pain so intensely? How had she wrested him from Lyrica’s power? The Ancient One must know.
Flicker added, Harmony is paramount in the warren.
She wailed, What have I done to you, Flicker? What have I done?
He rushed to her, crooning, rubbing muzzles with the Human girl. It was my choice. I made my decision long before I met you, Lia.
Her weeping excoriated his soul.
* * * *
Heavy-hearted, Hualiama hunted in a most unusual night–a moonless night. With five moons crowding the sky, aside from the myriad stars, Island-World nights were almost never devoid of light. Iridith the yellow, Jade the green, the Blue and Mystic moons, and White, all dominated the skies in their various orbits and periods. For just three nights a year, and only for a few hours at most, a night might be moonless. Then, the glory of the stars blazed with a rare and breathtaking brilliance.
Lia could not shake the concern that she had unwittingly ripped Flicker from his home, from his loved ones, and from all of his kind. How could that be good for any dragonet? Yet he assured her he was happy, and better off without them. Truth be told, the prospect of being a faceless clone in a community of clones, terrified him. How had she beaten the red dragonet? Hualiama concluded that in her extremity, she had somehow been able to exploit the magic indwelling that cavern to withstand the warren-mother’s power.
With a brace of lemurs slung over her shoulder and a small vine net of ripe fruits weighing on her belt, Lia trudged back along a familiar trail. In this darkness, a misstep was inevitable, so she felt for each step before trusting it. She should have waited until dawn to hunt.
Just before midnight, she approached the ledge. All was still.
Of course, Flicker was not inside the cave. Lia sighed. Another night-time jaunt for the dragonet, after she had instructed him to stay put? Incorrigible pest! She’d have his hide for this. About as incorrigible as a certain girl she might name, Hualiama chuckled. They made a perfect pair–scoundrels to the core!
Lia padded outside to make her ablutions near the picturesque hundred-foot waterfall at the southern edge of their ledge. Sleep? She was too keyed-up to feel sleepy, despite the water’s soothing burble. How many people in the Island-World were privileged to see the stars on a night like this? Stretching out on her favourite flat rock, she knitted her fingers behind her neck and began to name the constellations with quiet resolve–the Dragon Rampant, the Fisherman, Fra’anior’s Breath and the Sky-Strider.
She should not allow her mind to wither from disuse.
Half of the sky was cut off by the black cliff soaring above her, but to the south and west and north, the monumental expanse of the Island-World cast the doings of a not-truly Princess of Fra’anior into insignificance. If it was true that Dragons had made Humans, she mused, who had made the moons and stars?
Perhaps great star-faring Dragons ruled the cosmos. It was their eyes gleaming up there in the darkness, all-seeing and omnipotent, crossing the unthinkable distances of space and time by the power of Dragon thought and magic. Lia chuckled. Any race with that kind of power could enslave Humans at the snap of a talon. More likely, they would not even need slaves. The Dragons of Fra’anior seemed to correlate Humans with an annoying swarm of mosquitoes. Occasionally, they might need to swat a few, especially if they dared to stray into Dragon territory.
Her nose wrinkled. Funny … now she detected a whiff of that same smell she had noticed when she first entered their cave with Flicker. Cinnamon? Crystal magic? Suddenly restive, Hualiama glanced about her. She could not remember rightly, but the small pool seemed to have taken on a new shape–at least, had that huge boulder lain next to it, two nights before? Had it been dislodged during a storm, they would surely have heard the impact from half a mile off.
Now her mind served up monkey-babble for thought. Hualiama’s eyes returned to the velvet skies. That gleaming expanse of stars … wow!
She whispered, “If I were a Dragon, I’d fly to the stars.”
“Me too.”
Lia gasped. “Flicker? Is that you? Don’t scare me like … aaah!”
The stars blotted out. Hualiama rolled instinctively, but thumped into something hard. Before thought could intrude, she switched direction, slipping free of a grasping talon the size of her leg. Dear sweet … ‘Roll!’ her mind shrieked. ‘Leap!’