Dragonfriend (5 page)

She had to be the greatest fool ever to have walked the Islands.

* * * *

Your eyes are leaking again,
said the dragonet.
What does this signify?

As she leaned over him, the twin suns’ radiance highlighted the girl’s pale, fine straw. Flicker lay in an unimaginable place, in the arms of a Human girl, surrounded by a waterfall of molten platinum that rippled as she moved, reminding his Dragon soul of the melody of flight.

She touched her soft lips to his muzzle. A kiss! “Thank you, dragonet.”

Never in his life had Flicker been more confused. Did she mean rather to rub muzzles? That was a common greeting between dragonets, becoming longer and more elaborate the closer the relationship in a warren. Only a dragonet and his mate would ever kiss as she had done. Clearly, she did this out of ignorance, yet he could not help but be deeply touched, for her emotions were as transparent to him as the crystal formations of the caverns beneath the Island.

“What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m Lia, as I said before. Say ‘Li-ya’.”

Lia?
He tried aloud, “L-Layer … Lia.”

Her laughter was the burbling of a playful stream, the petting motion of her hand, at once frightening and delightful. The girl–Lia–placed one digit on the point of his nose.

He growled,
Remove that talon of yours before I–

“What’s your name, little one?”

He did not know her speech, but her meaning was clear. He said,
Flicker.

She stared expectantly at him.

Flicker,
he repeated, aloud this time.
Flicker, Flicker …

Flibbit?
She coloured prettily at his laughter, but struggled on,
Flinger? Flapper?

The dragonet grew annoyed, letting a tiny curl of fire lick around her digit.
Flicker!
How dare the two-legged thing mock him like this?
Mangle my name just one more time and I swear–

Flicker.

He trilled his delight into the still afternoon air. Lia laughed again, pressing his body against her shaking stomach, so brimful of joy he could not help but revel in it, too.

She said, “We’re going to be great friends.”
Flicker.

Lia, I’m going to teach you all about dragonets,
he gushed.
You’ll never have had a better teacher than me, you’ll see. I’m smart, and dauntless, and …

The girl let out a hiss of pain, making him jump. Flicker did not understand the sound, but the lines creasing her flat face made her need clear–herbs to dull the pain. Had anything survived the storm?

H
ualiama REsted in
a small, sandy cave–really just a shelter hollowed out by animals beneath a vast boulder–as the dragonet worked indefatigably in her care. Flicker disappeared for hours on end before returning with treasures such as ripe, tasty prekki fruit, landas gourds which yielded sour but palatable milk, and offerings of small animals which he hunted and killed. Raw monkey meat made her sick, but she found lemur and bat very acceptable.

Dragonets were vain, thoughtless creatures, she had always been taught. Flicker’s knowledge blew that Island right out of the Cloudlands. The day following their escape from the storm, Flicker made Lia understand that she should lie on her stomach while he cleaned out the wound on her back, numbed it with one of his powerful concoctions, and then proceeded to sew the flapping skin and muscle tissue together with the use of long, thin thorns and a thread he chewed and teased apart from a fleshy, succulent type of grass. He slathered more of his healing herbs on the wound.

His tiny paws were fabulously dextrous. Flicker seemed able to do anything a Human could do, and more. The dragonet was certainly intelligent! They passed the hours teaching each other words and phrases in their respective languages.

Lia sang for him, which he clearly loved. The dragonet’s eyes would fill with fire as he basked in the sound and often, he chirped insistently for more. Once, he showed her a dragonet dance, but acted embarrassed afterward.

Moving with great care because of the thousand-kitten claw-prick sensation of the stitches criss-crossing her back, Lia cut ferns for a bed, not the hundred-foot trailing ferns from the cliff face, but the softer, smaller type which flourished around boulders and in any moist crack. Flicker immediately appropriated the soft pallet. Lia scolded him until she realised that he meant for them to sleep curled up together, much as a pet feline might creep into a warm bed.

Then, he purred up a miniature storm and spent all night trying to burrow beneath her neck. Perfect.

