A Mother's Fire

Her former name was an ancient one, in a tongue lost to time - a tongue with no modern equivalent. She had previously claimed the name with pride before she passed it down to her daughter, just as her mother had passed it on to her.

And yet, the small creature that stood before her, pointing a stubby finger in her direction called her Karumbe.

Her knowledge of human language was limited, and it had been a very long time since she had last communicated with man, but something in the deep recesses of her mind was able to determine that the tiny human was calling her Turtle.

“A turtle!” she thought. For such a pathetic creature to have the gall to call her a turtle was actually enough to make her laugh – something she had not done in ages. A low rumble reverberated in her chest, and the sound seemed to startle the small creature. It stumbled backwards and landed on its clothed bottom, but continued to smile and stare up at her in awe. She did not remain amused for long.

“Karumbe!” it said again. The dragon huffed indignantly and stood up to her full height. The light peeking through the dense foliage of the rainforest reflected off her copper-colored scales, making it look as if they were rippling as she flexed the musculature of her legs and neck.

She was unable to fully show off her impressive wingspan, due to injury and the limited space between the kapok trees, but spread her wings out as much as she could. Her wings were identical to those of the condors she once shared the skies with, albeit much larger and sinewy, and were sparsely coated with black and white feathers – the plumage being a characteristic possessed only by those of her nearly extinct race.

She bared her sharp fangs at the small creature and growled, and thin tendrils of smoke escaped from the small gaps between her dagger-like teeth. These mighty features were most certainly not those of a turtle, and this thing would find that out soon enough.

She had been curled up among the knotted roots of the largest kapok tree in the jungle when the small human had woken her. It was not like her to be caught off guard, but not only was her visual acuity not what it once was, time had also dulled her other senses. The human was significantly smaller than the ones she had seen – it was a child, and an especially young one at that, given its diminutive stature. So, despite its clumsy movements, it treaded lightly, and its footsteps were imperceptible from a distance. It was only when it stood but a few feet away from her sleeping form that she was able to sense its presence.

The last time she had seen a dark-skinned human like this one must have been a century ago, when she was but a hatchling, right before the Great Exodus during which she and her remaining kin had fled to the peaks of the highest mountains, buried in the clouds.

It was said that a thousand years ago, the first peoples had worshipped her ancestors, the Inti Kuntur – the Sun Condors – named after the way they breathed fire and the way their scales shone like flaming gold in the sunlight. Not all humans revered them in this same way, however; others hunted her kind, seeing them as monsters that needed to be eradicated from the world.

Those who worshipped the Inti Kuntur offered up their hearts and minds to the dragons, and the dragons accepted their gifts, using arcane magic to intertwine their souls together. The nomads rode on the backs of her ancestors, deep into the mountains where they then built their first civilizations.

The first peoples prospered and, for a time, everything was good. But humans, she had learned, were violent, terrible creatures, and they waged war on one another over the gifts the earth had provided for them – food, land, and other such resources.

With their souls and destinies tied together in such a way that they could not untangle themselves, her predecessors had no choice but to take part in the atrocities man committed against their fellow man. It wasn’t until the first generation of rider-less dragons were born – her generation, that her kind was able to escape, fleeing to the highest peaks of the mountains, where no man could reach them.

But then, almost one hundred years later, pale men covered with impenetrable silver scales climbed the cliffsides on the backs of creatures she had never seen before – creatures she could only describe as demon dogs. They came in the dead of night, and used every weapon at their disposal to attack her kin.

The dragons had already been vastly outnumbered by the invaders, and less than half of them were fit to fight. The elder dragons were the first to fall, and then the demon dogs came for the younglings; their fangs shredded the naked wings of hatchlings, tore at their throats, and by the time she had reached them, it was too late.

She had once thought that death was like a sunset – that it would be gradual, and would come to a peaceful end like the sun sinking below the horizon, hiding behind the mountaintops. Life was like the explosion of colors painting the sky before the sunset. She had dared to believe that life was beautiful, and that beauty could also be found in death.

What she had learned on that fateful night, was that life was not like the sun, life was like a tiny flame being beaten by the wind, desperately fighting to remain alight. And death was like a torrential downpour of rain, smothering the flame and leaving nothing behind, not even fingers of smoke to claw their way upwards into the sky.

Dragons were creatures of fire, and she had always believed that fire could not harm them, but the flames that erupted from the mouths of the demon dogs had burnt her wings, leaving behind singed patches of feathers and burns that had not healed in the four and fifty nights since she had escaped the carnage.

Her left wing was nearly rendered useless, and it was only by chance that she had managed to make it out alive. She had thrown the humans’ leader from the edge of a cliff, and had fallen along with him. Before she could hit the ground, she extended her wings and, powered by sheer will alone, had flown deep into the jungle where she now hid. With her wings as burnt and damaged as they were, she had no hope of ever returning to her home in the mountains.

For all she knew, there was not even a home worth returning to. Blood had stained every inch of the refuge, and it was more than likely that she was the last of her kind. And even if she was not, there was no way for her to ever find out.

