by Audrey Faye
The man who ran the nursery and taught them all weapons was already stomping up the hill to meet them. It pained Lily to think of Oceana as wounded, but she had felt the darkness and the emptiness. “Will she get better?”
Fendellen launched herself skyward. ::She already is.::
“Well.” Irin strode over, making no effort to be quiet. “Enough of standing around, missy. Let’s get your dragon something to eat and a cup of water for her tail.” He nodded at Sapphire. “Your mischief maker has been very patient. Go.”
Sapphire sent Lily one last look full of friendship and worry and pride and ran toward the incoming pink-peach blot in the sky.
Irin laid a hand on Alonia’s shoulder. “Karis has a bath waiting for you and a change of clothes.” He gave her a dry look. “And if you wouldn’t mind taking a pass through that gaggle of dragons down there, maybe you can give them something more interesting to do than watch me stomp around.”
Lily almost managed a tired smile. Alonia loved flirting with the unattached dragons, and there were more gathered by the village than she’d seen together in ages.
Kellen just stood, looking uncertain.
Irin’s voice got oddly gentle as he glanced her way. “Kis has been a cranky old man ever since you left, missy. He’s been watching the door for two days now, waiting for you to come visit.”
Kellen gulped. “I don’t have any meat pies for him.”
Irin snorted. “It’s your heart he wants, not your excellent cooking. Go. Inga will send something over for both of you.”
Lily’s eyes widened as Kellen ran off, trailing dust and happiness behind her. “We’re not going to the nursery?”
Irin shook his head and started walking. “Fendellen wasn’t thinking. She finds her comfort there still, but from what I hear, this girl of yours isn’t used to enclosed spaces or other dragons.”
He’d clearly heard a lot. Lily walked alongside him, trying not to jiggle the snoring package on her back. Fendellen might think waking Oceana up was a good idea, but Lily wasn’t remotely convinced. “I don’t know how to help her. She’s scared and she won’t listen and she hasn’t bonded with me properly.”
“I don’t know about that.” Irin waved a hand to stop her protests. “Fendellen told me how the bond feels, but feelings are a luxury. What matters is actions. She came with you. She left her home and came out into the big, scary world just because you asked her to. That right there is a bond, a big and powerful one, and you would do well not to forget it.”
Lily crashed to a halt and stared at him.
His lips twitched into something that might be trying to be a smile, and then he was walking again. “A bond isn’t something out of a ballad. It’s not meant to put quivers in your belly and stars in your eyes. It’s a partnership, and those are built on actions. Choices. There is no tighter bond than the one of soldiers on the battlefield, and they never sit around and flutter their eyelashes at each other.”
Lily’s own lips twitched. She’d seen Alonia trying that often enough. And Irin’s words, gruff as they were, soothed something inside her that had been building toward panic. “What actions will help make it stronger?”
There was approval in his glance. “We’ll go to the kitchen. Inga is through for the day, and I hear your girl is fond of nice things to eat.”
Food had been the only thing that had stopped Oceana’s frantic flights into the sky. Afran had arrived bearing a basket of treats, and Lily had walked most of the day handing small bites up to her shoulder. Which hadn’t been all that easy while constantly holding a cup of water in the vicinity of her dragon’s tail. Maybe in the kitchen they could use one of Inga’s old pots instead. “She’d probably like some water.”
“Already set up. One of the old rain barrels.” Irin’s face didn’t change, but his voice was tinged with amusement. “Inga’s right fit to be tied, so you might stay out of her way for a bit.”
A rain barrel in her kitchen. Lily could only imagine.
The snores behind her right ear were getting more sporadic. “Fendellen thought I should wake her.”
Irin snorted. “She’s fond of fancy entrances, that one. Me, I’m smart enough not to wake sleeping dragons, especially old and cranky ones.”
His words settled some of what had been riling in Lily’s belly. She fell in beside Irin as they entered the village proper. As they turned toward the large rondo that housed the village’s main kitchen, she finally let herself relax a little. They were home, and mostly in one piece, and there were lots of smart people here who knew how to deal with difficult dragons.
