Dragonfriend (10 page)

“You call that clothing?” Flicker asked, not bothering to crack open an eye.

“That’s right, clothing. In a manner of speaking.”

Lia eyed her new top judiciously. It would not pass for decent apparel in any royal court of the known Island-World, she imagined. Her options were limited, for the material of her attire that fateful morning when Ra’aba staged his revolt had not been designed with rough living in mind. Her ankle-length skirt had now been shortened to mid-thigh, in order to provide enough material to fashion a brief halter top from the remaining scraps.

“Why ‘in a manner of speaking’?” asked the dragonet, mimicking her delivery with the skill of a parakeet.

“Because it doesn’t cover enough of my skin.”

Needlework was not a Hualiama strong point. Fixing Dragonships? Any day. Tinkering with her solo Dragonship was one of her favourite pastimes, adjusting the rigging or figuring out better ways of harnessing an engine’s power. Grease was good. Tiny needles and fine lacework were not. She yelped and sucked her finger. Definitely not!

Explain this nudity taboo to me,
said Flicker.
Are your female parts not attractive to a male of your kind, that you must cover them up?

Flicker!
She clicked her fingers rudely at him.
My parts … um …

Tell me, what would a Human male find attractive? Your long, pale straw?

Aye, my straw!
Lia had finally learned the word in Dragonish, and her tone turned waspish as he teased her again.
I guess … they might …

And your haunches?
He grinned toothily.
I’ve observed Human males are similar to dragonets in this regard.

I refuse to answer that question, you rude, crude creature.

Lia drew the length of fabric across the middle of her back, brought it around her ribs, crossed it over the essentials, and drew the ends together behind her neck. She tied a knot and adjusted the fit self-consciously, hoping that the dragonet might change the subject.

Flicker continued,
So, Human males don’t mind you covering your hide? This is ‘polite’ in Human society?

How do I look?

The dragonet’s eyes whirled with lively curiosity. Hualiama was certain there was another rash of questions coming from the inquisitive dragonet, or one of his ever-sharp insults. He simply did not understand clothing. Neither did she, in this heat, but the thought of dashing barefoot over the blistering black ledge to their little rock pool on the far side of the ledge was too much to contemplate. Was she desperate enough? Nay.

If I confess I don’t find you attractive, that’s bad, right?

Lia burst out laughing.
Aha, you remembered that lesson! Well done, Flicker.

So, should I say your breasts are well-formed? Shapely?

Heat exploded into her face. “No!” Lia shouted, trapped between mortification and horror. “Don’t you dare! That’s male dragonet culture, Flicker–your display rituals–the dancing, the flaring wings, stalking a female and breathing fire. Humans are more subtle … well, not always. Islands’ sakes! Let’s talk about something else.”

Well, does their size matter?

“We are not discussing the size of my … my–end of Island!”

Flicker pretended to be hurt, although the curl of fire that escaped between his fangs told Lia that he was unrepentant.
We discussed how Dragons find physical size attractive,
he protested.
Why can we not discuss your size?

“Because it’s too personal,” said Lia, fanning her face with her hands. “I’m not a stick and I’d thank you not to notice.”

Although, she had lost weight–as might be expected after being stabbed in the belly, tossed to the windrocs, and having to survive on a diet of raw fruit and meat thereafter. Her skirt sagged on her hips. Her already toned dancer’s body had turned gaunt. Such royal comforts as she had enjoyed, now seemed to belong to another life.

It’s strange how Humans have fires, too,
offered the dragonet.
Hold still–another Dragon.

Lia followed the faraway red speck with her gaze, shrinking further beneath the tree.
That’s the third Dragon this week. What’s going on, Flicker? Do you think the Dragons have found us?

* * * *

Flicker’s eyes leaped from the faraway Dragon to his rosy-cheeked companion.

The Human girl’s ever-busy hands had turned to the matter of fashioning another hunting sling, having broken the previous three. Securing a length of vine between her toes, she shaved it with her dagger using long, steady strokes. As the dragonet watched her working, he wondered at these strange Human customs of manners and taboos and politeness; their many-layered, complex disguises for truth. Who should care if she covered herself to her knees with a piece of cloth, or to her ankles? Only Humans. If he could observe her interacting with others of her kind, he might find a few answers.

“Another sling?” he enquired.

“I don’t have the tools to build a decent bow,” said Lia. “I’m not as good with a sling, but I can hit a moving target one in three times. I need to hunt tonight.”

