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When she went for a swim, crabs and fish knew to stay far away. Humans didn't share that same instinct. She maneuvered around dozens of feet, keeping far enough away that she was sure none of them had spotted her. Her sensitive ears picked up snippets of human conversation just above the waterline. She had about twenty minutes of air left. Cayna dug her fingers into the sand to keep herself from floating up to the surface. She pulled herself along, inch by inch. She saw nothing but water, sand and wading feet, some bare, some clad in sandals. A small pair of feet waded toward her. Cayna let them get close. She smiled. It was time to let them all know she was here. Her human fingers untied the laces of her bikini. She lifted her foot and curled her toes around the tiny pieces of fabric. Her feet widened as they transformed, skin becoming thick leather as her toes curled into clutching talons. She pushed away from the sand with fingers already bending into clawed toes. Her arms widened into forelegs. Her hind legs thickened. Her frame of vision widened. She burst free from the water, snout and horns first. A dark-skinned boy, no older than seven with floaties on both arms, gaped at her. She would have grinned if her snout had allowed it. A beat of the wings that appeared on her back sent her up, halfway out of the water, until she towered over the boy. She let more beats of her wings carry her up, up and up. The fifty-foot shadow of her fully transformed body fell across the water. Screams, gasps of surprise and shouts met her. Hundreds of eyes turned to watch her. Human arms pointed. "Cayna! It's Cayna!" Salt water dripped off her blue-green scales. She hovered in the sky and peered down the beach, which stretched on for miles. Beachgoers, umbrellas and towels formed a nearly unending line up and down the coast, from one island to the next one, just barely in sight. Not everyone had noticed her yet. As she left the shocked boy behind and flew along the beach, more heads looked up. She pointed her snout toward the clouds and released a burst of red flame hotter than the sun beating down. Her audience let out wolf-whistles, whoops and applause. She was, undoubtedly, the highlight of their day. Moments like this were so enjoyable, a nice change from the rest of her time. She'd taken a break to go on a swim, and that had been fun on its own, but now, she basked in the freedom to be completely herself in full view of so many humans. But even a moment like this wasn't free of obligation. The yachts floating three miles off the coast got a good view, too, as she lit the sky on fire. She'd flown closer to them earlier and had determined they weren't dangerous. They were probably just partiers enjoying international waters, but it didn't hurt to send a message, just in case the coast guard boat holding position half a mile from the coast wasn't enough. That was probably enough showing off. Cayna banked to the side and descended toward an empty expanse of beach, halfway between the shoreline and the strip of hotels. She landed on all fours. Kids came running from among the umbrellas, laughing and calling her name. Cayna took the opportunity to shake herself free of water, splashing the kids. They squealed and laughed, delighted. Their parents jogged up behind them and stopped to stare at the American Dragon up-close. Cayna released her grip on her bikini and rolled onto her back and then onto her stomach, letting the sand rub against as many scales as possible. Her scales itched from her dip in the salt water, and the abrasive sand scratched that itch in such a satisfying way. She pulled in her wings and tail as she rolled to avoid hitting anyone. The kids still dodged around her, screeching, until their parents finally remembered they were parents and pulled the kids to a safer distance. She rolled back onto her feet, shook off the sand and walked off on her four legs. She left the bikini behind. She'd return for it in a moment. "Bye, Cayna!" the kids called after her. She wandered toward several seven-foot-tall mounds forming a broken barrier between the hotels and the ocean. The parents stopped their kids from following as she stepped carefully over a dune. She found her backpack right where she'd left it, in the little valley among the dunes. That was all the privacy she was going to bother to find. She let herself shift. The space in the valley was tight one moment and then more than big enough the next. She shifted from dragon to human and back every day. The human form had long since become a second skin, but she never failed to notice the sheer size difference between the two forms. Hotel guests in upstairs rooms could have seen her transformation, but