by Marc Secchia
Ping! A few thoughts collided inside his brain and spat out a conclusion. “A promise – you’re engaged? Oh Azania, that’s wonderful news. Congratulations!”
She ducked her head self-consciously. “Not quite yet. Azerim made it clear that our engagement would depend on … uh, well, you.”
“Me?” he spluttered. Clean out the ear canals and try again. “Whatever do you mean?”
“On your permission, specifically.”
“Then, of course I –”
“Dragon, shh.” She could never shut his lips with a finger; the use of both arms carried the idea without covering even a third of his maw. “This is serious.”
“Mussht be sherioush,” he slurred around her arms.
“Dragon! Honestly, you’re terrible. You did miss me, didn’t you?”
“You’d think with all this peace and quiet and time to think out here, I’d be sleeping like a hatchling. But no. Seems I’ve grown accustomed to the presence of this pestiferous person I dare to call a friend.”
Smiling uncertainly, Azania said, “It’s more a promise of a promise. You see, we realised that there’s something new going on under the suns – something that involves a whole new way of being between Dragons and Humans. We don’t want to damage that. Being a Dragon Rider is hard to put into words. Friendship, companionship, soul mates … battle buddies …”
He chuckled, “I agree! How does it feel?”
The girl considered this, head askance. He scented her perfume and a new, different oil she must have used in her hair. It looked utterly lustrous, like delicate filaments of the darkest night. Yet she was still Azania, vibrant and brimming over with concentrated mischief. Ever so beautiful.
Pressing her forehead against his eye, she murmured, Like this.
Images flowed into his mind. Friends patting aside the clouds they flew through. The comfort of a huge paw clasped about her body, knowing that she slept beside living fires. The clash and heart-slamming adrenaline of battle. Patching up one another’s wounds. Peeking around his thigh to snoop on his work as he focussed on mixing just the right blend of colours for a fiery sunset over rippling waters. Swimming together. Feeling the detonation of delight in his body as he saw clearly for the first time through his spectacles. Sharing meals upon lonely mountaintops, snorting with laughter and chasing off errant knights, talking and telling stories and loving one another as the very best of friends. The extraordinary gift of knowing he had her back at all times. No flinching. No regrets.
Dragon sighed, Oh, that’s beautiful. One day you really are going to make me weep real tears.
Those would be jewels of white flame.
Ooh. As for me …
The loneliest Dragon in existence moseyed about his lair, crushed beneath a burden of angst and self-pity and futile rage. No fires. No hope. A future full of nothing. He could not be or become, because he could never believe. Then, in a flash of outrage, he made the best decision he had ever made.
You’re so sweet, Dragon!
He threw her a picture of Prince Floric tumbling over and over down his stairs. For you, I’d do that all over again, save for having you suffer that fool and his vile threats.
Then, he showed her what it meant to find his fires, how a Dragon had changed his every scale, all for the sake of the courage and confidence a treasured Dragon Rider had instilled in his hearts. She melted against him, sobbing – for joy, it must be. He even admitted how miserable he had been out at the end of the talon without her, and how he had feared all was lost. Azania reassured him without words that it was not so.
He said, “Oh! It’s almost time!”
“Time for what?”
“Do you want to hear the Sea Dragons, and my dam’s voice? They’re just days away now!”
“Right – of course! That’s why you’re glowing!” She bounced on her toes. “Oh, Dragon, that’s just the best news since … whenever!”
Aargh, girls. Leaking again. Maybe he was learning to love that Human reaction.
ARIA!! he bellowed.
“Honestly, I’m not going to have any ears left by the time you’re done.”
You thundered, o mighty denizen of the deeps?
There she was! With a smile that squirted fire through the portals of his Dragon hearts, the cobalt warrior Dragoness winged toward him from where she must have been watching their interaction from a quarter-mile away.
Submerge quickly, and listen. Snaffling the Princess into his paw, Dragon hurled himself out over the last boulders. Deep breath, Azania!
