thing to do, Flicker. But her eyes seemed smokier than usual, almost shadowed.
“When you leak over Human graves, Lia, what does that mean?” the dragonet inquired. “Do you lose your courage? Are your tears supposed to water those flame bushes you placed over each grave? Why don’t you sing the flame songs?”
She chuckled, “The word you’re looking for is ‘crying’, Flicker. We grieve that a soul has passed on, just as you dragonets believe the flame-soul returns to the invisible fires of eternity. But you’re wrong about my courage–if anything, I’m more determined than ever to see Ra’aba brought low.”
“Grief exposes weakness.”
“Grief strengthens,” Hualiama shot back, earning herself a hiss of disapproval. “It tempers and refines, focussing a person on things that truly matter. Surely, there is no pleasure without pain? Joy becomes meaningless in a world without suffering.”
“Therefore I should wish you’d suffer more?” snapped Flicker, before shutting his jaw with a snap louder than that which had just entered his voice. “I’m sorry, Lia. Shards take it, what a stupid thing to say!”
Lia simply extended her hands. A flip of a wing later, he nestled in her arms, and extended his serpentine neck to rub his muzzle against her cheek. She scratched Flicker just behind his skull spikes, the spot where he loved it most.
“Jealous old lizard, aren’t you?” she whispered into his ear canals.
How did she know his moods so well? Testily, he said, “You Humans always think jealousy is a negative emotion.”
Though his fire curled past her nose, Hualiama did not flinch. Instead, she performed her powerful, indefinable magic. In a tone that squeezed his third heart and made his fires surge, she said, “I am jealous of our friendship, Flicker. So few people would understand, but you … how can I describe it? You make my Island shiver with happiness.”
“While this conversation confuses us yokels beyond redemption?” But Inniora tempered her response by tickling Flicker beneath the chin.
He purred, “What’s a yokel? You really must teach me more Human insults, Lia.”
Hualiama peered ahead to the monastery’s Island, frowning. “The truth is, I didn’t know much about friendship before you pulled me out of the sky, Flicker.”
Human courage was inexplicable, Flicker decided. A creature like his Hualiama, often riddled with self-doubt and thoughts unshaped by a protective warren, so wounded by life and maimed by her enemies, still chose to spread her wings and soar. The idea practically turned his hide inside-out. Dragons valued physical size and prowess. Little Lia possessed neither size nor raw physical strength, but her heart was a hidden jewel, blazing with star-fire. She had the audacity to laugh at her fate, to struggle on and to overcome.
These events drove her toward a cliff-edge, Flicker sensed. The true plunge would come soon.
The dragonet asked, What’s bothering you, Lia?
She said, Am I imagining it, or do I sense something out there? Her face suddenly turned as grey as storm clouds. Ra’aba … he’s near.
A frisson of flame ignited the dragonet’s body. Flicker leaped into the air. I will scout. And he darted out of the open doorway of the navigation cabin, leaving the two girls staring at him from behind the crysglass.
* * * *
“What was that?” asked Inniora.
“Aye, what was that?” inquired Master Jo’el, right behind them.
“Master!” Hualiama gasped. “Don’t sneak … sorry, Master. I had a sense–”
“A premonition?” His lean face seemed graven in stone. “We call this the Great Dragon’s voice. Learn to listen with your entire being, Hualiama. Open yourself to the currents of the Island-World, from the groan of Islands shifting upon their roots to the song of the stars above. Be not too busy to listen. Even the lowliest beetle has a voice. Know him, and you will know what is abroad in the world.”
Master Jo’el’s long, spiderlike fingers came to rest on Lia’s head. A link. A bridge for the passing on of knowledge. Jo’el said, “It is a small magic, but one with enormous power. A sixth sense, if you wish–intuition and more. Open yourself, like this.”
Unfolding. In a time measured by an eye’s blink, yet which stretched like her despairing sensitivity upon the Dragonship’s gantry before Ra’aba flung her overboard, Hualiama saw the world painted anew. From the great bellying storm-clouds to the tiniest mote floating across the leagues between the Island-mountains, she saw bonds and influences and harmonies, a song of fiery magic as old as the aeons yet experienced by her for the first time. White-golden fire radiated from her being, concentric