by B C Penling
The elf managed to muster some strength and stood on shaky, undependable feet. She took arduous and ambling steps towards the dragon and was almost at his side when a flash of emerald flame blinded her. She stumbled and sprawled at the dragon’s feet. The bright flame left a ghostly image in her sight that she couldn’t blink away. She could only hear the crackling of flames and the hiss they made when extinguished.
When the light brands dissipated and she regained most of her vision, she saw that the slate glowed as molten as lava. The dragon still stood where he had been and watched as the stones cooled. The orange faded quickly in the cool of the evening.
The rocks didn’t keep their dull appearance. Instead, they glistened in the light of the rising moon. The dreary slate was replaced by lustrous obsidian.
He admired his handy work with a grave eye and cheerless face before he went to where Mailaea’s body lay. When he picked her up, eeriness enveloped him. She had been so full of life when she visited Bledsoe Keep and now she lay limply in his palm, cold from death. Her warm and friendly touch he would feel no more. Her smile he would never experience again. Her company he would miss.
He cradled her lovingly to the obsidian sarcophagus he had made for her and placed her gently upon the earthen bottom. The bed of damp grass welcomed her quietly with a muffled whisper. He arranged her body and clothing the best he could. He looked at her blood stained dress, deathful gaze, and limp form. Further sadness sprang from his heart and he grimaced from a slew of painful mixed emotions. He couldn't shed a tear for her and that tormented him.
“I wish I had something more suiting to entomb you in," he said gently, but anguished.
He plucked one of the last wildflowers growing on top of the plateau and placed it upon her hands. The elf rested her head on the ground and sobbed loudly into the grass. The dragon understood her anguish but couldn’t show it in the manner of elves and humans. He lifted the last of the dull stones on top of the obsidian, catching his last glimpse of Mailaea as the stone slid to its place.
Resting his hand on the top, he arched his neck and bowed his head so low his snout nearly touched the rock. Then, silent as a kiss, he exhaled and enveloped it with green fire. It glowed molten as the others had but it did not snuff out so quickly. The flames flickered, emanating a dull light like a shimmer in a stone of peridot. They danced upon the tomb happily, oblivious to the death lying beneath, and consumed the rock, metamorphosing its dullness into slick, glossy black. The fire licked the dragon’s scales yet didn’t burn or singe him. Only when the slinking flames had finished engulfing the top rock did he remove his hand. There beneath it, placed within the obsidian, was a large red crystal imprint of his hand.
The elf crawled to the obsidian sarcophagus and curled beside it. The dragon didn’t know how to comfort her since elvin customs were far different than those of the wyverns he lived with. He was taught only a few burial rights of elves and wasn’t knowledgeable about their grieving process except through speculation.
He sprang from the ground forcefully to fetch wood from the forest at the restward base of the plateau. He knew elves liked to be warm and thought it might help soothe his disheartened companion if he built a fire. He snapped the boughs off a large dead pine and returned to the elf’s side. He splintered the branches, piled the kindling, and lit them aflame. The fire crackled lively and invited the elf closer to its warmth. She was dressed in fine silk, as was the tradition for elves to wear until the day after the yearend festival. The eve of yearend was when young elves came of age. They celebrated with many elfish foods and wine, music and dancing. Her people had gathered outside and were busily preparing for the feast that night; little did they know they would be the main course.
She gazed into the fire. A tear rolled down her cheek when she thought about home. Her mother had given her a bird that night as her coming of age gift. He was bright red with black around his eyes and tail; a ridge of feathers ran the length of his back. She had just named him Darnicla when the Warisai burst into her room. It was then that the commotion from the streets below made sense. The hollering wasn’t merrymaking and jesting, it was terror and battle commands. The Warisai sneered and moved toward her. She screamed for help and her oldest brother, Lonen, answered. He ran into her room with swords drawn and attacked the hideous creatures. “Run!” He commanded, “Go find mother!”
She shivered when the wind rolled over the plateau. Her tears were like ice and they forsook the heat from the fire in front of her.
