weeks. Afterwards, the peace had begun to crumble, slowly at first, as the effect of the medication wavered under the weight of the dreams. Then, all of it had come crashing down once more, like the visions had been building up behind the walls of a cracking, futile dam.
Aerion swallowed the pills regardless, praying that maybe this night, they’d overpower the images of the sky, the sound of wings. With a last hopeful glimpse at the bottle on his nightstand, laid his head on the pillow and closed his eyes.
⊰══════════⊱
Another dream of leathery skin strung tight,
gliding through the clouds and the cold.
Glimpses of iridescent scales
gleaming in the sunlight,
shifting between hues of red and gold.
The distant heat of fire
and the smell of smoke.
The beast underneath him halted
as the flapping of its wings faltered
and did not carry them higher.
He felt himself fall.
Left in him was all
but a single cry,
as the bright sky above him darkened
into a starless night.
Aerion awoke with a gasp, just before he could feel the impact of shattering into a million pieces. He darted his eyes around the dark room frantically, twisting his hands into the sheets in an attempt to ground himself to something, anything. The fall had felt too real, too tangible, and the sensation of cold wind biting at his skin still lingered, raising goosebumps on his arms.
He tried to calm his breathing and fall back asleep, despite what might await him there, but it was futile. Perhaps it was for the better, he thought, convincing himself that something protected him from another nightmare, another fall. Maybe the gods thought that he’d been tormented enough for one night.
The coffee machine was rumbling and steaming in the background when he’d finally collected himself enough to manage a clear thought. He glanced at the clock. Barely 4 AM. As much as he’d have liked to pass the time in a productive way, he was too tired to work on his paper, too weary to decipher any words on a page or a laptop screen.
Defeated, Aerion sank down on the couch with his cup of coffee. He’d forgone the milk and sugar, hoping the bitter taste would carry the remaining fatigue from his mind.
Once the sun began to rise, Aerion rubbed his eyes wearily and begrudgingly rose to greet the day with as much goodwill as he could scratch together. He hoped that he wouldn’t meet Lyonel in the hallways today, fearing that his constant teasing and cheeriness would rip the fraying edges of his patience and endurance.
With half-lidded eyes, he reached into his wardrobe and pulled out whatever he got his hands on first. Somehow, he landed on a t-shirt he’d swiped years ago from his cousin at university. It had been sitting in the far corner of his wardrobe ever since, forgotten, just like the memory of his cousin in the back of his mind. Aerion was surprised that he’d kept it all those years, unsure of the reason, but grateful for it now, as the fabric was soft from repeated use.
He left the building with a barely suppressed yawn and began to make his way to the university. The high pitched chirping of a particularly enthusiastic bird grated away at his eardrums. He had half a mind to pick up a stone and throw it at the innocent creature testing his nerves, but a sudden chill of cold wind stopped him in his tracks.
It seemed to creep beneath the fabric of his denim jacket and into the sleeve of his button down, before finally ghosting over his bare skin under the shirt. He shuddered at the icy sensation and tugged the collar of the jacket closer around him.
As he resumed his steps, he noticed that the trees around him were quiet, not a single breeze tugging at the leaves. The birds had stopped their songs.
The day dragged on without an end in sight. Aerion spent most of the time going back and forth to refill his cup with the sorry excuse of coffee available, practically gagging at every sip, but drinking nonetheless.
Lyonel noticed him in the cafeteria before he could flee. With a wave of his hand, he signaled Aerion to sit with him and his colleagues.
“Another time. I’ve got work piling up on my desk.”, Aerion replied and shot him an apologetic smile, determined to leave the danger zone before Lyonel could stand up and stop him.
He took a sip from the watery concoction and screwed up his face at the diluted, bitter taste. Lyonel roared with laughter when he saw him grimacing.
“Fucking dishwater, isn’t it?”, he called out, a cup of tea in his own hand.
Aerion only nodded and waved his hand, too tired to engage in any conversation. Knowing Lyonel, he’d be there for an hour before the man ran out of words to say and things to laugh at.
At the end of the day, he had barely spared a glance at his research. Still, he was glad to leave his office and lock up earlier than any of his colleagues, if it meant the silence of his apartment.
As he walked through the hallway, he noticed that the offices of Raymun and Dunk were dark behind the small glass window of the door. With a thin smile, he hoped that it meant that their treasure hunt had proven successful.
This time, Aerion rushed home, taking every shortcut known to man, almost stumbling over his feet several times with how fast he was marching.
The floorboards of the apartment welcomed him with a small creak. He kicked off his shoes impatiently, throwing his jacket in the vague direction of the bench beside the shoe rack and strode to his bedroom. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so relieved at the prospect of sleep.
Though his stomach was growling angrily at him, he fell onto the bed, no mind to change out of his clothes. He tried recalling if he had taken a moment to consume something besides coffee throughout the day and came up empty. Now, the need to close his eyes overpowered everything else and he gave in. The bottle of pills stood unopened on the nightstand as he dozed off.
