Lessons In Spoken Flame

Part 1: Lovers Painted Blind

Two bodies entwined in rhythmic centrifuge thump against damp earth, flattening over clover blossoms and weevils in their rapturous downhill wake. The young lovers barrel into a woodpile near the edge of Feeding Forest, where none, at all, were permitted. Never.

Iraia untangles her nest of obsidian curls from Koda's. "This wood splinters just fine under your skin,"he gripes in pain.

"Hold still ya ninny," Iraia mocks, picking out the slivers of timber from his skin. Koda's eyes follow the gradate of soil, from green to a rotting black, as it approaches the Feeding Forest. "Would ya look how much it's grown just since last week. Mark my words, it's comin' for us. That forest is gonna eat us alive."

Iraia mounts Koda like a submissive steed and pins his arms behind his back. He doesn't resist. Because if he did, it would batter his youthful ego. He's bigger by a few stacks at least, but the 16 year old girl was faster than a praerie cheetah and knew the right pressure points to play on her prey.

"What you should worry about is if I catch your peepers lay on another girl," Iraia threatens with a smirk.

"Jealous, are ya?"

"Territotial," she bites back.

There was another reason Koda never challenged her. He thought the little battle hound sexy. "Go on then, give a piss on me and mark me yours."

"Shite!" Iraia's eyes go wide enough to see the green bands stretched around the speckled yellow. "Aio!" She leaps off the boy and runs calling for her baby brother. "Aio, where you at you crafty babe? I got chocolate for ya! Come out you little pisser!"

"Iraia!" Koda yells from the forest's edge, holding something high in the air.

"Please, let it be nothin'," she begs, running to him. Koda gives her a clayen wheel. "It's his, it's Aio's," she cries. "Musta broke off his horsey toy. Into the blaggy damn forest he went with that thing. I'm goin' after him," she says, marching past the first tree.

Koda yanks her back by her mane of hair. "Not in yer blaggiest dreams, Iraia. Yer not puttin' one foot in that forest. No one's ever come back. You remember that minor detail?" he fumes. "We'll go tell the others. Get help."

Iraia doubles over in grief and guilt. "My own dear baby brother. Just a kiddling in that bloodthirtsy forest. He's deader than dead. And by my dishonor!" she sobs into Koda's chest.

The two lovers leave the same way, but different; entwined, but hearts pounding with fear instead of desire. If one of them had looked back, over their shoulder, they may have seen a clayen horsey toy, missing one wheel, sticking out from behind a tree. Aio giggles. Cheeky pisser indeed. His fat little feet patter deeper into the mouth of the Feeding Forest, pulling his horsey toy behind him.

Part 2: Babe In The Woods

Little Aio stops to look for the sun. The beacon of light is extinguished by the crimson canopy of trees. It was frigid and the babe was no longer giggling. He wanted his sister's arms and a bowl of warm pumpkin soup. Aio began to howl and wail, as three year olds do.

The Feeding Forest didn't behave like an ordinary forest. Nature it was, but natural it was not. It didn't follow the orders of the world. Instead it fed on them. It devoured anything; feather, fur or flesh, that touched it's carnivorous soil.

The forest roused at the pulsing of Aio's blood and the warmth of his life. The dank, clotted earth rippled towards him. It gathered around his fat little feet and began pulling him under. Aio screams murder as the forest swallows him down. Up to his neck, his gaze is forced to the canopy, pulsing red with fresh feast. His cries are smothered by metallic soil filling his throat, until the only sign left of the wayward babe is his clayen horsey toy. The forest goes back to sleep.

The silence is ripped apart by a cataclysm of flames, unfurling through the trees in scorching, blistering waves, re-waking the forest. It's vital earth shrinks away from the godless heat, retching Aio up, like spoiled meat. Charred timber snaps like toothpicks against gargantuan, scaled wings beating down. A head the size of a castle, marked with a cerulean blue ring, descends on Aio's limp, little body. In a matter of seconds, Aio is in the mouth of another. The mouth of a Terragnite Dragon.