Finding flint, Hualiama taught herself how to strike a fire, starting with dry moss and twigs, before adding slightly larger sticks. Now she could spit a small bird or bat and roast it over a dancing fire, making her meals much more palatable. The dragonet ate from her fingers with the finicky care of a cat, and woe betide her should she allow fat or juice to drip onto his scales! His love of intestines, however, made her want to cackle like a yellow-breasted parakeet. He was so disgusting, especially his delight in fiery burps during mealtimes, or his predilection for playing with his prey before killing it. But one evening, a week after they had fled from the storm, he nosed her hand aside as she reached for the flint.

“No. Flicker do,” he said, very clearly, and lit the fire for her with his breath.

Flicker clever boy,
she replied in Dragonish.

He arched his back against her hand.
Scratch.

Flicker turned his muzzle to gaze at her as she coughed dryly, trying to protect her stomach by not coughing too violently. “The air isn’t good,” she said, signing at the cave roof. “I think we should climb, Flicker.”

Fly?
he said, hopefully.

Climb. Humans no fly.

His snort of fire let her know his opinion of her disability. Hualiama chuckled, especially when he added,
Food ready?

Flicker eat Dragon,
she teased.

Flicker eat like Dragon,
he corrected her grammar, but purred contentedly nevertheless.
Tomorrow, we should climb, Lia.

“What’s your family like, Flicker? Do you have family? A mother, who–er, hatched you?” He seemed more interested in the lemur as she skinned it. “Fine, have the intestines.”

Thanks, straw-head.

Lia wished she knew everything the dragonet said. The dragonet laughed at her for no apparent reason, sometimes, or ribbed her gently with words she did not understand. She was convinced Flicker must think her stupid, because he often acted as if he expected a response from her, yet he had not to her knowledge spoken or otherwise tried to communicate with her. Flicker was smart. He learned so quickly that Lia struggled to keep up. Once he learned simple questions, everything had a question. She dreaded teaching him the word ‘why’. Her brother Elki had been fixated on why questions for several years, driving her parents up the proverbial Island cliff.

“Well, I’ll tell you about my family,” she told Flicker. “I’m adopted, what we call a foundling or ward. My wards, who I call my parents, are King Chalcion and Queen Shyana of Fra’anior, which is the main Human Island of this Island-Cluster, and also the name of the volcano itself. Just to confuse you.”

Flicker ruffled his wings drolly.
I’m not confused.

“Oh, is that so?”

Her sarcasm brought a hundred-fang dragonet smile to his lips. “Carry on, Human girl.”

“There are twenty-seven inhabited Islands around the rim,” Lia informed him. “Some Islands belong to the Dragons and others to us Humans. Well, the politics are a little complicated–maybe another time. Anyways, a young Dragoness found me as a days-old babe in a cave on Gi’ishior Island. That’s a mystery, because no Humans live on Gi’ishior. It’s where the Halls of the Dragons are, after all, the great seat of the Dragon Elders who rule all of their kind. Nobody knows who abandoned me there. I wish I knew that Dragoness, so that I could thank her …”

Lia stared into the heart of their fire, struggling to master an overwhelming sense of desolation. Why would her mother abandon her? Why? Didn’t that just scream, ‘You rested nine months in my womb, and I never loved you?’

“I’m grateful to have a family, truly I am–but it isn’t always easy. The King was married once before, to Queen Si’ilmira, but she died giving birth to Ka’allion. I call him Kalli, just like I’m Hualiama, but everyone calls me Lia. He loves to read all the time, and he doesn’t laugh much.”

As she spoke, she drew people in the sand with a stick. “I have two other brothers, Elka’anor and Fa’arrion, who I call Elki and Ari. You’d like Elki, because he’s a mischief-maker, like you. He’s twelve. Ari is only nine, but he’s already taller than me, which I find rather depressing. People think he’s simple because he can’t talk properly, but I think it’s more like you and me, we just don’t understand each other yet. Then, there’s my sister Fyria. She’s half a year younger, but also taller than me, and a great beauty. I’m afraid you probably wouldn’t like her.”

* * * *

Flicker slurped down a length of intestine, wondering at the catch in her voice. He was starting to understand the Human girl’s emotions–her face was an ever-changing scroll, alarmingly so at times, as unpredictable as the storm which had chased them off the branch. He knew happiness, and thoughtfulness, but what was this emotion, which made her eyes grow moister than usual?