She was all alone now. She had lost the only family she had ever known; she had lost herself; and worst of all, she had lost her hatchling. Her only daughter never had the chance to circle the sun even once.

“A life for a life,” she thought. Killing the human child would not bring back her own hatchling, but perhaps it would lessen the constant pain she had felt in her heart since the day her world was broken beyond repair.

The child in front of her was alone and defenseless, and she could think of a hundred ways to kill it without exerting any real effort. She could crush it under her claw, or strangle it with her tail in the same way she had seen the anacondas do to their prey. She could rip it to shreds with her fangs, or she could set it aflame with a single breath – just as the demon dogs had done to her daughter.

She had seen firsthand exactly what this child would grow into; she would be doing the world a favor by eliminating this threat now.

The child continued to stare up at her, the sparkle of awe never once leaving its eyes. It watched as she folded her wings into her body, and it followed her movements as she closed the distance between them.

But as she neared it, she was overcome with the feeling that there was something about the creature that prevented her from harming it– an inexplicable connection between the two that, although intangible, physically drew her to the child, pulling her into its orbit until their souls began to touch.

The child shuffled closer, apparently also feeling the pull, and rested its small hand on the rough patch of scales between her eyes. At the sudden contact, an overwhelming sense of calm washed over her, as if a piece of her that had been missing had finally returned to its rightful place in her heart.

And then her mind was flooded with hazy, almost incomprehensible memories.

She could hear the echoes of screams, see flashes of fire, and her nostrils were filled with the putrid stench of death. She could taste the metallic tang of tongue on her blood, and every cell in her body was filled with sheer terror. She was reliving this child’s experiences through his memories, and her muscles tensed to the point of pain, paralyzing her where she stood as she began to make sense of the tidal wave of memories crashing over her.

She heard the familiar howling of the demon dogs, and watched as pale, silver-scaled men raised their long blades and forcefully swung them down on the necks of dark-skinned persons that bore a strong resemblance to the child she had found wandering the rainforest. Other men would take their long sticks, with shining, pointed ends, and pierce the hearts of the natives. Others would use some kind of handheld mechanism to launch projectiles from a distance.

The overwhelming sense of fright faded when she felt the strange sensation of being enveloped in strong, ghostlike arms. She peered through the eyes of the child and looked up at the woman who held him tightly to her, and she could hear the woman’s racing heartbeat when the boy rested his head on his mother’s chest.

She backed away from the child’s touch and urged her muscles to relax. Although it went unsaid, she was certain that the woman in the memory was the boy’s mother; it was the only explanation for the way he peacefully settled against her breast despite the chaos in the background.

It was the same way she used to feel whenever she curled up under her mother’s wing when she was still a youngling. And surely it was the same way her own daughter felt whenever she would nuzzle up against her neck.

She settled on her haunches and allowed the child to climb onto her tail. The connection between them seemed to strengthen with each passing moment, and it struck her that what she was feeling was surely the bond between rider and dragon.

Although none of her generation ever had a rider, traces of the soul-binding magic their ancestors used still remained, and it appeared that she had never truly known what the magic really accomplished. She did not choose this human, and he only happened to stumble into her life by chance; their lives had travelled down separate paths until finally meeting at this intersection, steered here by the omnipotent hand of destiny.

The magic of her ancestors did not just tie them to humans individually, but as a whole. Inti Kuntur and the First Peoples existed as two halves of the same whole – she understood that now. And this small creature resting against the smooth scales of her tail was her rider. He was hers and she was his.

She had been prejudiced against humans since she was but a hatchling, and she was raised to think only the worst of them. Following the events in the mountains, when her kind was slain, she had been blinded by grief and rage. She had come so close to killing the child. Never once did it occur to her that he was just like her: a victim – no, a survivor.

Humans were cruel, that much was true. And she was sure that humans would always remain cruel, even several hundreds and thousands of sun cycles into the future. But to continue to assume that all of them possessed the same cruel intentions as the pale men or the ancient warlords would be ignorant.

Just as there would always be darkness in the world, there would always be light. She had been granted a second chance at feeling that warm glow in her heart that only love could ignite – because that was what she felt for the boy. Pure, untainted love.

She thought that being unable to return to her home in the mountains meant she would be alone for the rest of her life; she thought she would spend the rest of her days in quiet solitude until, eventually, the earth would swallow her whole and she could be reunited with her daughter. But now, she would not only be living for herself, but for someone else as well. She would never feel lonely again, not now that she had found her rider.

Karumbe, the boy had called her. She had passed her former name down to her daughter, and her daughter would be buried with that name, marking the end of an era. But for now, and forever more, she would be Karumbe. She was his Karumbe. And the two would never be separated.

She nudged the boy with her snout and he erupted into a fit of giggles. She became so distracted by the boy playing with the patches of feathers on her wings, that she almost failed to pick up on the sounds of footsteps rapidly approaching.