Aerion stood on a hill, overlooking a spring meadow littered with wildflowers. Warm wind tousled his hair and he welcomed it, tilting his head back to gaze at the cloudless sky. A sudden feeling overcame him, urging him to leave the peaceful hilltop. He followed the invisible string guiding him, until it stopped him in the middle of the meadow.
Only poppies grew there, brilliantly red, orange and yellow.
Aerion’s hands buzzed and twitched and he fell to his knees. He tore at the grass until it gave way to the earth underneath. His fingers dug through the ground frantically, not caring that the dirt forced itself beneath his nails so much that it grew painful. There was no time or space to feel the ache, he only knew that it was essential for him to unearth whatever lay there.
Sweat was dripping down his temples when his fingers brushed over something other than the crumbling dirt. It was smooth and strangely warm. With renewed energy, he shoved away the remaining layers of soil.
Three eggs laid in the ground, red, orange and yellow, like the phases of a rising sun.
They gleamed, reflecting the rays of light so brightly that Aerion had to narrow his eyes. The surface was scaled and iridescent, like the skin of a fish made from mother-of-pearl. In awe, Aerion slowly reached out to run a trembling hand over the red one. When he touched it, the surface was so hot, it seemed to burn him.
He drew back his hand in shock, turning it over and expecting to see the burn marks it had left, but there were none. He returned his eyes to the egg that now seemed to glow, emitting a faint, pulsing light. It increased gradually until it almost blinded him. Aerion shielded his eyes, reaching out once more.
Then, the egg began to crack; slow at first, but within moments, the scale-armored surface was littered with splits, branching out like a shot of lightning. The shell started coming apart and a small piece broke off, giving way to the thin, milky membrane. A dark talon stretched out from beneath, too weak to tear into the veil but clawing at it nonetheless.
The sound of a phone ringing in the background didn’t quite fit, but Aerion didn’t question it further, too focused on the fragmented, iridescent shell and the tender efforts of the talon. Slowly, the ringing grew louder until he couldn’t ignore it anymore and it ripped him from his dream.
He opened his eyes reluctantly. The room was bathed in moonlight and the stark, artificial light of the phone screen as it rang and vibrated on his nightstand. Grumbling, he reached for it, eyes protesting at the sudden brightness, and answered.
“Hello?” he croaked out, raspy with sleep.
The voice on the other end was too loud in the gloomy silence of the bedroom. “Aerion? You won’t believe what we just found. You need to come down here.”
It took a few moments for his mind to recognize the voice as Duncan’s.
Aerion groaned, begrudgingly sitting up against the headboard. “God, do you know what time it is?”, he asked. In truth, he didn’t know himself, but judging by the fact that the sun had not yet replaced the moon, it was no time he ought to be awake.
“Fuck the time, get up and come here. The excavation team has found something. We don’t know exactly what it is yet exactly, but we’re all sure that it’s nothing any of us have ever seen before. Just trust me, get down here.”, Duncan said, rambling with excitement.
Every muscle in Aerion’s body tensed, pulled as tight as a bowstring.“What did you find?”
“The fossil of an undescribed avialan theropod.”
⊰══════════⊱
Aerion didn’t spare the time to change out of yesterday’s clothes or tie his shoes, shoving the laces hastily into the sides. They came undone when he rushed out of his apartment, but he had no mind to fix them, not even after he tripped over them and almost tumbled down the stairs. The sheer amount of adrenaline pumping through his veins didn’t allow him to slow down.
His thoughts were racing when he jumped into his car and started the engine before he’d even closed the door. The drive to the excavation site was longer than he would have liked, asphalted roads morphing into bumpy country lanes. An orange sun was rising behind the dark tree line when he reached his destination.
Duncan ran out of the tent raised over the excavation at the sound of tires on dirt and gravel.
“There you are, finally. Get out of the fucking car, you need to see this. Who would have thought that some kids screwing around would find something like this, I mean-”, he rambled, impatiently throwing the door open when Aerion wasn’t fast enough for his liking.
“Please tell me you have coffee.”, Aerion sighed. He got out before Dunk had the mind to yank him from the seat and stretched his legs slowly. The adrenaline had faded during the slow drive on the narrow country roads and fatigue was gnawing at the edges of his vision.
“Best I can do is a can of energy or coke zero.”, Dunk offered with an apologetic smile. Before Aerion could bemoan the lack of coffee, he turned on his heels, striding off and waving his hand for Aerion to follow him.
“Why were you even working through the night?”, he wondered, struggling to catch up. He walked through the tent flap being held open for him and mouthed a quick thank you.
Dunk shrugged and pushed his glasses further up his nose. “It got dark by the time we’d uncovered half of it, and by then I already knew that it didn’t match anything I’d ever seen. Guess we all just got too excited to quit.”