Splash. Oh, the music! Her eyes popped wide; he was not sure where Aria was, but he imagined her response must be similar. It was a symphony of draconic horns and bugles at a level of musical complexity that befuddled the brain with its intense, intricate beauty. Next came the words:
≈We’re coming faster. Wait.≈
≈Waiting with my two best friends beneath all the waves!≈
Oh. That was new.
Flummox his white wings, oceanic language really did seem to have a mind of its own. He could not fathom it – pun intended.
Azania signalled upward. Losing air already? He helped her to surface, pushing that part of her which had so distracted a King. She burst into the air with a yell of amazement, splashing so haphazardly, he gripped her waist lest she sink again.
“What was that? Dragon! That was – it really was your dam?”
“Aye, after the music. She said, ‘We’re coming faster, wait.’ They say the same thing every day at this time. I’ve been tracking the incoming migration from over 2,500 miles away.”
“Whoooo-wheeee! No wonder you got stuck here.”
“I think that was more about my fears than –”
“Dragon!” Aria burst out of the waves about four Dragon paces away, swamping them both as she lunged into the air, only to realise that he was still bobbing in the surf. “That was your dam? Incredible! They’re that close?”
“A little under six hundred miles,” he smiled.
Jaw-dropper.
Perhaps he ought not to enjoy confounding her quite as much as he did.
“Dragon – you!” she spluttered at last. “You’ve got some explaining to do. Come over here and let me tell you how much I missed you, and how when I thought you were lost … ah, a Dragoness despaired to the depths of her hearts.”
He eyed her playfully. “Aria, if you’re expecting intelligible sentences and rational thought, maybe we should keep a healthy distance?”
“Mrrrr, you get that stupendously attractive hide over here right now, Dragon, or I’ll have to threaten you with a range of unspeakably delicious torments.”
Whadda-whomp! His fires ignited.
Judging by the way he was now steaming, getting dry would not be an issue.
Looking extremely pleased with herself, Aria added, “Have I told you recently how much I despise the words, ‘healthy’ and ‘distance’? Ghastly idea. Especially when it involves you going missing on the far side of the Archipelago with so much remaining unresolved between us.”
With that, she blew his concern that she was merely content with a renewed flirtation, right out of the water.
No, he knew nothing about females.
Wrong. He knew one thing. Underestimate them at one’s peril, Dragon!
* * * *
The Princess of T’nagru wandered off along the beach, collecting shells. Ahem. In other words, removing herself from the ambit of fiery romance. Subtle. Besides, the beach promised hours of delight for a child of the desert. Her realm was all sand and a lifelong struggle for water. Here was water in incalculable measure, albeit too salty for any Human to drink.
With the evening drawing in, Dragon picked a pleasant spot on the soft white sand against a cosy-looking boulder, well above the high tide line. Let’s overnight here, Aria. Is it … just you two?
Just us. Azerim was fighting off an infection. My Dragonesses returned to Wave Dragonhome for a brief space. They understand that this is a
personal matter.
You take the boulder.
Thanks. I am tired, I’ll admit. We flew from one end of the Archipelago to the other, searching for you.
She curled up with her flank against the boulder. Dragon tried to judge how she was lying, before wedging his tail beneath her neck and making his much larger, taller body into a bulwark of protection, bending about her much smaller frame with draconic limberness until his muzzle rested within the ambit of her hind paws. Tail to muzzle they lay, but their necks curved inward until their eyes lay only a couple of feet apart, and their warm breath mingled in the space between.
For the longest time, they simply lay close. No need to speak in this cosy lair for two. At last, he realised that their breathing had synchronised, for he felt the rise and fall of her flank against his neck and cheek.
Comfortable? he rasped. Not squashing you, am I?
