flaring the left leg, now a spin, ignoring the tugging sensation across her scarred back, springing into a looping somersault, legs elegantly extended and toes pointed in imitation of a Dragon’s wings … if only the air would not refuse her entreaties and choose, just this once, to bear her aloft! What more did she desire?
Flicker. All was not well. Lia stepped into the golden rays of a fragrant Fra’aniorian afternoon, the scents so thick and redolent on the breeze, she imagined she could stretch out her arms and scoop up great handfuls, stuffing them greedily into her mouth. Unbidden, her head turned to the north. She drew a breath through her pathetic, inadequate nostrils, right into the roots of her lungs.
Flicker, my darling. Where are you?
If she could have cut out her heart and sent it winging away to him, she would have. He needed her. She knew it as deeply as her bones knew their need for marrow.
Pensively, Hualiama’s footsteps turned to the cave. If she could do nothing else, she would explore deeper beneath the Island. Perhaps she would discover something useful.
* * * *
Flicker waited in his cell.
There was no door to the small underground chamber, located off a quiet corridor of the warren, nor was there need of one. Tradition and expectation bound a dragonet more surely than any Human chains or locks. The communal hive-mind saw to that. It saw all, pervaded all, and judged all, just as he was surely being judged by Mother Lyrica and her Twelve and being found guilty of behaviour unbecoming of his kind. He threatened the harmony. He brought the imbalance of original thought and unsettling perspectives to the gentle, never-changing thrum of the warren, as though his music conveyed a different pulse, being strident or discordant in ways he did not entirely understand.
No behaviour of an individual dragonet should ever threaten the sanctity and security of the warren. He could only hope that respect for the Ancient One would temper their judgement.
Was it so evil of him to have plucked an injured Human girl from the air? Perhaps not, but what had followed would terrify them–just as he, when he looked to his Dragon fires, felt at once alarmed and exhilarated. Dragonets should not keep Humans for pets. Dragonets should not treat a Human’s wounds, nor teach them civilised speech. Roost with a Human? That lay beyond the Isle of sanity.
A scratching of claws heralded Shimyal’s arrival.
He read accusation in her gaze and hurt in the tilt of her wings. Flicker, she said. What of us?
What indeed? Once, a promise made by their egg-mothers. A lifelong friendship, yet the seven ascending degrees of fire-promises had always remained unspoken between them–never needing to be spoken, he had assumed. That was a mistake. Flicker’s hearts burbled in his chest and throat as he studied the details of Shimyal’s stance, noting the slight vibration in her wings and the deep apricot tones visible in her eyes. Clearly, she had spoken the fire-promises in her third heart.
That creature has bewitched your hearts, Flicker, said Shimyal.
Flicker said, She is a Human and can never mean more to me than one of my kind.
Truth did not dwell in his words. Shimyal knew it, for her talons clenched as though she intended to spring at him. Flicker would have welcomed a physical punishment. What Mother Lyrica intended would injure much more surely and profoundly, in places claw and talon could never reach.
Shimyal spat, You must choose between the Human and me, Flicker.
The sudden flare of her fire made him flinch. How could he choose? He was bound to the ways of dragonets as surely as he was born a dragonet.
Lia is just a friend, Shimyal. She–
Just a friend? cried the dragonet. You stupid null-brain! I’ve put up with seasons of nonsense, with your learning squiggles and watching the two-legged monsters in the world above, and listened to your perverse, twisting thoughts. Come back to us, Flicker! Be one of us.
Be another obedient clone? That possibility had stepped out of his life when he shouldered aside the shards of his shell.
Suddenly, understanding filled Flicker’s mind with dark flame. He would never be content in the hive-mind. He was an aberration, a threat to be excised like a cancer should be separated from the healthy flesh, burned up, and its ashes buried forever. Why could he not have been an egg like any other in the clutch? Was it the Great Dragon who had made him