Aerion nodded hesitantly. “Alright, you want to show me this mysterious fossil then?”
Dunk pointed to the excavation square at the far end of the tent. Three people, including Raymun, were kneeling in it, hands full of brushes and fine chisels. The remaining part of the team surrounded them, eyes fixed to the bottom of the trench.
Aerion suppressed a yawn rising in his throat and shot Dunk a warning glare. “If you were all just to dumb to recognize the specimen and I drove out here for nothing, I’ll rip off your head and bury you in that ditch.”, he grumbled.
Dunk peered down at him and chuckled under his breath. “I’d like to see you try. Go, have a look!”, he pressed, giving Aerion a light shove.
He almost stumbled from the force of it, but caught himself and walked towards the excavation square. Curiosity took over his tired mind, eager to see what his peers were so fascinated by. He tried to catch a glimpse, but all he could make out were Raymun and his colleagues, knees and hands covered in layers of dirt.
“Alright, tools down for a minute.” Dunk ordered. “Make some room. Let him see what we’ve got.”
The onlookers shuffled back and Raymun shifted out of the way, clearing Aerion’s line of sight. His mouth dropped open and he barely registered Dunk’s hand coming to rest on his shoulder.
Aerion saw the remnants of a leathery membrane stretching between the wing bones and the stony hints of scales, bony spikes extended from the orbital bone and the spine. The world around him laid still and he held his breath in reverence. For a split second, he felt the ghost of an icy wind brushing his face.
“Incredible, isn’t it?”, Dunk mused, but the sound seemed far away. Aerion nodded absentmindedly, only vaguely aware of what was said.
“Yeah, I agree.”, he muttered. He turned to face Dunk and for a moment, the fossil seemed to glow in his periphery of his eyes. “You are certain that it’s undescribed?”
Dunk puffed up his cheeks and blew the air out slowly. “We’ve compared it to the known basal avialans and the usual paravians. The proportions don’t line up. If this has a match, it’s buried somewhere none of us have ever seen.”
“My god, this is incredible.”, Aerion breathed out and his mouth widened with a euphoric smile. “I can’t believe it. I can't even remember what you're supposed to do in a situation like this, who you have to to inform-"
Dunk pulled him into a crushing hug and squeezed him so tight that he could barely draw air. “Me neither, but we’ll figure it out. God, I’m so excited.”
Aerion rushed through his goodbyes and ran back to the car. He drove straight to the department and pored over archival photographs of early avialans for hours, studying published descriptions and old monographs and cross-checking proportions against memory.
With a trembling hand, he dialed Dunk’s number, needing several attempts before he managed the correct order, and pressed it to his ear. It only rang a second before he picked up.
“Are you still at the site?”, Aerion inquired frantically once the call connected.
The faint sound of music and rustling of fabric came through the speaker. “No, I’m driving home. We covered the exposure and wrapped for the day. Everyone was too tired after being there all night.”
“Alright, I’ve been going through the literature since I left this morning, reviewing everything I could think of. I can’t find a clean match.”, Aerion announced eagerly. “Of course, we won’t know anything definitive until it’s fully exposed and prepped. If after that, there’s no exact match- well, that would mean you have something entirely new on your hands.
There was no answer at first, only a soft thud and a muffled curse.
“Sorry, dropped my phone hearing. that”, Dunk replied with an incredulous laugh. “I can’t believe it, Aerion. Do you know how rare that is? Shit, I should call Professor Ashford and tell him about this, can you imagine his reaction?”
Aerion chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. “He’s older than your grandfather, news like that would be a certain way to put him in the ground to become a fossil himself. You’d give him a heart attack.”
“Fuck that, I feel like I’m about to have a heart attack myself!”, Dunk yelped. “Listen, I think I should hang up before I cause an accident. We’ll talk tomorrow or I’ll come to your office on Monday, alright?”
“Yeah, that sounds good. Get home safely and get some sleep, you great discoverer. I hope you remembered to yell heureka.”, Aerion teased.
“You know I did. You better get your ass home as well, or I’ll send Lyonel to haul you out of there”, Dunk chastised, undercut by a deep yawn. “It’s bloody Saturday and you probably sat in that office all day.”
Aerion raised his brows in faux shock. “And here I was acting out of the goodness in my heart, slaving away at my desk all day for the sake of my dear friend.”, he exclaimed, scandalized. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow then. Goodbye and sleep well.”
Dunk said his goodbyes as well and hung up the phone.
Aerion leaned back at his office chair and sighed. Two nights in a row without proper sleep weighed on him and he felt the dull sting of an oncoming headache growing behind his eyes. Slowly, he stood up and pulled his jacket off the back of the chair.
⊰══════════⊱
The following week consisted of Dunk, Raymun and him squeezed around a desk, cataloguing preliminary photographs of the fossil while the rest of the team continued the excavation. They’d already written to several of their colleagues to inquire about their thoughts on the specimen, yet so far, none have been all that helpful.
