flew respectively up to the White Dragoness’ lair. Having packed the immensity of their possessions into two pouches which Lia slung at her belt, they returned to Amaryllion and took lunch with him–an affair to make the most cynical soul melt in wonder, Lia thought. Lunch with an Ancient Dragon, anyone?
They spoke with Amaryllion for an hour before setting out along a new tunnel, taking a route which led ever southward and upward. Passing through a series of what appeared to be room-sized sapphire-encrusted geodes, they picked their way across a vaulting rock bridge above a depthless chasm, before plunging back into the mountain. By mid-afternoon, aided by Amaryllion’s excellent instructions, Human and dragonet came at last to a deep but narrow gorge, where daylight filtered from above through a matted layer of brush and vines. Hualiama scrambled over and under boulders the size of houses which had dropped into the chasm in ages past, while Flicker danced in the air above her and called her ‘slow-slug’ and ‘wingless worm’, charming creature that he was. She gritted her teeth, gave in, and lobbed a pebble half-heartedly in his direction.
He dodged with a titter of amusement.
They emerged directly opposite a serene volcanic cone, on a perfect afternoon. A thousand dragonets soared on the hot thermals above the seamless, sheer green slopes. Flicker, quivering, came to land on Lia’s shoulder with his claws sheathed, his eyes a-whirl with what she had come to recognise as curiosity and anticipation.
Hualiama smiled at him. “You could almost reach out and touch it, couldn’t you?”
“O for the wings of a Dragon,” he replied, quoting a famous ballad Lia had taught him, called Moons over the Cloudlands. Flicker said, “Shall I fetch you a handy monk?”
“And the moment the Dragons see them heading this way, we’re dead,” said Lia, scanning the cliffs above and below. “Sage advice, dragonet.”
Flicker shivered in one accord with her. Aye.
“There.” She pointed vertically down the cliff. “That’s where we’ll cross.”
Just three or four hundred feet separated the Islands at this point. Lia narrowed her eyes. Down there, thanks to a bulge in Ha’athior’s side, the gap narrowed to only a hundred feet, so close that the Islands resembled two brothers, one much older than the other, leaning together in whispered conversation. An ancient prekki tree leaned partway across the divide. That much was good. What was less good was that the gap extended vertically downward for at least two more miles. Her knuckles turned white at her sides. This was not the moment for vertigo.
Be strong, Lia, said Flicker, curling his paw around her neck to one side and his tail to the other. Let us eat and drink, and gather our wits, and then we shall make a Human fly. Why don’t you refresh yourself in this waterfall?
Hualiama took his advice gratefully. The water was barely a trickle, but blessedly cool, and tangy with minerals. She drank greedily before washing both herself and her clothes.
“Itchy, Flicker?”
He scratched his hide vigorously. “Scale mites. Blasted prickly inflaming insatiable pests!”
“Great Islands, you make them sound exactly like this dragonet I know.”
This comment earned her a growl and a snap of his fangs.
“Can I help?”
“Talons are better than fingernails,” he protested.
“Especially where you can’t see, right?”
Leaping belly fires, it’s perfectly evident to me now that a lack of centuries of servitude has made some Humans insufferable. Flicker grinned widely, leaping up to assume his customary perch on her shoulder. Attend closely to your duties, slave.
Lia huffed, Slave? I prefer ‘straw-head’, you graceless wasp-snapper.
The dragonet ignored her loftily, launching into one of his lectures. Scale mites stick closer than a dragonet’s own shadow. On Dragons, the mites grow as big as your thumb, and they like nothing better than to shelter right under the root of a scale, where it is warmest, and in that cosy abode, lay their eggs and do other unmentionable things.
Unmentionable things?
Defecate, he said, succinctly.
Yuck! So, your beautiful scales are full of scale mite faeces?
This time, the dragonet gripped her left ear in his sharp little talons. He growled, One more word and I’ll shave this flap of skin and cartilage off the side of your head. I do keep myself mite-free, understood?
“Suddenly, I find the idea of scrubbing your scales strangely attractive.”
“What a pleasing improvement in your attitude–slave.”
So Hualiama learned how to tip up his scales to check for mites, while Flicker lolled in the hot suns and exerted himself to snarkier and snarkier comments. ‘Gently with the sensitive hide.’ ‘Hurry