Ember and Ash

Ember soared above the clouds. Her scales, glorious scarlet, her eyes rubies the size of boulders. Ancient and terrible Ember had encountered no serious threat to her existence in centuries. She had destroyed armies, devoured giants. One day a powerful wizard had broken into her lair to ransack her hoard with the intent of stealing an ancient necromancer’s grimoire. She had eviscerated the wizard with one claw and melted his brother with her flaming breath, armour, flesh and bone all.

It was one of her fonder memories. The wizard had wailed so sweetly in a mixture of terror, agony and despair as he had died. His brother hadn’t had time to more than steam and smoulder after the fact. The wizard’s lightning had done little more than tickle her hide, his brother’s axe had simply bounced off her scales.

The memory, as it usually did, made her hungry. Swooping down beneath the blanket of clouds Ember scoured the land beneath, searching for a flock of sheep or a herd of goats. Pigs, cows. Whatever, really, as long as there were a lot of them. It had been more than a week since she’d last feasted.

As she banked around a hill, she heard the distinctive lowing of cows. Surveying the herd for a moment on her first pass, she inhaled as she turned around. Exhaling, Ember spewed flame over a dozen cows, roasting them to perfection before she landed. She then went to the nearest carcass and proceeded to tear it apart with her teeth.

It wasn’t long before she was rudely interrupted by the angry voices of human peasants, cursing at her for devouring their cattle. One hurled a rock at her. She’d normally have ignored such slights and continued with her meal. The humans would normally have been far too terrified to approach her. For whatever reason, fate conspired that the humans were brave enough to hurl insults and stones, and one of these stones hit Ember in her glowing orange eye.

Enraged, she struck out without thought. By sound alone she targeted her prey and unleashed a torrent of flame and burning rage that melted them as they stood. She then blinked a few times to dislodge the pebble and returned to her meal.

She finished as the sun sank beneath the hills far to the west, belching air and smoke. As she prepared to take off into the sky once more, she was surprised by a bizarre sound. It was almost as though someone was slowly squeezing a cat, the poor creature letting out one long bleat before a sharp intake of breath and another lengthy bleat. This cat, Ember assumed, was probably being tormented by some teenaged human child.

Ember’s scales shimmered as she shifted into a smaller, more accommodating form, that of a tall blonde woman wearing a shimmering golden gown of scales. A woman with a vertically slit iris in the centre of each vividly green eye. As she approached the origin of the bizarre sound, she realised that it had moved. She entered the house carefully, quietly, almost creeping inside. The sound had abated somewhat, now reminding Ember more of a hiccoughing camel, except the sound was of a higher pitch.

The interior of the house was clean and uncluttered, though a small trail of liquid droplets led from a small bedroom to the back door. The door was still swinging on its hinges, the smaller of the two beds in the bedroom was clearly the origin point of the liquid. Ember’s human nose wrinkled at the smell wafting up from the soiled sheets.

Following the trail of urine outside she saw trees looming in the gloom behind the cattle farmer’s home. The high-pitched hiccoughing camel had moved into the forest. The sound ceased abruptly only to be replaced by the cat being squeezed once again. Something deep within Ember’s human chest drew her onwards, first at a fast walk, then at a run. Her inhuman vision showed her the clearest path to follow, and she gave no thought to the deepening shadows.

She came to a clearing as the noise reached a crescendo before being overpowered by growling. Several large grey wolves were slowly surrounding the source of the sound, a squalling, bawling infant human child. Ember considered turning away from the scene, knowing that the wolves’ teeth would make short work of the child. Instead, driven by that strange feeling within her human chest, her human heart, she approached.

“Leave the child alone!” She called to the wolves. Not understanding her words, the wolves divided their attention between Ember and the child. Sighing forcefully, rolling her draconic eyes, Ember inhaled deeply.

The gout of flame that erupted was not as intense as the white-hot furious raging inferno that she had used to roast her earlier meal, but it was more than enough to destroy most of the pack of wolves. The sole remaining threat turned tail and bolted off into the darkness between the trees, flaming tail spurring the wolf onwards.

Ember knelt before the small human child. It was filthy, covered in mud and blood and dirt. It had soiled itself quite thoroughly. Wrinkling her nose as she sniffed Ember determined that the child had likely soiled itself more than once. Wondering why she was even doing this, she reached out and stroked the child’s cheek. The skin was warm, wet, and sticky all at the same time. Most unpleasant. She didn’t know why humans bothered breeding if this was the result.

Then the child smiled. A single tear rose in her eye, slipped down Ember’s cheek. She didn’t notice in the slightest. Something in her human chest, in her human heart, seemed to be tearing itself in two. She took hold of the human child’s hand and led it deeper into the forest. She’d flown over this country for hundreds of years; she knew where she was going. There was a small village in this direction, not too distant.

The child kept making smells and sounds as Ember dragged it along. Some of the noises sounded like it was attempting to speak. Eventually, frustrated, Ember whirled on the child and dropped to her knees.

“What is it?” She asked.

“Ummmm…” The child said.

“What’s the matter, child?” She moderated her voice.

“I’m sleepy,” The child said. “I want mummy.”

A vision rose in Ember’s mind, unbidden. One of the humans that had interrupted her feast had hair of a similar colouring to this child’s, a flaming red. The mother, perhaps? An unfamiliar feeling rose in her chest.

“I’m your mummy now. Come on, child.” She spoke softly, but firmly. That was how you handled humans, wasn’t it?

“No, you’re not! You’re not my mummy!” The child shouted.

“I am now. Hush now child, do you want to bring the wolves back?” Ember tried to reason with the child. A gasp told Ember that the point had been made.