Aerion sat in his apartment each night, and though he kept declining invitations to the pub every other night, he was fulfilled by the work he had done with his friends. It frustrated him that the process took so long, irritated by the uncertainty. It would be a while before they’d be able to get any concrete answers through further examination and carbon dating.
The unsettling dreams had stopped the night Dunk had called him from the excavation site, shifting into memories of his grandmother. Though the images were familiar, they were no less unnerving and he woke up with a heavy heart instead of a frightened one.
The memories weren’t distorted into horror, they were simply memories of the stories she used to tell him, back when she had moved in with them after her health had taken a turn for the worse. She had sat in her armchair, knitting with swift, practiced fingers and he had sat on the floor, observing the flick of her needles and listening to her stories. Although she had always retold the same few, he’d never grown tired of hearing them.
“Aerion, my boy. Come sit with your old grandmother and keep me company.”, she said lovingly, looking at him over the rim of her glasses.
Aerion crouched down on the thick carpet and picked at a loose strand, before his grandmother tossed him a ball of yarn for him to unwind as she knitted.
The clicking of the needles stopped for a moment as she began. “The stories I tell you have been told to me by my grandmother, as her grandmother told her and it goes back that way. It’s important you know them too. Your father never cared about them.”
Aerion rolled the yarn for her, nodding enthusiastically. “I care about them, grandma. I love your stories.”
She smiled, kind but solemn. There was a light behind her eyes, flickering and distant, like the restless flame of a candle.
“Oh, but they’re not just stories.”, she said ominously. “In the old times, our family wasn’t like the others. We took to the sky on the backs of great beasts. The greatest of them was Baelerion, the Black Dread. He was fearsome and his wings covered the sun when he flew through the sky. But we didn’t just fly on the dragons, they also called to us in our dreams. There was a bond between a dragon and their rider, a magical bond. Sometimes, they’d show us visions of things that would come to pass.”
Aerion pursed his lips. “I never dream of dragons. Daeron does, and he doesn’t even like it.”, he sulked.
“Don’t worry about that. The dreams can be a heavy burden to bear and they were rare when the dragons were still around. I imagine they’re even rarer now. The magic of the dragons is all but gone from our world.”, she sighed and looked out the window wistfully.
“Why is it gone?”, Aerion asked and looked up at her with big, curious eyes.
His grandmother smiled at him sadly. “I wish I could tell you. Maybe it simply wasn’t their time anymore. Or could you imagine seeing a dragon in the sky when you walk home from school?”
Before the dreams, he hadn’t much thought of her in years, only in passing or on the anniversary of her death. Perhaps, he should feel guilty about that, about all but forgetting her, not bearing her in his mind as he did in his heart. Perhaps it was simply the way of grief to visit once in a while, hibernating until it reared its bleak head when one least expects it.
Now, the bittersweet memory of those stories wouldn’t leave him, whether in his sleep or his waking hours. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was glad of them, if he preferred the kind face of his grandmother over the dreams of falling to his death. Maybe it was another cruel play of those nameless gods, sending her spirit after him to lull him into a false sense of security before ripping the ground beneath him away once more.
With the stories came the dragons, always creeping back into his thoughts, despite all attempts to bury them beneath research and archives and bones. Ironically, it was then those thoughts surfaced the most.
As he sat hunched over a desk with Dunk and Raymun, he glanced at a photograph of the fossil, strewn on the table betwewn folders and notebooks. The image slowly merged into a dragon with scales of crimson, so vivid that Aerion thought he might risk breathing life into the hallucination if he only turned towards it, acknowledged it. He didn’t dare, shaking his head like it would banish the insanity that had taken seed within him. In the blink of an eye, the photograph was back to the old bones they’d been examining for weeks.
I'm just overworking myself again, he thought and the words echoed in his head like the cruel call of a mockingbird.
Nonetheless, he didn’t allow himself to rest, fearful of the silence of his own mind. Each morning, he dragged himself to the office and brought his research home with him each night, trying to drown out any foolish notions of the childhood tales and those damned dragons. The recurring headaches weren’t helping his focus either, growing more frequent and agonizing.
Two weeks after the fossil had been found, his brother Daeron called him in the evening as he sat hunched over the kitchen table, his dinner shoved aside in favor of the latest version of his paper and a red pen. Aerion stared at the phone in disbelief before answering. They rarely talked, if not for holidays and birthdays.
“Did something happen?”, he asked as soon as he picked up.
“Can’t I just call my little brother?”, Daeron sighed. His voice was raspy and sore, like he’d thought it would be fun to pass the time by screaming at a wall.
Aerion’s brows furrowed with worry, wondering about the exhaustion in his voice. “Well, you usually don’t. You sound tired. Is everything alright?”
