Lacewings

Aoife squirms restlessly on the workbench, reddish-brown curls bouncing, avoiding Nana’s gaze. She’d been running in the meadow with Sarah, again, even though Mama and Nana told her lots and lots to “Take care Aoife” and “slow down “Aoife,” so she knew she was in trouble.

She’d tripped and fallen into Sarah, taking her down with her, and Sarah had cried and cried until her Mama’d come for her and taken her home, and Aoife thought it was silly because she’d barely cried at all, and the skin on her knee was healing already, so what was all the fuss about anyway?

It’s possible she’s muttered that last bit aloud, because when she looks up Nana is trying to look cross, even though her eyes are crinkled up on the end.

“Aoife,” she says, in her soft buttery voice, “You’re six years old now, and I think it’s past time that you learned that our family is a bit different than all the others.

“Little Sarah Walters can’t just brush off a tumble and run about moments later.” she says, peering at Aoife with wizened eyes. Aoife feels something weird, like flitting about in her stomach, because she’d noticed already, that she could run faster and longer than the others, and her breath never came out in pants and spurts, and when she jammed her thumb in the door it only hurt until the door opened, but Jem had cried and cried and held his thumb in the creek ‘cause it was red and swollen.

Nana nods, like she knows what Aoife was thinking about, and agrees. “Just so, my darling, we were given a gift once, our family, and it lives in us still.”

“You are old enough to know now, and old enough to realize that being different in this world isn’t always safe. Sarah’s family knows, as do most of those that live here. But you may not always stay in the confines of our little Village, and there are always those who’ll travel through unknowing. The story of our family is a secret, and you must always keep it safe, hold it close to your heart, and share it only with those you’d trust with your heart and soul.”

She settles back in her chair, which gives a creaking sigh along with her, and begins to tell a bright-eyed and spellbound Aoife, the story of their family.

The forest is quiet in the way that most forests are quiet, which is to say, not at all, if one is versed in the noise of forests. A vole digs slowly through soft dirt, and a high-perched bird ruffles its feathers and lets out a spirited song. The wind plays through the tree tops and boughs creak and groan. On the forest floor a small pink flower unfurls amidst a carpet of moss, and below that mossy carpet, sparsely littered with blooms, a dragon softly, slowly, breathes. This did not startle the other life in the forest, skittering around the floor or flitting between trees; no, this dragon had long since settled into her sleep, and had become quite a part of the landscape. The other inhabitants of the forest paid little heed to the slumbering dragon, nor she to them, and there was no reason to think today ought to change that, at the moment.

The dragon, before her long sleep, and when there had been other dragons in the valley-that-was to care about such things, had been known as Lacewings. She was called such for her most distinguishing feature, and also because dragons were rather blunt creatures and cared little for such things as tact or gentleness, and her great white wings, thin as parchment, and covered in holes of varying size, resembled nothing so much as fine white lace. This meant that, while the rest of her Nest Mother’s clutch fluttered brightly in the sky, racing and diving and swooping, Lacewings was left behind on the ground, flightless. It also meant that eventually, when each nest mate soared off to find and build a nest, or cave, or life of their own, Lacewings was left behind, as usual.

Dragons are naturally solitary creatures, together only when freshly hatched, or when nesting for a clutch of their own. But Lacewings, not possessing the ability to soar away under her own power, or indeed many of the other qualities and attitudes of the rest of her brethren, never felt that feeling of rightness and of settling and instead was left feeling quite alone and abandoned, although being a Dragon did not have the words to describe it as such.

Therefore Lacewings, flightless and alone, simply remained in the valley, which changed around her, small seeds becoming saplings, saplings becoming trees, which as the years went by grew and grew until they had three times the height of the grounded dragon. Said dragon, having little to do, and nobody to talk to, grew listless and exhausted by the endless days full of nothing much, and even though she had only seven centuries, and everyone knew only the ancients settled down for a Long Sleep, soon nestled down under the shelter of the great trees and slept the decades away.

So here she is, now, slumbering on the forest floor, covered in a blanket of moss littered intermittently with wild flowers of varying size and color. She likely would have remained there for the next century, or even an age, except for the first time since she’d laid down there was an itch just on the tip of her nose. This was quite odd because dragons aren’t prone to such human things as discomfort or itches, but now she quite distinctly feels a tickle just at the end of her great white snout.

She had no desire to open her eyes, which were heavy with sleep still, or shift under her warm blanket of moss, and so she reached out with her mind to that tiny irritant and thought, quite sternly, “STOP!”.

“Mwa?” says the tiny blue sparkling itch, perching on the end of one nostril.

What in the name of the Unhatched is this? She pokes the tiny blue sparking ball with her mind and recoils. Magic! She flicks her tongue out quickly for the first time in many years. Human magic at that! She reaches out with a strand of her own magic, pinkish-red, amaranthine, like the flower and her eyes, and gingerly touches it to the brightly sparking blue ball of magic. The little ball squirms in her grip, panicked, its soul-home was lost, and afraid, it was calling out for help, for its Mama.

