In Interim
Jul. 16th, 2009 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joegodaWhile my creativity reboots, I have given a reader a choice. To continue with one of my current messes or to re-post one of my ancient favorites from the attic of the Storyteller's Keep.
Long, long ago, in a land far, far away, nestled between twin mountains, and snuggled at the fork of a river, there was a small village. It was an unusual village as everyone in it was a Shopkeeper, with a Capital S. Oh, not everyone was in the village, as there were farmers and ranchers and such that lived on the outside of the village, but the village itself, well... the village was an unusual place. That, however, is not what this story is about. This story is about a time when the village was quite small, and the lands around it were very dangerous. You see... there used to be dragons there.
Many years before the first man found the little valley, there were hundreds of dragons, all whirly flying around, high, high in the sky, and crabbily calling out to and challenging each other as they flew around doing their dragony business. They were the kings of their world, of this little valley, and they were very proud and very jealous of each other's territory.
What this meant is that every so often there would be a big battle, where all sorts of nasty things happened with dragons flying around and gnashing of beaks and teeth and claws snapping and tails a lashing. There were quite a bit fewer dragons flying around after one of those battles let me tell you.
It was so bad that, in a very short time (only a hundred years, or so), there were only 2 dragons left.
They were the meanest, toughest, most dragony dragons there were that have ever lived. They would sit, one on each mountaintop, and throw insults at each other and be just generally as mean to each other as they possibly could. What sort of insults did they say? Now, gentle readers, they were not the sort of talk that gentle folk should hear, and besides, I don't speak dragon. I couldn't tell you if I wanted to. And I wouldn't even if I did.
These two dragons kept being angry at each other for years and years and even more years than that. They were angry though the days when the first man came to the valley, washed up on the shore like some piece of driftwood. They were angry at each other when the first Shopkeeper showed up with his gaily painted boat and smoking smokestack. They were angry at each other when the first family showed up, to till the fields and turn the land. Needless to say, these were two angry dragons.
It came to pass, then, as it always does, that one dragon decided he had had enough. That it was time to be over and done with. So he called out the dragon's challenge, and flew up into the clouds. The other dragon, hearing the dragon's challenge, became outraged and flew to answer the challenge. This would decide it then. Who would be final King of the Dragons, with a capital K. It would prove, once and for all, who was rightfully King and who was rightfully dead.
The villagers far below gathered to watch the battle. To their eyes, the dragons started out as tiny, tiny dragon winged specks, floating high, high in the sky, wheeling and darting at each other, spinning together and then roaring apart with a fearsome roar and cry.
Far in the sky, with claw and tooth, deadly tails lashing out and darting back, the dragons fought a horrible fight. Tears and rends in their wings forced them to fly lower and lower until they were barely above the tops of the trees. The villagers, frightened by the sights and sounds, ran and hid in their shops, and their houses. It was terrible, with dragon blood splashing down onto the earth, and dragon blood is terrible in itself, as it burns bright blue upon contact with whatever it touches. It was terrible in that the grass burned and wilted, and the water steamed when the dragon's flew overhead.
Everyone ran and hid, except for one small girl, who was transfixed by the battle and cried out "NO!", whenever it seemed that one of the dragons or the other had dealt the last final strike. She cried tears and she felt their pain and she just couldn't move away and NOT watch the war, the battle, the fight. Every claw slash, every tooth bite would cause more and more tears to stream down her face, her hands were tangled in her long blonde hair and she simply could not, could not, and could not turn away.
Harder and harder, the dragons fought. More and more of the blood splashed down upon the earth scorching the ground and burning the water. Some of the buildings on the outside of the Village caught fire and burned, but none of the Shops caught fire, because, as we know, they were magical.
Eventually the dragons crashed down onto the earth, near the where the river ran and near where the tiny boats were tied to simple wooden piers. The dragons great sharp claws scored the ground, and their snapping jaws crashed and tore into each other.
The little blonde girl drew closer and closer until she was no more than two cart lengths away. Horrible was the sight, and terrible was the noise, but she still she stood, as still as a grain of sand, and her tears mingled with the blood on the ground.
With a great roar, one of the dragons seized the neck of the other and twisted, with a capital T, as hard as it could until with a tremendous SNAP, the other dragon fell limp and dead.
The last living dragon lifted his head and roared forth a mighty roar, letting the world know who was King and who was dead. He stood to rise, but couldn't. So much blood had been lost and so much damage had been done, he simply, plainly couldn't stand or crawl or fly or do anything at all. He was dying as well from the wounds he had been given. With a hiss and a shudder, he fell back to the ground, head upon his great paws and eyes closed. There he lay, and there he suffered.
