Song of the Sea

“To my wonderful son, a new graduate of the Igneous school!” said Poseidon, raising his chalice in one paw to the open sky. “Enoch, you have surpassed me, and I can die a happy dragon.”

He downed the spicy mead in one chug and grinned at his son with mirth. His mate, Elora, rolled her eyes at his bawdy display, but she was smiling too. Thin trails of smoke rose from Enoch’s nostrils, far thinner than when he first began his combat training. He had learned to control it during his schooling, like every dragon before him except his father.

When Poseidon was born, his egg was gooey and translucent. His parents watched it pulse as the days passed, and when he hatched, they celebrated carefully, afraid to believe they had begotten a healthy dragon. The herbalist confirmed that there was indeed something different about their son: Poseidon was born without bellows or a flint gland, and he would never retain enough air to spark fire within his throat. One by one, his friends progressed to the Igneous school, and he wished upon burning starlight that he, too, would someday get to step over its threshold and learn to control his dragon's birthright of fire. He watched how the young students pranced about and were thrown into the air with the force of their new breath, leaving scorch marks on the mountainside. They coughed up coals while their flint glands filled, but his throat remained bare of soot, and his secret hope began to trickle away.

As his friends grew into adolescents, they snuck away at night to bonfires and revels. They roasted the most delicious food, and battle songs reverberated through the darkness from deep in their bellows. Elora had always loved the lack of gruffness in his voice, but he couldn’t help but feel less than the regal warriors that surrounded him. As the nights passed, Poseidon grew more and more restless, nursing wounded pride and cursing his body. In his loneliness, Poseidon learned to hear the sounds other dragons had tuned out against the backdrop of their booming roars. He studied the faithful lapping of the far away ocean and listened to the bright whistle of the wind on cold nights, and he filled the empty spaces inside of him with the song of the sea.

“Poseidon,” his mother had said, “Your clanmates possess great power, but you cannot afford their same recklessness. You have no way to protect yourself and no roar to cry for aid. In your hour of need, your greatest power will be finding a high and dry place to hide.”

When Poseidon and Elora discovered they were expecting, Poseidon’s clanmates scorned him and called him selfish for taking a mate at all while knowing his disability could pass on to his progeny, and his heart broke. He realized the world would battle him at every turn, and not even one simple pleasure or joy could remain uncomplicated. Poseidon lived his life with strings attached to everything he did, and whenever he tried to sever them, the rest of the world returned viciously to tie them back on. No matter what he chose to do, everyone had an opinion, and they were much, much louder than he could ever be, without bellows, all by himself. Even still, the fact that Enoch’s voice was thunderous and mighty gave Poseidon great comfort for the child’s future, and despite the hatefulness of his clan, his son rose to the top of his class at Igneous. Once rumors of rogue necromancers spread across the land, Poseidon knew his son would be able to protect the kingdom against these most unpredictable of opponents.

Poseidon’s thoughts snapped back to the hall at the sound of the great tavern doors giving way. Splinters popped as the black wood caved inward and icy beings poured into the hall. Their loose joints clattered with movement, and their slack jaws snapped to the beat of their footsteps. Dragons lunged in attack, breathing fire at their skeletal foes, but as the wraiths melted, they did not disappear into water. Instead, they became molten and hardened once more, sealing the dragons to the floor. Those who could not pull free in time were slaughtered where they stood. Through his mead-heavy haze, Poseidon realized the beings were not made of ice at all. The wraiths were made of glass.

His bellowless body was idle and frozen while the rest of his clan fought with vicious abandon, hot burning breath turning the half-dead beings into molten glass. He searched for Enoch and Elora, but the smoke clouded his vision. His nostrils were abraded by the scent of gunpowder, and he flew high above the fray to escape the wafting smoke. The dragons battled with their wide bellows at their throat, fighting the undead with ancestral fire Poseidon did not possess. Poseidon fled to the mountains in search of a place to hide.

The spire of the tallest mountain caught the edge of his vision, and he banked to the east before landing atop its crags. He curled up in the shadow of an overhang and folded his wings over his wide snout, willing the scent of ancestral fire out of his nostrils. He pictured Elora's yellow scales flashing in the flame of battle, her brave heart beating energy through her veins. He thought of his son, rash with confidence but so very young in dragon years. Thoughts of their triumph fed him with hope but prickled his body with the pain of exclusion.

Poseidon awoke to the swoop of wings, unaware he had even dozed off. He stood and shook his wings before joining his swarming clan in flight. They dove towards a high plateau on the edge of their territory alit upon the rock. As the hours passed, surviving dragons trickled in from the skirmish. The warriors curled around their mates and children, but as the twilight spread, Enoch and Elora did not appear. Poseidon's gaze traced the horizon for his family first and then migrated to the ground. Their lush valley was razed with scorchmarks, and smoke rose from several clan member's caverns. Their food stores were strewn over the ground, charred and wasted.

