The dragon calls woke her up. Rilan was sleep, one of his arms thrown over his head while she slept on the other one. He was showing no signs of waking up, she slid out of the bed not able to ignore the noise coming from outside.
The sun was coming in making the room beautiful in the light. It highlighted the pictures and the furniture she hadn’t paid attention to last night. She dressed and sneaked out. Magnus wasn’t awake so she went to the balcony opening it wide. Her mouth dropped open. Before her was Tree House city in all its glory. Dragon’s flying the sky without a care in the world. Children playing in the branches of the trees as both children and dragons.
“It’s beautiful isn’t it.” A woman she never saw came to land beside her. Her dragon form receded leaving a bearing so regal that she had to be a queen.
“Call me Lumia, I am Rilan and Rey’s mother.”
“Queen Lumia,” Kisame dropped into a curtsey.
“Mother to you as you are mated to my oldest son.”
“How are you here? I mean I thought… I’m not sure what I thought.”
“Call it a mating gift or maybe you’re beginning to see what was always in front of you.” She walked around Kisame. “You will make him a fine mate. I can see the love you have for him already growing inside of you.”
Lumia was short and thick. Seeing her was a revelation Kisame wasn’t ready for. She imagined the queen would be tall and willowy in fashion with what everyone seemed to want nowadays.
“Quiet?”
“Sorry, I don’t know what to say or to think if I’m honest. I could spend my life speculating on what I might see or who I might meet in The Interior and never come up with this.”
“What feels extraordinary to you is a day in the life of a dragon. Shall we go?”
“Go? Where?”
“For a flight.”
“I’m not a dragon.”
“Well according to you I’m not here. I think for today you can be one. Close your eyes and look deep within for that voice that you’ve walled up. Normally this is harder, but right now I’m here to make sure everything is smooth.”
Kisame didn’t expect to find a voice, but she closed her eyes and went looking. Inner search? Was there such a thing as inner peace? She left everything she knew by the side of a busy road as she followed a trail through a quiet forest.
“Hi.” The voice belonged to a little girl with large purple eyes. She reached out and took Kisame’s hand.
“Now it’s time to change. Let her do all the work.” Lumia’s voice reached her deep inside.
Kisame felt a cool draft making her open her eyes. She was hovering over the balcony.
“You did it.”
“Holy… what?” The words didn’t come out as words but as sounds and still, she understood what she was saying. Lumia or mother just laughed. She changed forms becoming a dragon. Kisame not knowing what to do moved her wings following her.
“How did this happen?”
“Anything is possible here. Besides, I want to show you around. How can you possibly understand if you can’t take part in it?”
The wind brushed over Kisame’s body like a lover’s kiss. It felt almost as good as Rilan running his hands over her. There was a freedom she never felt before. It felt like she was meant to fly the sky to soar with the other dragons.
She wasn’t as high as she’d like to go.
“You’re as high as you’re going today. This is the level we keep our children on until they attain a certain mastery. It hurts, but not as bad if you fall from here.”
A laugh left her lips sounding like a strange cry that she could get used to. Other dragons dropped down to greet her.
“Hi.”
“Welcome.”
“Nice to see.”
All of them and so many more without actual words and still she understood. They flew past a large tree that was used as a school. Lumia stopped, and they changed back into their human forms walking through the school as the teachers prepared for the day.
“You have universities?”
“More than I think we need sometimes. In this town, we only have a college.” Lumia turned and took her to it. The tree where it was located was massive. “This is the main part of the campus. There are several more trees that have classrooms, book stores, a dining facility and much more.”
They stopped by stores and businesses while watching as dragons switched between forms. They spotted lovers in the park and children on playground equipment.
They finally found a tree to land on.
“This is a society, vibrant, and full of life. I could live here and be happy.”
“Yes, that’s what I was hoping you would see. These people, my people and yours were going about their day. They were loving, and living, and working, then…”
Everything happened at once. Dragons screamed in pain, children called out. Then bodies fell and began to dissolve to disappear right in front of her face.
“Noooo,” she screamed along with the tortured cries.
“Some lived in a state of sleep I think you’ve been calling it, but so many died that day. They are just gone. They weren’t in a war, and they definitely killed no one. An attack from nowhere or so it seemed decimated us. Why? Was purity of the species that important? Could they not live with a part of themselves? Were we so despised that all that could be done was mass genocide? If they could have walked in our shoes would the outcome be different? The only one who can make that decision for you is you. Remember Kisame, hate poisons everything it touches.”
“Kisame?” A hand touched her shoulder making her jump.
“Magnus? How did I get back here?”
“Did you go somewhere?”
“I thought I did.” She gave a laugh not sure what just happened.
“Where?”
“I thought I met a queen.”
“What was her name and did she scare you?”
“It was queen Lumia and no.”
