Thwarted

There was a step that shook the trees, and another.

Two forms descended upon the source of a sound that had drawn the attention of their ears from a mile away and craned their necks to peer closely to it.

“What is it?” inquired the first, she, brown-scaled and tall, with thick brows arched over earth coloured eyes. Her wings were tucked against her sides.

Smooth, rumbled the larger, thinking to her. He prodded at the straw basket with a claw and withered back as the being inside roused and whined. Young, he observed unhelpfully.

Move aside, Galain. Let me see. Pushing past her counterpart with some impatience, the female poked her large nose into the shrubbery and sniffed. A very young child lay within the basket, bearing sunned skin and a short tangle of brown hair. The dragon's nostrils tingled as she drew back. Earthly! So far from the Lake?

She lifted her great head and examined their surroundings. Thin trees betrayed signs of wear beyond the work of creatures living between their branches. The air was still and cold. “They know not to come out here,” she wondered aloud, in a good voice soft with thought, “the smoke must be pushing them in.” Her eyes softened to stare into the middle distance as bewilderment set in.

“Do you think they dropped it, Gi?” Galain shook away his surprise and pressed in beside her, for he seemed to have realized that for a dragon of his size to cower at the bleating of an earthly infant was unseemly. Eyes glowing emerald to match his dimly lit scales made a snicking sound as he bent and blinked at the babe in its basket, both stowed beneath the furl of fern fronds dripping with the prior evening’s rain. “I have never seen their young before.”

“I have. This isn’t the smallest of them.” Gi sighed out a small flame to flicker her concern. “They are fleeing for the mountains. An elder spoke of sighting caravans on the plains, but I didn’t think they would come this far.” She shook her head. “I had hoped their fear of us would be greater than their fears of the sea.”

“They don’t know what lies across the sea, and the mountains belong to land on which they were born. It’s much easier to slay a dragon than a sea, Gi. They won’t want to leave if they find safety in the mountains, but of course…” Galain looked to her, reassurance drawn onto his countenance. “They won’t find it. What will we do with this one, then?” The Earthly child balled its hands into little fists and let out a wail.

Galain flattened his ears to his skull. “They certainly sound like hatchlings,” he complained.

Gi sighed. “We cannot handle it. We would tear or burn it.” The brown dragon took a step back, eying the babe in its basket. “Nor would it make for much of a meal...” Galain nodded his agreement and waited patiently for her to decide. He wasn’t the brains of their pairing and little he did oft made sense to her, but Gi quietly counted on his composure for support. She sought out their surroundings once more and let her eyes drift while she lapsed into thought.

The forest surrounding them was lush with the greenery of summer’s end. Though leaves were lightening and yellowing with the passing of days, autumn was still weeks away and they’d not wilt nor flutter away for some time.

Gi’s stare wandered down to the basket, and she watched as the child rolled onto its side and stared out to the pair of dragons standing before it. It was naked against the air but for a wrapping around its midriff. As Gi watched, the earthly child waved its arms up at Galain and stammered strings of unintelligible sounds. It giggled.

She rolled her shoulders back and felt her scales ripple with discomfort. Something didn’t feel right. The way the basket sat cradled so carefully beneath the ferns was unsettling, purposeful, altogether intentional. She couldn’t smell any other creatures around, but the craftiness of mortals was not to be underestimated. We can’t touch it, she thought finally.

“What? Why?” Galain jerked his chin around to look down at her.

This wasn’t an accident, Galain. Look at how it is placed, protected. Gi indicated the placement of the fern in the rising of a heavy forefoot. We need to tell the elders that the Earthly are close. She huffed and a rising tendril of smoke met the air.

“Do we have to leave it? Seems like a bit of a waste,” Galain slowly trailed a claw around the ferns and watched the Earthly child follow the movement with its round, dark eyes. "It's rather interesting."

“What’s wrong with you?” Gi insisted. “Don’t you feel the strangeness of it? The Earthly may have left it as a trap.”

Or a sacrifice.

In a panic both dragons wheeled, nearly crushing the basket and its burden in their haste. They exchanged confused glances and stood to rapt attention to observe as a black dragon emerged from shadows and strode between the trees toward them. He stepped lightly for a creature so large, barely rippling the leaves of cypress and cedar. He was far taller than either the brown or green dragons before him, and four amber eyes protruded above his long muzzle, one set atop another.

Raith, Galain and Gi chorused his name, and they bowed their necks in respect. The great dragon blinked his bottom pair of eyes whilst the top sought out their features.

This is not the first. The Earthly have left many young and their vulnerable behind as they scout out the mountains. They pray to us. They urge us bless their endeavors and allow them settlement. The black dragon halted before them and blinked all eyes in greeting.

“Raith,” Gi pleaded, wincing, “much as we appreciate your thoughts, please consider speaking with us.” The power of his mind was too much for her, a stark, striking difference in comparison with Galain’s smooth consciousness.

“As you wish.”

Galain relaxed beside Gi and inhaled to have his side brush against hers. The brown dragon seemed to take brief comfort from this, and Galain saw a tightness in her jaw ease.

He turned his attention back to Raith, but not before feeling a clammy presence latch onto the tip of his tail. Galain frowned and flicked it. The presence held on, and the green dragon felt his stomach clamp with the chill of surprise as he looked over his shoulder to find the Earthly child clambering up to his hind quarters. Gi, the Earthly, it’s- he began to think to her. The child cooed and kept climbing. Galain did not enjoy the feeling of it, for there came a slight tingling sensation that rattled his spine, and he twitched the scales of his back in concern.

“We are not taking bribes. The mountains are ours, and we will not share. The Earthly have caused this chaos.” A spark of the embers within Raith’s belly left his maw as he spoke. “It is for them to fight their own fires, and for us to tend our own.”