Cayna didn't really care if someone saw her naked human form. Even after a century of bowing to American prudishness, their sentiments hadn't really rubbed off on her. It was amusing, really, how much they didn't seem to mind looking at her naked dragon form but got so angry and flustered if she tried to go without clothes in her human form. She brushed off the sand coating nearly every inch of skin, which didn't feel as pleasant on human skin as it had on her scales. She reached into her backpack for a towel and her clothes. She dressed in the underwear, shorts and T-shirt she'd been wearing when she arrived on the beach two hours ago. Her hearing was sharp enough to pick up the footsteps kicking their way over a mound of sand. A white man with messy brown hair appeared on the crest of the dune. He wore swim trunks and no shirt. His arms, normally pale, had turned red along with his chest and shoulders. She had a feeling he would be suffering tomorrow from a bad sunburn. His hand covered his eyes. "Is it okay to look?" "Go ahead," she said, amused. "It's Ray Boyer, isn't it?" She'd only ever seen him in suits under bright studio lights. "Yep, that's me. It's good to see you again." He dropped his hand. "You wouldn't happen to have any sunscreen, would you? I've run out and I think I need to put some on again. I'll give it back next week." She shook her head in disbelief as she pulled the bottle out of her backpack. She tossed it to him, then pulled out a pair of sandals and slid them on. "Thanks." He opened the cap and frowned at the foil seal. "This bottle hasn't been opened." "I don't need it." She never got sunburned. She had naturally bronzed skin and dark hair so she hardly needed to tan, but she'd known dragons with lighter skin in their human forms, and they didn't burn in the sun, either. "So why carry it?" She strung her backpack over her shoulder. "One of you is always getting sunburned. And then my protective instincts kick in." "Instincts" wasn't the right term, but it was as good a word as any. "You're a bit far from Jersey." "Nah, they've got planes for that nowadays. You may have heard of them." "Yes. Noisy things. The pilots never like it when I do loops around them." "Er ..." This, finally, made him pause. "You don't come close enough to, uh, scratch the metal or anything, do you?" She smirked. "Of course not. That would be dangerous for everyone on the plane, and I'm here to protect, not to harm." "Right. Um. Well, I'm here because I'm on vacation with my wife and our kids. It's spring break for them." He waved vaguely back toward the beach. "I saw you head over here and thought I'd just come over and say hi." "And steal my sunscreen?" He shrugged. "Maybe I'll sell it on eBay. Make some money," he said lightly. "No, I actually spotted you when you went into the water earlier. You were underwater for a while. Just how long can dragons hold their breath, anyway?" "Ask me next week. I'll see you then, Mr. Boyer." "See you in the studio," said Ray.
 She walked along the beach, passing each hotel until she reached the one she'd liked the look of from the air. Some people she strolled past on the beach recognized her and called after her, thanking her for the show. Most of the crowd paid her no mind. A dragon not in dragon form was never as interesting. She'd noticed that many times before, and today was no exception. The hotel lobby was human-sized, just like all buildings. Cayna had a theory that builders never took dragon-sized dimensions into consideration. There was only one dragon in the country, so why would they bother making it easy for a dragon in dragon form to enter a building? She was lucky she had a human form to fall back on. Her human hand could pull open a door with ease. Her human form could step through it. In the lobby, puddles shaped like human footprints formed tracks from the doors to the elevator. Cayna glanced down at them as she walked up to the counter. The woman behind the counter gave her a distracted smile as she scanned Cayna's face. It was an expression Cayna saw often. She could take a guess what was going on in this woman's mind: She knew she'd seen Cayna before, she just couldn't place it, not yet. Cayna made it easier by handing over her government-issued credit card and federal photo ID — the custom one with two very distinct headshots. "I'd like a room for one night, please, as high up as you have available. I believe you have windows that open." The woman's eyes widened. "Of course, Ms. Maren." "Mrs." Her eyebrows dipped in confusion. "Oh, I'm sorry. Mrs. Maren." Cayna felt confused, too. Why had she corrected the woman? Cayna hadn't thought about her marriage in a long time. It was likely no human alive remembered that she wasn't single. When