She pours her magic out into the forest, pink as her eyes, flowing over leaf and stump and bramble, stone and earth and river, engaged for the first time since before the last of her nest mates had flown off to higher aeries, and growing more agitated as each moment passed without locating this human child, wandering naively around her forest calling for help and instead waking a literal sleeping dragon.

Billows of pink magic brush past squirrels and gnomes, mushrooms and snakes and even a bear, harmlessly. Where is the human? She wants to stop thinking about this, she wants to stop feeling this helpless, and frantic, and Unhatched knows why she even cares. Waking even further she briefly remembers her Nest Mother’s lessons on magic when she’d been small as a bear herself, eggshell white with her pink red eyes and useless wings, her Nest Mother had taught her to use her magic to track and kill prey, warm and cool, grow and heal, flame and hurt, detect magic, find lost things…detect magic. She grasps the tiny blue sparking flame of human magic in a giant amarthine claw and pushes. A glowing line appears leading through the forest.

She focuses on the shining blue lead and is briefly disoriented as she finds herself looking through two sets of eyes. She quickly closes the physical set attached to her form on the forest floor and is left with those of the little glowing pink dragon hovering over the blue line of magic stretching through the forest.

She flits about, experimentally, this is…she had never considered this before, she wasn’t sure if she had known it was possible. Unhatched! She wasn’t sure if her Nest Mother had known it was possible. She can fly like this! Made of pure magic, she hovers and soars through the trees, following the blue glow under and over and ‘round and ‘round. She pauses and hovers for a moment where it takes a steep dive toward the forest floor, disappearing under a giant taro leaf. She reaches out with a magic-formed claw, pulling the leaf aside.

An absurdly small human child lies beneath the leaf. It is trembling violently, and looks damp, its brown skin grayed with sickness. The child's fluffy hair is a riotous mess interspersed by leaves, and a large jagged scar, poorly stitched, takes up a third of its face, bisecting one eye. Its clothes are grubby, worn and shredded. Its arms are far too thin, and littered with bruises, while its hands were a bloody mass of oozing cuts and sores and are missing several fingernails.

Lacewings had been removed from the rest of the world for quite some time, but even she could recognize this child had obviously not been cared for, at least not for some time. The magical tether is wrapped around the child's pointer finger possessively. The blue glow doing nothing good for its sickly, waxy, complexion. Its eyes fluttered open briefly, just for a moment, the child obviously delirious with fever.

"Mwa?" came the thin and thready voice.

How did a human child come to be all the way out in the middle of her forest? Surely it cannot stay here, surely someone somewhere had cared for it at some point, for it to have lived to at least this age. The little thing is too young, and too ill, to tell her how it got here itself. Which leaves only one way to find out. She reaches out with her magic to the child's mind, and gently taps the surface, looking for recent memories.

She swirls down through a fog of pink magic and into the child's memories.

She is looking through the child’s eyes as they blink open by the hearth. There’s a searing burning pain on his face -he, the child is a he- but the pain in his soul is much worse. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad. He thinks frantically, throat too tight to speak.

The scene sparks pink and-

Callum’s giggling on a dirt floor, his toes squirming in the dirt. A small sky bright spark flits between his fingers. He toddles over to Papa, but something is wrong wrong wrong, ‘cause Papa face twists in rage and he’s yelling, “What are you, you monster, what have you done to my son, you demon” and then he’s raising the chisel off the anvil and everything goes hot and then darkness-

Washes with pink and-

“How could you! Callum is our son!” a woman’s voice sobs.

Across the room a human man, tall and broad shouldered, with calloused hands and a thick dark beard - Papa, Callum's mind insists, towers, tense and angry, dimly lit by hearth-fire, shaking a frail woman -Mama- from her raised fist, which she had been beating on his chest.

"I won't have it, woman!" he bellows, red-faced and spitting. "I won't have that unnatural thing under my roof for one more night!"

"-our son"

"That thing is no son of mine! "

A slap rings through the room, but Callum doesn't see it, curled up and sobbing in the corner as he is, so who struck who goes unseen.

"You get him out of here by the time I get back or I swear to the gods I will do the world a favor and put that creature out of its misery myself."

Heavy bootsteps taper off, culminating in a loud slam, and a womanly wail.

The scene sparks pink and-

Mama clutches Callum tight and moves through the night, breath coming in harsh gulps and Callum lets out a sharp wail of distress.

“Shush my love, we must be very quiet my darling.” Mama whispers, gripping Callum tight as she heads towards the towering trees of Drahaem Forest. Callum can hear dogs barking and men’s raised voices as they rush towards looming wood. Mama stumbles and Callum is tossed through the air, falling on the loamy earth, buffeted by leaf and branch. He toddles up and looks back, “Mama!” he cries,

“Mama!”

“Run, Callum!” Mama’s voice is hoarse and broken, and Callum’s never felt so afraid before, he doesn’t want to run, he just wants his Mama. He hasn’t stopped being afraid since he made that blue spark, and found out he was wrong.

