by Jada Fisher
“Oh no, we were hoping you would bring him back to the healing hall.”
“The healing hall?” Eist asked, her voice shooting up an few pitches as she felt her eyes go wide.
“Yes. In that same room we first met him in. Of course, you don’t have to, but it is best for your dragon to make sure we keep track of everything at certain increments.”
“I… I…”
What was going on? Normally, Eist knew what she was going to say and why. She liked to think of herself as determined, but now she was just staring up at them like they had asked her to do the impossible.
Surely, she wasn’t going to let one bad experience keep her away from an entire area of the academy!
Granted, that half of the academy was where she, her grandfather, and her dragon had almost been killed and she had been speared through with a door fragment and had her throat throttled so hard that she lost the ability to speak for weeks.
“I will meet you there in a bit,” Eist managed to squeak out. She couldn’t have them thinking that she was weak. If she showed that she was traumatized by the violence, they could possibly think that she wasn’t strong enough to be a dragon rider.
And she was. She knew that in the deepest parts of her heart that she was strong enough. Brave enough. She was just having a little…trouble.
“Of course. We’ll let you settle in. Hopefully, we’ll see you before dinner?”
“Yeah. Dinner.”
They gave her a nod, then to her two friends before walking off. Eist slowly closed the door, standing there like a dolt.
“You okay?” Dille asked, coming up behind her.
“Yeah,” Eist said, shaking her head again. “I’m fine.”
“We can go with you, you know,” Yacrist said, coming up behind the two of them and placing his long arms about their shoulders. This time, Eist didn’t mind his touch, and leaned her head against his chest. “You’re not in this alone.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Eist muttered.
“Of course we don’t have to. But we’re friends. We want to.”
Eist looked to Dille and she nodded dutifully. “You went through hell, Eist. A few times I was sure that the Grandfather himself was going to take you and your grandfather away.”
“But he didn’t,” Yacrist said brightly. “And that’s why we must stick together! I’m not going to let anything like that happen to either of you ever again.”
“And what are you going to do to stop it?” Eist asked, feeling more normal as she teased the handsome man.
He winked, his bright eyes sparkling. “I have some tricks up my sleeve, you know.”
“If you say so,” Eist said, taking a deep breath. “Let me just finish with the anti-chew wash and we can go back to the place where I almost died.”
“Well, when you say it like that, how could we resist?”
Eist shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot between Dille and Yacrist, her eyes boring into the two healers as they examined Fior.
The little guy was as happy as a clam, chewing on a piece of thick hide that they had given him, his tail wagging as he gummed it up. He never sat that still for her. Eist made a note to invest in some pieces of hide or thick bones that were normally for large hunting dogs.
The healers didn’t say much, and Eist figured that they could sense the tension radiating from her. She couldn’t really help it and considering that they somehow hadn’t noticed that one of their coworkers was literally possessed by an evil spirit of unknown origin, they deserved it.
Eventually, however, they finished and patted Fior on his head. He chirped up at them, his crystalline eyes sparkling. If Eist didn’t know better, she would think he was flirting with them. It figured that he would act like a spirit of peace in front of them, but whenever he was with her, he was an obnoxious little brother who never ran out of energy and insisted on gumming everything.
“He’s small,” one of the healers said finally after another awkward silence.
“I don’t think you need a blue sash to know that,” Dille retorted. Eist couldn’t help but smirk at that. Trust the slight girl to always have her back.
“Charming,” the woman said before continuing. “I know we were holding back because we thought he might have just been a little behind considering the whole lightning business, but at this point, I think it’s obvious that he’s not hitting any of his growth marks. In fact, he’s hardly grown at all.”
The man nodded. “Young Fior here has taken almost half a year to grow what most dragons do in a few weeks. I think it’s time that you need to face that he might never grow to a size to ride.”
It felt like the floor fell out from under her and Eist stared at them.
“What?”
“It’s lucky that you’re not a particularly large person yourself, like that young giant that’s walking around in your class, but considering how little he had grown in his first stage of life, you do need to consider that he might never grow large enough to carry a human.”
“Never carry a human?”
She was doing that thing where she was just repeating words, but it was like her mind was struggling to keep up. There was a chance that even with a dragon, she would never be a true dragon rider?
She didn’t know how to wrap her mind around that. Her whole life she had been working toward taking to the sky after her parents, but now that might not happen at all.
“When will we know for sure?” Eist asked, her voice barely a whisper. Fior seemed to sense her trepidation and slid down from the table, coming over to curl around her feet.
“I would say after his second year. Once he’s hit his first shed, then he’s not going to get that much bigger.”
“It’s a shame, really,” the woman said. “He’s such a beautiful dragon and I heard that he protected you fiercely. He really would make a brilliant mount.”
“Let’s not count him out yet,” the older man said. “Fior is a dragon unlike any other. We don’t know if the lightning is still affecting him, or even if he is a copper dragon at all. We’re just assuming. He hasn’t even manifested any abilities.”