was the last time she'd thought about her nest-mate? And why had she thought about him now, in the middle of a beach hotel lobby? She was still troubled as she took the keys and followed the woman's directions to her room. A shower took care of the salt and sand still on her skin and in her hair. Later, she climbed into the king-sized bed that was too big for her human frame but too small for her dragon form – all hotel beds were. She did her best to relax in her human form, but sleeping with sheets against skin was never as comfortable as scales on rocks. In her dreams, claws raked down her scales. Someone's wings wrapped around her and held fast. She nipped his leg in response, but playfully, without tearing muscle. Hot breath smothered the air in a cavern. They lay on a floor of woven sticks and leaves, both coarse and soft in ways that hotel mattresses could have never hoped to match. She woke late in the night. She stared at the blinking numbers of the desktop alarm clock. The hotel blankets were too smooth. Her skin crawled with the wrongness of being here. She'd slept in beds for almost a century. She'd thought she'd long since adjusted to it. So why would she dream of things she hadn't experienced in a hundred years? The sheets shredded with a loud ripping sound as she threw them off of her. She held up her hand and realized it had turned into a scaly paw. She didn't bother turning it back to human. She used her other hand, still in human form, to throw her things into her backpack. She could see in the dark just fine. She crossed the room to the window and climbed up onto the sill. The metal edges of the window frame dug into the pads of her human feet. She lifted one ankle behind her and draped the backpack straps over it. She jumped and changed. Her ankle expanded as her leg transformed to a dragon's hind leg. The backpack straps fit like an ankle bracelet on her dragon-form leg. Not many people on land were awake to witness the blue-green-scaled dragon take to the skies. But the passengers and pilots on the commercial flight she came across got a great view. It was climbing the sky outside the Miami airport. The plane was mostly dark except for a few caution lights on the fuselage. As she approached, shades rose as passengers crowded around the windows for a view of her. The frames of every window flared to life, LED lights pointed outwards, illuminating her like spotlights on a stage. Some airlines in the U.S. installed the special lights in every model of plane they built. Cayna had such a reputation for "playing" with commercial flights that the airlines had deemed the investment worth it. Cayna circled the plane two more times, giving them the show they wanted, before soaring away. She headed north over central Florida, then headed west across the Panhandle. She continued across the country, passing over the southern states and the southwestern states. The black splotches of lakes, channels and swamps were landmarks she'd long since memorized, easily recognizable among home-security lights and streetlights marking highways. She'd even driven down some of those roadways and walked inside many of those cities. It took hours to reach the Pacific coast, but she wasn't traveling at her top speed. She left Florida behind in the middle of the night, and she arrived in the middle of the night in California. She thought about finding a spot on a slope and sprawling on the grass. But she began to flag while Sacramento stretched out below her and the mountains were too many miles away. Instead, she checked into another hotel, called the Miami hotel to tell them she'd checked out, and slept another twelve hours in a bed that felt as uncomfortable as the last. But at least, this time, she was too tired to dream. The next day, she headed up north to Washington, then went east at a slower pace. She patrolled, watching every city she passed over, and as usual, found nothing at all. She stopped again in Minnesota, found a hotel, then set off again after resting. She did a full circuit of the country. It was her usual patrol. She watched the skies for enemies. She scanned the ground for dangers she could help with. She found none for her particular talents, so all was well. Once upon a time, Cayna had done flybys along the border, but current United States relations with Canada and Mexico prevented her from doing so. She had to settle for patrolling close to but not directly on the border and trust border agents not to screw it up, even though they often did. Crimes still occurred, but most of them were handled by the police. She kept on patrolling, regardless. She ended this particular patrol in New York, just in time for the interview circuit.
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