“Rilan’s mother.”
“That’s what she said.”
“I’m going to the kitchen you want to walk with me and tell me about it?”
She nodded and started telling him what she thought she saw. “I was a dragon.”
“What color were your scales?”
“Purple and silver.”
“Just like your eyes, I’m not surprised.”
“I never thought about that.” She took a deep breath before passing the rolls to Magnus. “They died. There were shrieks and screams of pain. Parents were desperately trying to be reunited with children in the end. Why? Please tell me what was so important that we could treat people like this?”
“I can’t answer that question. Sometimes we hate. There are times it’s a good reason or at least a legitimate reason. Someone hurt us or our family. Sometimes it’s just fear mongering. Other times it's jealousy. Those times are harder to see.”
“Why?”
“Most of the time the person who is jealous looks like they have everything. There is no way to understand that in their greed they want the one thing you love or cherish.”
“Someone who looks like me killed all those people.”
“Maybe, you can’t jump to conclusions when we don’t even know the questions to ask. Someone started the ball. Whoever pulled the trigger was probably like you, but the monster behind the curtain he or she is not like either of us.”
“You really believe that?”
“I do. I’ve lived longer than you. I know enough to understand that hatred comes in all forms and colors and creed. In the end, the one that hates so much they can kill indiscriminately is a monster that we will never understand.
“I try to tell myself that those kinds of monsters don’t exist.” Rilan was leaning against the door frame.
“Morning,” Kisame got up and crossed over to give him a kiss.
“Morning my queen. You woke up early.”
“I had a dream or a vision or an out-of-body experience, but afte
r all of that, I got it. I understand why the fight is important. Come sit I’ll tell you what I’ve experienced.” She told him everything she thought happened and then waited.
“You met my mom,” his voice held a touch of awe in it.
“I did, she loves you.”
“I know. It feels like forever since I’ve seen her.”
“You’re not surprised?”
“No, she always said she would meet our wives. Why should a little thing like death stop her?”
“Dragons believe death is stepping from one plane to another. We are just as alive there as we are here,” Magnus stepped in.
“But you live so long. Don’t you just want to rest after you die?”
“Is that what you want?”
She turned to look at Rilan. He was tilted back in the chair, his one arm behind his head. His green eyes were focused on her that silver ring around them making her heart beat faster. It was the first time she realized that his eye color reflected the color of his scales.
She could picture his dragon how sinewy it was. Something about him in dragon form was turning her on. This shouldn’t be happening but now that she knew what it was like to have a different body, understood what it was like to fly the sky, she wanted to fly with him. To feel him… no that was a step too far.
“I don’t know what I want. We always believed that after we died, there was either nothing or the afterlife. In the afterlife, we would spend forever worshipping our creator. Personally, I never thought the creator needed more people to worship him, but what do I know.”
“What did you plan to do?”
“I thought I’d be the captain of a space ship and explore remote regions of the galaxy, with his pleasure of course.”
Rilan grinned at her balancing the chair on the two back legs. “Of course. Is that really all that different from what we picture? There is a plane that dragons go to after they leave this life. It is eternal. What happens there is a mystery, but you met my mom and that’s more proof of its existence.”
She’d have to give him this one. It was the only valid explanation she had for what happened. The question she was asking herself was why. Had she missed something in her excitement to see everything? She didn’t think queen Lumia came back just to say hi.
“How long are we staying here?”
“I’d thought we stay for a couple of days.”
She nodded liking that idea.
Chapter Seventeen
“I’m not sure about this.” Kisame was looking at Rilan in dragon form. She knew he could understand her and even talk to her but he stayed quiet. He was lying down where they parked the vehicle to make it easier for her to climb his back. He wanted to take her flying.
Her body shook from the shiver that went down her back. This wasn't the first time and being up in the sky thrilled her. There was a difference now that she had been given a chance to fly on her own in her own body. There was an intimacy of sitting on his back. It brought her close to things she refused to think about. That small voice tried to speak to her asking her if she was sure that she wasn't a dragon. No, she was an explorer that was more than enough.
In her world being an explorer meant keeping your feet firmly on the ground and your head nestled in logic.
This was not logical.
She got closer. He was her mate even if he might be slightly crazy.
Crazy? She had been in the interior for a week or maybe two. In that time, she’d met a dragon, more than one, gotten mated. Met the deceased mother of the dragon king she mated. Okay, she was probably the one who was slightly crazy.
She climbed up Rilan’s body shivering this time because her dragon mate turned her on in both forms. At least he wasn’t asking her to look for a voice that belonged to a little girl inside of her.
“Welcome aboard.” She heard his voice with perfect clarity in her head.
“If you drop me, I will come back from the other plane and haunt you every minute for the rest of your life.” She replied without opening her mouth.
His deep laughter made her adjust herself on his back.
