Another Nightmare Book 3: Facing Nightmares

Chapter 18

Shortclaw kept flying with Ivar in her claws and she kept flying and flying. Ivar pressed the wound on his left arm with his free hand and couldn't even talk properly for a while gasping from the waves of pain in his arm. The island they had left from was already a nearly indistinguishable speck under the dark clouds when he calmed a bit. He was still bleeding though and worrying amount too.

"Shortclaw," he called out. The dragon kept flying staring forward without as much as recognizing Ivar. Ivar tried to slap her leg to get attention but stopped mid motion. He screamed as the movement felt like he had been stabbed again. Tears flowed from his eyes.

Shortclaw growled and finally turned to look at Ivar. Then she let out a high-pitched screech and tilted towards a nearby island, barely a rock in the ocean with couple of trees that had miraculously gotten there at some point. She hovered right over a flat spot, as well as she could and dropped Ivar carefully. Normally the fall wouldn't have been much of a problem, but the impact caused his arm to move again. This time he couldn't even scream too breathless to create anything more than a hiss. By the time he struggled to a sitting position Shortclaw had landed and was staring at him her snout almost touching him. For the first time Ivar could properly look at his injury.

It was bad. The wound was very long and deep where the tip of the arrow had been. He had at least been lucky that the arrow didn't cut major veins. He' would have already been drained dry if it did. He was still losing blood. Shortclaw pushed his healthy hand aside and...

Jumped back with a screech? Ivar blinked and stared at the wound. There was something on it. It was the stuff hunters used to knock out dragons.

"Better you not touch that," he said in his weak voice and used his healthy hand to brush off worst of the goo from the top of the wound. "I... I need to stop the bleeding."

He didn't have any bandage or herbs... or anything else really, just his clothes and a dragon who could get poisoned if they were careless. That had to do. Ivar grabbed his sleeve and pulled it up just above the wound. He tried to tear the fabric off and bit his teeth together when the wound protested.

"Shortclaw." he said and moved his finger on the sleeve pressing it against the fabric with some force. When Shortclaw didn't immediately understand he pointed at her nearest foot, its claws to be specific. Shortclaw raised it up balancing on the other three. When it was close Ivar extended one finger and shortclaw mimicked the motion with her claw. Ivar pulled his sleeve and pressed it against the claw. The claw cut the fabric surprisingly easily.

"Good," Ivar gasped and reconsidered, "better than nothing."

It took a while to bind the wound since he usually had two hands for that. Afterwards he just sat and stared at it for a moment, tightened the improvised bandage, and stared again. It seemed to control the bleeding. Still hurt a lot. At least the torn shirt was relatively clean. Mom was always strict with being clean when working in healing. What would Hakon do to her? Tears flowed down his cheeks, not from pain this time. Hakon and the hunters had almost everyone he cared about, most people he had ever known actually. Ivar looked at Shortclaw, but she had turned away staring out to the sea, to the direction where her hatchlings were.

Ivar struggled to his feet letting his wounded arm hang to the side, trying to keep it from moving. He walked to Shortclaw's head an sat next to it. The dragon showed no sign of even noticing him, well she tried not to. Ivar caught quick glance of her eye. The look in it was... empty was the best word Ivar could think of. He reached out with his good arm, but Shortclaw moved her head away and grunted. Ivar pulled his hand back and sat in silence for a long time. It wasn't a time to push Shortclaw. The sun approached the horizon quickly as they sat there thinking and rethinking about all the things they had lost today. Eventually Ivar couldn't continue like that.