bubbling on her lips. Alive! The twin suns baked her shoulders, and she was alive! The storm had rumbled off over the endless Cloudlands, leaving sopping vegetation and a fresh, loamy-wet smell to speak of its fury. The dragonet rested atop her head, his wings drooping either side of her face. Her heartbeat pulsed in her ears, lub-lub, a life-affirming sound, while the pulse in his chest was a complex, ever-shifting drumbeat driven by multiple hearts.
For sheer overflow of joy, she began to sing. Her voice was as rusty as metal left to corrode near the caldera floor, so Lia sang in an almost-whisper. As she sang, she gently shifted the dragonet from its perch on her head into the crook of her left arm.
“You’re a beautiful–ah–” she checked, and blushed “–boy. Oh, aye! You are.”
If he was like any male she knew, she hoped he never found out she had mistaken him for a pretty female at first.
A more appropriate song suggested itself:
Rejoice! O my soul, rejoice!
Soar with the dawn fresh to the day,
Rejoice! O my soul, rejoice!
May these suns brighten upon my way.
No mind that she felt as wrung out as a dishcloth used to scrub pots in the Palace kitchens for the last ten years. Her excitement was unbridled. The Dragon of Death had been cheated of his prey. He would hunt no more, not this day. She might be stuck four miles down a cliff, with no hope of climbing back up again until her arm and stomach healed, but Lia’s heart pulsated with gratitude.
She had a chance to avenge her family.
Aye, and the Roc had better watch his back from now on.
However, such grim oaths did not match her mood. Tenderly, all choked up with wonder and thankfulness, Lia stroked the dragonet. “I’ve never known an animal as faithful as you, little one. Thank you for … everything. How shall I name you? After all, it seems you want to be my friend, for you came back to me.”
He was incredible. His scales had the supple gloss of Helyon silk, yet Dragon scales were known to be diamond-hard. Every detail of his body was sculpted, from the striated muscles and delicate wing struts, to the miniscule detail of the tiniest scales around his eyes. The longer she scrutinised his scales, the more different patterns she found, a palette of greens and flecks of gold which could not conceivably be pinned down to any handful of colours. Lia shook herself free of the subtle hypnosis this investigation exerted on her mind. The dragonet lived and breathed, yet, if she listened as closely as she could, it was to detect a faint crackling within his belly. She held a living coal, a creature of enchanted fires. His body radiated warmth into her belly, soothing the much-abused tissues around her wound.
He watched her! Lying content in her arms, the little creature’s eyes swirled with flame. He had no apparent pupils or irises, just pellucid, almost crystalline orbs filled with an ever-shifting inner storm, clouds and colours and fires all mixed together. And she called this magical creature, an animal?
She had to be the greatest fool ever to have walked the Islands.
* * * *
Your eyes are leaking again, said the dragonet. What does this signify?
As she leaned over him, the twin suns’ radiance highlighted the girl’s pale, fine straw. Flicker lay in an unimaginable place, in the arms of a Human girl, surrounded by a waterfall of molten platinum that rippled as she moved, reminding his Dragon soul of the melody of flight.
She touched her soft lips to his muzzle. A kiss! “Thank you, dragonet.”
Never in his life had Flicker been more confused. Did she mean rather to rub muzzles? That was a common greeting between dragonets, becoming longer and more elaborate the closer the relationship in a warren. Only a dragonet and his mate would ever kiss as she had done. Clearly, she did this out of ignorance, yet he could not help but be deeply touched, for her emotions were as transparent to him as the crystal formations of the caverns beneath the Island.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m Lia, as I said before. Say ‘Li-ya’.”
Lia? He tried aloud, “L-Layer … Lia.”
Her laughter was the burbling of a playful stream, the petting motion of her hand, at once frightening and delightful. The girl–Lia–placed one digit on the point of his nose.