The Wombs of Tethering

There weren't always dragons in the valley. None had been seen since the world had fallen as the frostmelts baked away, when balance had faltered and the Chaos of Tethering unleashed itself.

Dj'het, eyeing a flock of seven of the winged beasts, gripped his petrified staff and peered slack-jawed from the cliff. "Unfathomable," his dusty lips whispered into the shearing wind at this height. He knelt down to get a better look, unfurling the pack at his side to pull out a polished wooden spyglass.

With the instrument pressed to his eye, he looked out upon a valley that had become a dusty, barren place scooped into the mountains and dotted with hollow trees. In truth, it had not seen life in decades. Dried, splintered earth blanketed the valley floor and swept into the rocky crags of the Orlenai Mountains. Dj’het only came here to reminisce or keep a lookout for the terrors that crawled these lands. To see dragons, though, was something else entirely.

Checking his positioning, the tanned-skin scout shifted forward to get a closer look. The children of his clan learned of past dragons as beautiful, glistening creatures whose colors shifted with the winds or their moods. The rarest were different, and it was these that Dj’het gained a closer eye upon. He began to smile wide as tears welled, seeing the luminate dragons for the first time in his life. Luminates emanated bright amber light from under their scales. A kaleidoscope of glimmering colors, their scales had all the qualities of stained glass being shone through at the zenith of a clear sunset. Such a sunset was hard to find in times like these, making the dragons all the more beautiful.

Dj’het’s silent tears rolled down his dusty face and he was transported to his childhood, stargazing in the Karth’nuli Wildwoods where his clan lived. Back then it was lush and green, rivers flowed all throughout, and small coral dragons nested in the thick canopy of the temperate rainforest. Others came and went as well, but the coral were special because somewhat the luminates, they shone a faint light from under their scales. Dotting the treetops under the night sky, Dj’het’s forest was lit by the pink lamps of these gentle creatures.

“It can’t be,” said a voice behind him. His cousin, Shirin, emerged from the pass and knelt down, pressing her hand onto his shoulder. “How is this possible?”

“It’s beautiful. Shirin, I–” he swallowed and gathered himself, looking into her cool brown eyes flecked with green. His eyes were a soft, faded green in color.

“We have to tell the others,” he said.

She gestured for his spyglass and peered through, shaking her head in disbelief. “We can tell them all we like but I’m not sure they’d believe us. I-is there a way to see how long they’ve been here?” She gruffly wiped away a tear, handing back the instrument.

Dj’het sat back and stared at the dragons in the distance. Scouring the valley floor for any signs of a nest, he began to wonder. He leaned to her with eyes still on the valley. “The coral dragons of Karth’nuli would put scales on the outside of their nests, wouldn’t they?”

“Yeah, they did do that. At night you could see the scales sometimes because of the light shining from the dragons…” She looked at him, grinning. “You think we should camp here for the night? Just to see? What time is it?”

He peered into the hazy sky, a faint disk of pale light beginning to make its long trek to the horizon. “I’d say we have a few hours until dusk. Enough time to set up camp. Is everything settled back there?” He nodded toward the narrow pass that gave path to their small mountainside cliff.

“We weren’t followed, if that’s what you’re asking. And,” she said as she quickly reached into her pack, pulling out a brilliant flower of fusing purples, greens, and pinks, “I found this! We can send a message back to Yalas tomorrow once the petals have curled.”

“Good idea, but don’t pull all of them. We may need to send another message later.”

Shirin frowned and nodded her head side to side. “Fair point.”

Over the next few hours, the two repeatedly withdrew behind the pass and back onto the cliffside, gathering what they needed to draw up a small makeshift camp. There would be no fire tonight, for the dragons might get spooked, but they at least gathered enough water from a tiny brook a short distance back into the lightly forested reaches of the grotto they had found.

Set upon the cliffside as the sun began to fade beyond the mountains, Dj’het rested his head against the rocky wall and stared at the sky. “Shirin,” he began. “What do you think the world would have been like?”

She slapped dirt off her hands and, squatting over a small bowl with some of the flower petals she’d been carefully plucking, stared into the sky as well. Sunsets once faded into oranges, violets, and pinks in a dazzling and brilliant display. Now it was a more sickly, bruised purple beyond a haze of thick, overripe orange. What had been a white dot visible through haze in the noon sky became an angry red disc shrouded by a hanging, murky dust in the air.

“It would’ve been a dream, Vigilspeaker.” She rarely used his formal title, hinting at the task he took on for the clan when someone died or went missing. Dj’het raised an eyebrow and then nodded toward the bowl. She looked back to it, shuffled the petals a bit, and held her hands over them.

She listened. Everything had gone silent. She looked over to Dj’het, and he stared at her in recognition. Something was wrong.

That moment, as soon as the sun had dipped beyond the mountain range, a roiling bellow of staccato, deep barks echoed across the entire valley. Dj’het and Shirin both had to cover their ears and grimaced in pain, struggling to avoid screaming. And then just as quickly, it dissipated. “What the hell was that?” Dj'het whispered.

Shirin shook her head and in a prone position, slowly moved to the side of the cliff. Dj’het followed suit. There, they could see the dragons in the valley all standing straight up on their shimmering hind legs, necks extended vertically stretching toward the sky. The largest one stood with its open mouth gaping.

Instead of fire or bellows now, though, it breathed music. As though a thousand ethereal beings cried out from within, the luminate dragon echoed forth an otherworldly chorus that shook the sides of mountains. Pebbles next to Shirin and Dj’het vibrated from the sonorous performance, the thrum humming through their chests. The others of the flock, all smaller, soon joined in. The dragons' angelic voices filled the world around them, a sense of peace washing over the two explorers, and tears streamed down their faces as they watched and listened.

Shirin wiped a tear away, looking down as Dj’het suddenly gasped. She returned her gaze and the two together watched the impossible: trees sprouting from the earth around the dragons at a dizzying speed. Patches of grasses and wildflowers filled the space all around the dragons as the song continued. In the distance across the peaked horizon, storm clouds not seen in what felt like an age warped and shifted their direction toward the valley.

The song continued for hours. Dj’het and Shirin both sat entranced. The storm blew through and then dissipated, their attention shaken only by the occasional gust. At last, in the middle of night, the music ended and they both lay under the thick cover of cloud. They could already smell a freshness they had not even remembered until now, and in the distance through what looked like brambles, they could see soft amber light glowing in the valley floor.

Before dozing off, Dj’het silently wondered if in the morning they might awake to the valley as it perhaps once had been, to a time when dragons had not needed to come to this far-off place at the edge of the world seeking respite and sanctuary. Smiling, he dreamed of a forest awash in the light of the dragons he had once known, which slowly transformed into these he had seen and heard. They sang to his childhood form, dipping and dashing in between trees.

Even in his blissful dreams, his head swirled with questions. Dj’het desperately needed to know why they had appeared now, whether other dragons were doing the same as had happened here, when it began, and so much more.

Somehow, the dragons had returned. That he had witnessed a valley’s rebirth could be no coincidence.