“Nay, I am a rebel through and through. I like you, little Human. So, we’re definitely agreed not to think about this?”
“I’d think even less about it if I could return briefly to the monastery to collect a few unnecessary items,” said Hualiama, smiling through the nausea churning in the pit of her stomach. Oh, flying ralti sheep, what had she just promised him–promised a Dragon? She was mad. Set aside the magic raging between them, she was off-the-Islands, loopier than an overexcited dragonet, mad! “Will you wait for me?”
“And stink like a cesspit before my benefactress? I think not.”
With that, the Dragon snatched Lia up. His forepaw covered her body from her neck to her knees.
“G-G-Grandion?” she squeaked, a pathetic and mortifying sound. “Put me d-down! N-No!” This was as he considered the vine connected to her waist. “Wait. What are you doing?”
With a deliberate flick of his talon, he severed the vine. “Ready?” The massive muscles of his thighs coiled.
“No! Grandeeeeee … yoooooonnnn …”
The Island-World turned on its head as the Dragon performed a backflip off the edge of Ha’athior Island.
Hualiama unashamedly wailed her heart out as the world turned over again, twice, for the Dragon wished to show off his aerial prowess to the melody of the joy gushing through his hearts. His grip almost stopped her breath, but it was also comforting in an utterly overpowering way.
And her mind was as cracked as an earthquake-cleft Island. Lia had just about mastered her terror when the Dragon growled, “Roll?”
“Noo … wooo … ooooeee!”
Before she knew it, Grandion thumped down on the rim wall of the volcano, right beside the boulder where she and Ja’al had kissed. He set her daintily upon her feet.
“How did her Royal Highness enjoy her first Dragon flight?”
Lia wobbled and would have collapsed, had Grandion’s paw not flashed out again to steady her. Now if she could only recapture her heart and stuff it back inside her chest!
With a coy glance at him, she complained, “That was not nice, you great big bully.”
A wickedly unrepentant chuckle, chock-full of Dragon fire and arrogance, constituted his response. Grandion rumbled, “Go collect those unnecessary items, little one. I shall bathe in this lake.”
“Let me alert the guards before–”
“They’re already alert,” said Grandion, nonchalantly dropping toward the lake on outspread wings. “Tell them to keep out of my way.”
“Tyrant,” Lia muttered.
“I heard that,” floated back to her on the breeze.
* * * *
Ja’al shouted, “You’re doing what?” Lia had never seen the tall, tan monk turn quite so pasty. “Lia, people don’t ride with Dragons, or on them, or any such nonsense! Where do you think … oh, no, no … NO! You and your dreams about flying! You’re forcing this poor Dragon to stick his head in a noose for you. Foolish girl! Don’t you realise how forbidden this is?”
“How can something be more or less forbidden, Ja’al?”
“It’s wrong!”
“It doesn’t feel wrong to him–to us.”
The way Ja’al’s eyes bulged brought a horrid, constricted feeling to Hualiama’s gut. “You have … feelings … for this creature! Unholy, perverted feelings.” He made a sign of the Great Dragon’s warding. “Lia, please. Tell me it isn’t true.”
“Look,” she said, her face flushing hotly, “I have feelings for Flicker and you don’t call those unholy. He’s my friend. I care for him, Ja’al. I owe that dragonet my life, and if anyone laid a finger on him, I’d destroy them. It’s that simple, yet the feeling runs so deep it’s like a river thundering into the Cloudlands; a river so deep and wild, it can never be grasped or contained. How I feel about Flicker is more than friendship, Ja’al. It’s a kind of love–a good, wholesome love.”
“I knew you’d use that word.”
Hualiama shook his hand off with an irate hiss. She shrugged the scabbard for her Nuyallith blades onto her shoulders and buckled the strap across her upper chest. “Aye, love!” She emphasized the word with a zing of the blades as she pushed them home.
“Always driven by your feelings, Lia. I hadn’t pegged you as the type. You aren’t weak, you’re the strongest woman I know.” Poor Ja’al, he was physically shaking as he tried to express the depths of his horror. “This is criminal. It’s inconceivable!”
Suddenly, her anger evaporated. Softly, Lia said, “Listen to me. Please, dear brother Ja’al. You know how you felt about your vows? That you must deny all, even a prodigal Princess and her pathetic attempts to distract you with a swift peck