Promises

Promise you'll keep quiet.

She promised as the dry wind took the tears from her face.

Promise you'll stay right there.

She promised as they gave her something wrapped in shimmering blue cloth. It was almost too big for her tiny hands to carry, but lighter than air.

Hold onto this until we return.

Look for us in the moonlight.

She kept quiet, held still, and held the bundled cloth close so the wind wouldn't take it away.

Two shadows, topped with wide brims and pointed tops, grew taller and taller as they went.

The next gust of wind stripped the last leaves from the crumbling branches of the dying woods.

Above that, the open sky above darkened with every moment.

The last stars blinked away.

She waited.

One of the three moons was gone, leaving two.

She waited.

Then only one. She looked to its fading light and the faint tall shadows it cast.

Soon, that last light and those two shadows were also gone.

There was only darkness and nowhere left to look.

The air stilled.

Her lip trembled, but she kept quiet.

She shivered, but she did not move.

Her heart beat faster.

She heard howling.

She heard branches crack, twigs snap, and dry leaves crunch.

She cried for help.

She had promised not to.

She heard gnashing, whimpering, wheezing, and whistling around her.

She ran.

She had promised not to.

She stumbled through the dark until she fell and the bundled cloth fell out of her hands.

Fangs like broken glass raked her ankle and dragged her back.

Raking jagged paws held her down and pressed her into the dust.

They gnashed, whimpered, wheezed, whistled, biting and tearing at her, biting and tearing at her.

The pain.

The pain.

She thrashed and kicked and flailed.

She cried...

"Hush now," a raspy voice interrupted. "No more words. Only breath. Breathe."

She ceased telling her story and only breathed.

Breath after breath, her crying slowed.

She opened her teary eyes.

The cozy hidden cave was dimly lit by moonlight behind where she sat. Ahead of her was a glowing maw lined with a silhouette of needly fangs.

She bared her teeth at that fanged face and snarled.

"Mind your manners Luma," the dragon whelpling said. "You are in my lair, after all."

"I don't like telling that story, Arkoth," Luma said as Arkoth's smoky breath dried her face, "not even for you."

"But you did, and the worst part of it is over," Arkoth assured her as he leaned closer still with the warmth of his words close enough to feel, "what happened next?"

Luma frowned. Someone had found her, yes, but not the ones waiting for her. The ones looking for her, ever after, even in her dreams.

They loved her.

They missed her...

Arkoth leaned in so close that his snout touched her nose.

"That's all," Luma pushed her fingertips on Arkoth's snout to push him back, "the end."

"No, no, that was not the end," Arkoth said with a little growl, "I have many questions."

Luma looked at of Arkoth's secret whelphoard. It was a collection of scraps of tarnished mail and rags from old banners, chipped old swords and ragged tatters of manclothes, mostly. Few things shined in it but stray buttons.

"My lairfather saved me," she said. No matter how scary the dark, no matter how painful the bites, what hurt most to remember was that she didn't keep quiet, didn't stay where she was, that she didn't keep her promises.

That was why they were gone.

Arkoth perched upon his whelphoard with enough grace to keep every button, thimble, and buckle in its place. "Of course Old Golthen saved you. Everywyrm knows that. But..."

Luma growled again, matching her belly. She folded her shimmering blue cloth over her lap. She used it as a blanket, cleaning rag, cloak, and sometimes as a napkin. That old thing went with her everywhere. "But you promised me supper."

Arkoth huffed and pouted. "I suppose supper comes next for my lairguest."

"Lairfriend," Luma corrected him. She was hungry and wanted all the manna Arkoth had fetched for her.

The whelpling's soft belly inflated as he took a deep breath. He let out a puff of lifeflame, making the invisible manna visible to Luma. The ribboning threads of it were beautiful, rippling from color to color as it danced lighter than air.

Luma reached out and caught the manna, feeling its lingering warmth between her fingers, inside her fingers. She could not gather it herself, not like any of her dragon family, friends, or neighbors could, but she could make things with it. The manna thrummed as if eager to become something.

Dragons could see the manna dancing in the air from ley to ley, and could sense where it flowed from deep under the ground. They breathed it, consumed it, and it carried them aloft, but that was all they used it for.