Her relief landed just long enough to pass through the kitchen door. Then claws dug into her shoulders, a terrified hiss whirred past her ears, and a blue-green streak headed straight for the open window.
Irin got there before Oceana did, moving with a speed that astonished Lily almost as much as her dragon’s antics. He shook his head at the small, hissing menace. “Oh, no you don’t, missy. There will be no more of that until you have something to eat and show us that you have some manners.”
Lily’s eyebrows flew up at his sternness. Her dragon might not understand his words, but she clearly understood his tone. Oceana still hissed, but quietly. She backed slowly into a corner and tucked in behind Ingrid’s collection of brooms.
Lily winced. Those brooms were one of the few things in the village capable of going up in flames. “I don’t think she has fire, but maybe we should move her.”
“She’s a water dragon. She has no fire.”
Lily stared as Irin crouched down to get a better view of the corner. “I never heard of a water dragon.”
“Kis remembered a story. An old one that we heard in the border lands. Dragons no bigger than cats, living with noble human families and swimming in their moats.” He paused. “The story we heard said there weren’t any left.”
Oceana chittered in the corner, very quietly.
Irin nodded his head at Lily. “Go on, then. She’s yours. Best you convince her to come out and have something to eat.”
Lily wanted to hear more of the story Kis remembered, but right now, her dragon needed her. She crouched down in the dirt close to the corner. “If you’re hungry, there are treats for dragons who can behave.”
Oceana made a noise that sound like chirring and hissing at the same time.
Lily managed not to laugh. She knew what it was to feel grumpy and amused and not want to let go of the first. Which made her feel better. And gave her an idea, because it wasn’t treats she wanted right now. It was something wet for her throat, preferably a whole bucket of it. Maybe her dragon felt the same way. She stood and backed up in the direction of the rain barrel sitting incongruously in the middle of the floor. “I’ll take you down to the river later and we can have a proper swim, but this will do for a start.”
She trailed her fingers in the water and watched Oceana’s whole body light up. “We can get your scales all nice and shiny and clean and show everyone here just how beautiful you are.”
Irin snorted quietly at her back.
She knew what he thought of Alonia’s girly nature, but it didn’t matter. Lily was proud of her dragon, and she wanted everyone to know it. “Come on out from behind those brooms. Those will just get you covered in more dust, and we’ve had enough of that for three lifetimes.”
The noise Oceana made sounded almost like agreement.
Lily held out her hand, covered in dripping water. “It’s cool and it doesn’t stink nearly as much as your swamp.” It still wasn’t anything an elf would want to drink, but for bathing, it was perfect. “I’ll help you get in.”
Oceana gave her a disdainful look and walked over to the barrel, nose in the air.
Lilly rolled her eyes and crouched down. “Would you like a lift into your bath, Your Royal Highness?”
Oceana hopped onto her shoulder, a move a little trickier and a lot more full of claws than when Lily had been wearing her rucksack. She winced and stood awkward
ly, shifting her dragon onto the half cover on top the rain barrel. Then she put her fingers in the water and waited for Oceana’s tail to join her.
She exhaled as Oceana’s contentment flowed through the water. “So much better.”
A chitter of disagreement, and the ruins and the dank water showed up in Lily’s vision. She stared at her dragon. “You have to be kidding me. It was not better there.” She crouched down and looked straight into black eyes. “Your water smelled like a herd of cattle had died there, and you didn’t even want to wake up in the mornings because it was so empty and lonely and dull.”
A gruff chuckle behind her. “It’s certainly none of those things here.”
Irin, making sure neither of them felt alone. Lily leaned into his stern, solid presence and kept being firm with the dragon who needed her to be. “You’re going to take a nice swim, and then we’ll go look at the treats Inga left us, because she’s probably never going to let you into her kitchen again.”
