Dragonfriend by Marc Secchia Page B

gemstone which had fascinated a young girl, found amidst the Palace’s treasures. What had her tutor called it? Tourmaline, aye. A blue tourmaline. Hualiama swallowed away a lump of dream-spawned horror. What must it mean for a creature who owned the freedom of the skies to be trapped in unending darkness?
    Flicker.
    Pushing abruptly to her feet, Lia was running before the cobwebs of sleep had fully cleared from her mind. She sliced her shoulder open on a spar of cream-coloured crystal, ripping what little fabric remained of her dress. Clumsy ralti sheep. Run! Lifting the fleet feet, skipping past an ancient rockfall, taking the twists and turns that led her past several depthless drop-offs, ever upward through galleries she had marked so painstakingly on the way down. Lia ran hard, taxing her strength and agility to the limit as she negotiated the twisting tunnels on her way to the surface.
    Here was the brightness of daylight. Had she spent a whole night underground?
    Hualiama burst into their cavern. “Flicker!”
    Lia scooped up the dragonet’s poor, limp form, splayed on the soft sand. So cold. She gasped at the gentle pulsing of his second heart at the base of his throat. Alive! Cradling him against her body, crooning, rocking, calling his name over and over, Lia checked Flicker’s limbs and wings for injuries, but found none. Only, if her cave-dreams had been true, he had suffered beyond imagination.
    After Hualiama dribbled a little water from a gourd down his throat, the dragonet’s eyes cracked open. Straw-head, you shouldn’t fuss over me.
    Shouldn’t fuss? You … you ridiculous male …
    She wanted to smack him into the middle of the next cavern. Flicker seemed to sense her feelings, because he chuckled, I came back, didn’t I?
    Lia began to say, “I’ll wring your neck, you wretched …” but her voice trailed off. The dragonet flicked his eye-membranes at her, and then with a contented purr, snuggled his muzzle into the crook of her arm. He might just as well have taken her heart in his little paws and squeezed it as the Fra’aniorian Islanders squeezed berries for their juices and berry-wines, Lia thought crossly. “Make yourself at home, little one.”
    He said, I will.
    How could any animal make her feel like this? Several notable Human scholars had raised exactly this issue. Did Dragons and dragonets have souls? Were they animals in the sense that people took them for? The histories taught that Humans had once been slaves to the Dragons, suggesting that Ancient Dragon scientists had created Human beings to serve them, to be the builders of their roosts, and to farm the Islands and bring in the produce. Pictures of Humans cleaning Dragon roosts and polishing Dragon scales, or making them armour for war, abounded in the royal archives. Slowly, over the centuries, Dragons taught Humans the sciences and scholarship, raising their slaves from the level of the animals they had been.
    Of course, it was no surprise that such an unflattering portrait of Humanity should provoke a sceptical response, called ‘adraconosticism’–a smile quirked Lia’s lips at the word–essentially, the belief that Humans arose naturally in the Island-World and were in no way created or shaped by draconic magical powers. The ‘draconist’ or ‘realist’ scholars opposed this movement, but were often accused of seeking to drag Humans back into draconic slavery.
    Whatever the truth, there was a great deal of bad blood between Humans and Dragons as a result, and also between Humans of differing beliefs.
    And the truth of a Dragon’s soul? No-one knew that for certain. Lia gazed at the creature in her arms. Intuition and experience could enlighten her a great deal, however. Flicker was far, far removed from an unthinking beast.
    Scraping a hollow for him in the warm sand, she settled the dragonet down.
    You wait here. I’ll go hunt. Don’t move!
    As you command, mighty Lia.
    She hissed in disapproval, wondering