Ira’s family was cursed.

That was a bit of an misleading statement meant to serve as a hook and get people interested in reading more.

Her family wasn't cursed per se, it was just that her entire family had a gift for angering witches.

Great-grandma Jhulan took a bite out of a bad pear and never felt her tongue again. Her grandmother had stolen a necklace from a witch and was cursed with mild myopia. (Glasses hadn’t been a thing yet, so twas a much harsher sentence than it sounded.) Ira’s mother haggled with the wrong person and couldn’t write vowels afterwards.

As for Ira, her mother said she was cursed with curiosity. This may have only been one of those silly things that moms just say, but they do have a habit of being right. It certainly wasn't anything normal drawing Ira to the woods this late at night.

That would be her brother. Who disappeared five weeks ago.

The woods couldn't even bring themselves to look forbidding. The deep, cheery greens of the treetops fit so perfectly, so aesthetically, with the dusky pink-orange-blue sky that it was almost enough to make Ira believe in a higher power- one that took color theory in college.

Even if it wasn't dark enough outside to convince Ira to turn back, it was cold enough. Hot days were like soup, muggy and not good for walking in, but cold days freeze-dried your skin right on your bones. Everything hurt and ached more in the cold. It even smelled cold, in that sharp, clean way that cold smells.

She flexed her toes, all mushy-wrinkly and numb from accidentally stumbling into a puddle, and stepped into the woods.

All the old fairy tales said that there's a hole in the center of the forest. Nobody ever elaborated on what that meant, so she’s kind of flying blind here, but there is definitely something. A witch told her, and if Ira believed anything, she believed witches.

Jayesh didn’t. Her brother was the rational one, who was good at useful things, like math and science. He's the kind of person who would be the protagonist of a story. And for her, she got stuck with an aptitude for fashion and an affinity for makeup. All the superficial stuff, shallow and vain and useless. Nobody in the stories are like her, not even the girls. Those girls were smart and effortlessly pretty and never, ever liked pink. Not unless they're the stupid vapid bullies with no brain behind their perfect doe eyes.

She was going to go through life coasting on her looks, and never achieve anything, and finding her perfect, genius brother this one time in the woods would be the best thing she'll ever do.

As her mental ranting reached its crescendo, she sighed and did something that humans very rarely remembered to do: she looked up.

Oh. Oh. It was the color of her favourite pink dress, like the clouds right above, hovering somewhere between neon and dusty and it was perfect. The creature shimmered with scales that flashed green in the light of dusk. It was studded with what seemed like fireflies, glowing a soft yellow-orange, and if Ira focused closely, she could pick out the stars in the sky, replicated perfectly on the back of its majestic wings.

“You’re beautiful,” she told the dragon.

You’re human, it responded conveniently in English. Ira wrinkled her nose.

“Uh, did you take-” She cut herself off midway. Would it be racist to assume that the first magical creature she came across stole her brother?

A little human boy? Yes. He’s quite good company.

As thankful as she was for confirmation that Jayesh was okay, she couldn’t help but feel inadequate. Of course her brother managed to charm a dragon. Of course he’s okay and of course she wasn’t ever going to save him.

“Well, my mom misses him. A lot, you know? And it would be nice to have him back?” She winced as her voice rose in obnoxiously high pitch with each sentence. Ira's inferiority complex wasn't the most well-hidden of things.

Answer my riddles.

Ira startled at the non-sequitur. She was fairly sure that was supposed to be the Sphinx’s schtick but she was also fairly certain that dragons normally ate people. It was just her luck. Her mom loved riddles, and she could never figure them out.

Hopefully, she wouldn't have to.

“What if, I ask you a riddle and if you can’t guess it, you have to take me to Jayesh and let him go!” She said it all quickly, syllables mushed together.

I’m sorr-

“What’s the difference between a cat and a comma!” Ira pressed on.

I don’t know what either of those things are, the dragon admitted.

“Then,” she smirked deviously, “I guess you just gotta buckle up. Or I need to buckle up. Wait. Yeah, no, I need to buckle up.”

She was gonna look so cool, riding down to rescue her brother on the back of a giant dragon.

There is no need. He is home. Like he never left. Your mother is waiting for you.

“Whaat? Lame.” Ira said, robbed of her cool entrance. “Wait. No catch?”

Of course there’s a catch. Come back to me every Friday. Entertain me. Tell me what cats are.

“There is no way you've never seen a cat before,” she said, crossing her arms. The dragon pulled itself up to its full height of at least five Iras, and did something with its wings that probably means it was getting a little tired of her s***.

Not many things visit dragons.

Oh. It was lonely. It was a lonely old dragon that just wanted to talk to people, and it chose her over her brother. It liked talking to her.

It liked her.

If the price for getting her brother was just talking to a lonely old dragon every week, then, well.

Ira supposed there were worse curses to get.