their own accord. I step fully into the clearing, and the dragon turns her head to look at me, the violet irises of her eyes gleaming brightly in the night, and I smile as she dips her head in the dragon’s imitation of a bow. “Ronin,” she greets me, her voice a rich contralto.
Ronin, a weighted title that means less to me now than it did generations ago when I first took it. I bow to return the dragon’s respect. “Titles are too formal on a night such as this, Sparkles.” I chastise her gently, smiling to lessen the impact of the words.
She dips her head in my direction. “A fair point, Mr. Bear. Have you discovered the nature of our quarry?” Even with the formality gone, her voice is still a pleasure to listen to.
I had been expecting the question and had the answer ready. “Goblins, a pack of them, maybe four, no more than six. The Silence and the false moonlight gave them away. Now to find them before they get any closer to the border.”
“If it is a simple pack of goblins, why did you bring me along, Bear? Surely you don’t need my help dealing with simple night terrors,” Sparkles comments before lifting her serpentine head to sniff at the night air.
She’s right, I could have done this on my own and had before, so why did I bring her? Why did I continue to involve others in my duties? It could have been the loneliness, or was it pride that made me think I could turn toys into guardians the way the Sandman had done for me? I tell her neither, saying instead, “The borders are long and as Emily gets older, the nightmares will change. I will need someone to keep the lesser forms at bay while I hunt the monsters.”
It appears as though she accepts my answer. “Shall we hunt from the air?” she asks me, almost eagerly, and I have to remind myself that in generations past I had fought nightmares of similar shape to her. Apparently, dragons were changing sides in the real world.
I nod in answer to her request, and as she lowers her body toward the ground, she dips the front of her wing for me to use as a grip. My paws grip the bones of her forewing, and I hoist myself up onto her back. Sure-footed, I weave between the thin spines that jut from her back to seat myself at the junction of her shoulders and neck. A saddle awaits me, and I buckle myself in with a practiced ease that I would never have expected to possess nearly a decade ago. Her neck is long enough that she is able to watch my progress and wait for me to be secured before leaping from the ground and beating her wings fiercely to escape the chains of gravity.
Above the canopy the light is clearer and the air cleaner, while below us the treetops sway, but not from the wind. The trees weave back and forth, like the waves of the ocean, controlled by a force separate from the wind that beats against my face as Sparkles relishes the environment she was made for. The strokes of her wings are long and steady through the air, and she flies with such grace that I barely waver in my seat.
It is her hunter’s eyes that spot the flicker of torches first. The faint gleam against what appears as a sea of darkness below us gives away the goblin pack, and I thank my lucky stars for enemies that hunt one another in the Dark. Sparkles rocks over her right wing twice to warn me of an impending dive, and I tap her right shoulder to acknowledge her warning. Moments later she rolls up and over her right wing toward the ground before sweeping her wings back to slice downward on the clearing and the unsuspecting goblins.
The wind screams in my ears and pulls at my face as we race toward the ground; with my left paw I find the quick release for the seat’s harness and steel myself. So rapid is our dive that the goblins fail to notice our approach until we are almost upon them; a twist of the clasp, a leap, and I am in