“Just haven’t been sleeping well. Bad dreams.”, Daeron muttered.
“Me neither, if I’m being honest.”, Aerion admitted quietly and leaned back on the couch.
Daeron chuckled under his breath. “Have you been having bad dreams too?”
“You could say that.” Aerion pushed away the wave of shame that washed over him at the mere implication of the dreams. He tried to keep his voice from wavering too much, nervous that Daeron would hear. He’d always had a way of noticing those miniscule details, every shift in demeanor, despite his tendency to detach from his body and let his mind travel elsewhere.
It was silent for a few moments, before Daeron inhaled deeply and spoke up again.
“Listen, I just had a feeling that I should call you.”, he began, before correcting himself. “That’s a lie, actually. I had a dream about you. I saw you burn your hand on something. You were falling and landed on a field of flowers. I think they were red, red flowers.”
Aerion jumped up, knocking the chair back. “What did you say?”, he gasped.
“Look, I know it sounds odd, but I had a weird feeling when I woke up this morning. I’m sure it means nothing, but you know how my dreams are sometimes. Nevermind, I shouldn’t have called.”, Daeron trailed off.
“No, wait.”, Aerion yelled quickly, before lowering his voice, almost pleading. “Don’t hang up, please. Did you see anything else in that dream? Did you see what I burned my hand on?”
Daeron seemed stunned at the questions. “I-, Well, I don’t remember much else. I’m sorry, I didn’t write it down or anything. Why do you ask?”
Aerion closed his eyes. “I had the same dream. I’ve been having all these kinds of weird dreams for months now.”, he confessed reluctantly, feeling humiliated by the need to show his cards now. It made him feel weak.
“When did they start?”, Daeron asked. His tone had grown deeper, serious.
“Around six months ago.”
Daeron hummed knowingly. “They started for me around that time as well. I haven’t had those dreams since I was a child. You always used to laugh at me and when I told you about them, remember?” There was no malice or hint of a grudge held in his tone.
Aerion nodded slowly and ran a hand through his hair, embarrassed at being reminded of his behaviour, how he'd ridiculed Daeron when he'd woken up terrified by another nightmare, screaming his lungs out. Aerion felt his face heat with shame, though he couldn't have been more than ten years old at the time.
He had been a rude child, by all means, uncaring of others because his own emotions were too great for him to contain in his small body. They’d clawed themselves out, whether it was seeking escape through ridicule or lashing out at whoever was around. Now, all that was inconceivable to him; he’d learn to restrain himself, keeping a tight leash on whatever was brewing within. Everyone benefitted from this, but Aerion. His body still didn’t seem large enough to house all of himself and sometimes he felt himself tear at the seams.
“Yeah, I know. I remember. They always sounded so-”, he stopped, at loss for the right word.
“Insane?”, Daeron finished. “Can’t blame you for thinking that back then. One time I dreamt that I was burning alive and a week later I fell into a bush of stinging nettles. Scared the shit out of me.”
Aerion sank back onto the couch. “God, I remember that. You sure looked like you had been in a fire after those nettles got you.”
“Felt like that too.”, Daeron chuckled. “Anyway, now you know why I called. Just wanted to check on you, I guess. Be careful, don’t put your hand on the stove or something.”
“I’ll be careful.”, Aerion promised. After they’d said their goodbyes and hung up, he was left feeling uneasy. Agitation and anxiety filled his chest, pressing his lungs against his ribcage until they displaced all the air.
He dug his fingers into his temples, hoping the ache would ease the phantom strain on his lungs. God, why is this happening to me, he cried out in his head.
He had never been one for believing in magical, irrational things, as much as he’d loved his grandmother’s stories. They’d always just been stories like any other fairytale. He was a realist, a skeptic, a scholar of science, but he had to acknowledge that it was at least an odd coincidence that his brother had a dream so similar to his own.
In their childhood, Daeron had told their parents about his dreams, which in some abstract way, often came into fruition. Their grandmother had always said they should listen to the boy, that the dreams were more than the imaginations of a child, but their father would only tell her to stop filling Daeron’s head with more nonsense.
One time, Aerion had convinced himself that he had experienced one of those prophetic dreams instead of Daeron. He had dreamt of a dragon with his grandmother’s eyes, taking to the sky wearily. It had soared through the clouds, parting them with its mighty wings that eclipsed the sun, before floating to the ground in a cloud of white ash.
Three days later, his grandmother had died in her sleep after a family trip to an airplane exhibition. His parents had her cremated. Aerion still remembered the day they lowered the urn into the cold ground. It had been snowing and the flakes had covered the grave like an icy blanket. He had cried himself to sleep for a month, blaming himself for her death as if his dream had sealed her fate.
The implications of these new dreams terrified him. He didn’t dare ponder their meaning, what they might signify. Better to pray they were only dreams, beg on his knees if must be and cry out to whichever God would listen, faceless or not.
