The dragons dragged a handful of shirtless Rexes from Bethany's dream, into Sheena's. The Rexes did ballet right into the stress dream she was already having about her upcoming meeting with Sadao the Seller, an elf. A Space-Elf, if you will.

  He lived in a space station - alone - unless you count the company of his hundreds of golems (most don't). Sadao was man of uncertain, but extraordinary age. An Elf, with wrinkles? and grey hair? Shrunken and hunched by the long passage of time? Absurd! But maybe not quite as absurd as the shirtless Rexes doing beautiful ballet in his space station.

  Whatever his weird, well-aged elf motives were, he had deep pockets and never ask anyone to do anything too unsavory. Just robbing the long dead. Sadao bought any and all artifacts from the ancient times. Whether they were dug up in civilized or wild space, be they magical or mundane in nature, he paid good credits.

  Crafty old soul, sold the ones he didn't really want in his collection all around known space without ever leaving his space station. He sent Chrysaora ships, like they had, but manned by his golems to deliver goods and collect payments.

  He always had great leads for the crew, as well. Quite frequently his tips were the ones that lead to the best payouts, also the greatest dangers. He'd led them to the codpiece. And he was the one that sent them to that volume of wild space where they ended up with baby dragons aboard in the end.

  Sheena was standing in front of him, wringing her hands, hoping he'd offer them good money for the codpiece, now that it wasn't cursed to them anymore. But Sadao was laughing in her face, just like he'd done when he refused to take a refund from them when it teleported itself from his hoard to their hold. They were light-days away, when someone started to make lunch.

  "That'll teach me to buy without checking for such things first," he'd said then, and now he said, "I'll not fall for that trick again, kid, but nice try. Cursed or not, that thing is yours to keep."

  The dragons and Rexes danced between them, demanding the attention of the dreamer, and the dream. Sadao cocked an eyebrow. She'd never seen him make such an expression in life, he almost always held it placid, stoic, like he was unmoved by the passage of eons, or the troubles they faced on their adventures to acquire the artifacts they sold him.

  Two Rexes lifted a third in their dance, the simple black leggings of the lifting Rexes were boring compared to the frilly pink tutu of the lifted Rex. The dragons floated nearby, watching the dance, and occasionally providing the literal wind beneath a jumping Rex.

  "Oh, now these are something I'd be interested in purchasing... would you sell them?" The ancient elf asked, a hungry grin growing on his face. Because it was dream, particularly a stress dream she felt he wasn't asking... this was hostility! He meant to eat the babies!

  "No! They're sentient creatures, they'll be smarter than humans in time." Sheena tried to ignore the ballet, pushing through a wall of Dancing Rexes that didn't seem so numerous a moment ago. She snatched the dragons and started to run, "Not for sale!"

  "Yeah, well... We'll see about that!" His face flashed skeletal and lightning shot from his fingers at the dancing Rexes, causing every one he hit to burst into a cloud of cherry blossoms.

  The dragons wrapped her arms with their bottom halves around her biceps and pulled her away from this terrifying nightmare of a stress-dream space-elf. Sheena, who in her dream totally knew how to use shield magic, did so. She defended herself and the dragons from the sudden and unexpected attack as they pulled her away.

  After the first volley of lightning, while Sadao recuperated for the next strike, Sheena ran.

  She burst through the door of his space station right into the forest she grew up in. She turned around and behind her was her house... She was off to meet Entle Luellin to learn which mushrooms were edible, and help with their foraging. She was a wee child, and her meta-consciousness was just now realizing why Luellin was always her favorite of father's siblings.

  Luellin was teaching her which plants to pick, and they had a lovely foraging session with Sheena's tiny help. The dragons floated along, learning and helping to fill their packs in the dream memory, like they belong there.

  (What? Expecting something horrible? Sheena's childhood was pretty good and wholesome like, at least by comparison to the rest of her crew. She lived a legitimately peaceful, loved by her parents, gentle forest village, sort of life.)

  Luellin unloaded their pack back home, and her mother picked Sheena up and squeezed her, for she was still not even waist high. Her father was a man with pointed ears, like Sadao's, but he smiled wide every time her saw her, and laughed often and drank deeply of the joy of life.

  Father joined Mother in hugging her, and Luellin joined in too, after a moment. When their big family hug was finally done, they set to work making a meal together.

  Sheena was sent to get another log for the wood-fired stove and when she left her house she found she was in school. A little older, not yet a teen. Some of the children made fun of her round ears, but she told them to shut it, because her mom has round ears too, and she's the greatest.

  The kids were only ever mean with words, though, they never picked on her with violence, still let her play with them, even if she was clumsy compared to all of them. All the same, the dragons floated through their unkind words and wrapped little Sheena for comfort as she lost game after game of tag. She received far more love and attention from her mother and father back home, making all her losses into learning, and bright memories.

  She grew older, and faster still, so did her mother. Not Father, though, he remained the same un-etched by the passing of time. Just as Luellin did, too.

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  Sheena kept at her studies, and found that she grew faster than the other children. By twenty years she was at the height of a full adult, while the children who had once teased her about her round ears were still years away from even hitting puberty. They still played as children did, rambunctious games that trained the famed elvish dexterity. Meanwhile, she learned chemistry, physics, and math. She learned music, art, and dance. And she longed for things in the purview of adults.

  Her mother was old now, terribly old. Twenty five years of her home world's track was the whole of an average human lifespan.

  "Sheena, darling girl, look at you. All but a grown woman now. You look just as beautiful as I did when I found the village, don't you?"

  "You don't really ever talk about that time of your life much, Mom, so how the heck would I know how pretty you were back then?"