“I’m ready,” said Flicker.

Her green eyes flashed a warning at him.

“Or you can practise your skills,” he amended hastily. “You’re very stubborn.”

Stubborn was his latest Human word, and it described Lia well, he felt, in the way that she focussed on problems until she solved them. She never gave up. It pleased him that they were so alike in this–well, with one exception. Ra’aba, the fungus-face who had thrown her off the Dragonship. Fear of him shrivelled her soul.

His belly-fires fulminated at this thought.

Lia glanced up. “Indigestion, Flicker?”

The dragonet bared his fangs lazily. “I expect a young, juicy lemur this time, not a tough old piece of goat sinew.”

She made a mocking half-bow. “Any further wishes, your blazingly majestic draconic highness?”

Indeed, I have a modest list–

“Shall I scribe my list on your green lizard-hide?”

“Ooh, sharpening our little fangs, are we?”

Lia giggled, “You should brush your fangs. Your breath stinks. Rotten meat.”

“I’ll just burn it out,” said Flicker, breathing a curl of fire toward her toes.

She jerked her feet away. “Islands’ sakes, that’s hot!”

Despite their shared laughter, Flicker’s thoughts were in another warren entirely. She was right. He should ask the Ancient One what they could do, for he had no desire to be chasing his Human friend down another cliff. Perhaps a hundred dragonets could carry her to another Island in a net made of vines? He brightened briefly, before realising that if a Dragon saw them leave, she was dead anyway. The dragonet’s eyes narrowed, scanning the skies.

Dragons patrolled up there. Why?

If he had still been part of the warren, the latest news would have been at his talon-tips. Could there be war between Humans and Dragons? Or a less sinister explanation?

He said,
Please be careful, Lia. Don’t go far.

I won’t.
Now, her eyes lit upon him with disconcerting force.
Are you ready to tell me what happened in the warren, Flicker?

Quietly, he said,
I am, and I thank you for protecting my mind, Lia. What Mother Lyrica intended, what you saved me from, is called ‘first impression’.
He searched for the right words, knowing he still needed to simplify his language for her to understand.
It is a process which wipes the mind clean, returning it to the state in which a hatchling begins their life in the warren. It is … retuned. It does not remember the past.

The tear which reached her chin, sparkling there for an instant before dropping to the ground between her legs, shocked him. Was she an empath? How else could she feel his pain so intensely? How had she wrested him from Lyrica’s power? The Ancient One must know.

Flicker added,
Harmony is paramount in the warren.

She wailed,
What have I done to you, Flicker? What have I done?

He rushed to her, crooning, rubbing muzzles with the Human girl.
It was my choice. I made my decision long before I met you, Lia.

Her weeping excoriated his soul.

* * * *

Heavy-hearted, Hualiama hunted in a most unusual night–a moonless night. With five moons crowding the sky, aside from the myriad stars, Island-World nights were almost never devoid of light. Iridith the yellow, Jade the green, the Blue and Mystic moons, and White, all dominated the skies in their various orbits and periods. For just three nights a year, and only for a few hours at most, a night might be moonless. Then, the glory of the stars blazed with a rare and breathtaking brilliance.

Lia could not shake the concern that she had unwittingly ripped Flicker from his home, from his loved ones, and from all of his kind. How could that be good for any dragonet? Yet he assured her he was happy, and better off without them. Truth be told, the prospect of being a faceless clone in a community of clones, terrified him. How had she beaten the red dragonet? Hualiama concluded that in her extremity, she had somehow been able to exploit the magic indwelling that cavern to withstand the warren-mother’s power.

With a brace of lemurs slung over her shoulder and a small vine net of ripe fruits weighing on her belt, Lia trudged back along a familiar trail. In this darkness, a misstep was inevitable, so she felt for each step before trusting it. She should have waited until dawn to hunt.

Just before midnight, she approached the ledge. All was still.

Of course, Flicker was not inside the cave. Lia sighed. Another night-time jaunt for the dragonet, after she had instructed him to stay put? Incorrigible pest! She’d have his hide for this. About as incorrigible as a certain girl she might name, Hualiama chuckled. They made a perfect pair–scoundrels to the core!