Luma could do a little more with it. She could mend her clothes and cobble her shoes, but for the moment, she wanted bread.

She visualized a crispy crust, like the truebread her lairfather used to make for her. The eldwyrm had baked it with patient puffs of trueflame upon a nook of packed round rocks. There, she had learned that there were different kinds of warmth. The warmth of trueflame, for example, was great for baking, but also hurt to touch and once it singed her soft tiny hand.

How she longed for more of her lairfather's truebread. He said he would make more, but there was nothing left from the ruins of man to make it with. It was all gone, just like the truebutter he used to melt on top of it with a careful extra lick of trueflame.

She reached out and caught the last ribboning traces of leftover manna before it could drift out of sight. There was just enough left to make a little butter with it.

Her manna-made bread was never as good as her lairfather's old recipe, nor was her butter, but she was too hungry to care.

She threaded the manna with deft strokes of her fingertips, letting the potential softness, even butteriness, of the inside of the roll wait a little longer as she worked from the outside inward.

Arkoth leaned in a bit too closely as he watched her work. The smoky accents of his trueflame were building up in her nose until she sneezed.

"You're losing your bread," Arkoth warned while flapping closer to catch the fraying ends of the manna. "Focus, Luma. Focus."

The manna frayed, like the hem of her blanket, but was just as mendable. As long as she focused on bread more than blanket, she could still make something edible from the miscast manna.

"Do you need any help?" Arkoth asked, but Luma had finished her work and bit into it.

The finished roll was tougher and cooler than she had wanted, but she was hungry enough not to care because it still tasted, somewhat, like bread. The butter she had set inside came out better at least, soft and warm.

Arkoth perched with his little foreclaws on his round belly, swaying his head from side to side in the way he often did when he wanted to keep talking but had to wait. One of the more sensible rules of wyrmkind forbade interruption of a lairguest's meal.

At the moment Luma finished licking the butter from her fingertips and rubbed them dry upon her lapcloth, Arkoth's next words burst forth with enough eagerness that he lit the cave. "Why do the eldwyrms call you Luma?"

Luma sighed as she sat up, restitching the fraying hem of her cloak once more. She would worry about the stains later. "They call me that because that's my name."

"Yes, but Luma is a weird wyrmname," Arkoth remarked. "I never heard it before I met you."

"That's because it's not a wyrmname," Luma said.

Arkoth pushed back against her hand with all of his flapping might and all the fire in his buoyant belly. "I see. Who gave it to you?"

Luma patted Arkoth's head, stroking the smooth way along his scales and horns. "Another time."

Arkoth slouched with resignation even while leaning into the petting until he perked up a moment later with a mischevious flash behind his teeth, "When you are ready to tell me more, I will have a great reward waiting for you."

"A great reward?" Luma snorted with doubt as she retracted her petting hand. "I don't see anything great here."

"How dare you insult my treasures!" Arkoth snarled.

Luma pinched her lips together. "I'm sorry. I've cleaned up and sorted things in many lairs. I've seen most of these things before."

"Of course you have," Arkoth growled. "All of these items once belonged to mighty eldwyrms."

Luma nodded. "Until they threw them away."

Arkoth cringed and quieted down, but then his eyes widened and his breathlight flared brighter. "Your Aunt Pothi has been holding onto something. She said she would give it to you when you were old enough. I think you're old enough, don't you agree?"

Luma gasped. The promise of something special made her imagination soar.

Maybe Aunt Pothi had sturdy and comfortable shoes that would never wear out?

Perhaps she had made her a cake so sweet and filling that she would never feel hunger again?

A great shadow swept away the moonlight on Luma's back, followed by a great roar. With thunderous wingflaps dust, dirt, and pebbles blew in behind her.

Luma pushed Arkoth's buoyant little round body down. "Hush."

Arkoth sank to the floor of his hiding place and started to slap and claw at the baubles scattered about. He should have dug himself to safety and waited out the danger, but instead he tried to reclaim a stray button rolling away from his grasping claws while also snapping his jaws at a scrap of bannercloth flutteering in the breeze.