Oceana’s eye ridges raised, and she turned her head, surveying the kitchen from one end to the other.
Lily hoped the banked fire didn’t look like anything scary. There was nothing but coals and a kettle hanging over it, but the heat still coming off the coals was substantial.
Her dragon hissed a little as she spied the huge hearth.
“It’s nothing.” Lily scratched under a blue-scaled chin and tried to project calm. “It will be a big fire in the morning to heat the water for soup, but we’ll be long gone by then.” There were rain barrels all over the village. A bath outside wouldn’t be nearly this warm, but maybe a dragon who’d lived her whole live in cold ruins didn’t care so much about that.
She blinked as Oceana’s tail flicked. Lightning quick, her dragon hopped down from the barrel and shot up a table leg. Then she marched regally right along the table’s edge, surveying the cutting boards and plates with every possible treat to tempt a dragon and her kin.
Lily flew toward the table to stop the inevitable bad manners, but Irin grabbed her arm before she’d taken two steps. “Let her be, missy. She’s just surveying her domain. Getting used to the place, just like a cat.”
Lily blinked. She’d met a few cats, but never spent enough time with one to know their habits. But Irin appeared to be right. Oceana hadn’t attacked the plates—in fact, she was almost ignoring them. Dark blue claws walked right to the end of the table and took a hop to a stool near the fire. Lily winced. They’d all spent most of a day picking tinder out of their hair after the last fire her dragon had met.
“She might not like fire, but cats like it warm.” Irin had let go of Lily’s arm, but his eyes were still on the dragon who was circling on the stool, tilting her head at the hearth. “Maybe we can make her a bed in front of the coals for the night.”
Lily had an old blanket that would serve, but she didn’t want to leave to go fetch it. And it wasn’t the coals Oceana was studying. Lily moved closer, feeling blind without their water connection. She couldn’t see anything special about the scratched and dented soup kettle, but maybe if you’d lived your whole life in a ruin, it looked like treasure. “That’s a pot. The water will stay warm overnight, and in the morning, Inga will add things and make a soup.”
Oceana ignored her.
“Keep talking, missy, even if it looks like she isn’t giving you the time of day. It will help remind her that people aren’t rocks.”
Some of them had rocks for brains, but she got his point. She opened her mouth to say something else, but her dragon was on the move again.
Straight toward the coals.
Lily dove and missed, landing face-first on the dirt floor as Oceana skittered straight up the stone hearth and in one swift, very wet move, leaped straight into the soup kettle. Lily jumped to her feet, reaching for the wildly swaying kettle and trying to keep her skirt out of the coals. She got one hand on the kettle and swiped her face with the other, clearing off the dirt and water that were rapidly turning to mud. “Oceana, you come out of there right this minute.”
Her dragon rested her chin on the kettle’s edge and chittered happily.
Lily glared and thrust her hand in the water. It was beautiful and warm. Not quite as warm as her hot pool, but close. And Oceana was practically exploding with contentment and pleasure.
Lily sighed. “You can’t stay in there. You know that, right? Inga will kill us both.”
Oceana just chittered again and laid her head on Lily’s hand.
Behind them, Irin chuckled.
Lily sighed again and pulled up a stool, watching her dragon swim in happy circles in the soup pot. Life with a dragon definitely wasn’t boring.
Interlude
Lovissa shook her head as the dream faded, and tried not to puff any more smoke out her nose. Her cave stank of it, and no wonder.
The fate of dragonkind rested on a dragon who swam in a soup pot. Lovissa wanted to flick her tail over her eyes and hide, just like she’d done as a hatchling. It was mortifying. A dragon scared to fly had been bad enough, but if she were to tell her warriors of the Dragon Star’s newest choice, the embarrassment would send them into battle with their tails between their legs.
Dragons were proud creatures—and at the very heart of their pride were the breaths of fire. Thus were dragons born and thus were their ashes given back to the Veld. One of their kind who scorned fire was beyond imagining.
Swimming. In a soup pot.
