Dragonic Pride
By Katherine A Smith
“Close your eyes.”
Without hesitation, Morrigan obeyed.
“You’re looking up at the sky—”
“I am not; my eyes are closed.”
“Ahem. You’re looking up at the sky.”
Morrigan grinned a little. “Ah, right. Of course, I am.”
“Off in the distance you see a tiny black speck moving through the sky.”
“Goodness, whatever could it be? Could it be a—”
“You are looking up at the sky and see a black speck moving in the distance. Gradually, it comes closer and you see that it is in fact, a dragon.”
“My, my, what a surprise.”
Morrigan heard nearly silent footsteps approaching from behind her, but kept her position, still and relaxed near the edge of the cliff.
“The dragon flies in closer and you see the sun glinting brightly off his—”
“Yellow and black bumblebee colors?”
“Magnificent gold and onyx wings stretched wide in a perfect glide: he soars over.”
“Likes what he sees and comes around for another pass?”
“Circles above, slowly flying downward until he is able to touch down like the lightest feather, first with just one foot, and then all four: the very essence of elegance.”
“Impressive.”
“Majestically, he folds his glittering wings, head high and neck arched, like some dragon out of an ornately illustrated manuscript. At which point you turn to face him.”
“Hm.”
Morrigan kept her seat, eyes closed, feeling the sun beating down on her skin and warming her throughout.
“Ahem. At which point you turn to face him.”
She let her head loll, falling down onto her crossed forearms and the book they were propping up. With a deep sigh she relaxed all her muscles, and a moment later gave a far from convincing snore.
“At which point you open your eyes and turn to face him before he swats you.”
Morrigan couldn’t help it; she laughed.
“You are so annoying!”
Morrigan laughed harder, ruining her napping charade, and let herself turn halfway about so she could look back at the dragon behind her. He was sitting back on his haunches now, arms folded human-like, crest totally flat, and head turned away as if offended.
“I put on a performance like that and what does she do? She laughs at me. If I had any pride it would be ruined,” he mumbled.
Morrigan smiled widely. She knew what Kyan was doing; knew it quite well. He was just trying to cheer her up. He was cheering her up, when, logically, it should have been the other way around.
“It was a beautiful landing,” she told him, “one of your best.”
“Nothing but the best for you,” he grumped, but his crest fluffed back up to normal.
Her grin faded somewhat into an understanding smile. He did indeed have golden wings, which were both currently folded tightly to his back; she hadn’t seen them open in weeks. His landing performance had been pure imagination because Kyan couldn’t fly. Hidden among his leathery golden feathers and across his onyx-black skin were several strips of dyed leather holding his right wing snug to his body, immobilized, while his broken humerus healed. Morrigan knew he was touchy about it, felt vulnerable, incomplete, and ashamed, but here he was making jokes at his own expense to try to cheer her up.
“Come join me,” she invited.
Pretending still to be affronted, Kyan walked up beside her, and daintily sat.
“Any luck?” he said simply.
“On which problem?” she asked archly.
That made him smile a bit, finally.
“I haven’t seen the Alpha,” she began, keeping her voice low so that only he would hear. “Of course, I might have, but not known it, since I don’t know at all what he looks like, and I can’t exactly go up to a native dragon and say ‘hey, what color is the Alpha?’ because I’m supposed to be a native dragon, and so would already know what he looks like.”
“Admittedly, a problem, since we would risk death to blow our cover,” Kyan agreed. “I don’t really like the idea of a bunch of natural dragons finding out we are created dragons, jumping us, and beating us to a pulp just because our origins are different. As for the Alpha, the Matriarch won’t tell you anything about him?”
“I haven’t asked.”
“Why not?”
Trust Kyan not to scoff at her, but to simply enquire as to why she hadn’t.
“I’ve found plenty of excuses not to go ask her. I will, I just don’t feel all that comfortable around her, and she is very busy. Plus, it feels impolite, and I know I’ll get grilled on the fact that I really do intend to seek him out and try to talk him around.”
“The Matriarch is protective of him, and her whole Voyage, I’ve noticed,” Kyan remarked.
Morrigan stared out at the sky, feeling the glacial breeze flutter through her long crest. “You can’t blame her; her people are already dying.”
Kyan nodded deeply. “So no progress yet on that front. What about—”
Morrigan winced. “Don’t even ask about Pryderi. He won’t talk to me. He’ll barely even look at me. Sometimes he won’t even stay in the same room with me. Other times he just ignores me.”
“You’re not alone in that. Diadem has been trying to talk to him,” Kyan offered. “So have Sniper and Fly-by-night, but not with much success.”
