Are weird and inexplicably complicated? suggested the dragonet.
That was occasion for all three of them to groan as one.
Grandion asked, So, where are we headed, Human girl? Not back to the Dragonship, I presume?
She shook her head. I’m finished with Humans for a while … maybe even for a lifetime. How could she tell them how she had been treated? Grandion would blast the Dragonship out of the sky. Instead, Hualiama lifted her eyes to the heavens.
What a night. Four moons adorned the sky–great Iridith waxing in the southern sky, crescent Jade to the east slightly eclipsing the fuller sphere of the Blue moon, and White shining with its characteristic pinpoint brilliance just over the north-western horizon, like a star of greater magnitude than any other. Ahead, the cone of Fra’anior heaved its shoulders out of the Cloudlands, its brow crowned by a second layer of spotless white cloud, perhaps a mist.
A homecoming, Lia wondered? Or a farewell? A song rose in her heart, perhaps an improper choice, but out in the trackless reaches of the Island-World’s loneliness, those concerns seemed to fade to nothingness. A song surfaced in her mind.
Hualiama sang the ballad of the Red Dragon Cerission romancing his Yellow Dragoness love:
The moons resplendent in glory rise, the shining souls of gilded skies,
To thy flank alone my third heart flies, to sing love’s song, which never dies,
O Zuthazia! The essence of thee …
O Zuthazia! Thy breath so free …
Unites fire to fire and soul to soul,
The glorious everlasting,
Love.
After that, Human, Dragon and dragonet flew north-eastward for a long time without speaking, as the moons ascended to fill the skies, and Fra’anior enlarged in kingly majesty above the horizon.
* * * *
Nothing had changed at the monastery, apparently, except that a girl and a Dragon winged in Dragonback at dawn’s first blush. Landing on the slope just shy of what Flicker referred to–with a typical snigger–as ‘the kissing boulder’, Hualiama enjoined Grandion to wait for half an hour before bathing and feeding in the crater lake. It must not be too obvious that they had arrived together.
She jogged down to the monastery building.
There, Master Jo’el and Ja’al meditated on the fire-blackened front porch, facing each other, eyes shuttered but fully aware of their surroundings, of that Lia had no doubt.
“Master Jo’el,” she whispered, bowing.
“You bring news?”
Lia stifled a curl of inner fire. No, ‘we’re delighted to see you alive, Lia’ or, ‘how did your perilous mission conclude?’ No, Master Jo’el was far too cool for that. Then, she spied a tiny smile playing upon Ja’al’s lips. “Oh, this and that, Master,” she replied, kneeling to make a third point of a triangle with them.
“Report, Apprentice Hualiama,” Jo’el said, in the same ultra-calm tone.
“Here is my report. Maroon Dragoness, check. Father, check. Mother, check. King and family, check times six.”
Master Jo’el’s lips quivered. “Might I request a more detailed report?”
“I am delighted to see you hale and hearty this morning, Master,” she replied, with utterly fake sweetness. “And I would simply love to extend the most reekingly redolent greetings of the mighty Great Dragon to you–”
“You are incurable, Apprentice Hualiama.”
“My humblest apologies, Master Jo’el.”
“You took off against my express orders, Lia,” he added, rather severely. “Do I sense the presence of a Dragon nearby? Call him.”
“Grandion convinced me that I had to travel to the Spits personally to meet with Ianthine,” said Lia. “Truly, Master, I am sorry if I caused you any concern.”
“Concern? Oh, I’m convinced you can whistle up a Cloudlands-spanning thunderstorm of trouble quite on your own, Lia,” he said, his ascetic features finally crinkling into a smile. “Of course I had my concerns. I still have them! But I trust your judgement, mad as that might prove. First I bewailed the fate of one who flew Dragonback, but then, the Great Dragon spoke to Ja’al and we had peace–be a good girl and collect your jaw from the ground, before the birds start building nests therein.”
Truth be told, she shook like a lava flow struck by an earthquake.
Lia called, Grandion? Would you join us?
She returned her attention to the Master, feeling in no small part perturbed and humbled. “Master, are you telling me that Fra’anior himself, the mighty Black Dragon, spoke? Again?”
Ja’al interjected, “The Black Dragon said, ‘Do not hinder my child.’”
“He didn’t say what she did was right,” the Master argued.
Hualiama had the sense that this was a conversation frequently repeated. As the Tourmaline Dragon landed nearby, his wings blasting dust around