Pray that the strange visions were merely figments of his tired mind, beg that those grotesque dreams weren’t signs sent from above or whatever hellish realm. Hope that old tales were only tales.
Coincidences, he told himself. Stories, and nothing else.
⊰══════════⊱
The headaches grew stronger the following days, until Aerion had difficulty focussing on anything beside the pain, barely able to complete his work. The amounts of ibuprofen and paracetamol he was swallowing definitely weren’t healthy, but he threw them back nonetheless.
Dunk noticed him flinch every time Lyonel's roaring laugh echoed through the room or a chair scraped over the floor. He kept quiet, didn’t voice his concern, but Aerion felt his eyes on him.
“Go home, Aerion. We can manage without for today, I promise.”, Dunk said softly and laid a warm hand on his shoulder.
Raymun shot Dunk a knowing look and nodded in agreement. “Yeah, we just have to finish logging the measurements and clean up the field notes. You won’t miss anything interesting.”
“I can’t leave you both alone with the work. You’ve been doing most of it for days as it is.”, Aerion protested and immediately felt another shot of pain behind his eyes. “I’m fine, I’ll stay and help.”
The hand on his shoulder tightened slightly. “You’re going home to rest and that’s the end of it.”, Dunk stated firmly. His voice left no room for objection, especially not when Aerion turned to him and saw the caring smile on his face.
“Alright, maybe I should try to get some sleep.”, he relented and rose from the chair.
He took a step to retrieve his jacket and bag, swaying slightly, dizzy with the dull ache building up in his skull. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dunk’s arms shoot out to catch him, should he fall.
“I’m fine, don’t worry. Just stood up too fast.”, he called out weakly and padded to the door carefully, waving goodbye.
⊰══════════⊱
Another week passed and the specimen had been fully excavated, jacked in plaster and transported to the university’s vertebrate paleontology lab for the preparation and conservation. Dunk and Raymun watched as the box was lowered and couldn’t wipe the proud grin off their faces if they tried.
“God, I still can’t believe it.”, Dunk muttered. “Raymun, you’re seeing this too right?”
Raymun shook his head slowly, his eyes wide and fixed on the box, as if he could see through it, if he only tried hard enough.
“I hope I am, because I’d hate for this to be a dream. Slap me or something.”, he responded, before snapping his head toward Dunk. “Don’t actually slap me or I’d fly to the other end of the room.”
Aerion laughed to himself as he observed them. He walked over to stand between them, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. “I’m so happy for you. Your names will be remembered as this creature’s discoverers. Though I still didn’t hear either of you say heureka, so I’m not sure if it counts.”
“Oh, shut up with your Greek nonsense. We couldn’t have come this far without your help.”, Dunk replied sincerely, blinking away the hint of tears beginning to flood his eyes. “You spent more time holed up in your office than both of us. I don’t know how to thank you.”
Aerion twisted his mouth into a lopsided smile to stop himself from becoming too emotional himself and peered up at his colleague, before turning his head to Raymun. “I’m just glad I could be there for you both. Not every day you get to assist with logging a new specimen.”
Raymun and Dunk ended up inviting him out for dinner and a few rounds of drinks to show their gratitude. Aerion had agreed without even considering to decline and as he sat across them, he was glad of it. The cage around his chest loosened and the weight that had been strapped to him dropped, if only partially. Maybe things will get better, he thought hopefully.
Aerion returned to his apartment still smiling up to his ears, his contentment solidified by the fact that his headache had silenced to an occasional and bearable sting for the night.
The bottle of medication on his nightstand he had abandoned a month ago suddenly caught his attention as he settled himself on his bed. He had an unexplainable feeling, somewhere behind his sternum and rising to his throat, that he’d be wise to take one of the pills tonight, but he attributed the sentiment to a lingering paranoia.
Aerion looked down to find his feet stuck in deep mud. Rain was dripping off his face, a cloudfall so heavy that he could barely see anything past an arm’s length. As the water eroded the mud, he could slowly make out the dark shapes of old bones coming to light. After a while, he recognised the fossil in the vague, murky skeleton, though any remnants of the scales and the stony membranes were gone. To his shock, Aerion realized that he was caged between the ribs of the beast, his feet held prisoner there instead of the mud. He tried to pull himself free, but his attempts were futile.
Slowly, the bones began to fill out with muscle, sinew and organs. He could feel the heart beating against his calf as it began to pump blood through the veins that had materialised only moments prior. Skin wrapped over the muscle, scales wrapped over the skin. Even in the bleak and gloomy surroundings, the scales shimmered like a bleeding pearl.
He was a part of the resurrecting beast. The chest revitalized and began to rise and fall with deep breaths, swaying him with each exhale. Its eyes opened, locking on Aerion’s with a sense of deep familiarity. He felt like he’d known those golden eyes lifetimes ago.
