Bracken

“There weren't always dragons in the Valley,” Bodhi mumbled.

An annoying habit of his, the mumbling. Coupled with soft distortion of words from his toothless mouth he was nothing short of a nightmare to hear. Seren leaned forward anyway, clenched her teeth against the irritation creeping up her chest and resigned herself. When an elder spoke, you listened.

He didn’t continue, and Seren went back to sharpening her stick to a point. The rabbit she’d caught and cut into strips for them earlier was testing her hunger.

“Time was when this valley here’d be overrun with the youngers,” Bodhi said. “One of ‘em m’self, I was,” his tired eyes were unblinking, transfixed on the dancing flames before him. “Concern’ with nothin’ more’n the right kind of daisy to pick our mothers.”

Seren said nothing, made sure no expression coloured her features, just methodically whittled her stick. Elders were always more concerned with the Before. Tales of bright flowers, warm days, and chill streams. Tales of nothing more than a fantasy.

“Weren’t always dragons here, no ma’am.”

Seren resisted the powerful urge to roll her eyes. She knew this. Knew the dragons were newcomers to him. It’s possible Bodhi was the oldest of all Valliers. Didn’t much matter to her. His perfect world existed long before she was born. They’d been here all her life. Dragons and destruction were all she’d ever know. Bohdi’s peace was as charred as the earth beneath her boots now.

And so, it surprised her when with the vehemence of a young man, Bodhi jolted forward to capture her hand in a vice grip and spoke slowly, dark eyes boring into hers. “There weren't always dragons in the Valley, Seren.”

“I know, Bod,” she placed the stick down, covered his hand with her own, patted, “I know.” The way he was staring unsettled her, crawled under her skin and chilled it. A ferocity radiated from him that she’d never seen before. She didn’t like it.

“Seventy years, ‘at’s all. All the time they’re here. Just seventy years.” He was mumbling again. Seren wished for his silence now. The flesh on her arm pulsed where he’d touched her.

Seventy years is more than enough time to turn the Valley into a scorched wasteland, old man.

She nodded, picked up her stick again, fought to roll her eyes at him. Always yearning for the feel of grass under their feet once more, the Elders were. She speared a strip of rabbit, mouth watering at the delicious scent that soon filled the air around them.

“If they have a start,” he spoke directly to her, though she did not meet his eye, “they can have an end.”

Seren scoffed, though it felt hollow. An end to the scourge was more than she could dream. “Goin’ to defeat the dragons are you, Bod?”

His eyes flashed with a hurt she almost regretted inflicting, and he said no more, just accepted the food she offered and silently excused himself to his bedroll close to the fire.

-

Their mission was an easy one. Should have been an easy one. A recon that would have taken her half the time had he not insisted on joining. Bodhi couldn’t move as swiftly, nor as intuitively as she. All she had to do was dislodge fallen rock from the valley’s undert-stream. Half a day, it should have taken.

But you don’t refuse an Elder, and he was adamant to the council that he should accompany her.

It was a surprise to her, therefore, when he complained of his aching bones, wanting to stay at camp while she ventured ahead.

Seren gladly jumped on the opportunity to save time. If she went on ahead perhaps they could even make it back to the village by supper.

Sure enough the familiar path over the scorched earth, through the barren glen, and down the sharp rock, was as speedy as she’d ever made it.

Keeping the stream clear was a constant battle for Valliers, the cave walls above were brittle from years of abuse, weak from battering waves of flame. But even though the upkeep of the river’s flow was a tedious task, she was ultimately grateful. Without the rock to catch the occasional blasting flames the stream would surely have dried up. The village would die a parching death.

She wasted no time wading into the waist-high waters and got to work. Rocks that were once part of the overhead structure blocked the course of the flow, and she heaved them out one by one. Sweat gathered on her brow as the sun moved overhead, spilling light further into the entrance.

