Chapter 17
- Vyrathion -
“That…” I begin, but words fail me. The situation is too bizarre to comprehend.
“Did you like what I showed you?” Morgan asks.
“I think you know I did,” I state. “And I now agree that it was worth it coming up here.”
“I thought you would,” she says. “I will call you Vyrathion the Fun from now on. Now can we go back down?”
“Oh, all right. But in a more effective way.” I grab her, put her over my shoulder and climb down, using my claws and superior strength as one should, not the strange branch-climbing manner of the female.
She screams and writhes all the way down, while also clinging to me for all she’s worth. “Don’t drop me! Are you sure what will hold? That bark isn’t safe! Nooo, don’t turn that way! Not so fast! Not so faaaaieee!”
It’s all very annoying, but we arrive at the ground with no particular injuries. I set Morgan down and note her amusingly red face.
“Can you not do that again?” she demands, having to support herself on the tree trunk.
“Me? It was you who wanted to climb,” I point out. “And getting back down caused you no great harm.”
“No, but… fine,” she says and brushes some bark and leaves off her. “It’s just that you fell the last ten feet.”
“I didn’t fall,” I tell her. “I simply climbed down faster than your mind could follow. Now then. Are you done climbing? Or shall we try another? I do like what happens in the top of these trees, you see. How about that one?” I point at another tree.
“No, I think I’m done climbing for now,” Morgan says weakly. “Oh, that tree has some fruits on it. Want to taste?”
“I don’t,” I tell her. “But I suppose I can’t keep you away from it.”
“I’ll just check. I haven’t seen those things before.” She saunters over to the tree and picks some yellow bulbs off it.
My gaze follows her before I force myself to look at something else.
This is still ridiculous. Why am I giving her this much attention? Why do I indulge her whims? Why am I still here?
She’s not a witch. She can’t be. She’s far too clumsy and unguarded and ludicrous. She trips over roots, she speaks to Plood, she gets insane ideas and she is completely at the mercy of the jungle. No witch I’ve ever met would behave this way.
And no spell should last this long, no potion could make me this crazy for this long. If she were a sorceress, I would be sure by now. I can use my own kind of magic, and this isn’t it.
No, there must be some other reason why I’m still allowing her in my presence. It must be the hunger for gold, the weakness it creates. This pitiful form is different from my dragon form and clearly makes me act with weakness, as if it thinks this female is my equal.
Morgan tastes the fruit, gives off an approving sound and picks more. Then she bends to pick a yellow flower that she puts behind one ear. Then she picks another and shows to me. “Look! It’s as golden as you.”
“It’s gold-ish,” I concede. “Not quite as golden as my scales, perhaps.”
She reaches up and sticks the flower into my hair. “Well, now it can see what kind of gold to aim for.”
There are so many things wrong with that sentence that I ignore it. No, this can’t possibly be a witch I’m dragging around the jungle.
“Are you done with your eating?” I inquire. “I know you’re not done with it for good. I mean, for now.”
“Umm,” Morgan says before she spits out a pit from the fruit. “Actually, if there’s more of that meat, I kind of liked it.” The pit has stuck to her foot and she kicks it away. It bounces off a tree trunk and hits her hip, making her squeal. No, definitely not a witch.
“There is only what I brought,” I tell her. “Perhaps you didn’t eat it all?”
She bites into another fruit. “Oh, I didn’t,” she says cheerfully.
“But if there was more… well, never mind. I mean, don’t go and get more from that tribe.
That’s not what I mean. They nearly came over on this island.
Actually, just stay here. We’ll stay here.
Sure you don’t want one?” She puts the rest of the fruit into her mouth.
I have trouble following her thinking, and I suspect there’s not much to follow. I look around the grove of trees. “There’s no gold here. There’s no meat to be had. We will now get back to the jungle and continue my search for gold.”
“There’s no bridge,” Morgan points out. “You pushed it into the river. And the moment we get into the jungle, you know those Plood are going to swarm you with leaves and gravel.”
“I’d forgotten about those,” I growl. “If only they’d leave me alone!”
To my considerable dismay, I find that I would like to spend more time on this silly little heap of mud that Morgan calls an island.
