Aronia studied Sonder more carefully, in more detail.
She had spent enough years examining dangerous objects to know that unusual details rarely existed without reason.
Many times people overlooked tiny things. But people like her remained employed by noticing them.
Her gaze settled on Sonder's collarbone.
"There."
She pointed with the end of her pencil.
"What's that? That little speck there. It isn't a beauty mark, or just a smudge of dust."
Aronia had dismissed those possibility almost immediately.
"I just want to be certain," she said.
Sonder looked down. "She has a name."
Aronia looked from the tiny black shape back to Sonder.
"You're telling me the mark on your shoulder has a name."
"She isn't a mark."
As though responding to being discussed, the tiny speck moved.
The shape stretched and expanded. That was the best way Aronia could describe it. It got larger, but it seemed to sort of inflate instead of really growing.
It still looked like a ball of dust.
"She is a featherling," Sonder said.
"A what?"
"A featherling."
Sonder gently touched one finger beside the tiny creature.
It climbed onto her fingertip. "It will become a dragon."
Aronia squinted her eyes and looked at it for several seconds.
When 'un-inflated' it was barely the size of a fingernail. How could something like that grow into a dragon?
She had never heard of a featherling before.
Dragons usually breathed fire and had scales, of all colors, but they weren't little dust balls.
But the sorceress didn't seem to be joking, so Aronia took her by her word.
Aronia slowly wrote: One featherling dragon. Named Sireacht.
Then she underlined dragon.
"How long until it becomes..." She gestured vaguely. "...more dragon-shaped?"
"I don't know."
"Ah, a precise scientific measurement."
"I've never raised one before."
"Fair enough."
The supposed little dragon gave a little coo as it drifted around the vault.
The sound was barely audible.
More of a squeak than anything else.
Then it curled back against Sonder's collarbone.
Aronia stared for another moment.
"I've cataloged dragons. But I've never seen one like that before. I assume it doesn't stay that size."
Sonder reached down and opened the leather pack resting beside her.
She began searching through it.
Immediately Aronia straightened.
"What are you taking out?"
Sonder looked up. "Food."
She produced a small jar. It was filled with a yellowish substance, almost like honey but not quite.
There wasn't anything ominous about it.
"Sireacht likes it," Sonder said.
The featherling immediately became more awake and floated to the sorceress finger as she held out a small portion of the honey-like substance.
"...It doesn't seem to have any teeth, or much of a mouth, really," Aronia said. "So, how does it...?"
It seemed that the honey just disappeared when the little dust ball landed on the sorceress' finger.
Aronia watched in complete silence.