Heart of a Beast

Part One

The dragon knew she couldn’t return home.

It was a deep, intrinsic knowledge, not based on what they’d done to her but on the questions that lingered.

She climbed out of the hollow cave where she’d spent another sleepless night pressed against the ashen rock.

First: Why had the land dwellers left their city and broken through the nature-erected barrier of brambles and boxwood for the first time in centuries?

She padded through the thick mud, leaving deep prints that filled with water and made tiny basins for other creatures to drink.

Second: Why had they cornered her and her youngling, backed them into a trap that must have been built and set with intent to harm?

She ascended up a short knoll until the ridge tipped below the horizon and she could look across the city.

Third: Why was hers the life they chose to spare?

The city perimeter had stretched every year, and now she could see places where it brushed up against the forest. Far beyond in the horizon, not visible but palpable, was home.

Fourth and final question: If her own heart broke under this weight, how could she place it on her community? How could she ever return?

That was the only answer she knew. How could she return? She couldn’t.

The dragon felt the pangs of hunger, her body’s prodding to hunt and feed, but she ignored it. Feeding would not quell the deeper emptiness inside.

She turned and headed back into the hollow to wait for sunfall to close another empty day. At least in the dark she could curl tight in her nest, close her lidded eyes and hope to dream glimpses of her youngling, still flapping his fledgling wings or exhaling sparks that would one day become flames.

Two steps outside the nest, she caught sight of her own footprints blocked into the mud. But what drew her closer were the smaller footprints within. Not the eight-cloved hoofprints of spider deer crossing from valley to river with featherlight steps. Nor the wide, clawed imprints of the chameleon lynx tracking them from behind while blending seamlessly into the foliage.

No, these footprints were tiny, neither cloven nor clawed. The dragon dropped her nose to the silt and breathed in, then jerked her head up, eyes flashing at the familiar scent. The land dwellers had returned.

She heard a sound behind her and tensed, preparing to fight. This time, she had nothing left to protect. Which meant she had nothing left to lose.

She whirled around, fire escaping through her flared nostrils and searing the grass underneath her. But there was no hunting party; just one land dweller, frozen in place fifty paces back. It was small – even by its species’ standards – and didn’t appear to carry any weapons or tools. Its feet were embedded in thick clay and tears poured down its small face.

This could be another trap, a way to lure her into sharp metal bonds. The first time, she’d been teaching her youngling how to hunt by tracking a wounded spider deer into a clearing. They’d crouched low and stepped toward their prey, ready to pounce, when suddenly the chains had flung out from the trees, ends barbed to catch on their scales. Then the land dwellers came flooding toward them with long, sharp instruments.

She shook her head to clear the memory and come back to the present. This seemed like another instance of easy prey, although why they would risk the life of one of their own, she didn’t know. She was further from the trees this time, too far for the chains to stretch and cling to her. So she stayed in place and watched around the clearing for a hint of movement, wings poised for a rapid escape.

Minutes ticked by into an hour. Then two. The land dweller didn’t move but it pierced the air with cries, clamored incoherently, and stretched its arms toward the dragon. The sky darkened above as she watched. Finally, its head drooped and fell to its chest. It stilled, minus the soft rise and fall of deep breaths. Without all the noise and movement, she could also see the small shudder of chills racking its frame.

The sight stirred a memory of her own youngling, fresh-born and helpless, shivering until she had breathed fire into the hearth and nestled the youngling beside it. Their first night together. A precious memory now pierced with heartache.

She looked back at the shivering land dweller and weighed the risk of getting closer, weighed the chance of capture and death. But she’d already decided she had nothing left to lose, didn’t she? If this was a trap, at least it would put an end to weeks of indecision and inaction.

She took one step toward it, then another. Nothing else moved. She approached it, leaned down and nudged it with her snout.

The land dweller awoke but didn’t cry or scream. It stared up at her with wide brown eyes, fear mixed with fascination. Then it reached two small limbs up and caught the edges of both her wide nostrils, yanking down.

She jerked with surprise and rose to move back, but the land dweller hung on to her nose as she lifted it in the air, freed from the mud below. She gave a gentle shake to dislodge it but it clung to her and she could feel the vibration from shivers racking its body. Up close, she could see the tip of its own snout was red and sniffling.

Slowly, carefully, she traced her own steps back to the hollow and lowered her head into the nest she’d built of leaves and moss. After a few more vigorous shakes, it finally lost its grip and tumbled into the bedding.

Stay put, she warned through a stern look as she crossed the hollow and breathed fire over the collection of discarded logs and sticks she’d used to harvest leaves.

