When Dragons Lay PART 3 of 5
Rite of Passage: a Fantasy in 5 Parts
FROM PART 2:
Take me home, Dragon! I say I can go with or without you. Now tell me, Dragon. Leave nothing out, she repeated sternly. He was silent.
"Tell me now!" she vocalized sharply. Out loud.
Little gnat--Ezzie--I have loved you with all of the power a beast can muster for one unlike himself. We differ, yet I saw it as beautiful when you were sick and succored by my embrace. I saw it as beautiful when you came of age and wondered about your body and its ways. I saw it as beautiful when, not knowing what you meant, you knew so well something you meant, as if it were the word of God. I saw your beauty when headstrong, angry, frustrated, and contrite. These were all reconciliations between species, little Ezzie. You acted out, and seeing it as beauty is all I needed.
But, my dear Ezzie, there are those who can find beauty nowhere on earth, the sea, or the æther. They wonder how they will eat with another mouth diluting the bounty. They wonder if giving a child away will satisfy whatever lurks in the forest, looking for such fodder instead of themselves. And, little gnat, one thing is for sure: if they do this, this child will never return; but they are not vexed, because they can make more children if they want. They know it is easy.
"Take me to these persons," she demanded aloud.
Use our commontalk, our minds, he pleaded. Your words are pointy, acidic, and ugly when exposed to the air like that.
An oxidation that makes things explode.
She remembered. She remembered the warmth of their commontalk flow, from mind to mind, sentiment to sentiment, affection to affection, each a two-way dialogue of communion of warm-blooded creatures who shared a home. And if home is where the hearth is, she need go no further than Dragon.
I love you, Dragon, but you've got to do this for me. I must confront them. I must confront them as an equal of this Earth. They were never to expect to see me again, but they need to.
Then, little gnat, they will. He knew this couldn't end any other way.
Ezzie pulled on his wing to signal him to scoop her up, enfold her in its jointed embrace, and share the night's sweet repose before the excitement to come the next morning.
It was as beautiful a new day as she had ever seen in her fifteen years. The equanimity of the morning, however, was the calm before the storm, amassing a vacuum for the turmoil and maelstrom soon to come. They fed on berries and sipped on their stream water. They talked of strategy silently--commontalked--mind to mind. When they were both satisfied no tangential surprise could spin off an unexpected tragedy, she mounted him on his back.
And his reflexes were at peace with that.
A dragon can hop right into the air, high enough to clear the tallest man, from a sudden flexion-and-contraction one-two combination of its thunderous thighs, and then powerful shoulders torquing the wings to lift it off its feet--all in one beat.
His wings were counter rhythms, rotationally producing a sucking vortex from above, allowing the beast to rise into a path of less atmospheric resistance. Ezzie gasped for oxygen, and the dragon slowed his ascent.
Ezzie's old village was a 30-leagues walk around hills, streams, and forests too thick to penetrate; but as the dragon flies, it was less than an hour away. From their ultimate altitude, the village seemed an ant pile of activity. He circled above the cumulonimbus clouds that seemed the only threat to the villagers below.
"It seems rain is brewing," the man said to the young girl.
"Yes, Papa," the thunder'll spook the horses, f'sure," she replied.
"That's what you concern y'sef with? Well, I shouldn't wonder, should I?"
Ezzie started. Did you hear that, Dragon? Hear what, little gnat? A girl. Speaking. To us, Ezzie? I don't know, Dragon.
With that the cloud discharged from below them, dovetailing with a loud boom. In Ezzie's head she heard a scream. Down below, a father berated his daughter. "A lot of good you do me, sniveller. Just like your mama! Gather your wits, girl!" Then he struck her in the face with an open palm.
Ezzie felt the strike. Aye! What's this? Could that be me screaming? Did you scream, Ezzie? No. No? then how could it be you? But Dragon, how is it I hear someone else?
The dragon thought she might be lightheaded from the thin air, so he circled around the thunderhead and then descended gracefully toward the village. The ants became beetles and the beetles became rats and the rats became hounds and the hounds became the people, identifiable at last.
The villagers, themselves, made an identification of their own:
"Dragon!" screamed a woman wringing clothing, alerting the neighborhood of thatched places they called home. And then the shrieks began, the scurrying launched, and the frenzy ignited, rekindling the ant pile image.
Take me to that girl, Dragon. But Ezzie, I didn't hear her. I don't-- No, but I do, Dragon. Go where I point.
She didn't point with her finger. She willed this way and that, by a certain feel, until she saw a couple of people--an older man and a young girl, apparently father and daughter--waiting out the rain under a barn roof. Ezzie's aim was true, because as they swooped by they could see the two of them through the door.
At ground level, father and daughter witnessed only a swoosh that whistled by them, all but blurred and streaked and unidentifiable.
"What was that, Papa?"
That was me! Ezzie hurled at her, not knowing if their connection was reciprocal.
"Papa! Papa!" she cried. Someone's talking in my head! Am I bewitched from the thunderbolt?"
TO BE CONTINUED…PART 4
Bothered and bewildered, too, I bet. 🙂