Chapter 7 #3
He absolutely would’ve heard her approaching. Would’ve scented a witch and snapped awake. And why would she protect his feelings and pride, when he’d made no effort to spare hers?
Kier decided to take her words as truth.
And follow her, although he didn’t know why he was doing it. Perhaps it was the switch in her behaviour, or the fact that her feet were moving rather hastily.
She entered the place where she’d been sleeping. He’d emptied this alcove for her and made some kind of bedding for her with the intention of it being soft. He didn’t know if it was, but she hadn’t complained, so he figured it was suitable.
The witch turned to him at the entryway, then after a few seconds, she frowned at him. “Can you please leave?”
“Why?” he asked, tilting his head towards the incline of his lair. “This is your sleeping area.”
She lifted her arms. “I can’t very well greet her covered in filth. I wish to bathe.”
Heat flared beneath his face scales, and he backed up. He gave her privacy by getting into a position next to the wall where he couldn’t see her.
Wait. Why am I still here? And blasted, why had he blushed?
! Nudity was not uncommon for his kind. Clothing was often a foreign thing, as it would merely burn away when they changed form.
But he was aware that wasn’t the case for creatures such as her and humans.
Apparently they saw nudity as something private.
Water splashed, and for pity’s sake, his face heated even more. She might be pretty, and he may have stared at her a few times over the past few days because of it, but he shouldn’t be having this strange reaction.
Just as he went to leave, she called out, “Dragon, are you still there?”
He considered not answering; he was fine with ignoring her as usual and disappearing. He often left a space she was in silently, no doubt confusing her as to how he suddenly escaped without her notice.
It was her tone that gave him pause. It wasn’t accusatory, or even bashful. There was curiosity.
“Yes,” he answered, despite his reservations about doing so.
“I wanted to ask... how long has she been like that?”
He gave an irritated huff. “I told you not to pry.”
“Please. I think it’ll help me to know what I’m dealing with.”
He licked the inside of his maw, unable to argue with such words when he very much wanted to. He also hated the idea of saying aloud his length of failure or her suffering.
“How long she has been cursed, I’m uncertain.” His wings drooped. “Perhaps a fortnight, perhaps more.”
“You don’t know?”
His wings drooped further as shame weighed them down, so heavy and unforgiving, and he even looked down. “I don’t know how long she’d been taken for. I hadn’t visited her for several days.”
Or, rather, she hadn’t visited him, when usually she came to fill his home by being annoying with her loudness, her stubbornness, and her warmth.
“How... how long has she been here with you?”
Kier grunted. “Eleven days.”
“I see.” More water splashed, as if she’d shoved her hands into the bucket, and it trickled against the stone ground.
“You must be very worried – not to mention exhausted from doing this all on your own. Although you don’t wish to know my history, I just wanted to say that I have sisters as well. They mean the world to us, don’t they?”
They do, he thought.
“Most of my siblings are dead,” he answered curtly.
Selene is all I have left.
He’d been born in his parents’ first hatch of eggs, Selene in the second that came not long after. Out of seven, they were all that remained. Of their family, they were all they had left.
Like many of their tales, it was wrought with tragedy, all of which would have been prevented had her kind not been created. In some ways, Kier hated the first dragon who mated with a human – because it brought such knowledge into their otherwise peaceful world.
At the same time, he recognised that another dragon and human likely would have mated at some point.
But that was enough to create a plague that overtook the world with a vengeance, and one man, one male witch, stood at the pillar of evil. He was now dead, but would likely never be forgotten.
“I’m so sorry.”
His first instinct was to tell her she should be, since it was her kind who had killed them or were the reason for their early demise. But he was beginning to feel as though he shouldn’t throw that upon her, not after the small things he had learned about her.
He turned to step towards her, only to stop when he remembered she was bathing.
She exited a moment later anyway, mostly clean besides her hair and a smudge of dust on her forehead.
Her clothing was neat, now a shade of yellow, and he frowned at how quickly she’d bathed and changed.
When he peeked inside, her soiled clothing lay in the water, soaking to be washed properly later.
This female was very attentive to her cleanliness, especially around his sister – as if she worried about getting dust on her.
He also noticed that she routinely smelt of oils and some kind of lotion, her skin and hair fragrant and often appearing silky and smooth. He didn’t understand these things, but he did know dragonesses to be quite particular when it came to caring for their scales.
She clasped her hands in front of her as she gazed up at him, and it made her appear remarkably innocent and guileless.
“I know it means very little to you, but I really am sorry that this has happened. I doubt you’ll find my presence pleasant, but I’ll try to make this easier on you any way I can.”
He squinted suspiciously at her. “Why are you saying this now?”
She’d had three days to ask this, to say this. So why now? What was the point of any of it?
“I was thinking about how much I miss my family, and what I would’ve done had I been in your shoes... well, paws, I guess.”
He lifted an arm to look down at his claws. Did she really just make fun of my paws? He wondered if this was a ploy to gather his pity in hopes it would allow her to leave and return to her family, rather than leaving the decision to Selene.
But no. There was sincerity in her gaze, in her tone, and in the way she kept her eyes upon his – without fear or disgust, without hate or anger. All he saw was... kindness.
It made him uncomfortable, as if he were the villain for keeping her against her will. Perhaps that is her intention. To guilt him into letting her go.
It dismayed him to know that such a thing was likely possible.
He was a killer. Many of her kind had died by his claws and fangs, but they’d all been evil and deserving of their fate.
He’d never met one to be innocent, and he’d always been...
compassionate in his own way. At least to his own kind, and even to the handful of humans he’d inadvertently conversed with in towns.
He nodded his snout towards the entrance of his lair. “Tend to her – I will be doing our task.”
Kier wanted away from her and how her words had managed to prod a tender place in his chest. He was unsure of the reason.