The cabin door was open, letting in a breeze that smelled of pine, rain-damp earth, and early summer. Otto sat on the porch steps with her wings stretched wide, soaking in the fading sun. Her black scales shimmered faintly, the white of her wing undersides catching glints of gold as she flexed them lazily. A few dragonflies hovered nearby, drawn to the heat radiating off her sun-warmed skin.
Inside, her girlfriend—curled on the floor beside a sunbeam, wings half-folded and messy—sighed with enough volume to shake the rafters.
“Ottoooo,” she called, dragging out the name like a plea.
Otto cocked her head toward the doorway, tail flicking. “Yeah?”
A pause. Then: “Can you help me with my wings? They’re so itchy and I’ve been molting weird all day and I can’t reach the top layer. Feels like something’s nesting in them.”
Otto’s ears perked up slightly at the request. Her grin came slow and satisfied. “Oh, so now you want my claws near your feathers, huh? After saying they were ‘too scaley’ and ‘not gentle enough’ last time?”
Her girlfriend peeked around the doorframe, feigning innocence. “I was being dramatic. You’re good at it. Please?”
Otto stretched, her joints cracking with a satisfying pop as she rose. “Yeah, alright,” she said, already padding inside. “Just don’t yell at me if I pull something weird and your wing flails again.”
The feathered girl settled herself on the rug, wings splayed out like a downy throne. Otto crouched behind her with practiced ease, running her long, curved nails along the base of her girlfriend’s wings, gathering up molted fluff as she went.
“Ugh, yeah, there,” her girlfriend mumbled, nearly melting under the touch. “You’re dangerously good at this. I’m starting to think you were a bird in a past life.”
“I’m a dragon,” Otto said flatly, flicking a loose feather over her shoulder. “We invented preening. You’re just the knockoff version.”
“Wow,” her girlfriend deadpanned, “incredible bedside manner.”
Otto chuckled under her breath, eyes scanning the wings with the intensity of a hunter. Her claws were surprisingly gentle, scraping delicately beneath layers of soft plumage. She was in her element—focused, a little territorial, maybe even smug. She liked being helpful. She especially liked being trusted with wings.
But then she spotted a feather nestled deep near the joint of the left wing. It was bent weird, a little out of place. A challenge.
“Hm. This one’s gotta go,” she murmured, reaching for it.
Her girlfriend stiffened slightly. “Wait, Otto, not that one, that’s—”
She plucked it.
A beat of silence.
Then the wing spasmed violently—and exploded in a violent puff of feathers directly into Otto’s face.
Pfffwump!
Otto staggered back, coughing, her eyes fluttering as she batted wildly at the cloud of soft plumage now clinging to her skin, her hair, even between her teeth. “Ack— what—ptoo!—I’m being attacked!”
Her girlfriend was howling with laughter, half-doubled over, wings flapping as she gasped. “I told you! That feather’s wired wrong or something! It always does that!”
Covered in a mask of white and cream feathers, Otto stood there in stunned silence, nostrils flaring. A particularly fluffy feather was perched indignantly on her nose.
She looked like a dragon who had lost a fistfight with a pillow factory.
“I preen out of love,” Otto said solemnly, spitting a down feather from her lip. “And this is how I’m repaid?”
Still laughing, her girlfriend sat up and gently plucked a feather from Otto’s bangs. “You look majestic.”
“I look like a plucked chicken,” she grumbled, but her grin betrayed her amusement. Her tail flicked, knocking into a pile of the discarded feathers. “This is what I get for helping a bird.”
“Oh, hush. You’re a very good dragon. You just have to learn the danger zones.”
“I mapped those wings like three days ago!”
“You missed one.”
They both dissolved into laughter, the warmth of it echoing through the room as Otto gave up the fight, flopping onto her back beside her girlfriend with feathers still stuck to her face.