Secret Agent #9

TITLE: Dragon Scales
GENRE: MG Contemporary, light fantasy

The first time I saw my violin, she winked at me from the top shelf of Sorić's Violin Shop. Opened her bright yellow eye, flashed a smile full of needle-sharp teeth and squinched shut her eyelid.

Violins don't wink, you say. It's impossible. They're made of wood and varnish. They have four metal strings, stretched over a wood bridge and wound around pegs in a box by the scroll.

The scroll doesn't morph into a dragon's snout when adults aren't looking. Their mouths aren't full of tiny, razor sharp teeth and they don't nip at you when you miss a note playing scales to warm up.

Enormous bat-ears don't pop up and swivel to listen to you play.

They don't have long, thin tails that whip out of the tailpiece button and curl around your neck when they tuck into your chin. And they don't help you keep time in the music by thumping their tails against your back.

You can't count on their back paws gripping your shoulder and pushing to the perfect height on your chest.  

They don't speak in Italian musical terms.

They most certainly don't have paper-thin wings that fold into their C-bouts, the C-shaped curves on both sides.

And they never, ever fly.

You're 100-percent right.

That's what I thought a violin was, too.

Until I met Zora.