Not all the ways of dragons made sense to Luma, and Arkoth's ways made the least sense of all. He could not have picked a more dangerous place for his whelplair, especially with an eldlair close by.

A vast shadow passed overhead once more, then came a great thud that sent dirt and pebbles collapsing most of the whelplair's entrance.

Luma already knew that she couldn't hold her breath nearly as long as her family or neighbors. It was scary to get caved in, but it wasn't her first time. She kept as calm as she could and started digging and crawling her way out. As she did, she felt two stray buttons catch between her fingers.

She crawled free, coughing and taking in the fresh cold mountain air as she palmed the pair of buttons.

A great roar shook her bones.

"Luma of the Lonely Light," the roaring voice then bellowed, "what are you doing, uninvited, in my domain?"

Luma tried to think of what to say to the eldwyrm with familiar scars lacing her brassy feminine face. Each and every scar was filled with cast gold to beautify them, making her look elegant and menacing, doting and domineering at the same time, her decorations both a boast and a warning to her poorer neighbors down the mountainside.

"So hesitant to answer me," the eldwyrm remarked as she leaned over and gazed down at Luma with grinning yellowed fangs, each the length of swords. "It takes more time to weave lies than it does to share truths, doesn't it?"

"I was... digging for treasure, Aunt Pothi," Luma lied. "I want to start my own hoard."

"Well, there are better places to look," Aunt Pothi pursed her flaky scaly lips, hiding all but the frontmost phalanx of fangs, "because the things I buried here were buried because they are treasure no longer."

"But these," Luma bluffed, opening her hand to show Aunt Pothi the two shiny buttons, one mde of wood with a stone set in it, the other shiny and metal, "are treasures to me."

"Are they?" Aunt Pothi leaned very close, her snout nudging against Luma to see the dubious treasures. The nearly blind eldwyrm then leaned her head back so her derisive snort wouldn't singe the trespasser. "Well, if all you wanted to do was just rummage through my rubbish like a lairless whelpling, you should have, at least, asked for my permission first."

"But I want more," Luma looked Aunt Pothi in the molten orbs of her eyes, seeing her tiny self in the twin reflections, "I also want your prettiest dresses, your crowns and tiaras, your gems and jewels and gold."

"I call your bluff, girl," Aunt Pothi scoffed, lifting her wings away to let the light back in and let Luma breathe the cooler evening air now that the dust had cleared. "Not even you would risk my wrath. I would burn you to ashes and cinders."

"No you wouldn't," Luma held up her hands, the buttons riding between her nimble fingers. "If you did, you would lose my hands."

Aunt Pothi clucked with a spark of spittle. "Your hands, your hands, your hands," she mimicked Luma's voice in a falsetto with her massive upturned head swaying from side to side.

"If only those deft little hands did not require the rest of you. Once, there were so many hands like yours. Some came to steal my treasure. Some came to pay me tribute. A precious few were... lairfriends."

"What happened to them?"

"The thieves? I slew them, of course. I spared those that paid due tribute... but they perished because of the follies of man. And my lairfriends became... scarce," Aunt Pothi sighed, "until there were none to be found, except you. You are priceless because of your rarity."

Luma knew her rarity. She was a stranger welcomed in almost every lair, but she was still a stranger.

"My claws may move mountains and carve grand lairs, but until you came around, so many little gems, so many coins, so many little treasures were slipping from my grasp..."

Luma let her keep talking. Every moment was more time for Arkoth to, hopefully, dig to safety.

Aunt Pothi snorted with narrowing eyes and growing smile. "For that reason, I forgive your tresspass and your transgressions. That said, digging in the dirt, my dirt, is a new low for you, girl. You blunt and tarnish and endanger your most valuable assets with such coarse mischief. I wonder who gave you the idea..."

Luma stumbled and gasped as she suddenly felt the pointy top of Arkoth's head rising from the dirt beneath the holey sole of her shoe. She bit down with a wince and pushed back down now matter how it stung until she pushed her lairfriend back down.

"Was it little lairless Arkoth?" Aunt Pothi sniffed, then snarled with and flashed her yellowed fangs. "By ley and stone, if I catch him, I will eat him."