Eventually, several high council members flew from their perches to search for survivors amongst the ash. Poseidon waited, so detached from himself was he that the chill of evening reached no deeper than his scales. Far to the east, the sea whispered, and Poseidon drank in its quiet calling. Finally, in the dying light, the high council presented him the body of his son. Elora had been trapped under layers of hardened glass. She, too, was gone.

The dragons sent the fallen souls to the beyond with a thunderous roar, and though Poseidon’s grief tore through his heart, all he could manage was a rattling whistle of pain. His valiant son could not even be guided home by the roar of his father, and Poseidon wept. As the moon climbed in the sky, he left the mountaintop in search of a proper burial place for his son.

Poseidon flew over the high treetops until he spotted a clearing dappled with moonlight. Several rough, red rocks flanked the flat circle of grass. One of them rustled and moved, raising Poseidon’s hackles. Then, it shook with giggles and stood. A mass of brick red curls gave way to a tiny, round face set with brown eyes like winter acorns. It was a child, no older than two or three. A human child alone at night, thought Poseidon, could very easily be harmed, especially with wraiths on the loose. The child moved forward to stroke one of his wide wings, so he curled her up inside it and lifted her onto his back. She kicked her feet and cheered.

Leaves rustled, and out from the brush appeared another human. The woman breathed heavily and stopped in her tracks, defying Poseidon’s gaze with her own. Her eyes, too, were like capless acorns, and her face was framed with brick red curls.

“Put my sister down,” snarled the woman, producing a wooden spoon from her apron and brandishing it.

Poseidon knelt and allowed the child to wriggle down from his back. She landed on her feet with a schlump and a wide grin.

“You should be indoors,” said Poseidon. “There are wraiths afoot, and several of our clan were lost. Please allow me to accompany you to your home for protection,” he continued, more out of courtesy than with any faith he possessed in his ability to protect them. He doubted his clan would appreciate his sullying the chivalrous perception dragons had long worked to cultivate amongst humans.

The walk was not far before the trio arrived at a village peppered with wooden huts. Poseidon was a vision of obsidian to behold, and the humans in the square stopped to gawk at his tall, shimmering form. The two humans were named Layla and Ciela, and they fed him hearty stew from a bowl that was comically small for Poseidon’s paws. He had only just begun to relax when he heard a familiar clacking sound from beyond the woods.

“Run, go now!” cried Poseidon, shoving little Ciela into Layla’s arms. Layla was rooted with fear, and before she could turn to run, the house quaked and Ciela jumped from her arms, fleeing into the street towards the clattering sound.

The terrified dragon remembered his son, soaring with the wind beneath his wings and smoke at his back, flying into the fray to protect his home. The first time he held Enoch's egg, beating and glutinous, not even fully formed from laying, rose like a ghost in his mind. His son's first flight, first hunt, and first revel flashed before Poseidon's eyes, grief settling on his heart knowing his only child was gone forever. Poseidon watched Ciela run into the path of the wraiths and stepped backwards, searching for a hiding place, knowing his presence could do nothing but complicate this battle. And then, in his hour of need, the sea called to him, its frothy music floating over the air. ‘Breathe,’ it whispered.

Poseidon pulled the wind inside of him, allowing grief to expand in his chest until it touched the fear thrumming over his scales. The pain and helplessness he was holding in finally escaped him in a shriek, loud and beautiful and shrill above the noise in the sky and the clink of glass upon dirt, skeleton heels that smelled of rot. His old friend begged to be released from his lungs, and when the breath escaped, his whistle cleaved the air in two. The wraiths rattled and burst into white hot sand, falling upon the city. The townspeople ran for cover, and some were burned, but the broken shards of the wraiths remained solid. No molten glass covered the ground, because Poseidon’s breath contained no heat.

Poseidon swept up Ciela in his talons and squeezed her tight. Grief roiled in him, but hope did, too.

In the following weeks, Poseidon organized a battalion of dragons to search for the source of the wraiths and destroy the threat to the kingdom. Although Poseidon was not able to save his son, he raised a great diamond memorial in their honor in the village square that could never be melted or shattered. He commissioned new armor and strutted with confidence, knowing he was worthy of fine craftsmanship. He was once othered because of his voice, but it had become his weapon, high and sweet, and it was a weapon that could never harm the people he loved. He loved his mother, but she was wrong. He was capable of so much more than hiding in the shadows and waiting for danger to pass. He bowed his head so little Ciela could pet his wide nose, and then flew off into battle as the hero he had become.