The Sword and The Mountain

A Change

"Storm." Lessa stumbled to her feet.

Distress moved across their bond in waves. The dragon was high enough that she might have been an eagle, she tucked her wings in tight and dove like an arrow.

Lessa staggered away from Zar.

"Lessa?" His voice wavered, unsure.

Spikes drove through Lessa's core, the place inside where her soul must've been.

She was so small.

Lessa closed her eyes.

Storm landed hard, ash flew away in all directions, it washed over Lessa like a polluted baptism.

"Lessa, where are you going?" Zar grabbed her arm but she shook him off, she couldn't let him see the tears that were already falling.

With shaking hands Lessa climbed the ladder to Storm's saddle, and Storm jumped into the sky.

Laying over the saddle, Lessa sobbed.

The bodies she had seen burned into her brain. She wanted to, needed to forget. Never before had Lessa been exposed to such cruelty, such disregard for human life.

Such disregard for a child.

Who could do such a thing?

And the mother, who clearly died trying to protect her child.

Storm took them far.

There were no true mountains in this part of Kathardra, but there were hills high enough that they might pass for a mountain.

Storm took them to a peak. Blissfully absent here was any other person.

She dropped lightly to the ground and Lessa dropped from the saddle at once. She crumpled to the ground and Storm's snout met her chest, pressing into her.

Lessa wrapped her arms around Storm's nose and she pressed her head against her, tears falling freely.

It was dark before they found Zar and Worran. Storm had landed well away to avoid buffeting the small campfire with her wings. Side by side Lessa and Storm walked into camp. Zar and Worran stood as one and stared at her.

"Are you-" Zar started.

"I don't want to talk about it," Lessa cut him off.

She sat close to the fire, close enough that the heat nearly scalded her. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

"This has all gotten very real. I don't know what I am doing here."

Storm shook her head, a peculiar rotation on her neck, almost like a dog shaking water from their ears.

"Little Lessa, I know this is a struggle. But it is only through struggles that we might test our strength."

She was too tired to respond.

The morning was refreshingly crisp. There was enough distance between Lessa and the trials of the day before that the internal wounds were not quite so raw.

As she sat eating the bland porridge given to her by Zar, Lessa noticed the boys giving each other significant looks.

None of them had said a thing since they had awoken. But the silence between the two was the silence of walking on a frozen lake with too thin ice.

Lessa snapped, "Would you two stop that?"

"Stop what?" Worran's innocence was false.

"I'm not going to explode. I had a bad day. I'm over it," she shrugged her shoulders and lied.