While there’s no gold, I find myself doing strange things like climbing trees and harvesting food for a female of a lesser species.
And I can’t deny that the experience in that tree was new and remarkably wonderful.
Perhaps I can delay my absolutely vital search for gold for another night. I have been on Xren for years now, steadily weakening, so one night of interesting pleasure should be an acceptable delay. Perhaps I need it. Perhaps I need one more night without the desperate search.
One part of me knows this is insane, but I silence that part with no great problem.
“Let us walk along the water,” I decide. I walk ahead, but then Morgan takes hold of my hand.
“Maybe like this?” she says and curls my hand around hers. It’s cool and ridiculously small, and it makes me feel like a giant.
“And?” I ask, puzzled. She didn’t give me anything.
“And then we walk,” she chirps and drags me along the bank. “See how nice this is?”
“It’s a good way to occupy someone’s sword hand,” I ponder. “So that he can be attacked from that side. But of course, dragons don’t use weapons. It’s useless for that.”
“What if,” Morgan says, frowning as if deep in thought, “someone did this, and it wasn’t because they wanted you dead? It was because they just wanted to be close to you because they like you?”
Words fail me. “Ah, but… now… Because they… like a dragon? Have any more confused words ever been uttered?”
“I don’t know,” Morgan says and swings my hand back and forth as we walk. “Maybe I’m confused. Actually, I definitely am. But I still like you enough to want to hold your hand.”
“Then I can only sympathize. That is to say, if I were capable of such things.”
She looks up at me. “Are you saying that you don’t like me? You don’t like me holding your hand?”
“This is your sorcery again,” I grumble. “Making me admit to being under your spell. No, I am not violently opposed to this hand thing. If I were, you’d know.”
“Not violently opposed!” Morgan chirps, swinging our hands forwards and backwards between us. “I’ve never been more flattered. Oh, look! Gold!”
I stiffen and look where she’s pointing. “Where do you see–”
“No, sorry,” Morgan says and kicks at something by the bank so it flutters into the river. “It looks just like gold leaf. See? It does, right?”
The leaf drifts calmly down the stream and is clearly just a regular leaf from a tree.
“I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t get my hopes up,” I growl as my jaws clench. “Certainly I forbid you from using any wordplay that concerns precious metals in any way. Gold leaf is fine gold hammered immensely thin, and it doesn’t grow on trees.”
“Can you be sure?” Morgan asks. “What if there are actual gold trees all over the jungle and you don’t know because you never look up?”
I frown as I look down on her face. “What was in those fruits?? A potion gone wrong? Did you enchant yourself by mistake?”
“Oh, don’t be so serious,” she says. “It was just a joke. Actually, those fruits were probably a little bit fermented. I might be just a tiny bit drunk. A tiiiiny bit. Or maybe I’m just happy. What are you looking at?”
“I try not to look at anything.” I wanted to walk along the bank to try to spot the monster and then maybe give it a knock, so that it won’t disturb us for a while. But it’s nowhere in sight.
“Oh, there’s Clyde!” Morgan exclaims. “Hey! You’re on the wrong side, Clyde. But it’s fine. Just wait there for a while. Actually, it might be a long while. I don’t know.”
Indeed the misshaped Plood is standing on the opposite bank, pondering the gouges in the mud from the tree I pushed in. And there are many others of his kind around him.
“So many of them,” I sigh. “Keep them off this island at all cost. We appear to be somewhat safe from them here.”
“Those guys are actually not that dangerous,” Morgan tells me as we keep walking. “They just want to help.”
“Their help looks remarkably like the opposite,” I grunt. “But as long as this island stays free of them, they won’t bother me too much.”
We get to the place where I dumped the fire log. The end of it is now black charcoal, and a thin stream of gray smoke rises straight up.
“Oh,” Morgan says and lets go of my hand before she kneels down by the log. “I want to use this.” She blows on the smoke, and soon a small flame shoots out. She keeps blowing until the flames grow and the log is on fire again. “It’s not like your dragon fire, I’m sure. But it’s all I have.”
