“I think she can hear my voice from here, and I’m sure she recognizes me, or she’d be watching us,” Kiron continued, thinking aloud. “She’s the only wild-caught dragon in either Alta or Tia that spent a significant amount of time on half-rations of tala while also being tended by humans. And I was the human who made sure she was properly fed and tended during that period. I think she knows exactly who I am, I think she pairs good things with me, and I think she might trust me, at least at a distance.”

“It would be awfully good if we could get one of her eggs,” Aket-ten said, wistfully, gazing down at the dragon with one hand shading her eyes. “But I know we’d never get her away, given how she’s protecting them. But she’s such a good mother and Avatre is magnificent—”

Kiron sucked on his lower lip. “But if we bring the food in a little closer to her each day, we might be able to get her to let us close enough that the dragonets take humans for granted. If they see us feeding her, when they fledge, they might come to us for food.”

“Maybe—closer,” Aket-ten mused. “If I can get close enough to her to talk to her, she might let us quite near, and when I can talk to the dragonets, I can make sure they know humans are all right. Especially if I get a chance to touch them. That won’t happen right away, but—but given time, if she starts leaving them to hunt, I think I can get right to them.”

He looked at her askance, trying not to let her see how horrified that idea made him. It was one thing to approach a tala-drugged wild-caught dragon in a pen. It was quite another to approach an undrugged dragon tending eggs or youngsters. “Are you sure it’s worth even trying?” he asked cautiously. Cautiously, because he knew exactly how Aket-ten would react to being told she shouldn’t do this.

Poorly.

“Oh, this is probably one of the least-clever things I’ve ever considered doing,” she admitted cheerfully. “But it’s still something I think I can do and, more importantly, get away with.”

Re-eth-ke snorted anxiously, and Aket-ten patted her shoulder. “I feel the same as Re-eth-ke does about you getting close to Coresan,” Kiron admitted. “I’d rather you didn’t try at all. I didn’t actually think about trying to get as close to Coresan as I did when she was in the pens.”