Eist bent down and picked him up, holding him tightly. She could already feel people’s future comments and pitiful gazes. They would say it was a shame, and that Eist and Fior had so much potential, that life had been cruel to them.
It made her cheeks burn, and she looked to the two healers. “Are we done here?”
“That depends. Do you have any questions? Do you feel the need to talk? Ultimately, we are here for you and your dragon.”
“Speaking of which,” the woman continued, “we’d like to check you out as well, Lady W’allenhaus. We haven’t seen you since you left, and your injuries were pretty severe.”
At that, Eist’s heart dropped and she felt all the color leave her face. “No. I’m good. We’re hungry now. We’re gonna eat.”
With that, she turned on her heels and rushed out, Fior trilling because he thought that they were going on a run.
But not quite. Eist slowed as she reached the closest staircase, and Yacrist and Dille caught up with her.
“That could have gone better,” Dille said. “But don’t believe them for a second. Fior is going to be a great dragon, and you’re going to get that seat on the council.”
“We’ll see,” Eist said with a sigh. “Right now, I’m mostly concerned with surviving.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve already been through the worst and single-handedly defeated an agent of evil. The worst is all over now.”
“Is it?” Eist murmured, continuing to walk.
But instead of going for the cafeteria, she headed outside. Her friends tried to follow her, but she stopped at the exit and turned to them.
“I think we’d like a bit of time alone, if you don’t mind,” Eist murmured, giving them an uncertain look. They had become fairly close in their first year together, but there were still times where she preferred her privacy.
“Are you sure?” Dille asked, trying to keep her expression nonchalant.
“Yeah. Fior and I just need to have a bit of a chat.”
Yacrist reached out, his large hand resting on her shoulder. “If you need us, just let us know. You don’t have to be alone.”
“But I want to be right now,” Eist answered. “I promise I’m not sulking. Just…thinking.”
“I understand,” Dille said, wrapping one of her hands in Yacrist’s expensive jerkin and pulling him back down the hall. “We’ll go get ourselves some food then come back later. Want us to bring you anything?”
“I wouldn’t say no to Braddock’s biscuits if he’s made them.”
“Righto. Be well, Eist. It’s just the first day of the new year.”
“I will. I promise.”
The two trotted off, leaving, Eist and Fior alone. He sniffed after Alynbach and Veralda, no doubt wondering where his friends went, but that concern was soon forgotten as they neared the dragon feeding area.
He recognized it even after their months away and jumped from her arms, rushing to the feeding area and parking himself right in front of the food cabinets. That pulled the slightest laugh from Eist, and she grabbed a platter to load up with his favorites.
While money wasn’t exactly tight since the council had promised to care for them, both Eist and her grandfather hadn’t been keen on traveling far to the market and getting a broad range of food. They mostly subsisted on sustenance from their garden, which meant that Fior wasn’t getting nearly the variety he normally got at the academy.
Just like last year, she gathered him up a plate with a little bit of everything he liked and fed it to him, bit by bit. She didn’t need to mash it nearly as much as she did before—more proof of him growing.
“You’re not going to listen to them, right?” she murmured, leaning over and pressing her cheek to the top of his head as he munched on a particularly hardy apple. “You’re gonna grow, and get strong, and be the best dragon that anyone could ask for.”
He looked up at her curiously, mouth full of mashed apple, and his iridescent eyes clearly had no worries. If he wasn’t bothered by it, why should she be? After all, she would love him no matter what.
Even if he never flew.
Even if all of her dreams stopped here.
That was a strange thought to have, and one she would have never thought possible. But it was true. Fior had saved her life. Although he was childish, and silly, and sometimes far too stubborn, they were still bonded for life. She couldn’t imagine a life without him, teething and all.
Her smile to him was bittersweet. It was hard to let go of her assurance that she was going to be the dragon rider to make history somehow, but she would manage. It would just take time, and lots of love for her messy little guy.
“How did you manage to get apple on top of your head?” she asked, wiping off a gob that she had almost set her cheek onto. He just garbled happily, of course, and moved right on to the salmon.
It seemed he still loved that fish more than any other food, because he was so eager to get it that his jaws just snapped around half of the platter, pulling backwards and leaving a thick mire of dragon spit, but no salmon.
“You know someone is going to have to wash that, right?” she chided gently.
But Fior was over the moon, garbling happily to himself while he squashed the fatty meat against his tiny baby teeth. Soon, if he accidentally tried to swallow her hand again, it was going to hurt. She’d need to be careful. It wasn’t unheard of for dragon trainers to be accidentally hurt by their growing charges who were still getting used to their bodies.
The rest of the meal went without incident, with no one bothering her, either. It seemed that most people enjoyed feeding their dragons alone, or only with very close friends. Eist didn’t quite know why. Maybe it was a bonding thing, maybe it was a protective thing, but she supposed either way that it didn’t really matter as long as the dragons were fed and happy.
She headed to the cafeteria to see that her friends were no longer there, but when she approached the open rectangle of wall that allowed the cooks to put dishes up for the attendants to place on the table, Braddock immediately turned to her.