Lia padded outside to make her ablutions near the picturesque hundred-foot waterfall at the southern edge of their ledge. Sleep? She was too keyed-up to feel sleepy, despite the water’s soothing burble. How many people in the Island-World were privileged to see the stars on a night like this? Stretching out on her favourite flat rock, she knitted her fingers behind her neck and began to name the constellations with quiet resolve–the Dragon Rampant, the Fisherman, Fra’anior’s Breath and the Sky-Strider.

She should not allow her mind to wither from disuse.

Half of the sky was cut off by the black cliff soaring above her, but to the south and west and north, the monumental expanse of the Island-World cast the doings of a not-truly Princess of Fra’anior into insignificance. If it was true that Dragons had made Humans, she mused, who had made the moons and stars?

Perhaps great star-faring Dragons ruled the cosmos. It was their eyes gleaming up there in the darkness, all-seeing and omnipotent, crossing the unthinkable distances of space and time by the power of Dragon thought and magic. Lia chuckled. Any race with that kind of power could enslave Humans at the snap of a talon. More likely, they would not even need slaves. The Dragons of Fra’anior seemed to correlate Humans with an annoying swarm of mosquitoes. Occasionally, they might need to swat a few, especially if they dared to stray into Dragon territory.

Her nose wrinkled. Funny … now she detected a whiff of that same smell she had noticed when she first entered their cave with Flicker. Cinnamon? Crystal magic? Suddenly restive, Hualiama glanced about her. She could not remember rightly, but the small pool seemed to have taken on a new shape–at least, had that huge boulder lain next to it, two nights before? Had it been dislodged during a storm, they would surely have heard the impact from half a mile off.

Now her mind served up monkey-babble for thought. Hualiama’s eyes returned to the velvet skies. That gleaming expanse of stars … wow!

She whispered, “If I were a Dragon, I’d fly to the stars.”

“Me too.”

Lia gasped. “Flicker? Is that you? Don’t scare me like …
aaah!
”

The stars blotted out. Hualiama rolled instinctively, but thumped into something hard. Before thought could intrude, she switched direction, slipping free of a grasping talon the size of her leg. Dear sweet … ‘Roll!’ her mind shrieked. ‘Leap!’ Another swipe splintered the rock beside her thigh. Lia was up, sprinting, screaming as she ran for her life. A massive shadow sprang away from the cliff face. A wing swept down ahead of her. Lia’s nose smacked into a hard, leathery surface. She bounced straight into a Dragon’s paw, which flattened her with irresistible power.

Dragon-thunder reverberated against her eardrums, “How dare you run from me?”

An Island stood atop her back, three rock-hard digits crushing her shoulders, ribs and thighs into the stone. The vast rasp of the creature’s breathing filled her world. Lia distinctly felt the heat of its breath wash over her back, but her world had reduced to a simple need: oxygen. Only that. The night became blacker as her lungs heaved against the impossibly massive compression of a Dragon’s grasp.

A wheeze escaped her lips. “Please …”

The Dragon spat, “Please what?”

“Can’t … breathe.”

“As if you deserve another breath, trespasser.” However, the paw did lift, if only an inch.

Her heart rattled painfully up near her throat, a mouse thrashing in a steel trap. She could not see much from her position, but Lia sensed something of the size of this predator. The Dragon’s talons felt as thick as her thighs, and terminated in foot-and-a-half blades visible beyond her nose. By the timbre of his voice, she imagined a young male Dragon, not a fully-grown adult, although she had no way of knowing how she arrived at this conclusion.

People did not just sit down to lunch with Dragons.

Again, the hot, enigmatically redolent breath stirred her hair. In a growl that turned the pit of her stomach into a bowl of quivering prekki-fruit mush, the Lesser Dragon rumbled, “You dare to live on holy Ha’athior, little Human? Tell me why I shouldn’t give you a short flight from a great height?”

Monstrous irony! A bleak, chopped-off laugh fell from her lips. Hualiama shuddered as the terrible grip intensified, grinding her jaw against the rock. Somewhere behind her, anger throbbed in the Dragon’s belly, the same fires she heard inside Flicker, only a hundred times larger. His hold was so powerful, Lia could not even turn her head to gaze up at him. All she knew was an awesome voice a mere foot from her quivering back, rich and deeply resonant. So noble. So formidable, and so utterly alien to her experience, vibrating right through her body as though her very bones thrummed to his prodigious tune. How many times had Lia unknowingly flattened an ant beneath her heel? This Dragon could do the same, should he so choose.