Aerion awoke to a single thought on his mind. “Wake dragons from stone.”, he whispered into the dark silence.
⊰══════════⊱
The dream still hadn’t left him as he accompanied Dunk to the first examination of the fossil. As the lab assistant turned away to retrieve another set of tools, the old bones compelled Aerion to stare until his eyes watered. He couldn’t avert them, as if under the spell of some ancient sorcery resting in the calcified remains. For a moment, Aerion thought he could see the faint phantom of a heart beating beneath the stony rips and hear the pulsing echoing in his ears.
With all his strength, he tore himself away, shaking his head to exile the image from his mind, but it had already burned itself inside his skull. All he could think of was to get out of the lab, to leave the vicinity of those cursed remains. He wished that those kids had never gone out to play, that those damned bones had stayed in the earth where they belonged.
Without any relief in sight, he’d rather take a sledgehammer to them or drop them to the depths of the ocean. Anywhere better than here.
“I have some important matters to take care of.”, he mumbled and excused himself before Dunk could question it.
Rushing to his office, he continued his futile efforts to evict the images from his mind, rubbing at his eyes and raking his hands through his hair like a madman. He ran into Lyonel on the way and apparently seemed so out of it, that even he did not find anything laughable about it.
Aerion threw the door to his office open and sank into the chair behind his desk like he’d reached the promised land, perhaps not of milk and honey, but at least lacking bones and despair. Another headache announced itself with a gracious, sharp pain behind his browbone, spreading through his skull. All he could do was clasp his hands to his temples in a vice grip, like it was the only thing keeping him from splitting apart.
The same words reverberated through his skull and he was sure they were the cause of the pain, the root of all his problems.
Wake dragons from stone.
“Be quiet!”, Aerion screamed into the empty office, desperate for it all to end.
Until the sky grew dark, he alternated between staring at the wall and the bright screen of his laptop, uncaring that it exacerbated the headache. Time was advancing too slowly, as if it taunting him, and he almost fell to his knees and kissed the ground when the clock hand indicated it was finally 7 PM. An appropriate time for him to leave without running the risk of encountering any colleagues in the hallway eager to engage him in conversation.
He locked up his office with a relieved sigh. The metallic clinking of the keys rang through his ears and he winced at the sound, before shoving them into his pockets.
The streets were near empty as he drove home and he thought it was for the better, less risk of crashing into someone in case the pain materialised as black spots in his vision. Though it would have been sensible, downright logical even, to leave the car and walk home in his condition, he ignored it. There was no space for a clear thought left. He longed to be away from it all, to swallow as many pills and tablets necessary to grant him some relief.
His apartment was illuminated by the yellow glow of the streetlights as he finally passed through the door and kicked off his shoes. Though his head felt as if it was near bursting, he could not bear the thought of laying down in his bed, although sleep might have been a mercy.
He padded to the kitchen and flicked the switch in passing, narrowing his eyes at the bright light. The sink was overflowing with old coffee cups and plates, but he had no mind for the banality of cleaning.
He opened the cabinet, almost empty after failing to run the dishwasher for days, and retrieved the last glass. It had some sort of black cartoon dragon printed on it. Aegon had left it there once after staying over for the weekend and now it only made Aerion’s thoughts circle back to the insanity of his dreams.
His eyes landed on a half empty bottle of wine as he was about to fill the glass with water from the sink, and he sighed. Maybe the dreadful day would improve with some alcohol, he thought, to hell with not drinking on pain medication.
With his improvisatory wine glass in hand, Aerion plopped down on the couch and turned on the TV, switching through the channels in hopes of landing on anything able to distract him. The monotone voice of the news anchor faded into the background as he nursed his wine, thoughts involuntarily returning to the fossil and the dragons of stone.
Soon enough, the glass was empty and after another refill, so was the bottle. Throwing all caution to the wind, Aerion pulled the cork on another. The wine had been a gift from Lyonel to celebrate finishing his PhD and had been gathering dust in the back of the cabinet since.
It wasn’t good by any means, although it couldn’t have been cheap; a fancy bottle of white that turned out to be drier than anything ought to be. Wrinkling his nose at the unpleasant acidity, he questioned whether the intention of the gift had truly been a friendly one or if Lyonel simply had terrible taste. It would be cruel to serve this to your worst enemy, even on a bad day.
After two hours of grating boredom, dull aches behind his eyes and the second bottle being nearly emptied, Aerion felt inspired by the intoxication and snatched his phone from the coffee table to search through his contacts.
Although it was after midnight, he pressed the call button with the unwavering confidence only a drunk person could have, hoping Valarr would pick up. He had always been somewhat of a night owl, so the chances weren’t all too slim.
After the ringing had lasted for more than half a minute, Aerion’s confidence began to falter and just as he was about to hang up, Valarr answered.
“God, what is it now?”, he snapped.