"No, I came here by myself," Luma ground her heel from side to side until the painful poking ceased, which hopefully meant that Arkoth got the hint to stay down there, "but I will warn him when I see him."

"You do that, girl..." Aunt Pothi sniffed her again. "That will not take long, will it?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"He is near. I smell his whelpstink all over you."

Luma gulped.

"He came here to steal my treasure," Pothi snarled with sizzling saliva between her worn yellowed fangs, "didn't he?"

"I don't know," Luma said before pinching her lips together, rethinking her previously rejected lie to mend it like her cloak or her shoes, "but didn't I say that's what I came here to do?"

"He told you to say that," Pothi curled her flaky scaly lips, sending some spittle hissing upon the rocks. "To see if I would eat you in his stead."

Luma gasped.

Aunt Pothi snickered. "You need to find lairfriends more your age."

"If I had lairfriends my age," Luma countered, "they would still be in eggs."

"Precisely my point," Pothi countered, her smile warmer, smotheringly so. She lifted and descended her wing over Luma like a canopy to shield her from the next chilly gust of wind. "You have once again crawled out of your own egg far too soon. Go home and stay there, where it is safe and warm, for just a few years longer."

Luma dared to ask, "Did you have something waiting for me, when I am old enough? A present?"

"Who told you that?" Aunt Pothi snarled as if she already knew. "It is less a present and more your... inheritance. A promise I intend to fulfill... when the time is right. If you behave. If you cease your mischief and stop digging through my rubbish. If you do your chores. If you stop staying up so late. Once you learn how to count high enough to reckon my riches..."

"Will you ever fulfill that promise?" Luma asked just before her wandering gaze caught Arkoth's head now peeking up from a freshly dug hole in the dirt, perilously close to Aunt Pothi's haunch. He wiggled free and took flight just before the eldwyrm's tail could sweep him up.

Aunt Pothi lifted her chin, frowning. As she did, Luma watched Arkoth foolishly flapping toward the golden mouth of the brightest and most ostentacious wyrmhoard in all the wyrmroad, gleaming with the last light of the setting sun. Luma had arranged the mirrors up there herself only a few moons ago, catching the light and brightening Aunt Pothi's wyrmlair and making her treasures shine brighter than ever before.

Luma averted her gaze away from Arkoth's ongoing flight up the mountain. If Aunt Pothi turned around and looked over her shoulder for even a moment, she'd have caught Arkoth for sure, lit up as he was by that mirrored light like a fat little gold nugget with flappy little wings.

"When I decide to do so, girl. The more you ask me, the longer it will take." Aunt Pothi's wings and limbs folded to her sides as her softer scales slammed and rubbed against the dirt, "Now, get on my back. I will take you to my favorite spring, warmed by the mountain's fiery heart, dip you in it, dirty laundry and all, then dry you with with my breath."

"Why?"

"Because I refuse to let your lairfather see you so dirty. It's unbecoming, even for you."

"But you don't even like my lairfather."

"I don't, but I must have words with him all the same, regarding your latest bad habit of digging in my trash."

"Do I have to?"

"You have no choice. Now, get on my back before..."

Luma had already turned away, starting a wild downhill dash.

Her thoughts started to catch up with her actions as she went. That was how it often was: she felt something, then she thought about why she did it.

She knew was in trouble already, and trying to outrun Aunt Pothi for long was impossible even with a head start, but it was trouble she could survive. Her lairfriend Arkoth was already delving into the lair of the greatest and most terrible eldwyrm in all the wyrmroad, daring to steal her inheritance back.

If she kept ahead of Aunt Pothi just long enough, she could maybe give Arkoth a chance to escape. Hopefully Arkoth's promised reward would be something small and lackluster enough that Aunt Pothi's dulling eyes wouldn't even notice was gone.

Aunt Pothi stammered and sputtered as if in disbelief until she roared like a thunderclap, her breathlight alone flaring like an early sunrise and casting a tall, tall shadow in front of Luma's ongoing retreat.

That shadow, so tall, cloaked as it was, was like her dreams, her nightmares. She promised to be quiet, to wait to be found again...