“I don’t disagree.” Galain grimaced as the child on his tail gripped tighter, “but it seems like a waste of life to snuff it out, don’t you think? Look at this thing. I would not accept it as a sacrifice, but perhaps it could be of some use to us. I’ve never been face to face with one before.” He lifted his tail and snaked it around for Raith and Gi to see. The child shrieked and babbled in glee as it was lifted into the air and displayed before the massive black dragon.

The Earthly reached out toward Raith with one smooth hand and made a greedy, grabbing motion. Raith sniffed. “It has barely lived. What waste would it be? It is of no use to us.”

Gi was watching in a conflicted silence. Her round brown eyes flicked several times between Raith and Galain while she managed the discomfort brewing in her, and then to the child bubbling laughter. “Something doesn’t feel right,” she murmured.

“You could say that again.” Galain wriggled his tail and watched the child cling to his scales, sighing in amusement. “It’s making my scales tingle.”

Raith blew smoke from his nostrils. “Because you dislike its touch.”

“It’s more than that,” Gi sighed. She lifted a claw up to the child. “Something has been bothering me beyond the state it was left in and its placement in the forest. It isn’t cold. Don’t Earthly ones shiver? Its elders would be wearing furs and leathers in this weather. The rain makes them cower and hide, and the cold much more so.” Instead of touching the claw to the little one, she rotated her forefoot and brought the side of it to the child’s flesh.

Immediately a tingling sensation began to spread through Gi’s scales, electric in its intensity.

The dragon's teeth chattered against her will and smoke flared from her nostrils from the shock of it. The feel of the Earthly was foreign, and in the moment of contact she felt a pulling, clutching, gripping at the corners of her mind, much more tangible than it should have been if indeed it had been normal at all. For all she knew of the Earthly they were not amongst those who could communicate outside of their muttered sounds, and this presence perturbed her greatly. Get out!

Gi unfurled her wings and furled them again in her dismay, and she reared back and pulled herself, her mind, away from the child, angry, confused, and unsettled. “There’s magic here!” She charged. “This isn’t right!”

“What are you talking about? It doesn’t hurt me at all,” Galain protested. “Just tingles a bit.” The child, unphased, curved the corners of its mouth upwards and babbled.

“That’s because you aren’t paying attention, thick-scales,” Gi snapped, “can’t you feel it in its touch? Raith, can't you sense it?”

She turned around to look up at the larger dragon and found his neck lowered to be closer to them. "I smell... Something." His nearness put her on edge; there was immense control housed within his form, and she often went out of her way not to be closer to him than she had to, to avoid the feeling of it. She moved out of his way and allowed him to lean in to sniff the child. Once, twice; so strongly that the fern fronds danced in the air’s disturbance. Then, the great onyx dragon began to growl and the dragons beside him shivered to hear the deep guttural rumble spreading from his belly.

“It smells of a hex. Of the sacrifices left to us there have been none with this affliction, each were mortal and without this trace. It would not surprise me if we could not burn this child.” Raith closed his eyes and shook his head. “There are works at play here stronger than we have been led to believe.”

He spread his wings, and Gi felt her stomach drop. She was already hesitant to be close to the child any longer. The thought of bringing it to the dragons’ council, closer to the heart of their society, made her feelings all the stronger. “Are you sure? It’s so small! Perhaps I’m simply sensitive to-”

“Size has nothing to do with it. It smells of hex; if one of them is involved with the Earthly we must know how, and why. What do you know of hexes, Gi?” Raith’s unblinking eyes bored into her, all four amber irises glowing intently.

The brown dragon swallowed hard. “Beings of magic,” she proffered, “shapeshifters, from somewhere out in the Beyond.”

Tricksters. Galain added, prone to folly. Gi nodded. Galain was examining the Earthly still clinging to his tail, and seemed to be waiting for Raith to explicate further.

“The thing is: hexes are created, not born. This poses a concern, for I don’t need to touch this child to know that magic sings in its blood. I smell enough of it, and now Gi, and you, Galain, have felt it. This is a grotesque misuse and mix of magic, a horror I have not seen in some time. If hexes have taken with the Earthly, whether for their cause or not, the Earthly may pose a greater danger to us in their flight from the Lake.” Raith gathered strength and flapped his wings once in a surge of air that blew the leaves of the trees to shake. “Galain, Gi, take the child back to the council and inform them of my suspicions.”

“Where will you go?” Galain asked, as the child shrieked with laughter. The green dragon began to lower his tail and turned to the basket, pushing the smooth-skinned Earthly inside.

“I fly to burn the frontline of the caravans lining the plains. They grow too close, and I will make them regret whatever deal they have made with hexes to strip us of our mountains.” The dark words hung in the air. Both Gi and Galain shivered and watched as the larger took his leave. Under their watch Raith strode with thunderous steps to a forest clearing where the leafy canopy gave way to sky and, with a thrust of his massive hind legs, he launched into the sky with a roar that split the air and began to wing westward.

In the silence following the sound of Raith’s fading wingbeats, Gi and Galain searched each other’s wide eyes for answers they knew they wouldn’t find. What had they set in motion?

The babe in the basket struck its hands against the walls of straw and bellowed to be allowed to leave, and Galain slipped his tail through the handle of the basket and lifted it. “Back home, then?”

Home again. Gi nodded. She followed her counterpart to the same clearing Raith had left empty and leapt into the air after Galain, flapping experimentally as she met the grey sky and carefully watching the placement of the basket’s burden lest the Earthly – perhaps hexed – child take a tumble for the worst.

Flying silently back to the mountains, their hunting efforts long forgotten, each dragon contemplated the implications of their discovery and the future it could bring to life, whilst the babe in the basket crowed excitement from the top of its lungs and watched the clouds slip away.