Her heart fluttered sadly as his cry replayed in her head. Her footsteps echoed in the hall as she fled her room. Down a spiral staircase she flew, skipping two steps at a time as graceful as a deer bounding across a meadow. She reached the threshold to the courtyard. The doors were broke from their hinges and lay splintered in the hall. Through the doorway she saw her mother, Mailaea, fighting three ugly beasts. She beheaded one, then spun and disarmed another in a swift, fluid movement. She drove her swords straight up into both Warisai’s skulls. They hung on her swords, twitching for a moment, before she unsheathed her blades from their lifeless bodies.
Lana screamed for her mother. Mailaea turned and ran toward her. To Lana’s terror, an enormous, ugly bird swooped through the smoke. Blood on its talons glistened in the firelight and its wing beats disturbed the corpses on the ground. It stretched out its feet. Lana screamed as its talons closed on her mother. The dull gray monster was so engrossed in grabbing Mailaea that it failed to notice the tall building before slamming into it with a deafening crash.
Lana collapsed to the ground, sheltering herself in the doorway, and covered her head with her arms and prayed. Her home buckled and crumbled above her, collapsing forcefully in a cloud of alabaster dust. The ground trembled as walls fell around her. She cried in terror when one landed to her right. She kept her eyes closed tightly and breathed through her dress. The dust was choking.
She shuddered violently and tried to shake her next memory from her distraught mind but it came anyway.
As the dust from her house cleared, she remembered seeing her mother. She was barely alive when she ran to her side, sobbing and calling for her. Her voice was weak and broken. She fell beside Mailaea and into a pool of her blood.
“Lana, you must hide,” her mother had said to her, “Close your eyes. Shut them tight!”
“I can’t leave you here,” Lana sobbed quietly.
“Go. You must,” Mailaea whispered. “Hide.”
When she tried dragging her mother to the crumbled walls, she quivered sharply as her immortal being turned mortal and her soul passed into the afterlife. Lana felt a wave wash over her, like the sea to shore, when her mother’s spirit surged to heaven. For a moment, all was silent around her despite the turmoil that surrounded her. Her body trembled with sorrow. Her mother was dead. Her mind was numb before a loud crash forced it to its senses.
Then she ran and did what her mother told her to; she hid and shut her eyes. She stayed under the crumbled walls until the shouts faded. When all was quiet again, and she had only the company of a mournfully beating heart, she crawled sorrowfully to her mother’s side and stayed there although she had passed hours before.
She blinked to get the images out of her head but found them replaying behind her eyelids. The feeling of loneliness scared her.
The dragon sensed her unease, watched her emotions dance across her face, and realized that he had not introduced himself. He felt ashamed for leaving her to wonder. He rose to his feet and walked around the small campfire. The elf jumped to her feet, startled by his unexpected movement. His large feet fell surprisingly soft on the cold, hard ground as he padded towards her. The flickering flames reflected in his eyes and lit his scales.
“Lana?” The dragon spoke softly. The look on her face told him that she was, in fact, Mailaea’s daughter. “You don’t need to fear me. I won’t harm you, nor will I allow harm to befall you, my fair elf.” He paused, bowed his head low, and placed his hand upon his chest.
“My heart weeps too.”
“So, you are Zen?” she asked feebly, her jaw chattering from the cold. He nodded and she felt relieved that her assumption was true.
“Before I took you from there, some uninvited attention struck me. A rare shot, I assure you, but nagging nonetheless. Wedged between my aft scales is a Warisai’s shank. I could do it myself but I’m afraid it wouldn’t look dignified. If you’d be kind enough to remove it, I’ll be grateful.”
Apprehensively, she walked around his flank and he lay down. His massive body blocked the chilling night wind and helped some of her leeched warmth to return.
It was easy to spot the area. His orange blood was dried on his scales and the shank glistened dimly in the firelight. It was neatly tucked between two large, thick scales just above his left hind leg. She now knew why Zen had roared so fiercely before he rescued her. She could imagine how painful and uncomfortable it was. She wrapped her hand around it, gripped it firmly, and tugged at it sharply. With a sound like talons on stone, the shank slid from his hide. Zen grunted with pain then moaned with relief.