Aerion flinched, caught off guard by the welcome he received. Growing unsure of his decision, he took another sip of wine before replying.
“Uh, hi. It’s Aerion… from university.”, he began hesitantly, wincing at how dumb he sounded. “I wasn't sure if you still had my number saved. Sorry if I caught you at a bad time. I can just call back tomorrow, maybe that would be better.”
He heard shuffling and a distant string of curses on the other end of the line.
“Aerion from university, huh?” Valarr echoed, sounding amused. “Did I miss something, or are you still my cousin?”
“I-, Well, I thought-”, Aerion stammered, suddenly tongue tied. ”Well, when you answered you sounded like you didn’t—”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” Valarr cut in, exasperatedly. “I didn’t check the caller ID before picking up. My research team has been hounding me all night. I thought it was one of them again.”
Aerion hummed, trying not to think of the implication that Valarr still had his number saved despite everything, though he felt his face heat up all the same. “Don’t I know what that’s like.”, he chuckled awkwardly. “But really, if you’re busy at the moment, I understand. I’ll just-”
“No, it’s fine. I’ve been meaning to take a break anyway.”, Valarr interrupted quickly, before his voice softened and a smile bled into his tone. “I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“I know. I just got buried in my PhD. You know how it goes. One minute, you’re planning on calling someone tomorrow and suddenly it’s three years later.”, Aerion sighed and raised the glass to his lips again. “I’m just going to get to the point, don’t want to occupy you for longer than necessary. I called because some of my friends found something and I thought that, maybe, I could get your opinion on it?.”
Only silence and the faint sound of static could be heard from the speaker, then what seemed to be Valarr clicking his tongue. Aerion assumed it was in annoyance.
He restrained himself from throwing the stupid cartoon glass at the wall in frustration, mentally slapping himself for even asking such a thing. As if the guy he’d known years ago, his estranged cousin besides, would just clear his schedule to indulge him and his silly requests, especially regarding their history. He regretted making the misguided judgement to call him in the first place. Ultimately, he blamed it on the wine.
“Alright, I’m intrigued.” Valarr said, a faint grin in his voice. “Tell me about whatever it is you got on your hands there.”
Aerion leaned against the back of the couch, inhaled and blew out the air slowly. He’d fallen low enough with the drunk call, he barely had any dignity left to lose. “Have you seen Jurassic Park?”
Another pause.
“If you’re about to tell me you extracted viable DNA, I’m hanging up.”
“No cloned velociraptors, I promise,” Aerion nearly burst out laughing at the thought. “My friends dug up a specimen a few weeks ago. Avialan, as far as we can tell. I thought, perhaps, you could have a look at it and work some of your paleoproteomics magic.”
“Depends on what you think that magic entails.”, Valarr stated slowly, almost making it sound like a question. “You do realize it depends entirely on preservation, if it wasn’t heavily weathered, if you didn’t contaminate it with half the department’s fingerprints-”
“It was jacketed properly and with minimal handling. We’re not amateurs.”, Aerion huffed, interrupting him. “I don’t suppose there’s any way for you to make the trip down here? I promise it will be worth your while.”, he inquired with a small pout and felt the urge to slap himself sober. He decided to lock his phone away in the future when planning to consume any sort of alcohol, but still emptied his glass. The damage was already done.
“I guess, I could get away for a few days.”, Valarr hummed in contemplation. “Never could say no to you anyway.”
“You never really could.”, Aerion mused before he could shut his mouth. The corners of Aerion’s mouth turned up by themselves, unable to keep the giddy grin off his face. It was as if they’d never stopped talking, as if the three years of lost contact had turned to wind. He could picture Valarr’s mannerisms like he was right there, sitting across him with that sheepish smile and the way he tilted his head and played with his lips when listening.
God, I really shouldn’t be thinking of this, he warned himself.
The memories flooded back then, of all the times he had gotten away with shit just because his smile had disarmed Valarr of any irritation, grudge and reservations. In the end, his smile had been the reason it all fell apart, the reason they hadn’t talked in three years.
“Call or text me once you know when you’ve decided. And thank you for helping me out, that’s really… great of you.”, he deflected, desperate to end the conversation before anything he’d regret in the morning could leave his lips.
“No need to thank me. Anything for you.”, Valarr sighed, before clearing his throat. “Anything for family, you know. Family’s important, afterall. Blood being thicker than water, and all that. Alright, I’ll text you once I’ve sorted some things out around here. I’ll let you know.”
“Yeah, of course.”, Aerion agreed quickly.
“Anyway, I’ve got to get back to my paper and the research.”, Valarr mumbled rapidly, almost unintelligible over the phone. “It was good talking to you again. Have a good night.”
With that he hung up, not giving Aerion a chance to say goodybye. He was left to wonder whether he'd said something wrong, overstepped afterall, and whether his cousin had noticed the underlying tension as well, still lurking in the shadows after years of radio silence.