him an arresting, rakish air. A single row of spine spikes ran the length of his body, from the tallest three-foot spikes above his burly shoulders, decreasing in size down his long, whiplike tail.
And his colour! Great Islands, what wouldn’t a girl give to be so pretty? The dirty blue had been washed clean, revealing the striking tourmaline of his armoured scales which indeed imitated the gemstone for which his rare colour was named. Blue-coloured Dragons were often capable of summoning lightning and storm-wind attacks, or hail and ice. The most powerful Blues were also masters of magic-casting and shields, making them formidable opponents in battle. The lore she knew suggested that Grandion’s gemstone rarity signified unique Dragon powers.
If she was not mistaken, the Tourmaline Dragon took full note of her regard and flew up to her position with studied elegance, making his landing soft-pawed just twenty feet from her right hand, careful to furl his wings without striking her.
“Any improvement?” he inquired.
Smug reptile! Her grin widened, for he knew full well her answer. Time to see if he responded to compliments as Flicker did. Lia declaimed, “O mighty Dragon, outshining the very stars, do I know thee?”
At once, Grandion’s fire-stomach rumbled energetically, and his eyes blazed amber with pleasure as he inclined his muzzle to spurt Dragon fire twenty feet from his nostrils. Lia scented smoke, the tang of charred minerals, and the alluring hint of cinnamon she recalled so clearly from the time he held her powerless beneath his paw.
The Dragon strutted toward her with all the arrogance of a courting bird displaying its beautiful plumage, growling, “Indeed?”
“As my mother would say, Grandion, you do scrub up very nicely.”
“Hmm,” he blinked at her mischievous tone. “As for you, how many knives does a Human girl need? Four?”
“Fifteen, counting the hidden ones,” said Lia.
Pure white sparks eddied in his eyes–approval? Grandion whispered, “You are arrayed in splendour as a Dragoness for war.”
Oh, mercy. Hualiama struggled to control an abiding weakness in her knees. An undignified splutter emerged from her throat, “S-s-soooo w-whaa …” She folded her arms at his smoky laughter, and evaded his gaze. “Vexatious reptile! Er, what now, Grandion? What are you neither planning nor thinking about? I wanted to say, I really don’t want to leave Flicker behind. We need to find him.”
“We’ll probably catch the dragonet before he reaches Gi’ishior,” said Grandion. “Are you planning to scream every time we fly?”
Lia fumed, “I’d smack you for that comment, but I fear it’s rather pointless.”
On cue, Grandion struck what he probably thought was a heroic pose. Actually, when his knee-joints were the height of her nose, and his massive stance brought all of the striations in his major flight muscles into sharp relief, he did rather succeed in shooting lightning bolts along every nerve in her terrified little body. Dragon fear turned her bowels to mush. There was something so instinctual about standing beside a beast within which Hualiama could hear fire boiling away, that her body simply screamed, ‘Run away!’ Only, that would be as futile as whacking his flank. He could catch her more easily than a windroc snagging an unwary lemur.
The glint in his eye suggested that he knew all this; that the treacherous Dragon perceived the exact rhythm of her runaway heart, and that an apology was the very last matter on his mind. Molten heat rushed into her cheeks. Was the hulking serpent stalking her? What thoughts lurked behind that scorching regard, his eye-fires smouldering, changing colour and character before her fascinated gaze? Lia wanted to fall into his eyes and burn forever.
Grandion reached out with the speed of a cobra’s strike.
“Oh!” Lia beat her fists uselessly against his talons. “What are you doing?”
The Tourmaline Dragon paused with the Human girl’s feet dangling eight feet in the air, rumbling, “Currently, you have a monopoly on being executed should the Dragons discover your secrets. I wish to unite myself to your fate. Therefore, I am placing you in the dominant and conceivably the only comfortable position I can imagine for an extended flight–between my spine spikes, above my shoulders.”
Lia gasped, “My riding on your back would be regarded as dominant? As in, a five-foot Human girl dictating terms to a multi-tonne fire-breathing Dragon? Which of the five moons do you live on?”
“Isn’t it droll?” he chuckled.
“Ridiculous!”
Grandion shrugged hugely. “I don’t make the law. And, I fancy the idea of making history, even if it’s a potentially fatal sort of history.”
Truly the young