Dragon's Isolation - Miranda Martin Page 0,22

course, is impossible. The more it builds, behind it is a deeper sensation. A coldness in the pit of my stomach.

I don’t understand it, and that makes me angry. I want to smash something, destroy whatever is causing my female to shed moisture. I have no target.

“I wish I knew,” the white-coat woman says, her voice barely a whisper. She clears her throat and rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. Shaking her head, she straightens and drops her hands to her side. “I have a couple of ideas though.”

“What?” Amara asks, pulling out of my embrace and giving the other female her attention.

“The shipwreck is first,” she says. “There might still be equipment there we haven’t salvaged. Or supplies, drugs maybe. I need better scanners, though I’m not sure we’d have the resources to power them. The machines I have won’t give me a clear picture of what’s happening in the Zmaj head. I need to see how this virus is affecting their brains.”

“Fine,” Amara says. “I’ll go and get it. Do you know what it looks like?”

“You can’t go alone,” she says.

“I won’t be,” Amara says. “Shidan will go with me.”

“Amara,” she purses her lips and hesitates before finishing her thought. “that’s not a good idea.”

“Why?” Amara asks, hands on her hips.

“He’s going…” she trails off.

“Where am I going?” I ask.

The white-coated female looks at me and frowns. She inhales deeply then lets it out in a long sigh.

“You’re going to get worse,” she says. “The pattern so far is you’ll continue to regress, getting worse and worse.”

“Until?” Amara asks.

The female’s eyes dart towards the door where the sound came from.

“Until he’s gone,” she says.

“Gone?” Amara asks.

“Primal. The man you know and love will be more animal than man,” she sighs.

Silence is a heavy weight across all of us. It doesn’t make sense. I’m fine, how can it be that I’m losing to… the bijass?

It takes me a moment to recall the word. Words are getting harder. Is this what she means? This must be a sign of what’s happening. The disease. I was exposed.

“We’ll go,” I say, taking Amara’s hand. “We’ll find this equipment you need. You will find a cure.”

Amara squeezes my hand tight and nods her agreement. The other female shrugs and nods.

“I don’t have any choice,” she says. “I need help, and Ormarr is lost to me too.”

“Describe what you need,” I say.

She launches into a description of the machines, and Amara makes careful notes for us. She also names off several words that make no sense to me, but Amara notes them as well. While the females discuss and throw about strange words, I study Amara.

Her jaw is strong, almost sharp, but comes down to a beautiful round chin. The way her brow wrinkles when she frowns. Her eyes alight with a fever, every motion of her body calling to be in action. She’s fierce. A fire burns inside of her soul that calls my dragon. I can feel it stirring behind the fog over my thoughts.

Is the fog nothing more than the breath of the dragon? The smoke coming from its fiery breath as it burns away all that’s unnecessary? Am I regressing as this female says, or am I progressing? Moving away from complexity towards simplicity and certainty?

When Amara finishes with her sketches and notes, the two females stare until I stop my musing and give them my attention.

“You need to fight it,” the other female says. “Hang on to every memory. Ormarr has had some success. Ladon woke up without his memory but Ormarr has remained less… primal. It’s the only advice I can give you.”

“I fight well,” I say.

“Of course you do, my love,” Amara says. “We will beat this. I won’t lose you.”

“You are my treasure, nothing can ever take that from us,” I say. “I will always love you.”

Amara smiles but the water runs from her eyes as if it’s being poured from a container. Beading down her cheeks and dripping off her chin. I pull her close and hold her tight.

“Get going,” the other female says, wiping moisture from her own eyes. “There isn’t time to waste.”

“Can you get a message to Jolie?” Amara asks. “Tell her what’s happening. She’ll need to keep Malcolm safe for us.”

My dragon roars inside and I growl. “No.”

“No?” Amara asks, looking at me with wide eyes.

“No,” I growl, jerking my hand from hers. “Malcolm. Our son. Stays.”

Amara’s eyes narrow and she shakes her head.

“Shidan, you’re not thinking clearly,”