Saccades

In spoken Romancy, the word "dragon" in its most literal definitions, means "non-living", or "un-alive". This was a fact that somewhat perplexed Iris, as she didn't recall feeling particularly "un-alive". As far as she was concerned, she was more alive than anyone. Especially, she was more alive than the little mortal things that defined her that way. The peoples of Roma, always so quick and desperate to define. Everything always had to be dangerous, or ancient, or foreign. They loved their definitions, even for the things they didn’t understand. Things like Iris. She was older than them, stranger than them too. A piece of the old world itself. But the peoples of Roma had their ways and Iris had hers. She was not one of them, of course. She was, as they say, a dragon; one of only four. Moreover, she was the oldest dragon, the first one. That made her the oldest thing of all things. However the little mortals chose to define her, that was their business. She knew what she was, and she knew her mission. She was blessed with it, burdened with it, even before her first moment in this world. Those misguided mortal things that so misunderstood her were actually under her sworn protection. Yes, that was her mission. They were her mission. Her blessing and her burden. She was created, just like her sister and two brothers, to cradle and protect mortal life. A weighty design to be sure, but one she was more than capable of fulfilling. She had a purpose. It was something she carried in her bosom with pride, even if the little people on the ground didn’t know it. It was enough for her to know.

But today was a prideful sort of day. Above the high canopy of the Deepwood, Iris could truly stretch herself. Her broad, ivory wings were soaked in pure white feathers and crowned in golden sunlight. The green sea of foliage below caught the light and sang. Iris closed her great amber eyes and felt the day, the sun warming her back, the wind cooling her face, the cold blue sky of the early morning surrounding her. A sleepy mist rolled over the distant mountain peaks and spilled out onto the trees below. A nearby lake threw tiny shimmers of sunlight at her from the water’s surface. Iris’ grand, white feathers made adjustments, minute but powerful, to keep her glass-still as she soared. A long and sturdy tail, adorned the same as her wings, twisted and curled and flexed into the wind to stay her course. Every muscle, scale, and feather on her great body was divine; posed and sculpted into place by cosmic hands. Iris' command of the wind and sky was so graceful, she barely needed to flap her massive wings. She was a perfect machine. She could soar like this for eons.

With the early afternoon sun now settled high in the sky, Iris decided to land and rest a while. As she surveys the panorama, she finds a clearing in the forest, and begins her descent. The great dove would land in a small but wide ravine bottom, with a roaring waterfall on its side. The canopy above glowed a vibrant green and cast jade splotches of shadow across the grass. The rushing downpour of the waterfall cast turbulent ripples all throughout the small pond at its base. Reverberations wrinkled their way in between the mossy stones and wet the tiny rocks at the water’s edge, where low ferns made umbrellas for the tadpoles and waterbugs. Delicate little wildflowers decorated the ground with beautiful randomness. Spring permeated every angle of this place. Iris felt peaceful, comfortable. The forest always reminded her of her sister, and that made her warm inside.

Iris bedded down to her stomach, her heavy tail brushing away some forest debris. She flapped her great wings lightly a few times to stabilize herself as she laid. Her long and capable neck carried down a heavy head to the grass, and she rested her chin lightly in a patch of yellow daisies. Her left wing, done steadying, now blanketed her body like a downy shield. The sunlight, still penetrating down through the trees, warmed the soft feathers on her back, and spread through her wings like a hug.

“Un-alive”, she scoffed in her head. Cradled in the forest, the ambience of nature was all around her; this was alive.

“Of course I’m alive." she thought, "And alive with purpose too." Her eyelids grew heavier as she smiled faintly. The sun would warm her to sleep. Iris dozed off in the grass.

…

Something was on her tail. Her eyes snapped open as a jolt went up her spine and her wings shot outwards defensively. Her back feathers ruffled up and she spun on a dime like a great, white cat. Her eyes burned with alert as they jumped back and forth over the scene, looking for the culprit. Within a second, it was found. A youngling mortal, it looked like it could be human, but she always got them confused. The little thing had brown eyes and wispy dark hair on its tiny head. It stood squarely on stubby legs, with short sausage fingers balled into round fists. Its tan face held a determined look, as if it was its job to disturb the sleeping beast, and it was a job unfinished.

Iris crouched there, frozen, completely flabbergasted by the bravery of the fledgling mortal. It must not be very old, no more than forty years.

