14. Wonderfully Affable in a World Full of Jerkwads
14. WONDERFULLY AFFABLE IN A WORLD FULL OF JERKWADS
ELOWYN
Are you admiring me or do you have something to say? Einar’s deep, measured voice rumbled through my thoughts.
Both. Truly, he was a magnificent creature, and so very magical. His pitch-black scales glimmered darkly in the open clearing. His legs, which rose up beside me, were corded with strong muscles. His claws were like lethal knives?—
While I would not usually interrupt your admiration, I was busy. Do you or do you not have something to say?
Oh! I’d assumed he’d been simply sunning himself, towering amid treetops.
He snorted, causing someone behind me to cheep . Coils of smoke, as broad as pythons, rose from his nostrils to fade into fluffy clouds.
I do not simply sun myself.
I waited for more. When it didn’t arrive, I asked, What were you doing, then?
You question a fuerin? his already low voice boomed deeper.
Um, no? Or … yes? But only ‘cause you just mentioned you were busy…? For fuck’s sake, I felt like an ant questioning a giant.
His enormous head nodded with a smooth creak of scales. Good. That is better.
So, what does a fuerin do with his time?
Another snort, another puff of smoke, another yelp from our audience. A fuerin takes a great many actions. We maintain the balance of this world. There used to be many of us to do the work. Now there are too few of us.
I blinked up at him. I never heard that before. You balance the world? The … Mirror World?
He lengthened his neck so that it stretched straight upward like the many tree trunks that surrounded us. I have only ever been in the Mirror World, though we fuerin do exist in others. Its darkness has been too great for me to risk leaving. The Mirror World may crumble if I am gone.
I see… Well, I came to ask you … or maybe to tell you … the dragons—fuerin—in the cells of the dungeon didn’t travel with us.
They did not.
You’d already, uh, noticed, huh?
Of course I did. That you did not indicates that mayhap your destiny is not as we have seen it.
Flushed with embarrassment, I swallowed. We ?
The fae are not meant to know the ways of the mighty fuerin.
Understood. Hmm, alright. Do you, ah, know what happened to the fuerin? Why didn’t they make the journey with us?
It is as it was with the broken one. They are bound by shadow.
Shit.
Huuuuh .
Nodding to myself in resolve, I said, I will free them. Even the green dragon, the one you say is broken. If there’s a way to spare them all, I’ll find it.
Then mayhap your destiny continues to align with ours.
It does, Einar. I know it.
Huuuuh . Mayhap.
Do you know if they’re okay? Can you communicate with them from a distance?
I do not like the shadows. I have not spoken to any of them since we left them.
I get it. Who would like the shadows? The darkness is awful.
No, little one. Darkness must exist for light to exist. Darkness in itself is not awful. It is necessary. It is a part of balance. It is the shadow who has abused this world so that the darkness overpowers the light.
She deserves to die, I seethed viciously.
Huuuuh . Every person dies.
Well, she’ll die painfully and horribly if I have anything to do with it.
The dragon hummed into my mind. Vengeance is not balance. It broaches darkness.
She’s earned what she’s got coming to her many times over.
It is not even the duty of the mighty fuerin to enact punishment. The essence is sacred regardless of whether its vessel is or is not.
Yeah, well… I didn’t know what else to say. The queen had inflicted too much misery to go gently in her sleep.
Balance is neutral, Einar added a bit enigmatically.
I had no desire to be neutral when it came to the cruel bitch. I had to watch her violate my mate! She’d ruined so many lives, so many families.
Balance is neither light nor dark. It is just, Einar added.
Well, thank you. I’m going to go?—
Speak with the podrala. Yes, I know.
I don’t suppose you’d stay out of my private thoughts if I ask?
A fuerin does not obey a fae.
Great. Dandy. I didn’t bother to disguise my sarcasm. Okay, then. Please don’t squish anyone.
I will squish if I so choose.
I’d already turned away and was eyeing the unisus. Backed up to one of the cabin’s intact walls, alongside the clearing, as far from the massive dragon as he could get, Azariah huddled beside Bertram. The ranucu appeared generally good-natured; he smiled a serene froggy smile as Azariah peered out at me from around his back.
“Hey, Azariah,” I called ahead in soothing tones meant not to spook him. He’d already been jumpy. Now he all but vibrated with a tension evident from the other side of the clearing as I crossed toward them.
“Greetings, Elowyn,” he called in a reaching whisper before whipping his head to hide behind Bertram. While the ranucu was indisputably large, he wasn’t exactly unisus shaped, and much of Azariah’s horse-like body stood out from behind him.
I slowed my pace to give the unisus more time to pull himself together. When I finally reached him, Azariah was shaking like a leaf that a big, brutish dragon had just knocked off its branch.
Who is this brute of a fuerin to whom you refer? Einar interjected.
I barely managed to restrain a groan. I thought you were too busy to talk?
I am not too busy to be curious. Curiosity makes long life infinitely more interesting.
While I’m sure that’s true, I didn’t mean anything by what I said, and I’m trying to speak with the … podrala, as you call Azariah.
I do not call him anything. A podrala is what he is.
Great. So we’re in agreement. Later! Talk to you soon.