I’ve never lain like this with any Dragon before, let alone one who fires my hearts as you do. It’s … intimate. He inhaled sharply. I have a deficit in that I was never raised to know much affection and intimacy. We’re taught it’s not the warrior way, that males exist to serve us with their gifts and talents. Emotion is excess. Yet I have seen how you are with Princess Azania. I saw her as competition. Can I be honest with you?
He purred encouragement.
As she spoke, her voice took on more of that exotic, lyrical quality which had kept him spellbound from the very first. Dragon, when I said I chose you, I think I meant a male in the image in my mind. I became confused. Seeing you here amongst our kind … I would still choose you in a heartbeat, but not with the arrogance I showed before. I am sorry I put you down, treating you as the lesser creature. You see, I feel a very great weight of expectation upon me as the daughter of Charielle, one expected to lead the Isles Dragonesses one day, and I bowed to that pressure. Tradition. Values and conduct. I’m not sure the Dragonesses know what to make of you – a male who cannot be cowed, who has artistic gifts, yet prefers a totally different way of … being.
The Dragon Rider question has thrown us all into a tailspin. That is what I was dealing with when I dismissed you so harshly, and unfairly. I demanded you be normal according to my norms. That was wrong. Perhaps it is us who are not normal.
Working that out would be hard. Her tone said she understood nuance, another matter upon which he had concluded she fell short. Had he entirely misjudged her hearts’ fires?
Carefully, he said, We’re different. Neither way is right or wrong, Aria. A warrior’s skills are not honed overnight. Nor is any relationship.
Am I too much – those razor wings? Can you be you, and not be sliced apart?
He reflected aloud, I find Azerim’s whole family dynamic very hard. They’re so close. So perfect. I never had that. Neither did Azania, nor you, I’ve come to realise.
The Cobalt Dragoness sighed, I’m trying to say something, but it’s not coming out very well.
What’s that?
I – she drew her gorgeously patterned wings over her eyes, as if she could neither bear to see his reaction, nor hear his words – I don’t just like you, Dragon. I … something-other … you.
Chapter 38: New Beginnings
DRAGON FOUND HIS VOICE in an incredulous snort, You something-other me? Aria!
A lot! she insisted, but did not come out of hiding.
He plucked playfully at the silky edges of her butterfly-like wings. You are something else. Something and someone special. I sense you might be referring to a something-other in which our feelings … wing together, as one.
Her eye peeked out of the wing folds for a second. You something-other me, too?
I rather think so. Although, I would perhaps have put all that something and a lot of other into different words. If we are talking about the same something other, and not another something. Now, will you come out?
No.
No?
I’m too shy.
He burst out laughing. Forgive me, but here’s a side of you I never quite imagined.
It’s just – in this culture, the female always makes the something-other-ish declaration first, do you see? But I want to honour you and your ways.
Dragon eyed the fierce warrior with consternation, rising respect and no little indecision. She truly was trying! Words led to direct, uncompromising action in her worldview. There was no wastage of sentiment – which meant, by extension, that she was not playing the tease here. She knew what she wanted, but a pause to rethink what it meant to him was precious beyond measure.
Perhaps she only needed help framing her response.
Unfurling his wing, he caressed the length of her back with the sensitive tip. Something-other like this?
The fires of her half-hidden gaze whitened. Umm …
And this? With his forepaw, he cupped her chin, and stroked the pulse of her neck, before circling the scales beside her eye with his thumb. I something-other you, Ariamyrielle Seaspray.
She shivered at his touch. I … oh, Dragon!
There might be details and complications to work out, he whispered, but you need to understand, in every part of your being, how deeply I care for you. You are worth caring for, Aria. You deserve every breath we share.
The Dragoness made that same keening sound she had made when faced with the possibility of her kin attacking a brash male and ending him there and then. Her wings folded back a little, framing her slim, elegant muzzle.