The blaze caught quickly but stayed in place. Blue and purple flickers danced and cast long shadows against the concave walls. Dragonfire was hotter and lasted longer than the red-yellow flames humans engineered through flint and friction, so a small pyre could sustain warmth until the sun broke through the trees.

The dragon turned back to the land dweller and noted with satisfaction that its shivering had stopped. It was curled against the wall and covered in leaves, one stuck in its chestnut hair. It looked up at her with watery, pleading eyes. Again, flickers of memory caught and she tried to push them away, but there were too many similarities to her own youngling to dismiss.

She curled up on the other side of the nest and looked out into the night. There was still no sign of other land dwellers. Low clouds skimmed the top of the treeline, but above them the night sky was freckled with stars. She watched as the moon rose to join them.

Now she wasn’t alone, not entirely. She had a land dweller – a young one, she concluded from its stature and complete lack of self-preservation – nested beside her.

What was she going to do?

The easy answer, the one that came first, was to eat it. It wouldn’t do anything to sate her hunger – she’d need to consume at least a dozen spider deer to make a dent in her current appetite – but it would be retribution. You take my youngling, I take yours. But her mouth pressed down at the thought.

The magnanimous approach would be to return it to the city. She could fly it to the border forest and nudge it through the thicket until it could stumble its own way back home. But she wasn’t feeling particularly magnanimous toward land dwellers as a whole.

There was a third option nudging its way to the forefront of her mind. This exercise with chills and fire had proven that the younglings from land and sky had similar needs, and that her instincts carried over between them. This option wasn’t forgiveness, but it was also a different kind of retribution than death, something quieter and sharper.

A youngling taken, and a youngling given, she thought. I’ll raise you as my own.

Part Two

Over the course of a fortnight, the dragon learned several new things about land dwellers.

First, they were very picky eaters. Catching a bug or a fish wasn’t enough for the land dweller; the dragon also had to kill the food, slice it, and place it over the fire until it was crispy. It seemed a lot more work than snapping a wooly pig in two with her jaw and swallowing in one gulp.

The land dweller taught her, through their gestures and demonstrations, that they could eat the fruits dangling from many of the trees. Better yet, these didn’t need to be cooked. So the dragon went around the clearing shaking trees until the fruit fell down, which the land dweller collected in their arms and piled up inside the hollow.

Next, the dragon learned that land dwellers had none of the basic abilities that constituted survival. Where are your wings, the dragon had thought curiously, peering under the fabric covering their back. There wasn’t even a bone jutting out to signify that they would grow in over time.

Instead of fire, the land dweller’s snout emitted some sort of liquid missing the useful applications of flame. Perhaps most perplexingly, when they came back from collecting fruit and flowers, their snout would often twitch, giving the dragon mere seconds to back away before they emitted a spray of liquid across anything in the vicinity.

The first time this happened, the dragon had been within arms-length and the spray had coated her face. She’d made an expression of disgust but instead of contrition, the land dweller had let loose a joyful shriek that bubbled into a musical sound. It should have upset or annoyed the dragon, but instead she felt affection pushing through.

By the end of the fortnight, the dragon concluded that in its present form, the land dweller was fairly strange, helpless, and disgusting. But she’d grown fond of it anyway, and held out hope that the useful skills would come in time.

Another week passed and they began to venture together beyond the clearing. The dragon and land dweller crossed over the river and wound into the foothills bordering the forest. There, they found a new kind of fruit – berries that weren’t high in the trees, but low in the bushes.

The dragon wasn’t able to help with the harvest so she stood watch as the land dweller collected berries into one pile. When they appeared satisfied with their bounty, the dragon scooped the berries into her mouth and carried them on their walk back to the hollow. But with a long ways to go, she noticed the land dweller’s head beginning to droop and bob in what she had come to recognize as exhaustion. So she sank low and gestured toward her back.

They seemed to understand and carefully grabbed on to her scales to scramble up onto her shoulders. The dragon rose and stepped forward gingerly, trying to keep her movements smooth. Within a few minutes of walking, they were fast asleep on her back, and she carried them to the hollow with warmth in her belly.

Gradually each of the seasons took the stage, performed, and bowed to a close. The dance of dying, fluttering leaves that they harvested to build a bigger, more comfortable nest. The cascade of frost and snow they let melt on their tongues and rolled into shapes. The appearance of tiny buds unfolding into bloom that they picked and brought into the hollow. The days of fruit and warmth and the two of them splashing in the river then drying in the sun.

The dragon no longer saw her companion as a land dweller. They were a unique creature, for sure, with their own passions and goals. But they didn’t seem so different as before, not in the ways that mattered. Even if they would never grow wings or breathe fire.