“Callum, go, now!” Mama screams, loud, and she sounds angry, so Callum cries but runs through the trees, he can hear her screaming, “Run Callum, run, go, be safe.”

And then he can’t hear her anymore. But he still listens, and he runs, until he can’t run anymore.

Lacewings pulls free of the memories, sadness welling. This child has no home, and by the sounds of the mob nobody who cares for him, not any longer. How primitive, and ridiculous, and human, to despise someone for having magic just because you do not. She looks down at the boy, lost and abandoned, miraculously alive, though damaged.

"Mwa-ma?"Callum cries blearily, and then he goes silent, and still.

Lacewings hesitates. Even if she saves him now the child would likely live only a few brief years before something else kills him, and even making it to the end of his life cycle he would only have, what 200 years or so? Why does she care for the life of a discarded human child? Well, she thought wryly, perhaps she cares because he’s been discarded. Discarded for something he did not choose and couldn’t change, much like her. She had yet to notice, but back on the forest floor her physical form is already shifting in place, large chunks of moss and earth falling from her long stationary form as she moves about in agitation.

She stills momentarily, and then huffs out a breath of steaming air. Well, it appears she had already decided, and for all her faults she’d never been much of one for second-guessing herself. She moves, and the earth moves with her. Her magic gently scoops up the human foundling and shields it from the passing branches and leaves as she carries Callum back to her resting place on the forest floor. Her call was as urgent as the call in her soul and soon the tiny boy was nestled in the foliage at her feet.

Callum is weak and sick with infection, she knows nothing of human remedies, nor would she be able to construct them if she did. Magic can only do so much, and dragons have little need or knowledge of healing magic, or perhaps she would not be here, her wings would be healed and she’d have a nest of her own already.

There is a way, all dragons know, to save the life of any living being. Dragon, elf, centaur, goblin, human, it would save them all the same. It’s rarely used, even between dragons, because the everlasting bond it creates is deep, and dragons are creatures of air and fire, and they tend to prefer fleeting, flitting connections that burn up quickly. But Lacewings has not even had those connections, these many years, and she finds that she is loath to lose this small kinship with this tiny fragile life.

Something has been sparked within her, and so she does what very few dragons before her have done, she reaches into the heart of herself, the seat of her magic, her heart’s blood, with one of her large, curved, adamantine claws, and gathers a single drop.

The crimson drop, shining with magic, quivers with tension on the tip of her claw for a brief moment, and then she lets it drop, drop, drop down into Callum’s waiting mouth, guided by her magic and will.

The effect is instantaneous, the child’s soul fire smoothly merges with hers, electric blue deepening to a rich purple, the grey edging out of his warm brown skin as it flushes healthily with blood. The jagged puckered wound on his face fades to the healing of a decades old scar. And Lacewings can feel Callum’s heartbeat through her own chest.

The child’s eyes flutter open, gleaming an inhuman plum.

“Mama?” he burbles, safe now, and happy, and she answers with all the warmth flowing and pulsing with the beating of their hearts,

“Yes, child of my soul.”

“And what happened next Nana?” Aoife breaths, eyes wide with wonder.

Nana smiles, eyes crinkling and hands stilling on her knitting, remembering a time when she too had sat, squirming, on that bench, her Papa sat across from her, sharing with her the story of their family.

“Well, Aoife, Callum lived, and learned, and grew, much like you are doing now. Only his family was the Dragon, and he was Lacewing’s family in return.” She got up from the chair, knees and chair both creaking, and set aside her knitting, shaking out her skirts.

Aoife slides off the bench, rushing to match Nana’s slow unhurried pace as she heads towards the door, and slips her small hand into Nana’s larger weathered one. The trees outside tower high, high, high over the roofs of the few scattered houses of their little Village of Forest’s Edge, aptly named and amply loved. Nana leads her by the hand deeper into the forest, deeper than she’d gone before on her own.

“One day, Aoife, Callum met a girl with fire-bright hair, and an open heart, and loved. The love created a daughter, who had a son, all with the blood of dragon sparking in their veins. And they lived longer, and stronger, and healthier than most, and made their home on the edge of the Forest of Drahaem, so their entire family could shelter and be sheltered, sometimes leaving to find those other rare souls who would make their home here, or become one of the family, but always, always, returning”

“And that,” Nana says, “is the story of our family,” she says, and pulls Aoife into the bright sunlight of a vast clearing. Aoife turns away from the brightness for a moment, bright purple eyes briefly blinded by the unnatural light in the clear.

“And this is the last member of it, it’s finally time for you to meet.” she finishes, laughter in her voice, perhaps at the wide gaping looking on Aoife’s face as she looks back and blinks through tears at the sharp fierce brightness that is the sun glancing of the Dragon’s pearl-white scales.

“Hello, Aoife,” Lacewing’s voice rumbles from above, her brilliant pink eyes warm as she crouches down, resting her immense head on the forest floor, “at long last I meet you, daughter of my soul.”