Huuuuh , was all that traveled down our connection. This time it felt distinctly like a harrumph. I was fast learning the sound was multi-purposed when it came to the dragon.
“Hello, Bertram,” I said around a smile.
“ Waaaawaaaaaa .”
“Thanks for helping Azariah.”
“ Waaawaaa .”
“You seem like a really good friend to him.”
“ Waaaaaawa .”
His side of the conversation could mean almost anything. I smiled some more and rounded him to stand beside Azariah. The hindquarters of the unisus—podrala, whichever—faced me. His tail was no longer limp and sagging. It now swished back and forth continuously as if a horde of insects swarmed him.
“Azariah,” I said, even more gently this time.
He craned his neck in my direction, snorted, whimpered, next crouched into his shoulders and tucked his face into Bertram’s side, careful to point his lethal, twisted-ivory horn away from the ranucu’s flesh.
“ Waawaaaaa .”
“Thanks, Bertram,” I said, since, why not? He was wonderfully affable in a world full of jerkwads—well, principally the one. “You know I’m not going to hurt you, right, Azariah? I would never, ever hurt you.”
His entire backside quivered, causing his tail and the fine strands of short, fluffy hair around his hooves to shiver with a rainbow iridescence that was still muted from its usual. His translucent wings were tucked tightly against his sides as if he were clutching himself.
I shuffled closer. “Azariah?” My tone was like a caress.
He whinnied and snorted softly, and this time I was positioned to observe a puff of rainbow colors waft from his nose.
“Az? Are you … alright?” Obviously, he was far from it. “Did the queen … hurt you?”
He only whimpered again.
By a dragon’s breath, it seemed the queen had devastated him—a creature who had more regal bearing in the tip of one of his hooves than she did in her entire body.
After aligning myself so Azariah could watch me, I slowly reached a hand toward his neck. When he didn’t pull away, those large glossy eyes on me, I touched him. He flinched but I kept my hand where it was. When he eventually leaned into my palm, I ran it tenderly down his neck, over and again.
“What can I do to help you?” I asked as if we had all the time in the world and there was no chance the queen would reach us here.
He sniffed loudly, leaned further into my caresses. His shivering tempered. Then he lifted his head, his horn skimming the outline of Bertram's body but not scratching him.
Azariah faced me so that he could study me through both eyes. “You already have helped me.” He hiccupped. “You stole me away from her . You brought me here.”
“And by sunshine, am I ever glad you’re here.”
“Me too.” He hiccupped again. “Me too.” He sniffled another time, but his shaking had stopped entirely. He leaned his neck heavily into my hand, his body against the ranucu, allowing us to share in his burdens.
“ Waaawaaa ,” croaked the ranucu in encouragement. I was growing to like him more by the second.
“What did she do to you?” I asked Azariah. “You know what, never mind. I shouldn’t have…”
Azariah’s head was already held higher. His white beard regained its former fluff and volume, suggesting everything about the unisus was magical. “It’s okay, Elowyn.” He nodded slowly as if to himself, careful not to dislodge my hand. “She believed she broke me. I believed she broke me. Only now am I realizing she didn’t.”
My hand continued to run along his pelt, which seemed to be growing softer and thicker with each passing stroke.
“She…” His voice cracked. “She showed me what she did to my…” Rainbows brimmed in liquid beads that then dripped from both his eyes, smearing the fur of his cheeks until it transformed from the pure white of his coat into a dash of all the colors.
Tears . The magnificent podrala , whom the dragons called the truthsayer , was crying. As if I needed another reason to punish the queen, I added this one to my list. She’d made such a magnificent, good creature fucking cry .
I wrapped both arms around his neck and held him as the tears drenched his face.
“She…” he tried again. His throat bobbed. “…she showed me her memories. Showed me what she did to my … mother.” His voice hitched on a thick sob.
“Oh, Azariah…” Tears streaked along my own cheeks, rolled from my chin.
His voice trembled. “She made my father … my father … watch. Then she did the same to him.”
My heart stuttered before I eked out, “Are they … by sunshine, Az, are they dead?”
He stilled entirely before nodding savagely. His fat tears rolled down his neck, where they mixed with mine, my face pressed against him.
“She…” He sniffed. “She was trying to take their power. She caa-aarved them up for it.” I gripped him even tighter. “In the end they took it with them to the Etherlands. Her Majesty didn’t get it. Not from any of my kind she hurt.”
“Did she try to hurt you that way too?”
“No. She needs me. Besides, as far as she knows, I’m the only one left now that she killed so many of us. She wouldn’t dare hurt me.”
“Not like that. But in other ways, yes.”
“In other ways, yes…”
“Are you … by warming sunlight, Az, are you the last of your kind?”
His eyes blurred by his grief, he waited a moment. “ I don’t know. My kind do not thrive in this much darkness. Some may have fled into the Sorumbra to escape her. But I-I really don’t know. It’s possible I may truly be the last one.”
Unable to find helpful words, I held him closely. And while he mourned, I also did.
For the extent of his pain and the magnitude of his loss.
For every creature who had suffered as deeply as he.
For whomever the queen would yet hurt before we found the way to end her once and for all.
For all the pointless devastation that could have been avoided save for the horrid ambitions of a singular woman.
To the gentle support of Bertram’s intermittent waawaas , Azariah and I cried and cried.