He said, I’m not one for the standard storyline, razor wings. I never have been. Maybe it’s to do with the strangeness of my birth and heritage, maybe to do with the way I grew up. We are good for one another, better together than apart. I don’t apologise for not following the standard script. I was fireless, yet I kidnapped the first Princess to be kidnapped in over thirty years. I value Human companionship, honouring a Dragon Rider. I breathe white fires and thrill to the presence of the ocean. I don’t know whether, one day, I will feel the need to migrate with my kind. Do you think you’ll be able to put up with all that?
Putting up with you is awfully hard, Dragon, she smiled, lying through her fangs.
I thought so. That’s why you’re allowing this big, bold male to trap you against this boulder and whisper sweet somethings into your ears.
I’m fighting talon and fang here, but I just can’t seem to escape.
Actually, her hearts were thrashing as if she were in the throes of mortal combat. He did not point out the obvious, however. Not when she seemed to be exploring a new freedom of being in her own right, a way of romancing a male that had to be entirely alien to her upbringing.
He said, Here’s a suggestion. On the Archipelago, I’ll submit to your lead and try not to make such a nuisance of myself, if you’ll allow me to be the brash male around my kin, over in the Tamarine Mountains. What do you think?
Sounds good. I might, however, need to call on you to occasionally cut through situations which might arise in your inimitable, great-white-Dragon way, she suggested, with a cunning rosy tint to her gaze. Even more wickedly, she added, Used well, you could be more than an asset in so many ways. We’ll agree a secret signal –
Upon which I galumph over your enemies?
Perfect.
He caressed her cheek again. Her scales were deceptively soft, like the silken edge of a perfectly whetted talon.
Aria, if indeed we feel the same way, shall we make our declarations together, on a count of three talons?
She nodded eagerly. Good idea. We say it three times. A thrice-bound oath is never broken.
Works for me.
Deep breath. Huge! Had the world stopped turning just for this moment, or was he imagining things?
He counted down with his talons. Three. Two. One.
Ariamyrielle Seaspray, I love you, I love you, I love you.
True Dragon of my hearts, she sang in beautiful melody, I love you, I love you, I love you. I am yours forever, faithful and true.
He echoed, I am yours forever, faithful and
true.
That was not a Tamarine Mountains saying, as best he knew, but it expressed his deepest feelings toward this Dragoness. Each pressing forward, they nuzzled and then twined their necks together, symbolic of the promise of draconic love.
She chuckled self-consciously and nibbled at his skull spikes. You’re so huge! You do know that Sea Dragons are said to grow all of their lives, don’t you?
Eh? No, I didn’t.
Slower in the adult years, but inevitably. How much of you am I going to get to enjoy?
All of me.
Aria blinked in acknowledgement, her fires softer and more beautiful than he had ever seen them. Mesmeric eyes.
She said, Dragon, may I wait with you for your dam’s arrival?
I’d like nothing more. You honour me.
Was it possible for a soul to sigh in relief, and burn white with the fires of joy?
* * * *
A short while later, Azania returned from her shell-collecting. Her boots scrunched along in the soft sand as she approached them, saying, “The evening’s growing cooler. You two look cosy.”
Dragon popped up his head and gave her a solemn wink. “It’s very warm in here.”
She eyed the intertwined bulk of their bodies. “How does one – ah, thank you, Dragon.”
Gripping his proffered talon with her hands, she walked up his tail and then over Aria’s neck, before dropping into the small sandy space between them.
“Cosy?” Aria purred.
“Positively balmy,” the Princess agreed. “Without being an awfully nosy busybody, do I sense that your chat went well?”
The Dragoness drew a little circle in the sand around the desert Princess with her fore talon, and said, “Just enough room for one more, I think. That would complete our little family – what do you say, Dragon?”
“Aye. Indeed, I have the perfect candidate in mind.”
“You two! What’s been going on here?”
“Oh, we were whispering sweet and fiery somethings to each other,” Dragon said airily.
“Spelled, ‘L-O-V-E,’ ” Aria clarified.
Azania gave a squeal of joy. “You did? You did! Oh … I’m so happy for you both! How does it work with Dragons? Are you mated, now? Or is this a beginning?”