“It’s of course merely a pale mockery of true fire,” I agree. “But if it’s useful to you, then I allow it.”
“Hey, you brought me this fire,” Morgan points out. “And I’m really grateful that you did.” She takes my hand again and strokes it in a way I haven’t experienced before in my long life.
“Now I can cook the rest of the meat.” She finds the slices that she’s wrapped in a leaf and goes on to heat them over the flames.
She sits down cross-legged and looks up at me. “What if you were to relax a little, Vyrathion? Sit down? And maybe you can tell me why they call you ‘the Wild’?”
I think about it, including the likelihood of any other dragon seeing me sit on the bare ground.
Then I deign to take my place on the cold end of the fire log.
“It was during the reign of King Smatirol the Short-lived. I followed Buparex the Short to his lair without him seeing me. He was ancient even then, and very proud of himself. The sort of dragon who believed nobody could surprise him because nobody ever had.”
Morgan nods. “And naturally you took that as a challenge.”
“It plainly was a challenge. Just not to me personally, but to everyone.”
“Plainly,” she agrees with a pleasing seriousness.
“I followed him for three days through the mountains. Then I slipped into his lair after he went to sleep. He had eight treasure chambers.”
“Eight? Big hoard.”
“Moderately big. One was hidden. Naturally I found it and started evaluating the quality of his hoard. During my evaluation, I found a magnificent crown that had belonged to some king or other. I picked it up for closer inspection. Unfortunately, there are limits to how much treasure one can carry while sneaking. The crown slipped from my claws.”
Morgan gasps. “Oh no!”
“It rolled down a staircase.”
“Disaster strikes!”
“No, but the crown struck a large gong.”
Morgan frowns. “A gong?”
“It was silver, covered with gold. I prefer solid gold, myself, but it was a fine enough item. It was not for using, you understand. It was for owning.”
She nods sagely. “Obviously.”
“The entire mountain rang. Buparex awoke. He was upset.”
“You stole his king crown and played on his gong!” Morgan exclaims. “I mean, if someone did that to me, I’d be so miffed.”
I shrug. “I would have stolen much more, if he hadn’t woken up.”
Morgan starts eating her grilled meat, tearing off a piece with her teeth while watching the fire. The smell of roasted game drifts through the evening air. “Did he chase you?”
I stretch my legs out and watch a spark spiral upward. “For three mountain ranges.”
Morgan pauses halfway through another bite. Her eyebrows rise. “What happened when he caught you?”
The question draws an old memory to the surface. Snow-covered peaks. Thin air. The thunder of enormous wings beating across the sky behind me.
I snort. “When I let him catch up with me, you mean? He tried to kill me, of course.”
Morgan lowers the meat into her lap and studies me with the same expression she uses whenever she suspects I am being difficult on purpose. “And?”
“I had dragged him across three mountain ranges in order to wear him out, to make him tired. And he was. So the fight was short and fierce.”
Morgan shakes her head slowly. “And you killed him.”
I shrug. “Fights between dragons always end in at least one death.” My gaze drifts toward her before returning to the fire. “As opposed to mating, which both parties sometimes survive.”
She rips more meat off. “So that’s how you became Vyrathion the Wild?”
“I told another dragon about it, and so the tale of my victory was spread. I was not the first dragon to challenge Buparex, but I was the first to wake him up and then tire him out. The other dragons find it a wild idea. To me, it was simply necessary. I wanted his hoard. And I got it.”
Done with her meal, Morgan wipes her hands. “Even the gong?”
“Because of its role in that action, I keep it in a place where I may enjoy looking at it when I lie on my hoard.”
“The best decorations are those that mean something to us,” she states and gets to her feet.
Then, to my astonishment, she comes over and sits down on my lap.
“Now, wild dragon. I liked your story. And I like that you’re still here.
” She traces the scales on my chest with one finger.
“And I like that you brought me the fire and the meat. And I like what we did in the tree. Whatever you say, I know you liked it too.”
“I don’t deny it,” I state.
Her finger slowly slides down my front. “Now I wonder if we can do something that we both like.”
Force and hardness roar to my midsection. “Perhaps we can, Morgan the alien female.”