Arvid collected bottles. Not of any particular sort. Some of them used to have drink in them. Others, fragrances. They weren’t any type of bottle, just ones that were beautiful on their own.

“Why?” Emine asked. She had meant to ask for a long time, but she had never been the type of girl to blurt out whatever she thought immediately. Or maybe she had been, when she was much younger. If that were so, she had long since grown out of it.

Arvid continued to dust off the bottles. Emine helped. “To be honest, I’m not sure why bottles specifically. All I remember is that when Ramar first Bonded with me, she always wanted to get me something. But I had no use for all of the particular trinkets she thought to give me. So I told her I was interested in bottles. These are all of the gifts she has gotten for me over the years.”

They were very interesting. Emine stared into one, made of blue glass and shaped for a human hand to grab around the body of it. “I would have told her I didn’t want anything.”

He chuckled. “Maybe I should have done that too. But she so wanted to give me things. And I… I just never knew what I wanted. I’m glad to have these bottles now.”

Emine tried to imagine a dragon like Ramar holding a bottle like any of these. No cracks, no chips, not broken. Despite all of the force she knew a dragon to be capable of.

While Emine knew she didn’t fully understand, she could comprehend a little more about Bonding.