He was a massive, rolling mountain of a man. Taller and more muscled than Athar with three times the gut, he was just a lot of human. He had a thick scar across his forehead, and his lip was folded in a strange way that Dille had told her was called a hare’s mouth. But despite that, he was one of the friendliest members of the cooking staff and the only one that went out of his way to get to know the students and dragon riders.
He also had the most delicious biscuits in the whole world.
“Ay! Eist! Your friends told me you would be late, so I saved a bit for you and your dragon there. I hear he’s getting teeth now?!”
He had a slight lisp to the way he talked, and Eist loved it. It made everything he said sound fun and exciting, like he was breathless with anticipation. Sometimes when people met him, they were foolish enough to mock him for it. Those folks usually ended up with black eyes and terrible food for the rest of their time at the academy.
“He is. He’s practically chewing on everything.” As if to prove her point, Fior gave an especially hard tug on her boot laces, that she hadn’t even noticed he had been mouthing.
“Aye. I went through the same with my brother’s little ones. But, unlike a human baby, your boy can eat some hardtack. I took the liberty of making him somethin’ special too.”
“Oh, you didn’t have to.”
“Of course I didn’t have to. But I did anyway. ‘Sides, I figure the dragon that saves his rider before he’s even got a grill o’ chompers is gonna grow up to do great things, so I wanna end up on his good side.”
“I’m glad you believe in him,” Eist said, reaching down and pulling him up so he could greet Braddock himself. He did indeed seem to recognize the man, who reached out to pet him, but Eist caught his wrist just in time.
“Right now, isn’t the best time to pet his head, with the whole teething thing,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Here, let me just turn him around.” She did so, cradling him to her like a baby, and the cook gently patted his back between his growing ridges.
“Definitely let him at the hardtack then. Looks like I came just in time.”
“You really did.” He handed her a bundled-up package through the window and she took it gratefully. She was sure that normally people would complain that this was special treatment, but normally students of the academy didn’t have their only living relative nearly killed in a lightning strike, then poisoned by some agent of evil that tried to kill her…and nearly succeeded.
“I’m going to try to catch some sleep. I’ll tell you tomorrow how he likes it.”
“Oh, trust me, he will love it.”
She smiled gratefully then headed back to her room. Once inside, she went about prepping the rest of her things for the onslaught of classes and training while Fior practically attacked the parcel that Braddock had made for them.
Dille wasn’t back yet, which Eist guessed was purposeful, and she was quite relieved. It seemed the closest person she had to a best friend understood that she needed her space and was keeping both herself and Yacrist away for a bit.
But Eist didn’t need too much space, and the younger woman trailed in a bit before lights out. Yacrist was behind her, of course, but he just bid them both good night before heading to his own room. There wasn’t a lot of conversation after that, but there didn’t need to be. The four of them, two humans and two dragons, were all content to go about their business and enjoy each other’s quiet company.
Surprisingly, it was Eist who broke the silence first. Sleep was tugging at her mind and her leg was aching something fierce, so she finally decided to give in for the evening.
“Good night, Dille, Verelda, Fior,” she murmured, changing into the new night robe her grandfather had given her and slipping under the covers. Fior just growle
d an answer, his mouth firmly clamped onto the hardtack Braddock had given him. The stuff was indeed strong, a strange mixture of bread, nuts, and meat that sounded like stone whenever he knocked it against the floor. It seemed that so far, the cook was indeed right about him loving it.
Verelda let out a croaking sort of sigh, only one of her eyes open as Dille methodically rubbed her scaly belly. As for the slight girl, she was busy reading a tome, her dark eyes alight with energy that Eist just didn’t have.
“Good night, Eist,” she replied, flicking her gaze up for just a moment to give the briefest of smiles.
And that was why they got on so well.
It didn’t take long for her eyelids to grow heavy, and soon she drifted off into some much-needed rest.
3
The Worst of Enemies, the Slightest of Friends
“Where are you going, girl?”
Eist didn’t dare look back, running as hard as she could down the hall. But no matter how hard she forced her stocky legs to churn, she didn’t seem to get any farther away. In fact, when the voice spoke again, it sounded like it was getting closer.
“Aw, trying to run?”
Then a hand grabbed her and she was whirled to face the healer, but this time she was even worse.
Her skin was a mottled grey, like there was something terrible and far too large within her that was fighting to burst out of her skin. Her eyes were pitch black, and yet seemed to glow with a noxious, green fire that threatened to burn Eist up right there on the spot.
“Let go!” Eist screamed, kicking her legs and trying to scratch at the woman. But for all her struggling, she didn’t even so much as slow down the healer. She drove Eist down into the ground hard enough to make the young girl see stars.
Eist gasped, hardly able to breathe, but the woman just kept pushing, and pushing, laughing the whole while. The healer’s mouth gaped and stretched, turning into a tooth-lined, endless maw, while the ground underneath them turned into a threatening sort of mush, sucking her into the darkness.
