Luminous

69 - A World Worth Seeing

The desert was just as teeth-shattering cold by night as it was skin-melting hot by day. Meya had tucked her blanket and shawls around Coris, yet he was still trembling as he hunched and cowered under two layers of blanket. In the end, she pushed her mattress up against his and lay with her back to his chest, warming his feeble heart with her heat.

Between her fingers, the Nostran dragon's eye glowed in the gloom, answering the light from Meya's own eyes. She lowered it into the bowl and watched as it bobbed and revolved in the disturbed water, and allowed the present world to drain away from her consciousness. Since she'd left training early, might as well do some catching up so she'd have more tales to share with the other Greeneyes tomorrow.

Night was swallowed by day. Carpets of fabric replaced by that of lush grass. Surrounding her was blue sky, her mother, and her quarrelsome siblings, as they rode the wind towards a looming pillar of clouds.

The warm updraft under her belly inflated the flaps of leather sprouting from her back, keeping her afloat before vanishing. Meya felt a lurching sensation behind her navel as she plummeted through thin air. The baby dragon whose memories she was inhabiting showed no fear, however. With a swooping beat of its wings, she was propelled back above the wind.

The sun emerged from behind a veil of clouds and her metal scales soaked up its rays. Its warmth spread through her veins and inundated every sinew of her muscles, diluting the fatigue accumulated over hours of flight. The sun really was their source of energy, mused Meya. She wondered how far, if at all, she would be able to fly at night.

A shrill scream pierced the calm, jolting Meya from the lull of the cool breeze and the sunlight's embrace. Its cry ricocheted in her skull and rang in her eardrums long after it had died. A second cry followed, then a third, a fourth. Behind her, her dragon mother moaned in agony. Her five wee dragon siblings thrashed and tumbled in panic, screeching for the call to stop.

At long last, their mother hurtled towards the earth, screaming for them to follow. As Meya dove after her waving tail, sunlight glanced off her silvery scales into Meya's eyes, already smarting against the wind. Green grass rose up towards her. She fanned out her wings to soften her landing, the way her mother had taught her.

Her paw flattened hairy grass, slippery with a coating of dew. Meya looked up and saw four humans—two grown men, a boy around five years old, and a girl twice his age.

The younger, slighter man lowered an iridescent silvery tube from his lips—A Lattis whistle. From one shoulder hung a crossbow, and the other a quiver filled with bolts of Lattis. He turned to the broad-chested, scarred man in a flowing blue cape, reading off his journal.

"Number 47, Commander." He nodded towards the mother dragon, who had herded Meya and her siblings into the caves under her wings. The commander appraised her with a neutral gaze bordering on bored, "Finest dam we have in this sanctuary. This litter was sired by Gorgodev. Tall as three men and ten times as mighty in his prime. Best known for his performance during the War of—"

The commander rolled his eyes and waved, impatient.

"Spare me the pedigree, we're not looking for war-mount material." He snapped at the dragon keeper, who jolted into a hasty bow. He turned to the little boy with a halfhearted smile, as if he wished he could be anywhere but dragon-pet-shopping with his kids,

"Well, son? You like any of them?"

The boy stuck out his pink, slobbery lip as he eyed each of them, his fleshy hand twitching in his father's cloak.

"I want a golden one. They're all iron." He grumbled. His big sister crossed her arms and rolled her eyes.

"Feed it enough brass and it will turn golden, dunderhead." She spited, a flash of jealousy in her seemingly cavalier gaze.