Adora

Jomei watched the light hit his translucent scales and scatter across the water of the mountain lake as he rued the mutation that exiled him. He lifted his huge head from contemplation of his curse, to gaze into the endless blue refraction of the sky, to where the atmosphere thinned and beyond in a blanket of sewn stars, the souls of his ancestors, waited for the velvet night.

Once he had been young and he’d thought the first century in exile the hardest, with the passing of each anniversary realization dawned; every day after was harder.

With all he knew forbidden, his new world alien, solitude grew into a beast that devoured all. The voices of the souls just beyond the blue of the sky, called to him.

Join us.

Each dawn, brought hours that tightened upon him, as filaments of despair drawn tight. His soul bleeding from the hundreds of tiny slices. Today he yearned to join them, to once again be embraced by the loving arms of his kin.

Carrying the scent of eucalyptus, leaf litter and blood, a breeze threaded through the wide spaced trees of the forest behind him.

Jomei’s nostrils flared, the thread of scent drawing his attention to the dappled light that spilled between branches and gilded the forest floor. The vibrant life of the forest pulsed behind him, power moved through the veins of the trees under their bark armour, tiny sparks, insects, lizards and birds swooped and spun as they burned bright against his senses. He’d chosen this place; its beauty had sustained his buried hope; what had marred its peace?

Moving his body huge and supple, light as cloud, he turned from the open sky, to slip between the trees and investigate. As he moved the thread of scent grew wider, bloodier, fouler. This was not the interplay of nature red in tooth and claw, this was unnatural.

As Jomei moved, his passage stirring leaf litter, his scales caught and sprayed the light into motes that wove around the dappled bark, he held his wings in close to his body. He never came this far down-wood, the interlocking fingers of the trees caged him from the sky, and beyond it the ragged edged wound made by the humans who lived in the valley was an assault upon his senses he did not wish to endure.

Bare ground, stripped of life, the severed remains of limbed friends who had whispered their secrets to him, sheltered him when he first arrived were too much to bear.

The scents of blood, flesh, faeces, fresh and wet, began to intertwine with decay, rot and bone. Dread quivered in his stomach as he emerged into a human made clearing close to the ragged edge of the forest. His mind reeled as it tried to make sense of the horror before him.

Bodies.

Tiny bodies.

None as long as his smallest claw.

Piled, wounds gaping, at the heart of the clearing.

Under them, rotted flesh suppurated, dampening the husks, sliming bones whitened by weathering.

Children.

Jomei’s eyes rose from the horror on the ground, to the primitive effigy, long necked, heavy headed, wings outstretched, tail dangling over the dead, glittering with shards of pearlescent pottery.

Both eyes closed to block the sight before him, his head hung, as sorrow threatened to overwhelm his heart.

A swirl of breeze lifted the stench of the dead into his nostrils. Sounds of sliding flesh, squelched on to leaf litter, as the abomination before him shifted.

Slipping, footsteps, unsteady, untrained toddled towards him.

Pressure of a tiny hand splayed on the side of his muzzle.

His eyes opened.

Silent, solemn, a gore-streaked child stared back at him. Eyes blue like the sky, lashes spangled with blood, a semi-clotted, oozing wound scored their sternum.

“How are you alive little one?” Jomei’s mind reached for the child’s as their gazes locked together.

Around them the breeze quested, swirled, leaf litter caught in its grasp spun in ever widening circles, strong enough to catch his whiskers spooling them into waving tendrils, and tug the child’s blood sodden hair into spiky clumps.

“Magic.” Jomei mused to himself.

The breeze dipped and died. Leaves skipped and settled back onto earth.

The child blinked and swayed on their feet.

Jomei opened his hand, diamond claws glittering scythes at the end of each finger and with infinite gentleness, laid it palm up beside the child.

Blue eyes swept from his moonshine eye to his hand.

He waited as the child made its decision and crawled up into the centre of his palm. There it curled into a ball, nestled between heartline and lifeline, blue eyes closed, tension drained in boneless trust.

“Your kin abandon you as I was abandoned by mine. We will have each other.” He murmured to the child.

Curling his fingers to cradle his precious cargo, he drew his hand to his chest and turned away from the horror and headed back to his home.

***

The mirror lake reflected the height of the suns climb and fluffy white clouds mounded into escarpments that would darken and later soak the dry forest floor with life. Around them the life of the forest pulsed, insects buzzed, birds swooped to catch them and deliver them to greedy young.

“Five, four, three, two, one,” Jomei counted as he held his hands over his eyes.

A titter of laughter betrayed her hiding place, high in the twig branches of the tall eucalypt behind him. He dropped his hands and looked around.

“Where could Adora be?” Jomei turned in circles on the spot. “How can she be so good at hiding?” He spoke mind to mind, could feel her joy in the complement.

His eyes scanned past the trembling tuft of leaves where his daughter hid swaying at the top of the tallest tree that ringed the lake.