“Wait, how old do mortals get? Babies are twenty or thirty, right?” Iris, frankly, had no concept of mortal ages. She grants to herself that she might be overshooting her estimates, but forty still felt right. Regardless, this was a situation that required her attention. While she had no clue of the toddler’s age, or even gender, she did know that tiny people are not ideally supposed to be alone in the woods. That much made sense to her. She had to get this thing home, wherever it belongs.

The first of many problems crosses Iris’ mind. Primarily, how could it see her? It was not typically the case that mortal men could see a dragon; more specifically, perceive one. Dragons, along with many other fixtures of the old world, were far too surreal for men to make sense of. Even if mortal people were to be looking straight at one, there is very little chance they would have the fortitude to maintain visual. Often, humans and the like will simply look away, avoiding the obvious like sparing one’s eyes from the sun’s rays. More commonly, mortal peoples will simply be driven around a dragon’s geographical movements, unknowingly circumnavigating an encounter altogether. This child, however, seemed entirely unconcerned with that precedent. Iris maintained surprised contact, and yawed her head back and forth slowly, watching as the little one followed her eyes. It was definitely looking at her.

The second problem at hand, there was no real way for Iris to communicate with it. If dragons were so surreal as to be imperceptible to men altogether, it follows that they would not share a common tongue with them either. Not that they would even get much chance for practice if they did, the mortals were many and the dragons were a scarce four. Most men lived and died never even coming close to one. Millennia old terrestrial guardians had little business with mortals directly. Dragons were closer to cosmic monsters than animals. There was a vast gap between the two of them, certainly. But surely Iris had to do something, right?

The tiny provocateur looked on while Iris wracked her brain for answers. Maintaining a focused demeanor, the little human did not await Iris’ solution, resolving instead to begin climbing up onto her tail. The toddler had one stubby leg over her anterior sail by the time Iris even processed what was going on. The determined little munchkin was mounting her! She wanted to recoil, the sheer absurdity of being touched like this by a human, a fledgling no less. But she also knew how fragile they were, and she’d been lucky to avoid hurting it earlier when she first got startled. So Iris, the eldest of the cosmic creations and fabled dragon White, held her breath and waited as the tiny daredevil struggled her way up for a ride.

The little one, now securely balanced on both feet atop the tail, looked to Iris. Its once quite stern look of determination melted into a giggle as it waddled along her spine feathers. The tiny giggles rang out into the clearing and were eaten up by the roar of the rushing water. Iris made an effort to flatten out the panic that had ruffled her feathers moments before. The little human’s loose brown curls bounced slightly as it balanced its way up, both stubby arms out to each side for stability, laughing the whole way. Occasionally it would lose balance and stumble back onto a chubby heel, but it managed to keep ascending through the giggles. Iris knew it was customary for humans, and mortals in general, to reciprocate social tells like laughter or crying. An interpersonal sign of agreement, something to connect them without words. While not convinced that she actually felt emotions in at all the same way as this little person, Iris would attempt to put forward some social effort all the same. A moment or two passed of mental preparation, and Iris was ready.

A loud and obnoxious snort-whinny bellowed forth from the dragon’s entirely untrained voice. A royal failure of an attempt at laughter, the sound came out much more akin to a beached whale drawing its last burp. Iris also realized, perhaps too late, that she did not have the facilities to adjust her volume appropriately. She could already tell she had been much too loud. The little one fell back onto its bum and began to cry, terrified by the enormous siren that had just gone off so close by. Iris looked on in abject remorse as the poor little thing wailed helplessly on her tail, and she felt a sensation grip her chest that she hadn’t felt before. A sadness, a discomfort that was all-new. Urgency.

As gently as she could physically manage, Iris guided the tip of her left wing towards the inconsolable child. Soft white blades of dragon feathers crept up to meet the little human, and they seemed to catch its attention. Face now red with tears and wet with snot, the toddler looked up from its crying and became suddenly transfixed by the hugeness and pureness of the display. Iris noticed this, and felt some relief, even the faintest excitement at having communicated. She continued to hold her whole wing now over the child’s head, and slowly oscillate it open and shut, dancing shadows over the quieted human like a mobile. The babe was enthralled. Iris continued to do so, giving the child a theater show of calm white waves; holding shut the great wing and casting heavy shadows, then slowly unfurling it to stretch the tips of her feathers and let more golden sunlight through. After a little while, it seemed the human had long since forgotten the terrible sound that let loose from the dragon's bellows, and was simply content to watch the pretty feathers dance just for them.