A sudden gasp cut through the air as a dark-skinned woman entered the clearing and caught sight of the boy so close to Karumbe’s face. She grabbed a fallen branch from off the ground and charged forward, Karumbe rose to her full height, ready to fight off her assailant and protect her rider. But as the woman drew nearer, Karumbe locked eyes with hers.

They were alight with what she could only describe as a Mother’s Fire – it was a look she was painfully familiar with, as it was the same fire she possessed when she sank her teeth into the jugulars of the men who had taken her daughter from her.

It was the boy’s mother, and she was ready to risk everything to protect her son – but there was no need for that. Before the mother could reach her, Karumbe bowed her head in reverence, showing the woman the respect that she deserved, and communicating to her that she was not a threat.

When the woman slowed to a stop, Karumbe tilted her head upwards and observed her appearance. Her brow glistened with a thin layer of sweat, and dried blood was caked onto her arms. Her bare chest was covered in tiny cuts and scratches she had collected from running through thickets, and her feet were bloodied from running barefoot over knotted roots and loose stones.

Despite all this, she had an air of regality that only a mother could possess.

She scooped her child into her arms and cradled his head on her shoulder as she regulated her breathing, her chest heaving up and down. Karumbe could hear the pounding of her heart even from a distance – she had been running. But from what?

Karumbe closed her eyes and shut the rest of the world out, focusing all of her energy on listening. Her ears perked up when she began to hear the distant sounds of an army approaching, and her nose twitched when she picked up on the foul smell of burning flesh and matted fur that she had learned to associate with the demon dogs.

It was them. The same ones who had taken everything from her,

They were headed in their direction, and they would soon arrive. The demon dogs that hunted them were well on their way, trailing far ahead of the men, and it was only a matter of minutes before they found them.

They had to get out of there – Karumbe had to be the one to get them out of there.

She turned to the mother and presented her neck. As if being able to read the intention in her eyes, the mother raised up her child and rested him in the space between her shoulders, which was the perfect shape for a rider. Karumbe lowered herself even further, and waited for her rider’s mother to climb on top of her.

“Hurry.”

The mother settled in behind her son and wrapped her arms around Karumbe’s neck.

Where they would go, she did not know, but she would fly as far as her wings would take them, towards the setting sun, beyond the mountains, beyond the desert and the waters she never had the chance to explore.

Karumbe took several steps back, until she stood at the edge of the clearing, and charged forward, gaining momentum before using her powerful hind legs to launch herself into the air.

She had not flown since the day she came soaring down from the mountaintops, and her injuries had never fully healed, and she found herself plummeting back to the earth. She contorted her body in such a way that she took the brunt of the impact, leaving her rider and his mother unharmed.

Albeit slowly, she was sure she could manage to fly on her own, and her rider was still small – small enough that he weighed almost nothing. But she was absolutely certain that she would not be able to carry both of them to safety.

As if understanding this, the mother kissed the top of her son’s head and climbed off of Karumbe’s back. Tears rolled down her cheeks and left streaks as it wiped away some of the grime that had accumulated on her skin. The mother spoke and, despite not fully understanding her tongue, Karumbe’s heart knew what she was saying:

“Leave me. Save him.”

The boy began to wail and Karumbe froze as she ran through every possible scenario in her head. Whatever she decided to do, at least one of them would die today.

And that one would be her.

Even before her daughter was a hatchling, when she was still growing inside her iridescent egg, Karumbe felt as if her heart was no longer hers. Having a child was like ripping your heart out of your chest and allowing it to exist outside of your body as its own being while still remaining a part of you. It was a terrifying thing to leave your heart susceptible to all the dangers of the world. But what was perhaps more terrifying than even that, was having your heart stolen from you and taken to a place where it was irretrievably lost.

She had lost her family, and she would not allow another to suffer just as she had.

Karumbe lowered herself onto her belly and craned her neck forward so that the boy began to slide off; his mother caught him and stared wide-eyed at her, wordlessly asking her what she was doing.

Karumbe rose and headed in the direction of the attackers. She looked back at the two of them over her shoulder and nodded her head.

“Go,” she thought. And as if she had heard her, the mother scooped her child up into her arms and ran as fast as her legs would allow. As the distance between Karumbe and the child grew, she could feel the connection between them thin. It grew taut, as if a rope was physically connecting the two of them and was being stretched to its limit.

She closed her eyes and willed the connection to break, and with a snap, it did just that. Their bond was irrevocably severed, and she once again felt that familiar emptiness in her heart.

There was nothing left for her to lose, now, but with strengthened resolve, she dug her claws into the ground. The howling grew louder, and she could hear the battle cries of the pale, silver-scaled men charging towards her. She took in a deep breath and the air that filled her lungs burned with the intensity of a thousand suns. With a roar, she set the forest ablaze.

Her death would not be beautiful and peaceful like a setting sun, nor would it be as sudden and hopeless as a flame being snuffed out. Her death would be like the eruption of a volcano – a testament to the ferocity of nature, burning hot, and annihilative.

And oh so spectacular.