He moved like mist in amongst the trees, being deliberately loud. Stooping he snuffled under bushes, disturbed the furred mammals who lived there. Lifting his head, he made sure she would see the dirt piled on the end of his muzzle.

A spike of delight travelled between their minds and he knew she had seen.

“Silly papa.” Her mind spoke to his, “I’m not on the ground.”

He jerked his head up as if in surprise, pretended not to see her flit from the first tree to another on a swirl of summoned breeze.

“Are you not?” He looked about himself in exaggeration, “Adora, my clever Adora where are you?”

“It’s called hide and seek, not hide and tell.”

He could feel her smile in her words, it echoed in his heart.

***

Rain pounded outside their cave. Jomei lay listening to the individual droplets fall as he watched Adora use a stick to copy the runes he’d scribed into the dirt floor. Her dark hair fell around her face obscuring her clever blue eyes as she concentrated on her task. For the first time he noticed that she had woven flecks of his shed scales into twisted bands of thick hair that lay amongst the waves.

“Adora,” he lifted a claw and with a delicate touch lifted one of the bands on its tip, “why have you done this?”

She turned from her task, rested back on her heels to regard him, her fingers lifting to touch the hard pieces woven into her hair. “I want to look like you papa.”

She pinched the skin on her forearm between her fingers, then reached out and stroked the surface of his smooth chitinous scales. “I want to be beautiful.”

“You are.”

She snorted and turned back to practice her letters.

Jomei watched her as he considered her words. She was not a dragon by species, but he had raised her as he remembered being raised. Her body may be that of a human, but she was not solely that either. With her dragon mind and magic maybe, she would be something else, something new.

“What would make you beautiful?” He asked as she traced the lines of the glyphs in the loose dirt of the floor.

She cocked her chin to the side, one clever blue eye regarded him for a moment. Her stick moved, illustrating a form that had never been. Finished she stepped aside and gestured with her hand to what she had drawn. “This.”

He lifted his head and craned his neck forward to see, his eyes lifted from the image carved into the earth, to settle on her slight figure.

“This will mark you as other forever.”

She shook her head, the movement setting her heavy locks in motion over her prepubescent chest and shoulders. “As this,” she gestured to the illustration, “I will belong.”

Jomei considered. Upon the advent of Adora, centuries of rejection, the heavy ill-fitting suit weighing him to the grave, had sloughed from him, could he deny his daughter the same relief?

He inclined his head in assent. “As you wish.”

***

Frigid wind wrapped its icy fingers around them as they whirled in the sky in a game of chase and soar. Jomei his wings spread in lustrous sails to either side caught the wind laughed into the sleet as Adora swept the air currents around her to fill her own sail wings.

Mounted on bone taken from his own, grafted into the musculature of her back, this was the first test of their strength, the last step in her transformation. Delight radiated from his daughter as she adjusted the angle of her wings to catch the next updraft, as the wind moved at her behest to allow her to dip and soar like her papa.

Dark hair woven in thick ropes streamed over her shoulders, her skin glittered as the light caught his scales seamlessly enmeshed with her more malleable flesh. At the tips of her fingers and toes diamond talons flashed. Above high cheek bones and wide stretched smile, her blue eyes blazed.

Higher and higher they soared into the heavy grey drifts of snow sodden cloud, freezing water sought purchase on their scales and wings, determined to drag them back to the earth, until they burst from them into weak sunlight. Adora raised her arms and spun upwards as no winged creature ever could and laughed with joy.

Jomei felt his heart swell with pride and pleasure. He veered towards the beach of a snow-capped mountain ledge, settled his bulk and watched her acrobatics. The sea of dirty grey cloud below them crashed in waves against his perch, spraying mist into the air. Adora, spun and favoured him with an immense satisfied smile and skimmed across the distance between them and settled next to him on the ledge.

“I am at last what I am meant to be.” She said laying her small fine boned hand on his smallest shortened talon.

“You are perfection.” Jomei agreed.

Her brow creased in concentration as she folded her wings flat to her back and settled into a crouch beside him. Over the years it had taken to mould her to the image of her heart’s desire, her hips had widened, breasts developed, height matured, each change had required adjustment of the modifications but now they were complete.

Adora turned her eyes beyond the endless blue of the sky. Above them he could feel the pulse of his ancestors where they waited in the emptiness.

“Do our kin still call to you?” Adora asked.

“Not as they did before.” Jomei said, his eyes on his daughter’s profile. Along the side of her throat a raised thickened thread of flesh protected by overlapping scales marked the passage of his former fire gland.

“Tell me again.”

Jomei cast the images of the Kin of Fire into her mind. “All Kin of Fire are bound by the flame that sustains us all. When our mortal time is done, the ancestors call you back to the flame, to join them, to watch over the next generation. One day we shall both watch the world as stars lighting the way for those who come next.”

She turned her eyes to his, her hands gripping the edge of the ledge before them, the stone crumbling under the assault of her talons. “If they tried to take you, I would fight them.”

