Daliah's Roost

The faint stink of human punctuated the air, but this time, it smelled different. There was some sort of sweetness to the scent that Daliah was uncertain about. She stretched her leathery wings and arched her back, straightening her legs that had been curled under her through the night. She was not a large dragon, she fit inside a small cavern that she found cozy, warming the surrounding stone with her draconic body heat. She emerged from her cave. It was getting dark. The evening star was already shining brightly, the sun already past the horizon. There was a chill in the air.

Humans were strange, cruel creatures, best hidden from rather than spoken to. One can never predict a human. Their friendships are formed and broken over the most insignificant things and they create bonds and promises that they just as soon break. In the two hundred odd years that Daliah had now lived, she knew humans to be the most treacherous of creatures.

This scent, however, this scent was only mostly human, and not yet fully formed. It was missing the typical robustness that was a hallmark of the human scent. It was missing musk and as such, it didn't set off her instinctive sense of danger.

Dahlia flapped her powerful wings once to launch herself into the air, once more to clear the treetops and glide in the undercurrents of the skywinds. She circled the area making a visual scan of anything out of the ordinary. Humans leave trails. Humans are clumsy and make a mess of things every time they enter the forest, broken branches and brambles in their wake, sometimes clearing large swathes of underbrush, sometimes whole trees just because it pleases them.

There!

She spotted the trail. It was very small; she almost missed it. There was no large-scale destruction, no missing trees or much damage at all. It actually reminded her of the small humans of old, the fae, who lived in harmony with the earth instead of waging war against it. She perched gently upon a tree branch in the middle of the canopy where she still had cover but could easily see the ground.

That´s when she heard the crying. He wasn´t crying out loud; just a sniffle here and there, a shaky breath. She looked past one of the branches that she was hiding behind and saw him nestled inside a large tree, hands closed into tight fists on his lap, the color drained from them. His bottom lip quivered, and his dark hair waved weightlessly in the chilly breeze he was sheltering from. Daliah sniffed the air.

He didn´t smell like any human she had known before, and he was less than a third of the size of humans. She wondered; perhaps he was a person of the fae, but she hadn't seen one of those in a hundred years!

Daliah began to hum the fae song, a haunting, tinkling melody that soothed any fae child.

'...Hush little faerie, no more tears...'

The boy opened his eyes and looked around,

'Time you learned there is nought to fear...'

He breathed deeply, steadying himself. Daliah's face fell. So, he was a faerie. She continued the fae song:

'Magic runs within your veins... Magic shields you every day...'

'And should that magic well run dry... There is magic still, up in the sky.'

She came to light in front of him. His eyes widened at the sight of her, and he froze. Daliah made eye contact and did not move, waiting to see what he did. It was customary to show proper deference to a dragon, and if he were truly of the fae, he would know to lower his gaze. The boy's eyes held for a moment. Just when Daliah thought he would begin to gawk like a human thing, his shoulders began to relax, and he looked down.

That was the sign! Daliah lowered her head and sniffed. The sweet scent was coming from him. She took three slow steps toward him. He raised one of his hands toward her and she sniffed his hand. His fingers! They smelled of...

'Cookie!' grinned the child. He opened a flap at his hip and Daliah perceived that he was wearing a satchel beneath his cloak. From the satchel he produced a circle that was almost gold but wasn't. It was almost bread, but sweet and crumbly. He offered it to her. She took a step backward, not sure what to make of this offering. Dragons and fae folk have a long history, with certain rituals and customs that humans barely understand. Accepting food from a faerie was to form an agreement with that fae, and Daliah did not know what this one would require in return. Come to think of it, humans are the same way, but, confusingly, they are not honest about it. Humans expect everything to be given to them freely. It is one of the reasons they cannot be trusted. But this one? He came with an offering first before asking for something. He knew the unwritten rule, she reasoned, and if he was in fact human, maybe there was some hope for him; maybe this was how the fae folk were made.

She sniffed the outstretched hand, the sweet-smelling stubby fingers and the cookie those little fingers held out to her. It did smell good. Gingerly, she took it in her mouth then took several steps back, crouching on all four of her legs to take a bite. It crumbled in her mouth. What it lacked in moisture it made up for in sweetness. It was hard and soft at the same time. She finished it in an instant. When she looked across at the child, he, too, was eating. So, it wasn't a trick. She finally saw past her own distrust: he was just a helpless thing, a child left deep in the forest alone, abandoned. Daliah held back a wave of emotion; sadness mixed with indignation as she pushed back a memory. She knew what that was like.

The babe gurgled, and Daliah stepped forward. She whickered to calm him and nuzzled his face with her warm snout. He giggled at the sensation of soft suede and whiskers. The sky was truly dark now, studded with silver diamante stars, with just a stripe of orange light fading to deep purple on the horizon. The Autumn would soon turn to frost. She lifted her two front legs off the ground and cradled the child between them, retracting her claws and using her front paws like hands. Against her warm dragon chest and strong beating heart the child fell asleep instantly. Daliah then reared back on her hind legs to summon the power to launch herself into the sky and fly toward her cliffside cavern where she roosted. After all, it was against the Draconic Code to allow any child to die.

She would raise him as a faerie child, at least through the winter, or until he could tell her from where he came, and she would call him by the only word he spoke to her; 'Cookie'.