“Look who believes in the other plane now. Hold on tight.”
She grabbed at the thick scales that were halfway down his shoulders. They made the perfect handhold. Her knees tightened, then he stood up. With a puff of air, they were sky born. His beautiful wings spread out in a display of dizzying color. She could stare at him all day long and not get bored.
“You make it look so easy.”
“It is but I’ve been trained to do it from birth.”
They circled the tree that was his house before he went higher taking her to the altitude, they let the children fly.
“This is where I flew with your mother.”
“We train the children here. By the time they reach this space we’re not concerned about them, it’s more about teaching them the dangers of the sky.”
“Before we had relays, we worried about the sky.”
“Relays?”
“It’s how we go long distances. There was a time we were interested in things we called planes, but in the end they were deemed too dangerous to move people. They were also costly because you needed to fill all the seats. A relay can take a person or several people to one spot in almost a blink of an eye. It’s easy and safe.”
“I would love to see it one day.”
“You would?”
“I want to see your society, get to understand you better.”
She leaned down and placed a kiss on his scales. “Rilan is that the school?”
“It is.”
“Can we… can we stop?”
“Baby it might not be—.”
“Please.”
“I’m going to regret this. Hold on.” He came down for a landing. “The students that flew to school would come here to stop and to change forms.”
“Those that didn’t fly?”
“There is a way in on the street level. Parents who came to check on their children used a higher level. It is larger.”
She nodded. Kids didn’t need a large place to land but she could see that Rilan took up at least a third of the available space. Once he changed forms, they walked through doors that weren’t locked. The hallway was silent it made her think of the teachers she had seen getting ready for their school day.
This was a shock to her soul after hearing music and people calling out to each other and laughter drifting down the hallways.
“Your mom said not everybody died. She didn’t tell me where they were.”
Rilan reached out and took her hand. “I can only imagine seeing it from the outside. Being on the inside was more than enough for me. I didn’t see the people disappear or die. But I heard them. I believe I was the last one who went silent I heard them all through the link I share with my people. Millions of voices screaming, begging, and then silence as they popped out of existence. How am I ever supposed to forget that?”
His words reminded her of what she saw. “You’re not supposed to forget. Never forget.”
“Why am I here Kisame? Why are you here?”
“I don’t know.”
“There was nothing in the dark. No thoughts, no desire for revenge, no need to do anything. At least that’s what I assumed when I woke up.”
“Assumed?” They walked into a classroom that was filled with high tables and chairs. Maybe a lab she thought.
“Assumed.” They took a seat looking around. There were books, biology, lying on the tables. “Every day I get a little more insight into what the last several hundred years have been like. I was asleep, but I was aware of the passing time.”
“That must have been hard,” she reached over wrapping her arms around him.
When had she become this person who liked to touch and be touched? Letting the thought go she gave him a soft kiss before straightening up.
Rilan stood and tugged on her hand. They walked the rest of the school looking for places that teachers may be hidden.
“Stop there.” When they got to the school, he took her on the rest of the tour. Now they were circling the tree where she stopped with his mother. “This is where your mother left me.”
He found a wide branch and came in for a landing.
“I never paid attention to this tree before.”
“It’s like a lookout. You can see everything in Tree City from here.”
“Tree City?”
She blushed. “That’s what I’ve been calling it.”
“I like it. Tree City it is.”
“We may have to wait for the others to wake up before we can change the name.”
They walked over to the edge of the limb they were on and took a seat. Neither of them wanting to say what they were both thinking.
“Your mom said they didn’t all die.”
“But we didn’t find anything like what was at the palace.”
“Maybe it’s different here, and we overlooked something.”
“Maybe.”
Kisame laid back. It still thrilled her to be able to lay on a branch and not worry about falling off it.
“Now that we are mated, how far away from you can I be?”
“It’s never been tested, but I believe I can find you anywhere on the planet. It’s not the distance, it’s the bond.”
“As long as the bond is not broken, we may be in pain from the distance but we will survive. When the bond breaks the pain can become unbearable. Can one or both of us survive a broken bond? Yes. Will we want to?” he shrugged.
“I’ve never felt anything like this before. I know that we belong together. I can feel it stretching from me to you and back again. It makes me happy.”
“You help to ground me Kisame. When I woke up, I had no idea what was happening. Then I saw my world and the lack of my people. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.”
“You would have done what you’re doing now, taking it one day at a time. Making a plan.”
“How do you know that I am making a plan?”
“We’re connected remember.”
“Connected? We could work on that.”
“We’re outside,” she whispered.
“No one is here to see us.”
She looked around from the top of the branch they were on. It was high on a hill with Tree City below them. The city looked like it was asleep just waiting for the first alarm clock to ring and begin waking everyone.
The Dragon's Mate (Ancient Dragons Book 1) Page 11