Hot wind blew at her back and caught on her frayed old cloak, lifting her off her running feet. She dug in her heels as she landed on her bent knees, riding the growing carpet of stirred dust, dirt, pebbles, and rocks.

"Luma of the Lonely Light," Aunt Pothi bellowed while taking flight, beating and booming the air with the wide span of her wings, "by ley and stone, when I catch you..."

"If you catch me!" Luma shouted back over her own shoulder. She was halfway out of breath already and felt the holes in her soles widen as she struggled for balance in the landslide beneath her feet.

The nearly blind eldwyrm swooped and swiped with her open claws, trying to pluck her up with the same ferocity and clumsiness that she had when she tried to scrape at loose coins and gems that fell from her piles of treasure.

Luma dodged Aunt Pothi's grabbing swipes as best she could. She was almost out of breath and slipped a few times, skidding her heels and even scraping her hands as she went further down the slope, losing both buttons somewhere in the ongoing avalanche around her.

The grabbing swipes suddenly ceased. The hot brimstone breath that had been blowing over her cloaked back gave way to the evening breeze.

Luma realized that Aunt Pothi had just given up the chase.

Why?

Luma caught her breath on the first level patch of ground that could carry her weight. As she did, she turned around and looked back up the way she came.

She saw Aunt Pothi rushing up the mountaintop with startling speed toward her gleaming wyrmlair. She thrust her head in first, her massive tail sweeping about with agitation.

The roar that followed shook the mountain, with smoke blowing out from every side passage and venting hole along its side like one of Aunt Pothi's tea kettles.

She then heard Aunt Pothi scream Arkoth's name. Never before did she sound so angry, so murderous, so hungry.

She waited, anxious, worried, even scared. No sign of Arkoth, nothing at all. Just more smoke and more flashes of trueflame deep within Aunt Pothi's vaults. The ground beneath her feet rumbled and stirred from the eldwyrm's ongoing hunt.

One vent was close enough to see glowing with searing hot air blowing out of it. Luma bent down and peeked inside.

Arkoth sped out, backed by a flood of roaring flame and heated air with with enough speed and force to crash into her, sending both tumbling down the slope. His scales were scathingly hot to the touch so she pushed him off. He cackled with triumph while squeezing something tightly within his tiny foreclaws. Whatever it was, he hugged it close as his steaming scales cooled in the darkening air as he flapped away before Aunt Pothi's imminent wrath.

"You can't outfly an eldwyrm," Luma warned him as she felt the ground rumble and start to sink around her.

"Then help me, somehow," Arkoth pleaded, "or you'll never get your reward!"

How could Luma help?

As she ran alongside him, still at a loss for how to help him, she saw the very last lights of the setting sun cast upon the steepest side of the mountain, dropping down sharply enough to show the divide between the living forest and the stagnant settled haze of lifeless dust that filled the valley beyond that. There, men were said to have once lived, until they were all gone.

"Arkoth," she yelled louder than the mountainside's rumbling and Aunt Pothi's latest and loudest roar beneath, "can you carry me?"

"What?" Arkoth gazed down the steep drop from the jagged cliffs ahead, his little wings flapping so hard they were a blur, to stop himself from floating over the edge, "There's nothing down there..."

Luma lunged and grabbed and held onto Arkoth's hind legs and squeezed tight, the momentum of her run pulling the whelpling over the edge with her.

Arkoth yelled, flapping and puffing up, as best as he could, clutching his claws together tighter than ever. "Luma! I can't keep us up..."

"Then don't," Luma urged as she saw Aunt Pothi burst forth from the mountainside with her trueflame rage lighting up the darkening sky.

Arkoth sank down, reluctantly at first, but then he had little choice as Luma's weight pulled him down faster and faster.

Luma held on tight as she sank under the blanket of dust, so thick in the hazy valley that the moonlight was dulled, dissipating, fading around her moment by moment.

The darker it became, the more she felt old pain and old wounds, the sting of loss and of broken and unfulfilled promises.

But she had already made her choice.

Soon, she slipped and landed upon the thick pillowy dust, stirring it in an outward ripple and blowing it everywhere, making her cough and sneeze until she covered her mouth and nose with her tattered cloak.