Lovissa let the thick, black humiliation settle on her shoulders. She could not tell her dragons of this new hope. Not until she knew more of the blue-green chosen one.
The dream had not all been dire. The small dragon had bravery enough. The elf would not understand what it had cost to leave home, to leave all that was known.
As her dragons would need to do one day. Lovissa rumbled, and considered. Perhaps all hope was not lost after all. There were lessons to be learned from such courage. And perhaps a dragon who had never known fire, who had only known water, could be forgiven for embracing what lived all around her.
The elf was not weak like the last one, either. She spoke firmly, and her head had very little room for nonsense. Such a one could be a warrior, if she chose, much like the older man who had stood in the shadows. He was an elf Lovissa could almost respect.
If one could look past the smoke of humiliation, there were embers of hope. Lovissa let her eyelids slide back down, feeling better. To look in this way was a queen’s job.
The small dragon would find fire. She was in a place of kin now, and she would learn. On that day, Lovissa would speak of the Dragon Star’s second choice. Of the small one of courage and royal bearing, and perhaps some day of the elf who spoke with a gruffness that any warrior would appreciate.
Lily. Lovissa snorted. Such foolish names these elves had. Lilies were flowers, fragile things that wilted at the smallest whiff of fire. It didn’t suit one of such fierceness.
Lovissa could feel slumber coming for her again, more peaceful this time. She tucked her tail a little more comfortably under her head.
Soup pots.
Part II
Water & Fire
Chapter 8
Lily perched on the small stool next to the rain barrel, leaned her head against the rondo at her back, and scowled at the first colors of the dawn lighting up the sky. This was a ridiculous hour to be up, but Kellen had shaken her awake while it was still the black of night. Something about needing to get the soup going and the bread rising before Inga arrived.
Which had somehow managed to get through the fog in Lily’s head long enough for her to remember why she’d fallen asleep on a stool, wrapped in an old blanket, with her hand in a kettle.
She looked over at her dragon, sitting on top of the half-open rain barrel and watching the coming dawn with alert interest. “How did you manage to sleep so well, hmm?”
Mild amusement drifted through the water that joined them. Oceana preened, turning herself to catch the first rays of light on the large scal
es on her back.
“You’re as vain as Alonia.” Lily shook her head, which felt oddly light after days of wearing the copper headdress of her clan, and lifted up the plate on her lap. “Want some more of this meat pie before I finish it?” Kellen had spirited those out of some hidden location when she’d woken them up, since Oceana had eaten every single bite from the platters sometime in the night.
Oceana turned her face toward the sun and emitted a loud burp.
Lily snorted and took a large bite out of the meat pie. It might be the last one she saw for a while. Inga was bound to be grumpy about a dragon spending the night in her kitchen, even if that’s all she found out. Lily had no idea what Kellen had done with the water in the kettle. Maybe today’s soup would be dragon-flavored.
Lily rotated her head slowly, listening to the bones of her neck crack. First up on today’s list was finding a bucket big enough for Oceana to sleep in—one that would fit beside a nice, comfortable bed for Lily.
“Morning.” Sapphire’s cheery voice emerged from the shadows, shortly followed by Sapphire herself holding up two mugs of something steaming. “Want some cider? Kellen said it will be a bit yet for bread, but she’s got cheese and apples if you’re hungry.”
Lily offered the remnants of her meat pie to the peach-pink nose that was hiding behind Sapphire. “We’ll wait for the bread, thanks.” A rough tongue licked off her fingers, but Lotus wasn’t the dragon Lily was watching. Oceana had snapped to attention, her eyes wide and suspicious and pointed straight at a peach-pink tail.
Sapphire rolled her eyes and half-turned. “You might as well stop hiding behind me, silly dragon.”
That had been a lot easier when Lotus was small.
“She wanted to come visit.” Sapphire was also keeping a watchful eye on Oceana’s body language. “If we’re all marked by the Dragon Star, I was thinking that maybe our dragons are meant to be friends.”