“We used to get on just fine. He was so grateful for my help with Diadem.” Morrigan felt her eyes narrow. “But, I know,” she admitted. “I know. He’s mourning, and I can’t blame him for that. Of course since I was, ah, involved, his feelings towards me will have changed, but I can’t believe he actually thinks I knowingly let Lovisa fall off. I didn’t want to lose anyone. I wanted to get us all out safely. It’s not like I had to get rid of her. If it turned out later she’d betrayed us, I could have easily killed her then. I just–there was so much going on.” She looked down, shamed. “I’ve thought about it a lot, since then. I really didn’t mean to, I just, it got complicated, I got tired, I was hurt: I know those aren’t good excuses but.”
“I don’t think he thinks you did it purposefully, not really,” Kyan interrupted. “He just feels lost and alone. This has been very traumatic for him. He lost a lot all at once.”
Morrigan didn’t press the issue. She didn’t know what to think about Pryderi’s behavior. His lover, Lovisa, was probably dead. She’d fallen from such great height during their escape from Wost. Of course Morrigan hadn’t let her fall off on purpose, but Pryderi knew that Morrigan had started doubting Lovisa’s loyalty, and that was enough to salt the wounds in Pryderi’s heart and turn him against Morrigan.
“Every time I try to apologize, he just won’t stand still for it,” she murmured. “I don’t know what I have to do to make things better.”
Kyan made no comment, probably because he didn’t know either. There was no point in pondering it again. The subject was well-worn in Morrigan’s mind, and until Pryderi’s mood changed for the better, Morrigan wasn’t going to waste effort on trying to force him to snap out of it. Grieving was important and essential for healing. Besides, she had much more serious problems to contemplate, and the other members of her little group were adapting just fine–or at least better than Pryderi.
“Fly-by-night’s doing well,” she offered into the momentary silence.
Kyan chuckled. “Spends most of his time off gallivanting through the ravine; you’ve seen him. Freedom suits him.” For a few minutes the two of them sat staring out over the ravine Kyan had mentioned, at the bottom of which rushed the Fourth River: icy, glacier-fed water.
“Honestly, it’s you I’m the most worried about,” Kyan said quietly.
“Me? I’m healthy, mentally and physically, and able to take care of myself. You shouldn’t be worrying about me.”
“You’ve taken on the task of convincing the natural dragons–who are rapidly declining to extinction–that they should help us. They’ll only help us if we give them a very good reason to, and with their numbers dropping as they are, there’s only one thing they care about.”
“Finding a way to stop the Decline,” Morrigan finished for him, “which I can understand.”
“So cure the Fate-Fever or increase the birthrate, or, ideally, both.”
“Neither of which I can do,” Morrigan reminded him. “Which is why I have to find the Alpha and convince him to help us anyway.”
“Because we’re all so cute,” Kyan finished, deadpan.
Morrigan laughed, but he turned serious eyes onto her.
“Put yourself in his position. He’s got his hands full, and he has to be scared, not only because he could get sick next, but also because this is happening on his watch. I can’t imagine any argument that would convince him to do as you ask.”
“All I have to do is find the Alpha and talk to him,” Morrigan asserted. “You know how convincing I can be. If I work at it, I can build an argument to get him around.”
Kyan was frowning. “Well, do it before he and the Matriarch change their minds and decide we are a threat after all and decide to kill us, or decide that we’ve been here long enough and had better get to the task of helping to increase the population. We can’t run until my wing has healed enough to let me fly, so we can’t leave on our own yet, and none of us knows how to find the Alpha, much less how you’re going to convince him to send his whole community of dragons—some of whom are suffering from a deadly illness—off to do battle with a few hundred other dragons, where surely some of the wild dragons will be killed, further reducing the population–”
“Right,” Morrigan agreed with a curt nod. “It shouldn’t be that hard.”
Kyan was only able to give a weak smile. He turned to catch her gaze as gently as possible. “We don’t have to have the help of the wild dragons,” Kyan reminded her.
“How do we face the ranks of Wostian dragons and their riders without other dragons to help us? Five dragons is not a match for the hundreds of Wostian dragons. We’re better at fighting than them, but not that good.”
Kyan shook his head slightly. “There are not even a hundred wild dragons in total. You think they can make a difference against hundreds of Wostian dragons? And that’s not even including the weapons the humans can level against us from the ground. I don’t believe this problem will be solved by pure force.”
“Then we will pool our knowledge, us and the wild dragons, and find a way to be victorious without direct application of force, without fighting fang and claw,” Morrigan postulated. “Outright battle is not a good way of solving problems anyway. Someone always gets hurt.”
Kyan snorted.
Morrigan slapped her tail on the ground. “But I do feel like the solution is here. I feel that we need the help of the wild dragons, or we cannot win, and cannot free the Wostian dragons. And I feel like, like,” she frowned, “like there’s a reason I need to be here, like there’s something I’m supposed to discover here, something that is calling me, even, but I don’t know what, not yet.”
“You know to follow your instincts,” Kyan murmured. “Your Sensitivity will lead you right. And if that is the case, then you need to do what you are led to do, and tell me how I can help you.”
“I will.”