Deeper Bonds

He awakened when he sneezed.

He was settling back down with heavy eyes when another, violent sneeze made him hit his head on the roof of his tiny home. He tried to snort in disgust but found that he couldn't.

His baby hands reached up and pulled a bunch of white goo off of his face.

He sighed. His mother had told him that when the first sign of his fire came, he would have to come out.

Eyeing the curved wall, he gave a half-hearted, experimental swipe with his claws. It didn’t even make a dent. Frowning in annoyance, he tried again, a bit harder this time. Still nothing.

Rage smoldered in his little breast and he roared so loudly that he almost deafened himself. No mere eggshell was going to defeat a dragon!

He attacked the wall in earnest, tearing at it savagely with all four claws and teeth alike, shaking his little world so that it felt to him that the very foundations of the earth were trembling at his fury.

His mother smiled at the adorable squeaks and rustles she heard from the only sapphire egg she had produced. Her baby boy was coming!

************

Jakkar jolted up in bed, screaming.

Jetten grabbed the knife from the table by the bed and looked around wildly for the danger.

Rivulets of sweat poured from the panting Jakkar and he was shaking as if he had been lost in a blizzard. Frantically, he tried to clear his head and slow his breathing, so as not to lose the respect of his wife. His panic made it even more difficult and for a moment he feared he might choke.

Once she realized they were not under attack, she looked at him with a mixture of concern and contempt.

“What is wrong with you?” she said.

“You died,” he whispered.

Jetten’s curiosity softened her attitude a bit. She curled her legs under her and laid the knife aside. “What do you mean?”

He cleared his raw throat. “You were cloaked, standing on a cliff under a full moon. You offered me an apple that was…glowing green in the moonlight. I didn’t want it at first, but you insisted I take it.”

“Why didn’t you want it?”

“I don’t know. Then, as I reached for it, a great red dragon flew up over the cliffside.”

“A dragon?!”

Jakkar nodded. “The wind from its wings knocked us both to the ground. You ran after the apple and he breathed fire all over you. Your flesh melted off your bones and you turned into a pile of ashes.”

Jetten listened to him in bewilderment as he finished this strange story, stranger still because he had never been given to telling tall tales or even thinking much about such things as dragons before. Her husband was usually a very practical man – a planner and a worker, not a joker or a storyteller.

“Why did I care so much about an apple?” she asked, then she looked at him more closely. “Are-are you crying?”

Jakkar put his hands up to his face in shock. His fingertips came away wet. Suddenly, his face burned with shame. A man should never cry, especially not in front of a woman, even if that woman was his wife.

“I – the thought of losing you… I can’t bear it,” he stammered. “You know I would never admit it to anyone else, but I love you.”

Her heart finally melted and she smiled at him. They settled back together to sleep.

Yet, she still couldn’t quite forgive those tears….