Now seeing the little face was dry and no longer contorted by scared tears, Iris slowly removed her wing from overtop the child’s head, and placed it back at her side to once more be used as a front extremity. Her head was turned all the way around on her great swan neck, fully monitoring the condition of the fickle human. Iris relaxed a bit, and the two looked to each other for reassurance. Yellow and ancient eyes met with tiny, brown, new ones. Iris meant only to check on them, but now found herself stuck in the child’s gaze. Never before had she been this close to a mortal. But it wasn’t just that. This one was so young, so innocent and new. Something struck her. This was a truly honest creature, one that felt every emotion in full measure and on display. Silly things caused them to chuckle, scary things caused them to cry. Iris had caused them to cry. Iris wondered for the first time if she was like that to all people, something scary. She couldn’t look away.

After a bit of calm, Iris would attempt once more. This time, instead of emulating laughter with a dragon’s machinery, she instead would start to ring out a low and steady hum. A great purr, so soft and so deep that at first, it seemed the child could only feel it. But Iris brought its volume louder, slowly but surely, and the song resonated up through the human’s pudgy little legs into their whole tiny chest. Their dark curls even swayed as the soft dragon hum vibrated their whole person. The movement must have begun to tickle, and once more, both Iris and the forest were treated to a song of excited giggles. Iris would need to find where the small thing came from, so she let the soothing hum fade out, and the two of them set off into the woods.

It was not long into the journey before Iris realized just how talkative her little companion was. The same minute they departed together, the child now on Iris’ upper back, the human babe began babbling away at the dragon. Iris listened dutifully to the chatter, naturally not understanding a lone sentence of it. But she just couldn’t help but feel herself softening on the tiny person. At first, Iris was admittedly a little put off by the whole situation. Being seen by a mortal at all, especially by a juvenile, had slightly attacked her notion of superiority. There was a certain security in invisibility, a feeling of exclusivity; for great eyes only. But it felt nice to meet a being so opposite her in status, and still share something.

Iris drifted again to the phrase. “Un-alive.” Still she wondered, why such a specific and purely strange definition? She couldn’t take it to mean that they thought the dragons to be dead, dragons were generally well known to the people of Roma. And the phrasing, “un-alive.” It was too exact, too deliberate. That wouldn’t do.

Iris tried to shake the qualms out of her mind, and looked back to see her little rider, still gabbing on about all manner of things. Iris wondered what they were saying. What they felt a dragon needed to hear. It was then that the human sped right past a word Iris actually did recognize, the Romancy word for “cloud.” A spark lit inside her, and she had to contain a sway of excitement. Was that what the human had named her? Cloud? Iris felt a swell of pride, and must have let out something audible, as the child stopped mid-sentence to look Iris in the eye and stroke the downy feathers on her shoulders.

“Cloud.” the child beamed again.

The sun was getting late in the evening sky, and Iris figured it was time for rest. Granted, Iris herself did not require rest, but her human companion was definitely getting tuckered out. Iris felt strangely about the day they had shared, and not just for the obvious. No, what was so novel about the experience was that Iris had never really focused on such a small thing for such a long time. Dragons live very long lives, her most of all, so it was common to get lost in the flow of things. Time passing wasn’t often a concern for something as truly immortal as her and her siblings. So Iris had been focusing on grounding herself in the moment. But this was not her current concern, so she sidled it away.

Iris swiveled her majestic head and saw the little one nodding off into her back. She again summoned her gentlest winged motion to lightly scoop the small thing off her back and to the ground. The human stood up groggily and rubbed their eyes with fatigue. Iris was not sure the best way to do this, but made up her mind. She laid down on her side and outstretched her bottom most wing all the way across the small clearing they had found. She had created a soft carpet over the forest floor. The child instinctively knew to lie down on the winged bed, and huddled into the massive feathers. When they were settled, Iris then closed her other wing overtop of the first, and fully shielded the child in a nest of downy ribbons. She then took care to curl her enormous tail around the whole of them, encircling the pair into a ring of pearly safety.

The dragon then lifted her head up on her great swan neck, and did a short survey of the darkening woods around them. Iris would never risk flying with the child, but still she knew their settlement was nearby. She would get the young one back to her nest tomorrow, back to their loving parents and village.

Certainly it must be that the child merely wandered off from the rest, perhaps while gathering with their mother? Their swaddling cloth gave the impression of care. But surely, it couldn’t be that the child was abandoned. Could it?

“Why would a mortal parent do such a thing?”

Before, that would have seemed to Iris a merely pragmatic mistake, casting aside a perfectly healthy offspring. But now… Well, it would have been more than just that, right? Wouldn’t they miss the little one? Wouldn’t they feel quiet in its absence?

