Brand New Day

Father sighed. "You like it here, don't you?" he asked. "Do you want to stay here? I'd like you to come home with me, but I can't force you. Not against your will. It's just, I want you to come home, Violet."

"I don't really know yet, Daddy," Vi said and nuzzled her head, "First I have to be human again so that I can even have the choice of going back right?"

"I guess..." Father said. "No sense getting ahead of ourselves." he said, straightening himself up.

"Exactly," Vi pipped up quickly, "I think Pernas should be coming soon unless he's dissappeared."

As if on cue because the author realized he was missing, Pernas emerged, holding the violin. "Well, good as new and all tuned up!" he said happily. "But I worry... it seems from now on, every time I try to hold a concert, something tries to kill me..."

"You can hold a private one just for the birds, Dad, and Ralph," Vi said softly to him, "I don't think any of us would try to kill you."

((That creature I thought of was kinda cool....))

"Good point." Pernas said, scratching his chin. "That might be smarter..."

Vi flitted off down the cave and landed on Ralph's big shoulders. She shifted her feet, "Sorry Ralph."

Ralph looked at her (good thing for eyes on the sides of his head). "Sorry?" he asked. "What for?"

"I thought you were dead and Captain tricked you," Vi said a bit nervously.

"That's not your fault," Ralph said.

"It's that Captain's..." the Father said.

"Well, in any case, he seems to be fairly..." Pernas looked for the right words, "not in a very good position right now."

"Well, he has a lot up his sleeve so I hope you Dad get's here soon, Pernas," Vi added as she hopped on to her fathers shoulder.

"Me too..." Pernas said, biting his lip. "What's taking him so long, I wonder?" he asked. "He called months ago, said he was coming..." he paused. "Maybe it has something to do with how the island is messed up from the time of other worlds... weird. I dunno, I wasn't paying attention when he explained all that."

Awkward silence.

"That was probably a bad idea."

"It's okay Pernas. You didn't know the cows were going to go all crazy like this anyway," Vi said reassuringly.

"True." Pernas said, nodding. "I don't think I have very much foresight. Figures I probably didn't think this needed foresight." he shook his head. "Ah well. Life goes on, they're cows, and I'm a dragon. I just need to figure out to stop them making monsters."

"I don't even know how they make the monsters," Vi said as she hopped on to Pernas now and settled on to his head.

"They probably use magic of some kind." Pernas said. "How they use the magic, I have no clue..." he thought. "Guess I'd better do some kind of investigating."

"Well, that would probably be benificial do you really think that you should be going around them alone at all?" Vi ruffled her feathers, "I can go. I can hide pretty easy being this small."

"I don't know..." Pernas said. "I can probably get lots of birds to help with that..."

Vi wriggled but staid quiet as she knew her father would be against it any way. He had only just gotten her back after all.

"Well..." Pernas said. "I need a nap." and with that, he headed back for the caves.

Vi flew off his head and landed on her fathers, "I guess we can't really do much else but nap as well?"

"I think that may be best." Father said, standing up and following Pernas.

"Yeah..." Ralph followed, as well.

Vi got her self to a random perch and settled down to sleep in the usual bird pose.

***

"Come to my garden,
Nestled in the hill.
There I'll see you safe beside me.
Come too my garden,
Rest there in my arms
There I'll see you safely grown and on your way
Stay here in my garden
Where love grows free and wild
Come to my garden
Come sweet child."

Pernas sang as he went to work on his garden. It'd been a little while since he really went to work on it, and there he was, on his hands and knees, clearing away the dead plants and clearing up the topsoil, planting a new seed here and there.