“Do they throw these?” Lana asked with disgusted curiosity, turning the shank over in her hand. It looked like a cross between a dagger and an arrow.
“I believe they shoot them from a crossbow,” Zen said, “Looks heavy and awkwardly large so I assume they don’t fly far. To think they got that close is unnerving.”
She tossed the blade aside with hatred welling in her heart. The shank landed blade first into the soil. She stared at it for a while then took a place beside the fire with her arms hugging her bent knees. Zen shifted closer to her.
“How did you know it was me?” asked Lana, after a long silence, interrupted only by the bursting pockets of sap within the burning wood.
“Your mother spoke about you often, described you to me.” The heaviness in Zen’s heart increased as he remembered the times he spent with Mailaea. Strong willed as she was, she remained open-minded to everything that had to be said.
“I thought so. I always wanted to go with her to Conclave. I wasn’t old enough the last time she went and promised I could go with her in novelyear.” She sighed, and then added chokingly, “She brought home a stone wyvern for me. It was made of marble. It sat on my bedroom windowsill.” She trailed off. It sat on her windowsill that was now destroyed.
“I know,” Zen said. “And it was a dragon, not a wyvern, and it was red marble.” Noticing the incredulous expression on Lana’s face, he added with a smile, “A nice self-portrait if I may say so myself. It took me a long time to find that marble. Then I spent a couple weeks carving it. I gave it to her after she arrived at Bledsoe.”
“You really made that?”
Zen nodded. “She never told you?” He couldn’t bring himself to say her name.
“She only said a good friend of hers. I always assumed she meant you. It’s too bad that it was destroyed.”
“It is a shame.” Zen said. Then he smiled kindly and made an offer. “I can make you another one.” Mailaea had considered him to be her friend. It made him feel good to know his feelings for her were reciprocated as he was incredibly fond of her.
After a brief silence, he spoke, “It’s late and you should rest.”
“I’m afraid of what I’ll see in my dreams,” Lana replied.
“Come, lay beside me and keep warm. I’ll be by your side through bad and good, I promise,” Zen replied.
“You say that now,” Lana said. “But what will tomorrow bring? I have no family or friends. No home to return to. I have nothing.” Her voice trailed off and tears coursed her cheeks like sorrowful streams traversing a desolate land.
Zen felt bad for the elf. He knew the feeling well because he felt the same way after his father died. Since Firth found his egg abandoned on the highest spires of the Bledsoe mountain range, he became his adoptive father. He never treated Zen differently from any of the wyverns, except that he showed him love and affection as if Zen were his own offspring. Firth was the only wyvern that made him feel completely welcomed. He knew what it felt like to be alone. He knew what she felt.
“Tomorrow you’ll still have me,” Zen said. “If you need me to, I’ll stay with you.”
Lana tilted her head gently to the side. “Why would you do that for me? You just met me.”
“Out of my respect and friendship with your mother,” Zen paused, “and I know what it’s like to be alone.”
Lana looked at him. “I doubt it,” she murmured.
“I lost my father. He was the only family I had,” Zen said. “No one should feel as lonesome and incomplete as I do every day. So, I’m offering you my companionship until either you don’t need me or the earth reclaims me.”
Lana looked into his piercingly sincere amber eyes. He lifted his wing and motioned with his head for her to go under. Apprehensively, she complied and sat with her knees drawn up to her chest. She leaned against the dragon’s warm body and nestled into the depression behind his foreleg. As he lowered his wing, the despair she felt melted away like snowcaps in summer sunlight. She rested her head against his scales and allowed his rhythmic breathing to lull her to sleep.
CHAPTER 3
TAKING FLIGHT
The morning dawned with red clouds and golden sky as it did often in yearend. Sunwake’s rays announced the start of another day but Zen’s yesterday had yet to end. He laid awake all night listening to the sounds of the countryside. He strained his ears but all was silent and the night passed uneventful. The elf was tucked tightly between his wing and body, like a hatchling, and hadn’t stirred the entire night.
