Fledgling

Kathrét crouched on trembling limbs. She peered through her inner eyelids at the frantic, wriggling clump of soft claws. The tiny creature had neither scales nor fur, just as Vern had described them. Her own scales hardened at the sight of the pudgy worm groping its way around the tree trunk on the edge of the clearing. Kathrét heaved her weight onto her front feet, taking care not to move them off the platform. If she were to step off the platform…the thought flickered through her chest. If she did, she would be sucked straight down, deep below the soil scattered with oak leaves, below the gritty crust from which she had temporarily projected an invisible landing platform. Dragons left no trace on Belanian soil. They flew over Belan only when travelling to or from the island of Ilantia, their funeral ground.

The worm edged itself around the trunk and Kathrét realised it was one of the creature’s forefeet. The body was half smothered in dark cloth, somehow blacker than the sky. In spite of her fatigue, Kathrét flushed with pride. The bleak, moonless night could disguise little from her sight. On top of the creature’s abdomen sat a head of the same pale shade as the foot, its features scrunched, and with clear liquid dribbling from its eyes. Kathrét gazed at the wretched creature with its washed-out face, its nose replaced by a snout in her mind. She could dissolve the thing to ashes just like on Ilantia, and put it out of its misery, like on Ilantia. It was a mother’s duty to dispose of wretched things.

‘Dada?’ the creature warbled. Kathrét flinched.

‘Dada, dada, dada!’ it chanted with increasing speed, piercing the night. A child, Kathrét confirmed, exasperated. Its wailing seemed to roll through Kathrét, igniting her bones. The child’s anxious claws picked loose pieces of bark off the oak tree. Kathrét decided she had lingered long enough. The clearing she had landed in should have been far enough away from the drow’s camp. They disliked the forest, or anything that reminded them of elves, but they might try their luck if they were pursuing an escaped fledgling. Kathrét scanned the child again. It wasn’t completely devoid of fur. There was a small grey patch of it on top of its head. Kathrét grimaced, her lips curling back. She wanted to believe it only looked grey in the night, but she knew her eyesight. Nothing so young should be so devoid of life. The greyness wasn’t a colour, it was a lack thereof. Vern had told her life was like that in this part of Belan. The drows managed to poison anything that lingered there. Kathrét’s stomach burned and the roiling flames within pecked at the back of her throat.

The child turned its head in her direction. She doubted it had good enough eyesight even to see its own reflection but Kathrét swallowed down on her simmering belly to avoid being heard. Kathrét tilted her head down, looking at a distorted view of the clearing in her chest. Crumpled, fallen leaves were peeling off the grassy sky and the child was squinting at her upside down. The whole view was broken. Thin, silvery lines separated the image into small oval pieces; her individual scales, which had mirror properties. According to Vern, the few humans who had seen themselves in dragon’s scales had walked away raving and tearing at their clothes. Thus, their existence remained a secret, but it was better to not be seen at all. Kathrét lifted her head to see the child right-side up again, tensing and flexing the muscles of her hind legs. The child stopped leaking and gaped at her. Her belly stewed. She needed to move. She coiled down ready to leap. Kathrét cursed herself. She ought to soar into the air, rise above the low, choking clouds and forget about Belan. Vern was always telling them how unlike them humans were. It didn’t matter how the drows experimented with their dark magic. Yet instead of feeling relieved, the look of complete incomprehension on the child’s face, recognisable even amongst its flat, wet features, caused Kathrét to wince. It filled her lungs with acid. She reconsidered cremating the child. She could extend her neck and fill the inky clearing with raging oranges and yellows. It would put a stop to whatever the drows had planned for the miserable fledgling. But Vern was right about one thing, humans weren’t dragons, and Belan wasn’t Ilantia. She couldn’t be a mother anymore, but in a corner of her mind that grief had eroded away, the cavern that remained resonated with the word dada.

Kathrét broke her gaze from the child and sniffed the air. A smell worse than creek toad dung accosted her. Sounds of jingling and scuffling pranced towards them on an occasional southerly gust of wind. In the distance Kathrét could make out lights winking between the jagged oak leaves. Imagine needing torches. Hot bursts of frustration pelted her chest. The scales in her neck clinked together as she turned back to the child. The child had come into the clearing and now had its naked arm stretched out towards her front right ankle; the highest it could reach. Kathrét snorted in alarm. The child screamed and tripped backwards over its robe. Kathrét’s chest panged and a prickly numbness spread throughout her body. The scuffling in the distance became shouts. Sounds of crackling and spiting marched with the lights. Kathrét’s innards boiled in response. She snarled. She had already left too much of a trace. Kathrét focused her remaining energy into her feet, she imagined it trickling down there like the liquid that was again pouring out of the human child’s eyes. She leapt into the sky and, once she was above the canopy of the forest, extended her wings with a whoosh that send the clouds scampering.

Kathrét sucked in the fresh air, but the higher she flew the heavier her body felt. With every wing beat she sent a torrent of air cascading down. Her mind floated back to Ilantia where she sat on the edge of the cliffs with the little pile of ashes in front of her. A glaring coral sunrise crept over the horizon. She drew back her wings, shoulders straining to hold them outstretched for a few tormented moments. Finally, she dragged them forward, causing a howling current of air to rush past her, buffeting her neck on its way to sweep the ashes off the cliff and out to sea. Her only small comfort was that home was in the west, and she had slunk back into the darkness, away from the rising sun.

She glanced back down to the clearing and managed to catch a glimpse of the child’s ashen head before the clouds crawled back into place. She couldn’t save the child. She couldn’t touch anything on Belan, not directly. Kathrét’s pulse quickened in time to the echoing dada, dada.

Kathrét tucked one wing and circled back down until she was floating just above the field of clouds. With adrenaline to replace her energy she flapped her wings in a series of short, forceful bursts, scattering the clouds like she had scattered the ashes on Ilantia. Through the opening she dove, enjoying the brief weightless sensation. Kathrét located the drow’s torches; a cluster of live coals some distance from the clearing, poorly hidden by the forest canopy. She pulled up short over the clearing on the side farthest from the approaching search party. The child was still lying in the dirt. Stay down, she thought. Nostrils flared, Kathrét swung her wings back and forth horizontally, sending chattering shivers through the leaves. In her mind Kathrét pretended she was simply summoning the strength to fly away, which wasn’t far from the truth. She shoved any knowledge about the drows and the child into the dark pit at the base of her skull. She swallowed its entire contents, her heavy, black grief, her tart, crimson anger, forcing it down her outstretched neck. Once it reached her chest she split the concoction in two and sent it shooting through her shoulders out to the sharp tips of her wings. Kathrét reared back, picturing the charred, brown cliffs on Ilantia. She beat her wings forward with all her might, releasing the sourness gathered on them, sending herself upwards and back.

Kathrét saw the gale rush through the trees. The oaks creaked and shook, but withstood, while further out the drow’s torches weren’t so lucky. One-by-one the wind extinguished the fires reducing the forest to slate and charcoal colours. Dry leaves were snatched up and they whirled about the clearing, hissing. Kathrét’s view was intercepted when her head pierced the clouds, but through the dragon sized hole she heard faint cries and startled yelps. The child was unlikely to reach the human village on its own, Kathrét reasoned. But she felt lighter. In the time she had delayed the stars had faded, and the pink and orange hues that replaced them accompanied her home.