your family like, Flicker? Do you have family? A mother, who–er, hatched you?” He seemed more interested in the lemur as she skinned it. “Fine, have the intestines.”
Thanks, straw-head.
Lia wished she knew everything the dragonet said. The dragonet laughed at her for no apparent reason, sometimes, or ribbed her gently with words she did not understand. She was convinced Flicker must think her stupid, because he often acted as if he expected a response from her, yet he had not to her knowledge spoken or otherwise tried to communicate with her. Flicker was smart. He learned so quickly that Lia struggled to keep up. Once he learned simple questions, everything had a question. She dreaded teaching him the word ‘why’. Her brother Elki had been fixated on why questions for several years, driving her parents up the proverbial Island cliff.
“Well, I’ll tell you about my family,” she told Flicker. “I’m adopted, what we call a foundling or ward. My wards, who I call my parents, are King Chalcion and Queen Shyana of Fra’anior, which is the main Human Island of this Island-Cluster, and also the name of the volcano itself. Just to confuse you.”
Flicker ruffled his wings drolly. I’m not confused.
“Oh, is that so?”
Her sarcasm brought a hundred-fang dragonet smile to his lips. “Carry on, Human girl.”
“There are twenty-seven inhabited Islands around the rim,” Lia informed him. “Some Islands belong to the Dragons and others to us Humans. Well, the politics are a little complicated–maybe another time. Anyways, a young Dragoness found me as a days-old babe in a cave on Gi’ishior Island. That’s a mystery, because no Humans live on Gi’ishior. It’s where the Halls of the Dragons are, after all, the great seat of the Dragon Elders who rule all of their kind. Nobody knows who abandoned me there. I wish I knew that Dragoness, so that I could thank her …”
Lia stared into the heart of their fire, struggling to master an overwhelming sense of desolation. Why would her mother abandon her? Why? Didn’t that just scream, ‘You rested nine months in my womb, and I never loved you?’
“I’m grateful to have a family, truly I am–but it isn’t always easy. The King was married once before, to Queen Si’ilmira, but she died giving birth to Ka’allion. I call him Kalli, just like I’m Hualiama, but everyone calls me Lia. He loves to read all the time, and he doesn’t laugh much.”
As she spoke, she drew people in the sand with a stick. “I have two other brothers, Elka’anor and Fa’arrion, who I call Elki and Ari. You’d like Elki, because he’s a mischief-maker, like you. He’s twelve. Ari is only nine, but he’s already taller than me, which I find rather depressing. People think he’s simple because he can’t talk properly, but I think it’s more like you and me, we just don’t understand each other yet. Then, there’s my sister Fyria. She’s half a year younger, but also taller than me, and a great beauty. I’m afraid you probably wouldn’t like her.”
* * * *
Flicker slurped down a length of intestine, wondering at the catch in her voice. He was starting to understand the Human girl’s emotions–her face was an ever-changing scroll, alarmingly so at times, as unpredictable as the storm which had chased them off the branch. He knew happiness, and thoughtfulness, but what was this emotion, which made her eyes grow moister than usual?
“She’s like her father, you see,” said Lia.
Sadness. He understood sadness. Dropping the intestines, Flicker sprang over to her, making Hualiama yelp and drop her stick.
See? I can also be impulsive, he grinned, wriggling against her chest, talons carefully sheathed, producing a giggle and a momentary interruption in her sorrow–ah! Perhaps it was like tickling, which dragonets did with their hatchlings to encourage good growth of the wings? Not that she had any wings to grow. He rubbed her neck. Tickle, tickle.
“Flicker, stop, that tickles! I was being serious.”
This is ‘tickle’, said Flicker, prodding her ribs. Learn the word, flat-face, or I’ll tickle you some more.
Actually, he was embarrassing them both now. Lia was a female of her kind, and he a male, and her excitable response made him imagine rubbing necks with a sweet female dragonet, and roosting together in a cosy cave like this one. Flicker’s belly-fires growled in discomfiture.
“You really are hungry,” she said, misunderstanding him completely.
“Hungry,” he agreed, grateful she had misread his response–for that was bathing in Dragon fire, as the dragonets liked to say.