strapping on her daggers with a studied unconcern that had the dragonet gaping. Would he ever understand the ways of a two-legged female? “Tell him to wait just a rajal’s whisker, Flicker.”
Flicker coughed up fire as he squeaked, “You tell him!”
A huge blue paw smashed through the floorboards, shooting splinters and chunks of wood across the room. Grandion snarled, “You come here right now, you wretched bundle of vexation, or I swear I’ll pulverise this place–”
“Coming, Grandion,” she cooed.
Flicker blenched. That was completely the wrong tone to take with a Dragon … on cue, Grandion’s fury erupted in spectacular style. He roared so deafeningly and so long that the Islanders could probably have heard him back on Gi’ishior, never mind Rolodia. Rock detonated just a couple of feet above their heads, while the south tower wall bulged and cracked as he flexed his muscles. Nails shrieked as the incensed Tourmaline Dragon tore through the floor, tossing boards and sturdy beams to the winds.
Hualiama shrugged her Nuyallith sword harness over her shoulders. “Right, Flicker, just a couple more things and I’ll be ready.”
A wordless squeak of dread escaped the dragonet. Hualiama deftly sidestepped a grasping paw, as if the Dragon were fishing for her like a dragonet fishing in a pond, and scooped her belongings into her arms.
“Quick, Flicker. Upstairs now.”
“There’s neither an upstairs nor stairs left anymore,” he pointed out.
Grandion’s forepaws swept the room from either end, eventually corralling the Human girl near the middle. His muzzle punched through what remained of the ceiling. The Tourmaline Dragon glowered at Hualiama from a distance of six inches, panting great gasps of smoke, growling deep in his belly as his tail idly demolished another section of the Rolodian jail tower behind him. Flicker sensed that his righteous wrath had robbed him of words, or more accurately, he did not wish to open his jaw and embroil her in a deadly firestorm. Grandion’s sword-like talons flexed as if longing to burrow into a certain Human’s impudent neck.
Flicker decided that at this precise moment, the path of valour would be to bury himself beneath the rubble, or be flying a hundred leagues an hour in the opposite direction.
“I’m ready when you are, Grandion,” Lia chirped, with a radiant smile. “Oh, and this is for coming to pick me up after my shopping.” Leaning forward, Hualiama planted a kiss directly on Grandion’s left eye. “You’re the best.”
Although, a dragonet could be moved to contemplate murder on occasion.
Chapter 22: Maroon Madness
HUMAN, DRAGON AND dragonet camped that evening on the wild, uninhabited northern shore of Rolodia Island, beside a terrace lake shimmering like fiery stained glass as the lambent twin suns fired their rays beneath the broad underbelly of waxing Iridith, dominating the south-western skies as only the yellow moon could. The mile-wide fourth and lowest band of terrace lakes, buttressed by mighty dam walls only the Ancient Dragons knew how to build, was home to a vast cornucopia of bird life which loved the violet-tufted reed beds and towering, impenetrable bamboo forests, and filled with the silverback trout famed throughout the region. An optical illusion made the far side of the unspoiled lake appear to run right into the Cloudlands, giving an impression of infinite distance. Warmly tinted in an awe-inspiring palette of colours, the evening was without equal.
Why a soul-lost sadness to darken such a day?
Hualiama sat on a grassy knoll overlooking this tableau, and hugged her knees to her chest. Grandion and Flicker bathed at the lakeside, the deft dragonet engaged–with much lip-smacking and trills of happiness–in plucking mites from beneath Tourmaline Dragon’s scales and gobbling them down.
The song of her heart was a haunting ballad:
Alas for the far shores, my heart, my third heart,
Alas for the stars, illuming thy doom,
Let my soul take wing upon dawn’s twin fires …
And fly to thee.
Alas for the fair peaks, my love, my fierce love,
Alas for the scorching winds, which stole thee away,
Let my soul take wing upon dawn’s twin fires …
And fly to thee.
So she had sung for Amaryllion, unwittingly, in the darkness beneath Ha’athior’s Island-massif, and the darkness had turned to magic and light, and that light was the naissance of a friendship few could have imagined.
Flicker’s voice rose, carrying clearly to her ears because of the stillness. Evidently, your large cranial cavity is woefully underutilised, Grandion. Insipid follicular filaments my shell-mother’s warty backside! Let me teach you about Human females. I am an expert, after all.
From beneath her lashes, giving no outward sign that