The two of them traveled more often than not, now, choosing an arbitrary path in the forest or a new hill to climb and following it to see where it might lead. Sometimes they walked side by side, but usually the companion climbed onto her back and lifted off the ground to fly over the terrain. They crossed deserts and fields, discovered places where water seemed to fall straight from the sky into a pool, or they lay down in the grass and watched stars in every color blaze across the night sky. Occasionally on their travels the dragon caught the scent of land dwellers, but she was careful to backtrack until she lost the scent and picked a new trail.

She continued to ache for her youngling every day. The grief didn’t disappear, or even lessen as time went on. But now it was one part of her life, mixed in with new moments of joy and discovery.

Part Three

One day, camped several hours east of the hollow, the dragon awoke to a scent overpowering all her other senses. Land dweller. They were around, and they were close. She jolted out of slumber and looked behind her to see her companion still fast asleep, the cavern behind them empty.

The dragon raised her wings like hackles and moved toward the mouth of the cavern, shielding her companion from the outside. Her only thought was to guard them from harm, whether this was five land dwellers with sticks or a hundred with metallic weapons.

Instead she came face to face with just one land dweller, no weapons in hand but a large pack strapped to their back. They had dark brown eyes and chestnut hair flowing down their shoulders.

The newcomer opened their mouth and made sounds the dragon couldn’t understand. They didn’t sound aggressive or move toward the dragon; instead, they backed away and kept making sounds.

The dragon cocked her head, trying to discern what the newcomer intended. Besides the day she met her companion, she hadn’t seen evidence of land dwellers traveling alone. The cavern was too far from the city or any of the encampments for it to be a coincidence.

Suddenly the dragon caught a flash of movement beneath her limbs. Her companion had woken up and slipped past her to stand by her front legs, in view of the newcomer. The two of them exchanged sounds and the newcomer gestured the dragon’s companion forward.

So the newcomer wanted her companion to go with them – but why?

The dragon’s companion turned to look at her, and with both land dwellers in view, it was clear as day. They had the same brown eyes, same dark hair and tiny snouts. Her companion was the newcomer’s youngling.

They were coming to take her companion away.

The dragon moved forward and cut into the middle, suddenly defensive. The land dwellers had taken her first youngling from her, ripped away and left her with nothing. Now that she had built a new life, found new joy, she wasn’t going to let it happen again.

She stepped right up to the newcomer, nostrils flaring at the thought of her companion being taken away. She could feel the fire surging down and beginning to blacken the weeds underneath her.

The dragon lifted her snout to direct the fire toward the newcomer. A deep breath in, and– they froze.

Because the newcomer’s eyes were the same shape and color as her youngling’s. But more than that, her expression was one the dragon could recognize instantly. It mirrored her own, on the day she’d lost her youngling. Lost her heart.

The dragon realized that if she acted now, she would be inflicting the same pain and loss that she had experienced years ago. Her anger and fear would breed someone else’s pain, which would lead to more anger and fear. A cycle with no end.

She decided it had to stop with her.

The dragon took a step back, then another. Her companion rushed up to the newcomer, who embraced and enveloped them.

After a few moments her companion grabbed the newcomer’s hand and led them over to the dragon. They exchanged more sounds and her companion wrapped her top limbs around the dragon, embracing her.

The dragon still couldn’t make sense of the sounds, but from their body language the message was clear: Her companion was telling the newcomer that the dragon could be trusted.

Trust goes both ways, the dragon realized. She sank low to the ground, back toward the pair. Her companion understood immediately and jumped onto her back, then helped the newcomer up behind her.

The dragon flapped her wings and moments later, the three of them took to the sky.

Epilogue

In time, the dragon flew into the city and traversed the wide paved streets with the land dwellers riding atop her back. The two of them exchanged sounds with the other land dwellers in the city and quelled any violence before it could escalate.

Gradually the city’s prevailing attitude about dragons transformed. It started with the younglings. The dragon’s companion gathered their peers to meet her, with a group of caretakers watching with unease. The dragon, by trusting her companion, slowly came to understand that the others didn’t mean her harm either. They, too, had passions and interests and a delight for fruits shaken from the trees.

The land dwellers resolved to end violence against dragons, viewing them as friends instead of beasts. They outlawed hunting parties and opened the city gates to other species.

The dragon’s companion returned to live in the city with their parent. But at least once a fortnight, they built a fire signal atop their brick living quarters. The dragon spotted it from her flights above and would swoop down and land on the roof. There, her companion would jump onto her back and they’d fly across the city, or back across the desert to watch the multicolored stars crossing the night sky.

The dragon felt at home in the city streets. But she began to feel the pull toward home, and knew eventually she would return and bring news of everything that had happened and the new world that had opened up around her.