“Why would they do that to their own creation?” The dragon’s thoughts ran free, and for the first time, she felt her breath start to quicken with upset.

“Why would something create you, just to leave you on your own and cast you into uncertainty? Iris was stirring now.

Don’t they want what’s best for- for…”

…

Iris paused.

She had apparently lost track of to whom she was referring. The dragon had not thought of her own creators for millennia. Those cosmic hands. Iris began to feel foolish. Why was she acting so emotionally? Is that even what it was? Uncomfortable questions churned in her, but her frantic mind was calmed by an unexpected touch.

Iris felt the tiny body scooch forward under her wing, and bury its face in the warm downy fur of her chest. The little human had moved to embrace the dragon, just to be closer to her. To hold her with bitty hands and soft embrace. Iris' mind was forcibly emptied of her turbulent thoughts. This little person needed her. And Iris knew in that moment, she would make sure they got her.

“I have you.” she thought.

“I have you.”

Her worries for her own status melted away, she felt content knowing that this tiny thing was alive. Very alive. Iris carefully squeezed her tail and wings around the little life a bit tighter. That little life was precious to her now. After all this time, maybe she still had so much to learn. Maybe this was her mission.

The two dozed together under the stars.

…

Iris awoke in the late morning, and stretched her back warmly. It must be a few hours after sunup. A quick survey showed that not much in the surrounding scenery had changed. After she had made certain the coast was clear, she lifted a wing to check on the child.

Iris’ stomach jumped up into her heart.

The little human was gone.

The dragon sprung to action, panic dawning on the horizon, and searched desperately for the little one. Not under her tail, nor under herself, thankfully, but gone. Totally gone. It’s at this moment that Iris, the Ivory dragon and eldest of the four, would experience something entirely new. In conceivably millions of years of life or more, it had taken her until now to run headfirst into this entirely unforeseen wall. Fear.

A white blur screamed into the sky with seismic force, trees blowing wildly, even toppling under the immense force of her takeoff. Iris was massive, but faster than she had any right to be. She bolted up and down the forest like a rogue missile, directionless in her sheer panic. Burning amber eyes peered wildly and desperately down into the trees, scanning for any sign of the little human companion.

“How far could they have gotten?” the question seared itself into her mind, strafe after strafe of the forest yielding no results. The poor dragon must have encircled the whole wood ten times over, each moment that passed growing more and more desperate. She felt a storm inside her, like nothing she had ever felt before. Disappointment, fear, and rage. Confused anger at the situation, at the child for wandering off and leaving her, and mostly, at herself. She pleaded over and over in her mind, to no one in particular;

“Please, please, please.” she didn’t even know why she was thinking it, but that’s all she could anymore.

She could not stop searching. She could not abandon the little human, she couldn’t abandon her mission. Her little rider. All alone in those woods, directionless and confused. Scared of the sounds and scared of the silence, all by themself without parents or a home or a dragon.

“Please, please-”

Iris could not give up, that little creature needed her, and Iris had failed them. Every passing second, a new string snapped in Iris’ heart. She didn’t even care how emotional she was being anymore, or about the implications of it. She was angry, she was sad, she was confused. She hoped her tiny friend wasn’t out there feeling the same way.

“Please, please, please…”

Her little friend, her first friend of only a day. But it felt like the longest day of Iris’ life. She scrolled back in her memory, millions of years of it, as far as she could reach, and realized an agonizing truth.

She recalled very little of her time on this world.

Iris had spent eons watching plants evolve, mountain ranges form, and volcanoes erupt. She had spent millennia overseeing the Romans and their Great Construction, watched them build their gilded towers and golden cities. Spent lifetimes with the spread of the tiny little people, lighting up the continent a hundred years at a time. But in all that history, with her siblings and with the cosmos and with the slow geology, not one clear memory remained.

Not until yesterday.

Her life had been a time lapse, a wide angle panorama of civilization and nature; pressure and heat and time. She had bore witness to more growth, preservation, and destruction than any observer living. But not a single day of love, or excitement, or fear. Not a single day of change.

Not until yesterday.

Only one phrase remained, searing its loop into her brain.

“Un-alive.”

Iris returned to the forest floor, defeated. Drained of all the emotion that drove her up and down the countryside moments before. She had nothing left in her mind, and no energy left in her body. To the growing list of entirely new things she hadn’t felt until now, Iris could now add ‘genuinely tired.’