“You’re still not my mummy.” The child was speaking softly yet insistently. “My mummy is nice.”

Another pang of that unfamiliar feeling struck Ember. She hoped it wouldn’t be a common occurrence. At least, were she to continue on looking after this child, humans didn’t live very long. Seven or eight decades, roughly. Merely a trifle compared to the centuries that Ember had lived already.

Why was she even considering this? Why was she trying to convince herself that she would make a good guardian for this child? She dragged the child further into the darkness of the forest, knowing that the village lay ahead. Somewhere.

A couple of hours later the child simply stopped moving.

“I’m sleepy, new mummy.” It told her, then yawned. Ember felt another pang of that damnable emotion once again, which was interrupted by her own body needing to yawn as well. “See? So are you,” the child told her.

“We need to get somewhere that you can clean up.” Ember told the child. “You’re absolutely filthy. Disgustingly filthy.”

“Now you sound like mummy.” The child said. Ember felt attacked by that feeling once again, more deeply than before. Idly she wondered whether the emotion would affect her if she left the child alone in the forest. Her body’s response to that thought told her that, yes, it would only be more intense. It was far too late for that now. Had she simply flown off after devouring the cattle, not investigated the house, perhaps. Now? The child looked up at her with a grin. “Your eyes look weird.”

She ignored the comment, instead searching for somewhere to rest and, hopefully, clean the child somewhat. Ember remembered that a river flowed through the centre of this forest, just to the south of their position.

“Come along, we’ll clean you up and then we can find somewhere to sleep.” Ember said, dragging the child along behind her. It followed reluctantly, shuffling feet furrowing the dirt.

In short order the pair came to the riverbank. Ember set up a firepit, gathering some fallen wood and setting it alight easily. The child peeled off her soiled clothes, revealing that it was indeed a she. Ember took the clothing and began to wash it, scrubbing vigorously as she did so. She also encouraged the child to bathe, at least as much as she felt comfortable doing so given the temperature of both the water and the night air. Once the child was done, she huddled near the fire shivering until Ember, feeling that sensation within her chest once again, sat beside her and wrapped her scaled garment around her newfound ward. The clothes, as clean as Ember could manage, flapped in the breeze like flags, held aloft by sticks thrust deep into the ground.

When Ember’s eyes opened the next morning, she glanced around. She knew she was in human form, though took a moment to recall precisely why. The child still slumbered a short distance from her. It, she, had clung onto Ember during the night. Uncomfortable had not been the start of it; the bizarre sounds and smells that emanated from the child as she slept were off-putting, to say the very least.

Ember utilised her abilities, creating a magical ward around the child’s location. It would deter any inquisitive creatures of the forest while also alerting Ember should the child awaken before Ember’s return. Adopting the form of a bird temporarily she flitted to the treetops, just to get her bearings. The road should be just around… There it was, directly ahead of them. For a proud wyrm that spent most of her time aloft her sense of direction hadn’t altered in the slightest. A horse-drawn cart ambled along the roadway, a single older gentleman prodding his single older horse whenever it slowed sufficiently for him to notice. The man was clearly either drunk or had been travelling through the night. Regardless, the road was where she’d surmised. It was time to…

The ward’s alarm sounded large and loud within her mind. It was startling enough that she fell out of the tree in which she’d been perched in bird form and toppled to the ground looking like a human in her haste to return to her newly acquired ward.

“Mummy! Where are you?” The child was bleating. The sounds would draw every predator for miles around. Vexed, Ember swooped up the child and held her close, until her warbling subsided somewhat. She then deposited the grubby toddler upon the ground again. How such a being got so filthy while asleep, after having bathed in a river the night before was quite beyond Ember’s understanding.

“Come on, child. It’s time to go.” Ember took the small girl’s hand once again as the pair took off towards the road Ember had seen from the treetops.

“Ash.” The child was insistent. There was none around, the campfire lay some distance behind them. Why would she be talking about ash? “Mummy calls me Ash.” Ember’s momentary confusion lifted. She had wondered how humans came by their names. Dragons just… knew. They knew what they were called from the moment they developed their flame breath. Ember had been Ember since the very first time she’d lit up a small goblin. Had it been a goblin child? A pang of that increasingly familiar sensation tore her insides apart a little bit.

“If your old mummy called you Ash, then I shall as well.” Ember forced her mind away from the memory of the goblin. She was certain that it probably had been a goblin child. Why could she not put this thought out of her mind? Why was the memory of this horrendously charred goblin-spawn making her feel like she’d eaten an entire throne made from swords?

The road loomed before them, hard packed dirt that split the forest in two. A set of fresh ruts showed the passage of the horse-drawn cart driven by the sleepy drunk old human. As the pair travelled the road became wider, the trees sparser. After some time travelling the child, Ash, began to complain. She was whining about her legs hurting, how she was hungry and tired and fed up with walking. Ember picked the child up and carried her as the packed dirt road evolved into paved stones.

By the time the sun was halfway up they had made it to a small village, the locals staring at the strange pair’s arrival. The closer locals wrinkled their noses; Ember had not been able to completely rid Ash’s clothing of the stench of her befoulment. The woman set the child upon her feet, took hold of a hand and began her temporary new life.

After all, raising a human child would perhaps take a couple of decades. Ember had lived for hundreds of years, would live for hundreds more. Perhaps thousands. That strange feeling in her chest was somehow less intense at this thought. Perhaps in time the feeling would fade over the centuries, long after the child Ash had herself faded from this world.

In time, the dragon would learn the humans have a name for this feeling. And this feeling is called guilt.