A rescue team of villagers running towards the forest, carrying ropes and planks of wood, are knocked on their arses after the blasts of fire. Iraia, Koda, and the rest, watch with slacken faces, as the Terragnite thrusts it's perfect, musculature through their sky. For most of the tribe, it was their first sighting of a Terragnite. But they all recognized the blue marking on the dragon's forehead. They'd seen it illustrated in books since they were kidlings. The books also wrote that the Terragnite were an evolved breed of dragon. That they had a capacity for intelligence beyond the limits of man. Some books even wrote, the Terragnite communicated using a sophisticated language that could not be heard, only seen.

"I'll be blagged." Koda gapes at the sky.

"There's no time, people!" Iraia rallies. "Aio could live. Pick up yer shite and let's get off."

"After all that, Iraia? You raging mad? The forest is on fire!" Koda urges incredulously, knowing well she won't be dissuaded.

"Exactly! she prods her people. "The forest will be weak, without appetite after the attack, we gotta fair chance now we do!"

Koda shakes her fiercely, speaking in a hushed voice. "He's deader than dead, Iraia. You said it yerself. And now, after what I just saw...what we all saw...we'll mourn Aio, we will. We'll keep him in our hearts. But if we go in that forest, they'll be plucked out our chests like ripe kiwifruit."

"Stay." Iraia says calmly, kissing him on his tight lips. She throws a stack of wooden slabs over back and runs towards the smoking forest. "Come with me or stay! You'll learn what you're made of!" Iraia calls back. "Soon we'll have to choose, fight the Feeding Forest or let it make meals of us, one by one! "

Koda watches her get smaller down the hill. "Gaaagh!" he bellows in frustration and runs after his battle hound. A handful of the bravest villagers follow. They know what they're made of.

Part 3: A Lesson In Spoken Flame

Amber tendrils of fire dance in the reflection of crystalline slabs of halite. The Terragnite carved a valley out of the the sodium rich rock. It was their secret meeting place. The salinity of the environment made it unfavoreable to other lifeforms. All 9 Terragnite were present. A rare occurrence, they remarked to each other, in their language painted with smears and splots of fire.

A man has two pipes; one for food and one for water. The anatomy of a Terragnite is similiar. Two pipes; one expelled fire for battle, the other expelled fire for communciation. This kind of fire was softer, and more nuanced. It spiraled and splintered, branching out in detailed, glowing vines. Composed candor glowed yellow, while the most passionate exchanges blazed blue. A whole legend could be incanted in one of these spoken flames.

"A gross error of judgment." 2nd hisses. His flames lash at the others with tips of ruby red. "The humans will come after their hatchling. And many more will die. In the forest or beyond."

"Their hatchling was in it's final phase of the dying process,” 3rd imparts with yellow, pillowy flames. I rescued it from the belly of the forest. The humans will acknowledge this service and be more willing to cooperate."

"You're sure it's not deceased?" 9th's flame trickles out the side of her jaws, thin and gray.

The Terragnites gaze falls on Aio, unconscious, next to a fire in the center of their gathering. His scalp is bald of hair, and scarred by 3rd's battle fire. But his chest rises and falls, ever so slightly, by the fire light.

First breaks the silence. He speaks slowly and with effort in gold, polished flames. "The hatchling is young. The neural connections in its brain are forming rapidly, making it highly adaptive. We will teach it our language. When it is old enough to understand, we will warn it of the scale and speed at which this malignant, sentient disease is spreading through our forests. And how to defeat it. We will return him to his people with this message and hope they are able to stop it before it consumes everything. And we are sentenced to a lifetime in flight."

"Are you proposing we defer the survival of the last 9 Terragnite on a clan of simple-minded humans that die so easily?!" 2nd lashes out in pointed blue flames."

"This one didn't die so easily, did it?" First reasons. The smoke from his words linger between the dragons. He raises his massive head and blasts a stream of battle fire towards the sky. It circles above the dragons, like a flaming, orange halo. 3rd raises her head and breathes her battle fire into the ring. The rest follow. The ring surges with violent summer colors. 2nd is last to join. He shakes his narrow head with hollow cheeks and casts his battle fire into the ring. The united fire of all 9 Terragnites transformes the ring of fire to cerulean blue. The circular markings on their foreheads pulse with bioluminescence. The Terragnite are in agreement. They will teach the human child lessons in spoken flame and he will become the first bridge between Teragnite and Man.

Aio wakes up staring at the ring of fire blazing above him. The radiant ultramine band reflects in his glassy eyes. And his first lesson begins.