Dragon Blood

Thirteen: Home

Once again, Skylar was perched between the shoulder blades of her new golden dragon friend. She felt far more comfortable with the dragon than the human. She was too drawn to the human Orion, and her dragon liked him too much. She liked the dragon as well, but she wanted to meet the dragon for herself, size him up before creating an opinion. She wasn't sure if Orion was aware when his dragon took form, but either way the dragon was sweeter to her than the man. Although when Orion had come to her rescue with the bear, she had been surprised at the relief she'd felt upon his appearance. She had been even more surprised when her first instinct upon encountering the bear was to call for her captor.

Her panic upon seeing him pinned beneath the menacing bear had caused her to push aside her fear and hit the bear over the head with a stick. Her dragon pushing her to do something to help him had caused her to act violently, when she'd never really been physically violent before. She hadn't wanted to hurt the bear, but Orion had needed her help. She still wasn't sure what to do with that new development in their relationship.

She reached down to reposition her skirts around her legs to protect them from chill of the wind rushing past them. Her arms and ears were cold, but she wasn't about to voice her discomfort. To distract herself from the monotony of travel, she focused on the fact that she was flying. She was in the air, perched on a fierce dragon, looking down as the world flew by. It made everything seem so small and insignificant, every problem she had faded in the background.

She looked over her shoulder at Percy, who was focused on the path ahead of him. His scales shined in the sun, but not in the same brilliant way Orion's did. He saw her looking and turned his massive head slightly. His silver eyes gleamed and he winked at her. She wondered if all dragons were as expressive as Orion and Percy's were, and she hoped so. She didn't need to know the human identity of each dragon to figure out who they were. Percy's dragon was more playful, Orion's more serious. Their personalities reflected their human sides, and she wondered what her dragon would be like had she not been suppressed for over 15 years.

After hearing about their escapade with the bear, Percy had burst into laughter. He'd made sure Orion was alright, but other than that he'd found the whole situation hilarious. He especially liked that Skylar had gone after the bear with a stick. He'd gone about cleaning his kills, caught with his bare hands, mumbling to himself about bears and vicious women with a small smile on his face. Orion had shaken his head in exasperation and disappeared into the woods to find more substantial, leaving Skylar with the other dragon.

"Wanna get started on that other rabbit?" he asked, motioning with his knife at the furry, brown heap on the ground next to him. Skylar look at it with distaste and shook her head.

"No, thank you. I've never, uh, skinned an animal before."

He sat back on his heals, his hands bloody from where his knife was inserted in the dead rabbit's stomach. He raised an eyebrow at her, while glancing between her and the animal carcass. He obviously noticed how uncomfortable it made her. "Have you ever seen an animal being cleaned?"

She shook her head again. She was a princess, far above the need to ever see a dead animal, and had never needed to see one cleaned. She was aware that animals had to be butchered for food, but being aware of the fact and seeing it in action were two very different thing.

"Would you like to learn?" he wondered.

"Either way you're going to do it, and I can't leave otherwise Orion is going to come after me."

Percy snorted and nodded. "That's true. And he won't be happy with you."

Skylar smiled at the dragon's amusement. "So I guess that means I'm going to learn." She had sat next to him and watched in horror as he separated the meat from the rest of the body and cut out the organs. When he was finished, he put her in charge of taking it to the river to wash off while he constructed a crude spit to set over the fire. Skylar tried not to think about the fact that she'd just seen the cute, fuzzy creatures the rabbits had been only minutes before, and now she was scrubbing the meat in the river to clean it of dirt and blood. This was the worst thing she'd done since being forced to flee the castle, by far.