This was a terrible task to be given, she knew deep in her bones. The chore usually given to freshly minted runners, fresh from their training to knock a bit of realism into their eagerness. Or it had been until the attack of the deep Summer, not five years before.

The sun had been unusually hot for days on end, more than she could remember in her previous eighteen summers. She’d been running just short of a year when the stream needed dislodging again. Her first venture into the valley, and she was ready. Had been prepared for months, wanted it, yearned for it. She was excited.

She was stupid.

Now she yearned for nothing more than to have her father back, the pebbled skin on her leg to smooth over and never have to run the stream again.

Clenching her teeth, she pushed the invasive thoughts that besieged the depths of her mind, chased the shiver that wound up her spine away and continued to work, thankful only for the early start she was afforded.

It was slow work, but with determination she had dislodged the sharp scree with minimal damage to the soft flesh of her hands. She bandaged them with torn strips of her shirt as she walked back under the waning sun to the camp. If Bodhi was up for it, they could easily make it home before deep nightfall.

But that, as it turned out, was a pipe-dream. She could have screamed in frustration, the ball of anger swelling ferociously in her stomach, when she reached camp and Bodhi was nowhere to be found.

“Elders!” she seethed through her teeth. They just didn’t have the right mindset for this work, this world. Fanciful and reckless. She slumped down beside the embers of her fire and stoked it, pulling out the rest of her rabbit to ease the ache in her belly.

It wasn’t until nightfall chilled her skin that her worry began to grow. The old man would have a terrible time finding her in the dark.

She chewed the skin of her lip, deciding as the flames began to die, to set out for him. Not a second later her concern transcended worry, and she shot straight to panic when, with the ground trembling beneath her feet, the unmistakable roar of the big one echoed through the night, Bracken the Bold. The Terrible. The Fierce. It had to be him.

Close.

Seren shot to her feet, stamped the fire out in a rapid dance, picked up her blade and sprinted for a mere second before halting in her tracks, a trill of feat shooting up her spine. A second, louder roar sliced through the Earth beneath her feet.

Idiot, idiot, idiot! She thought furiously, sprinting forward again, though at herself for running toward the dragon, or at Bodhi for getting turned around in the Valley floor she wasn’t sure. Both probably.

She flew past jagged boulders and the dried husks of felled trees, stumbled down a cliff-like edge and slid around the corner on a hill when she saw it. The serpent-tail of Bracken already in flight, making away with a good fleshy bite of Bodhi, who laid bleeding on the ground and reaching out.

Reaching out for her.

“Gods!” she panted, racing forward toward him and pressing down hard on the wound. Pressure, always apply pressure! She knew the basic tenets of wound care, though in her rational mind she was aware, too aware, that as the blood seeped between her fingers in a ferocious flow, nothing could help.

“Seren,” Bodhi said, coughing up a generous amount of blood onto her face.

“Shh,” she soothed, “save your breath, old man.”

His breath quickened. “Too late, here.”

She applied more pressure, tried to avoid his gaze. She hated this. Hated the desperation, the way she was his last hope. Hated that he needed this last connection from her. Hated that anyone would need her for something so critical. So final.

“Here!”

She snapped to meet his gaze. “What! What! I’m trying to sto–”

“Too late,” he replied. “Take it.”

Just as he said it, the stump of his left arm patted against a shiny blade. A sword. Even covered in blood as it was, she could tell it was a fine weapon.

“It’s the only thing that’ll do the trick. Find Gabilis, south of the Valley. He knows–”

“Knows what?” She asked. “Knows what! Bodhi! Bodhi– Shit!”

Tears prickled at her eyes as she sat back, took a look over his ruined frame, and sniffed. The sighting, the attack, would have to be logged as soon as possible. She stood, plucked the grand sword from his grasp, and began to walk. Someone would come back for the body in the morning, it certainly was not going to be her.

She was left with a peculiar mix of resentment and humour for Bodhi. She could never understand a word he said to her in life, and now in death he left her with nothing but the biggest mystery of all.

Where had he gotten this sword?