After Sunwake had warmed the chilly air, Lana emerged from under Zen's wing. She tightly wrapped her arms around herself and walked to her mother’s sepulcher. The sunlight glimmered on the obsidian rock like moonlight on a lake. She rested her hand on the crystalline handprint and sighed. Zen felt sadness creep over him once more and all the splendors of the morning waned like sunlight in a twilight sky.
Sleeping beside Zen had removed Lana’s anguish and replaced it with hope. She missed her family and friends; the memories she had of them pained her so. She lowered her head and kissed the glossy surface, a farewell to her mother and everything she knew.
"Are you ready?" Zen asked lightly. Lana didn’t look away or answer. "We will come back here if that’s your wish."
He spent the night thinking about what they should do. Flying to Bledsoe Keep was a priority. There Lana could find adequate clothing. The elves left a hoard of items that accumulated over the years and would likely be of use to her. Her stained dress smelled heavily of blood, Mailaea’s blood, and turned Zen’s stomach.
The wakewardly winds had already graced the sky, blowing cumulus clouds over the Bledsoe range toward the Alvens. Tears streamed her face when she walked to Zen's side.
“I’ll fly gently,” he said. “Whenever you feel like you need to stop, just tap me with your heel and I’ll land.”
She nodded slowly and reached for the spikes over his shoulder. He gave her a boost and waited for her to settle before standing and walking to the edge of the plateau. The cliff plummeted three hundred feet and skirting it were small hills covered in bright green grass that danced with the breath of the wind. It was a beautiful yet mournful place.
With a flinch of grief and gratitude, Lana realized where he had taken her and most importantly where he had entombed her mother. Below them was Armalin; the place where elves buried their dead, most of them from the Fae War.
Zen unfurled his wings and inhaled deeply. The air smelled of dew-dampened grasses and yearend leaves before they begin to fall. The wind rustled his wings and filled them like sails on a ship at sea. He loved the wind; how it caressed his mane and whispered past his ears.
He felt Lana tense and grab handfuls of his red-orange hair that ran the length of his top line, from the base of his skull to the tip of his tail. Zen turned his head and looked at her. She was hunched low and gave him an anxious expression.
"Are you ready?” Zen asked.
She nodded.
Zen gave Mailaea many rides over the Bledsoe Range and now it was her daughter's turn to fly with him. With a careful, straight jump and a gentle flap of his large wings, they were airborne. The wind caught beneath Zen’s wings and invited him to go higher. He soared over Armalin and toward a jagged, rather uninviting, snowcapped mountain range. The Bledsoe Mountains, a series of peaks and crags, weren’t akin to the Alven Mountains with their beautiful flora.
The second sun, known as Sunrest, began to climb the sky slightly to the south from where the first sun rose. It was pale in comparison to its larger, brighter sister but its striking red light helped heat the cool air nevertheless. For that, Lana was thankful. Although she was chilled, riding on Zen's back wasn’t as bad as she expected. It was comparable to riding the horses back home, only with rhythmic rising and undulation of shoulder muscles when Zen flapped his wings.
She looked around. South of the jagged mountains where the wyverns lived, she could see a massive lake glistening brightly in the suns and beyond it was a grassy plain that stretched to the horizon. The sky to their south was hazy, its beauty choked by the smoke from her city. She fought back the lump in her throat and turned her gaze to the north, not wanting to look behind them where her home still smoldered.
Sand, it stretched for miles. The Gour Desert spread far to the north. Despite its hostile appearance, many creatures called it home. Cactuses, enormous in stature, dotted the desert. They were towering prickly fortresses covered with barbed needles almost as long as Lana was tall. The cacti of Gour, or Gourts, were unique on Ancienta because they could move around, unlike other flora. Lana watched them closely, hoping to see them shuffle across the desert, but couldn’t determine if they were moving or not.