Wherever the little human had gone, she knew she would not find them. Iris wonders desperately, self-destructively,

“Why had the child left? What did I do wrong?”

The cave in her chest was now filled with dark and heavy questions. Questions that tormented her, bullied her relentlessly. “What did I do wrong?”

Iris’ mind drifted to early yesterday, when she had frightened the child to tears. There was a dark line of questioning too.

“What if I truly am scary?”

Iris wondered if nightfall had made her appear dark and ominous, if the child’s imagination was set free, and their initial fears of her returned.

Iris wondered if she had made a frightening sound again in her sleep, obviously she had a lot to learn about her own voice. Perhaps even, a true threat had appeared from the woods, and the child fled, not feeling safe in the arms of a monster. Iris played that useless game with herself for what felt like hours, perched there in the woods as dusk set in. The sun was once again sinking low in the sky, and the warm oranges and pinks had now drained to a cold, dark blue. She figured as long as she was here, she might at least find where the babe had come from. Maybe they had found their way back on their own, and Iris was her arrogant self in thinking it was her and her alone who could save the helpless mortals.

Lethargically, Iris took to the sky and flew lowly above the canopy. She did not feel like the beautiful dove she was before. She felt like the ancient, sheltered monster that she was. How long had she gone on thinking she was carrying out her mission? What even was her mission? To watch rocks weather and cities be built? That didn’t feel right anymore, but neither did this. For a day, just one day, she carried that small child on her back, only twenty miles or so, and that was her destiny finally fulfilled. Never had she done so much by doing so little, cared so much about something other than herself. After all this time, all this investment, and all those promises, she finally cared.

With the blue of the ephemeral light on the horizon and the moon still high in the sky, Iris was coming upon the small village she had presumed her little rider to come from. Just past this grove it would be there, all quiet and asleep in the night, still missing its brave and giggly little dragonrider. Iris braced for the sight, braced for the wave of regret when she saw that lonely old town. What she saw, though, was quite different.

A sprawling metro, all lit up with Brightrod street lamps and tall, illuminated towers. Glowing orange roads carved warm grid patterns through the busy storefronts and downtown regions that teetered off to quieter countryside homes at the outskirts of the city. Iris was shocked. This was not at all what she had seen ahead of them, this wasn't here yesterday. And then it struck her all at once.

Iris had not been with the child yesterday. She likely hadn't been with the child for decades. Just as men ignored the obvious, so had she her whole life. Her timescale, all that ancient history, had forever warped her perception even more thoroughly than she thought. When she and the child had drifted off to sleep that night, she must not have awoken for many years. All this time, she had never realized the irony of her inception. Iris was created to be the vigilant sentry of mortal life, but given eyes better suited for watching the stars go out. Given a mind more fit to track the shifting of continents, and a voice tuned for ear-splitting roars that scare little children. How much time had slipped by her, how many lives had come and gone between the saccades in her vision, between the gaps in her gaps? Had she really spent all this time, just to lose track of all this time? Yes, she had.

Iris soared hard and fast to the outer edges of the metro, and crashed down near a badly aged cemetery. The rising sun cast fresh pinks and yellows across the landscape, and illuminated the worn headstones. After reading through many forgotten names to no avail, it was then that the dragon saw it, and made her final realization:

The mortals were right. She was a dragon, in every sense. Un-alive and non-living. Because life, in its most literal of definitions, means change. As she was so graciously taught by her little friend, life is fragile, fleeting, and impermanent. Categorically. And it’s something neither Iris, nor any other dragon had ever truly possessed. The certainty of uncertainty, and the absence of a cosmic mission. The promise of it all being over one day, and the ability to change on your way there. Life, she now understood, could only be experienced by those strong enough, noble enough, vulnerable enough to die. A birth, spurred on by random chance. A tiny little body and tiny little sausage fingers, that could someday grow and change. Change into a beautiful human woman, loved by her family and friends. Loved by her children, eventually, too. And more importantly than that, missed. Missed by all of those who were graced by her presence, lucky enough to witness her when she was still around to giggle out loud and ride dragons in the woods. So earnest a being that she could even take an old and stubborn heart, an arrogant dragon’s heart, and sweetly convince it to change for the better. Her little friend had given so much in her life, and not just to Iris the dragon.

“At least,” Iris thought,

“my little rider got to live. She found her place in the world and lived.”

The great dragon glanced at the morning city skyline.

“She made it home.”

Iris sat a little longer at the aging headstone, proudly adorned with the human name;

“Cloud.”