“She’s like her father, you see,” said Lia.

Sadness. He understood sadness. Dropping the intestines, Flicker sprang over to her, making Hualiama yelp and drop her stick.

See? I can also be impulsive,
he grinned, wriggling against her chest, talons carefully sheathed, producing a giggle and a momentary interruption in her sorrow–ah! Perhaps it was like tickling, which dragonets did with their hatchlings to encourage good growth of the wings? Not that she had any wings to grow. He rubbed her neck.
Tickle, tickle.

“Flicker, stop, that tickles! I was being serious.”

This is ‘tickle’,
said Flicker, prodding her ribs.
Learn the word, flat-face, or I’ll tickle you some more.

Actually, he was embarrassing them both now. Lia was a female of her kind, and he a male, and her excitable response made him imagine rubbing necks with a sweet female dragonet, and roosting together in a cosy cave like this one. Flicker’s belly-fires growled in discomfiture.

“You really are hungry,” she said, misunderstanding him completely.

“Hungry,” he agreed, grateful she had misread his response–for that was bathing in Dragon fire, as the dragonets liked to say.

He wondered what passed for beauty among her people. Long straw? A regular but woefully flat muzzle? And those horrid flaps she called ears, those could not possibly attract a mate. Her eyes, however, might conceivably enthral a male of her kind. They were pleasingly fiery, often seeming to spark when she became animated, or mellowing when she sang. Straw-head had no wings to flutter prettily, but perhaps Humans liked the filaments which adorned her eyelids? They were a pleasing adornment when she shuttered her gaze, or glanced at him with that impishly veiled glimmer when she was tugging his wings or making a joke.

Lia prepared the meat with deft strokes of her dagger, splaying the lemur so that she could pin it with her sticks and set it to cook. When she had done that, she returned to her drawing. “Father. Mother. Brother, sister. Three brothers.”

Oh. She meant the eggs of her clutch, and the parents who had laid them. Flicker taught her the right words in Dragonish. Then, he hesitantly set his paws to the sand. This earned him the bright expression she called a smile. He really needed to make her understand that showing one’s fangs was seen as aggressive amongst Dragons and dragonets. Ooh, perhaps he could draw expressions …

They spent a hilarious evening swapping notes on Human and Dragon facial expressions. Flicker learned that her eye-fluid was called tears, and when her eyes leaked, she was either sad or happy. Utterly baffling! She did not have transparent, secondary nictitating membranes to protect her orbs, unlike him, so she could not express subtleties of emotion with her inner membranes. Humans could snarl. They could know fear, surprise, hatred, anger and consternation. Indeed, she was a much more complex creature than he had assumed.

Still, she could not fly.

After snoozing the night away curled up against her stomach, Flicker rose with the dawn. Lia woke too, and taught him a sweet lullaby as they collected their few possessions.

“Ready,” she said.

Ready, Human girl? Great. I’m a fantastic scout. I know the paths of this Island like the palm of my paw. I will lead you.
Flicker pointed.
How is your wound?

My wound is good,
she repeated, pronouncing the lilting chirps carefully. “It still pulls, Flicker. I’ll need to climb slowly.”

He insisted,
Have to climb! Arm?

Lia checked the rude splint she had carved for her upper arm, five lengths of stick bound around her arm as tightly as she and Flicker could manage with vines. She tried to lift it; shook her head.

“Not good?”

“No, Flicker. Not good at all.”

He managed, “Flicker find good fly.”

Path? That would help,
Lia replied.

Flicker rewarded her linguistic efforts with a spiralling double backflip.

* * * *

Poor dragonet. Flicker had little patience with her inability to fly, Hualiama realised, although he was happy to spend hours coaching her in the nuances of Dragonish, which was so ridiculously complex, Lia despaired of ever talking properly. As promised, he scouted for the best paths. However, the cliff was vertical or very near vertical, a miles-high wall of rock and vegetation which disappeared into the misty skies overhead. Many places had overhangs, or were so tangled as to be impassable to anyone without wings.

Three hours later, having made less than five hundred vertical feet of progress, Lia sat on a fallen tree trunk, put her head in her hands, and growled her frustration to all and sundry.