After all that noise she just made, there were no cracking branches, snapping twigs, or dry leaves left to crunch. There was no gnashing, whimpering, wheezing, or whistling.

Nothing at all but her breath, her heartbeat, and the flapping of her lairfriend's wings.

"I'm still here," Arkoth assured her. "You can't see me, but... there isn't much to see here. Except... oh no. Watch your step..."

She had stepped on something dry and brittle that crunched underfoot. She yelped and stumbled backward away from it, but she was too curious, so she knelt and reached out.

She felt a skull, lined with brittle jagged fangs that crumbled under her touch.

Her fear waxed with a climactic shiver, then waned. She felt no more fear, only pity.

"A dustwolf," Arkoth realized. "Just like in your first, scariest story."

"A dustwolf," Luma confirmed, "but it can't hurt me anymore. It can't hurt anyone anymore."

"Why do you sound so... sad?"

"Because it was hungry, and lost. Unlike me, no one came to save it."

"I have so, so many questions... but are you ready for your surprise first?" Arkoth detached from her shoulders and flapped nearby, unseen in the murk.

"Yes," Luma shivered, wondering if she was ready, or could ever be truly ready, for what Aunt Pothi kept from her and Arkoth stole for her, all for her to continue her story.

Arkoth parted his clasped foreclaws, releasing a dazzlingly bright little mote of light that pierced the veil of dust... and seemed to blow it back, making things clear all around the little whelpling.

Luma saw the pale bones of a dustwolf, and another, and another.

She looked back at the light. Her lairfriend flinched and squinted his eyes shut, as if unable to look at it directly, but to her, it was soothing, calming... like a dream, or from a dream.

"I hope you like your present," Arkoth said, pressing it at her. As if weightless, the open-clawed gesture set it afloat, drifting toward her.

Luma caught the mote of light and clasped her own hands over it.

"There is more," Arkoth said, shyly. "I promised not to tell, but out of fear, not friendship."

"You promised... to the eldwyrms?"

"Yes, your lairfather included," Arkoth confessed. "But before you do, fulfill your own promise to me. After the dustwolves came, what happened? What really happened?"

"They... my trueparents... told me to look to the moonlight," Luma said as she felt her hands tremble. "But there was no more light."

"Unless there was one," Arkoth corrected. "One lonely light."

Luma gasped. "The moon came back."

"Yes," Arkoth said, "because you made it come back."

Luma shook her head. No, that was not possible.

"What you hold is celestial manna. It glows without needing to be lit by lifeflame. There is none like it in all the world. Its light used to be... bigger. Brighter. But that is all that is left."

Luma knew, in her heart, what to do with that mote of light, the remnant of something so powerful that it somehow made a new moon.

Were her trueparents still out there, somewhere?

She wished to see them again.

She looked up to the pale moon in the clearing sky.

As she did, the light in her hand flickered and faded until she held nothing.

Her inheritance, her present, gone just like that, wasted.

It seemed Aunt Pothi was right to keep it from her...

"Wait," Arkoth said with lifeflame sparking from his mouth. "Look."

Luma wiped fresh tears from her eyes and watched as the dust continue to clear, ever onward, forming a path that seemed to wind to the horizon under the lonely moon.

Near the start of that path, something blue shimmered. It was a hat with a wide brim, pointed on top. Unlike the waning tides of dust all around her, the hat itself somehow clean, pristine, well taken care of.

"This path," Luma said with hope and wonder, "I made this path. I am going to see where it goes."

"So you did, and so you may. But what am I going to tell your lairfather?"

Luma pulled the hat over her head. It was still a bit too large for her, but it kept the glare at bay, and her shadow stood taller than ever. "Tell him not to worry."

"When I tell him, he will do nothing but worry."

"He will understand. I just got my present a little early. Could you come back with breakfast?"

"Of course. I look forward to our next meal. But how will I find you again?"

"Look for me," Luma smiled back at him as she turned with a swirl of her cloak to face the moon and began to walk, "in the moonlight."

Arkoth reluctantly flapped away, but Luma felt his eyes upon her back, at least for a while.

She continued down the moonlit path.

It was time to mend her broken promises.