He felt the fury of promise behind her words, the fierce love that burned between them, that had saved him.

“I would not go.”

“I would burn the sky.” Adora’s sincere intensity warmed the air around them, melting the crashing edge of cloud under them.

“There will be no need.” Jomei lifted his forearm, Adora leant into his scaled under-hide, as he settled his arm around her with care.

While her tears froze upon his scales, he knew he would do worse if any attempted to take her from him.

***

Spring warmth coaxed the first flowers to worship the sun, as dawn scattered across the surface of mirror lake, Jomei lay on its shore letting the immature light catch on his scales and refract into the atmosphere.

Adora had been gone when he awoke. She had slipped away to pick cornflowers.

Blue, they reminded him of her eyes, he had told her.

Every morning since the thaw, she’d disappeared early only to return with her arms full of the blooms. Each day her journey was longer, as she depleted their numbers closest to their home.

When she returned today, he would help her weave the stalks into the thick bands of her hair, and they would play together in the sky.

He closed his eyes and relaxed in the warmth of the morning, happiness a banked inferno that sustained his heart.

Abomination! How is it that you are still alive?

The familiar voice ripping into his mind, sent ice racing through his veins.

Jomei’s eyes snapped open; his head whipped to look over his shoulder.

Behind him, Siera stood scales clumped in saw toothed ridges across the muscled expanse of his chest, the mottled green, brown, grey of his scales exposed in the light filled clearing. Golden eyes blazed with righteous fury.

Leave! Jomei replied, gathering his strength beneath him. He closed the link between his and Adora’s mind.

We heard stories, of an abomination who lived here, never did we think it would be you. Siera’s spiked tail whipped side to side, his tone amused, unconcerned.

Brother, we are kin, do not make me … Jomei hoped Adora had needed to go far to find this morning’s flowers.

You think you could take me? Once perhaps, exile has made you careless. Amused derision, coloured Siera’s thoughts.

The mirrored water behind Jomei erupted as warriors burst from beneath its surface and launched themselves at his back. Caught mid turn, Jomei felt hands wrap around the base of his wings and rip them free.

He raked his talons across the flank of the warrior he could reach as other fangs set into his throat where it met his shoulder. With a roar of agony, he ripped his flesh from the bite opening the artery.

Opalescent blood spurted from the wound as he turned upon the warriors and tore them to pieces with his teeth and talons. He prayed that it would be over before Adora returned. Only his death would protect her from Siera’s mercy.

Well, it’s good to see there’s life in you yet brother. Siera circled him, forcing Jomei to turn to keep him in sight.

If you want death, I am willing to oblige. Jomei growled as he lunged his talons outstretched.

Siera laughed, unfurled his wings behind him, and rose into the air out of reach. I don’t have to fight you. I just have to wait.

Jomei felt his limbs falter, as blood loss weakened his body. Coward.

Jomei fell to his knees on grass soaked with his life blood. His body too heavy for him to hold up, his head crashed to the ground.

Siera settled back to earth, extended an onyx talon to turn Jomei’s head so he could see his eyes.

In a final burst of strength, Jomei lunged, his jaws caught the talon and snapped it off.

Siera snarled and kicked Jomei’s head away. As his last breath blew from his lungs, Siera leant down so Jomei’s fading eyesight could see his face.

Not coward brother, King.

***

The scent of death filled her nostrils before she saw her father’s body staked out on the shore of mirror lake.

Each of his great limbs had been tied to butchered trees driven into the ground around him. His chest had been split; rib cage wrenched asunder to expose the organs within. His great wings lay to the side, ripped from his body and slashed to ribbons, his beautiful eye punctured with a spike of onyx.

Adora hit the ground too fast, the physical pain miniscule in comparison to the rending of her heart. Blue flowers scattered from her arms, onto the gore-soaked ground. She crawl-stumbled to his side. Her hands touched his face, cold, still, empty.

Tears burned down her cheeks, as the wind rose around her. A vengeful shrieking screaming morass, it stripped the bark off the trees surrounding the lake, tore them from the ground, piled them around her father’s body. Birds, insects, lizards, mammals fled the under growth and sky in the face of her furious grief.

Adora’s fingers wrapped around the onyx spike driven into her father’s eye socket and wrenched it free. Once in her hand she knew it for what it was, a talon. Leaf litter, green, stripped from branches rained into the space around her. Soaked in her father’s blood, the wind caught her and lifted her out from amongst the jagged wreckage of trees.

Kin of Fire had done this.

Adora threw back her head, opened her mouth and wailed. Fire spilled from between her lips, caught by the wind, flames were driven into the pyre. It exploded into a firestorm that scorched the earth; boiled the lake; singed the sky.

She lifted the talon in a white knuckled grip, brought it to her chest, rested its razor tip on the edge of her old scar, and slashed.

Droplets of scarlet-opalescent blood pulsed into the flames; they reached for her, blue fingers of heat.

The Kin of Fire had had left him like this so he would never be able to join the ancestors.

They would all burn.