The dragonet stuffed the holes full of his most potent healing mixture. There, that should stop her leaking. Muttering fussily to himself, Flicker covered the wound’s open lips with another poultice, before checking the rest of her body for further wounds. She had an impressive collection.
Just let the Ancient One see him now!
Since no other creature was nearby to express due admiration, he congratulated himself, Ha, I’ve saved the life of a two-legged straw-head, a mighty and worthy deed!
By the radiant light of the Yellow moon, Iridith, which covered half of the southern horizon, Flicker saw that the branches beneath her body were slick with blood. He sighed. What dragonet had a chance of lifting such a lump of flesh? How demeaning, now he had to crawl through the branches beneath her body to find where else she was wounded.
The gash on her back, however, made his fiery eyes darken with anger. See what that fungus-faced, mange-ridden rat had done! A flap of skin roughly the size of his right wing hung loose from her back, torn and dirty, already attracting flies. How did flies find an open wound so quickly? By the stench of her blood? If he did not treat this, she would be infested with maggots before the next Blue moon. Admittedly, maggots tasted much like lemur meat, they were just squishier. Yum.
Perhaps she might share her maggots with him? There was an agreeable thought.
With a contented gurgle, Flicker returned to his medicines. Now, where to start? If she was anything like a dragonet, her hide was a sack which held the fluids inside. First, the wound must be thoroughly cleaned. After that, the muscles should be returned to their rightful places, and the hide sewn together to prevent it from shifting about while she healed.
He worked for several hours more before deciding, with a huge yawn, that his heroism and dauntless service ought to be rewarded with a nap for the remaining three hours of darkness.
* * * *
Lia dreamed the blasphemous dream.
Once, she had dared to tell Fyria about her dreams. Her sister relayed them to their father; King Chalcion beat her with his fists. That was the day she learned, to the tune of a broken rib and a split lip, that people did not dream about flying with Dragons. Only wicked, depraved girls dreamed about soaring over the everlasting thermals of Fra’anior’s great caldera upon wings a hundred feet wide, which cut the moons like crystal blades.
She woke with a choked-off sob. A daytime thermal drove hot, faintly rancid air up from the depths. Up at Island level, a league above the Cloudlands, the air would be fragrant with the scent of a thousand pollens and rich with birdsong and dragonet-song, but down here, the heat shrivelled her lungs. Lia’s eyes traversed the lush green precipice rising above her until it was lost in the mists above. She wondered dully why she roosted in a tree.
Captain Ra’aba’s dagger! Falling through the twin suns’ warm, radiant beams … she was alive? Ridiculous! Off-the-Islands crazy.
Despite the heat, her body felt chilled. Hualiama shifted her aching neck to examine her wounds. Shock jolted her as she discovered a green dragonet curled up against her left shoulder, purring softly in his sleep, just like a wild rajal kitten she had once tried to tame. How sweet! The tiny paws twitched slightly and the eyes darted about behind the animal’s shuttered eyelids as though it dreamed. She saw multi-jointed wings, folded neatly back to its sides. It had a row of spine spikes which exactly matched those of the Lesser Dragons who roosted at Gi’ishior Island to the west of her home, and at Ha’athior, and claimed many other Islands for their homes. But Fra’anior’s great volcano was the most ancient and beloved of Dragon roosts, where Dragons lived on the peaks and in the caves, and Humans on their Islands, in an often uneasy truce.
Lia moistened her lips with her tongue. She remembered small, fluttering wings, and the sharp clasp of talons. This dragonet had rescued her, landing her on Ha’athior Island? That was the only possible explanation. She had explored the caldera and its twenty-seven Islands many times, sailing her single-handed or solo Dragonship with her brother Elki, or alone. Even Elki, more mischievous than a troop of monkeys rolled together, had never set foot on holy Ha’athior Island. Dragons tended to take a dim view of trespassers. They dropped