  "Mra-mraA." "Maa-mrAA. " The dragons seemed annoyed by her level of sass to her ailing mother, though it was fairly light sass. Flix and Flox still heckled and jeckled her consciousness. Dragons can hold grudges, and they remembered being told not to sass, so it felt a bit hypocritical to their little brains, just now. Oh, we can't sass, but look at you, Miss Sassafras, sassing your mom.

  The dream-memory ground to a halt and Sheena's meta-consciousness leaned out of herself to scold the dragons, again. "Hey. You wanna see why I told you not to sass, you little winged-punks? Watch this shit. Watch what an asshole I was, and see if that turned out great for me, emotionally speaking, afterward. Now, zip it! Ya yammering snakes!"

  The gears of dream reality started to turn again, and her elderly, dying mother said, "Ah, well... that's because your grandfather wouldn't let me leave the village, it is forbidden for an outsider to leave, once knowing the location of our village. Not like I wanted to leave, I'd chased your father across the planet, in love. But you're not an outsider, you're allowed to leave. They wouldn't dare stop you, like they did the others from my expedition."

  "What are you going on about, mom?" Sheena knew her mother wasn't like everyone else in town, being human, but this was the first she'd heard of other humans ever being at the village. Her grandfather was colder to her than to her pointy-eared cousins, sure, but that sounded like an accusation of murder.

  "Oh, you never did quite belong here, did you?" Her mother said, changing the subject. "Go off, find the city I came from, half across the world form here. You look like a human well enough, and you can claim my old accounts at my old bank, I'm sure. They'll never know you're part elf. Make a life for yourself away from here. Find a community where you're truly welcomed."

  "I've never felt unwelcome here by any but foolish children and grumpy old people." Sheena spoke truthfully. "Maybe a little bit less of a problem from grandfather, he seems somewhat unwelcoming to everyone, so I don't take it personally."

  Her mom laughed, "He is a bit of a stick in the mud."

  Sheena's mom tried almost every time they talked that last season to convince her to leave the village. When her mother passed, she found out why.

  After they buried her, Sheena heard the true feelings of the eldest in the village. Her fault for eavesdropping on grandfather's siblings, elders she rarely saw, save for the annual new year festival. Like those festivals, the whole village had come to bury her mother; a funeral was a rare thing indeed in a village whose residents are barely touched by the passage of time.

  While she listened to what she oughtn't, one elder made a comment about how burying a human here might taint the soil, and another warned that allowing the 'blood' to stay would destroy the whole village, killing all their lines in time, with her mortal taint. Her grandfather grit it his teeth, and said nothing, but she could swear she could hear him grinding his teeth.

  That night, when the village had left their home, Sheena started her preparations to leave. Her father did not try to stop her, he knew better. He'd also heard his aunts, uncles, and entles at his home after the funeral, and Sheena was old enough to realize that he'd probably been hearing such things for her whole life.

  When it became known that she was planning to leave, some of those very same uncouth elders that been so foul to her when they thought she couldn't hear them, offered to help her build an advanced flying craft. They could be polite and helpful if it meant she was leaving.

  It took only a hundred days to build the ship and train her to fly it. A 'Moon hopper' they'd called it. Indeed, they were wonderfully helpful, efficient, and swift moving with the engineering, and technical support. Fine craftspeople with long-earned expertise, the lot of them in the eldest generation. They put together a space-worthy ship with a gravity engine. No warp drive, but plenty enough machine to cruise around a planet, or visit the moons and come back if she wanted.

  "This isn't what I wanted for you." Her dad said, squeezing her hard, crying, almost shaking with grief.

  She patted him on the back, "I know dad, but it's okay. I'm ready to go make a life for myself. Away from here. With other mortals."

  Her dad has pulled it together enough to say "I must accept it is what is right for you, I love you SheenaaaAAAAAaaAAaa!!!" He fell out bawling; an embarrassing mess, once again.

  "Ooookay, Dad." Sheena passed him off to Luellin, "Take care of him, please."

  "We'll all do our very best." They said. "He'll be fine, one day."

  Her grandfather was the last elf of the village to touch her hand. He passed a tablet with all the account information of her mother, and a few small elf accounts he'd set aside for her the day she was born. She'd have money to start her new life, at least.

  She hugged him, she'd never hugged him before as far as she could remember, and to her great surprise he hugged her back. "Go on kid, have a good life. Sorry It couldn't be here, my siblings are real jerks."

  ___

  It was a good thing she had money to start her new life, because when she got to the city with a space port, she broke down. Not her ship, her. That ship of her would run a thousand years before needing maintenance.

  Sheena fell into a year long depression, on extra long year, world. She couldn't stop ruminating on the way she had been dismissive of her mother's concerns, and what really was her place in the world. Was she just going to watch all the friends she made here die in a few years, like her mother? What was her lifespan going to be like? Grandfather was said to be over a thousand years old, would she live to five hundred?

  The therapist her landlord of all people made her get was not a specialist in half-elves, nor long-lived races dealing with existential problems from their long lives, she was just a human woman. She did her best though, and through doing the work, Sheena adjusted to life amongst humans, mostly. She still didn't get close to them, emotionally. She didn't want a dog, yet. Some poor creature to care for, for a few years before it died and left her living and heartbroken.

  The dragons cooed and purred out their apologies, now they felt guilty. But in their way, they knew they'd live a loooong time, like her. They could be her friends, forever.

  An extra greased up, shirtless Rex burst through the wall of her first apartment like a great beast being hunted. Bethany was there, in pajamas, but with a safari hat and hunter's rifle on her shoulder. "Time to wake up Sheena! We have a shift..." Bethany popped a sharp clap with her hands, and in the dream she shot Rex. He exploded into butterflies, and Sheena woke up with such a start that she slammed her head into the bottom side of Bethany's bunk, scattering dragons from her bunk and onto the floor.