The little girl edged closer to where the great beast lay. "Dragon?", she said, quietly, softly, so soft that the falling of a dandelion seed made more noise.
The dragon gave no response. She waited, and waited and waited. "Dragon?" she asked again, a bit louder, but still softer than the babbling of the river nearby. The dragon opened one of his eyes and flicked a look at the girl. Then he closed his eye and went back to the wherever he his brain had taken him, waiting to die.
The girl crept closer, only a few inches, not too close, but closer. "Dragon?", she tried again. Her voice was louder than the river this time, and carried with it the softness that only little children can do. The dragon opened one great terrible eye again and turned his head ever so slightly as to look at the girl. And that was all he did, just look.
The girl looked up at the dragon's one great terrible eye, and asked, "Does it hurt much?"
The dragon huffed out a great cloud of blue grayish steam and said, "Does it hurt much? Does fighting tooth and claw to the death, to find victory in battle, to have been wounded to the point of not being able to fly triumphantly away hurt much? No, antling (for that was what they thought of humans), it does not hurt much."
"These wounds are fatal," the dragon said, in a deep voice that sounded like a ton of small stones running down a long metal flume, "and I know that I'm going to die. It is a good thing, because I am the last one, the King of the Dragons, and it is something that makes my dragon's heart soar!" The dragon's excitement lived only briefly, and he coughed greatly with a heavy and liquid sound, his eyes squished shut in pain that was obvious and strong.
When he had regained himself, from wherever he had gone, the dragon inhaled painfully and continued. "I only speak to you because I know that I am King, and I know that I am dying. It is nothing to me that I speak to you. does it hurt? No, little antling, it does not hurt as much as it feels very good to be the King of the Dragons"
"No", said the little girl, carefully edging closer, so that she could feel the heat radiating off the great beast, but not so close that the dragon could snap her up like a noonday snack.
"No, dragon," she repeated. "What I meant was, does it hurt to be alone? To be the last of your kind, to know that you are King of the Dragons, but to be the very last dragon there is? Does that hurt?"
The dragon opened his other great eye and gave the girl a hard look. He looked so very hard that the grass around her turned to glass and broke away. He looked so hard that the very air became like crystal and thick, but the little girl didn't notice at all. She just continued to gaze quietly at the dragon, her eyes big and still wet from crying.
The dragon huffed again, and was silent for a very long time. The little girl just waited and waited. After the sun had started to drop below the midpoint, the dragon once again huffed and said "I don't know," he said, a bit grumpily, which for a dragon was pretty fearsome. "I don't know, little ant. I've never thought about it."
The little girl came closer, almost close enough to touch, but still far enough to run away and said, "I'm sure it must hurt very much to be so alone, to not have anyone nearby when you... when you... it must be very sad." Another tear ran from the corner of her blue eye, down her nose and dripped from the pert little nose-end.
"Dragons don't feel sadness, dragons are supposed to be alone", said the dragon, huffing up and trying to look his dragon proudest. "Dragons are used to being alone when they..." he stopped and closed his eyes. "Go away, little ant. It is not safe here. I may just decide to eat you as look at you."
"I'll go away, dragon," the little girl said and she turned away. She walked a a few steps, just a little teeny bit, and then turned back. She shook her fingers at the dragon and said, in the exact same tone she had heard her mother use many times, "but I'll be back again tomorrow". She left the dragon where he lay, and she left the dragon things to wonder and ponder about, hugely and largely, as only dragons can.
The dragon spent a very hard night lying on the ground near the docks. His many wounds bled freely and the blood left smoking trails on the ground where he lay. His fitful dreams were full of darkness and rocks and he could not rest at all. He missed his bed of mountain snow, and he missed his breakfasts of mountain rabbit, mountain goat, and mountain... mountain whatever happened to be the catch of the day. Though he told the little girl that he did not hurt, he did indeed, hurt quite a bit! Indeed he did. Muscle and bone had been torn, flesh and scales had been ripped, and blood had been spilled. The dragon hurt quite a bit, and the dragon knew he was going to die.
The little girl, whose name was Kajira (a lovely name, thought her mother, for a lovely girl), had gone home that night to a million kazillion questions from her parents. However, not a single one of the questions involved staying away from the dragon, because her parents both knew Kajira was a bit... unusual. The questions were more like "What did you two talk about?", and "Is he in pain?", and "What did he smell like?" The last was from her older brother, because brothers are always interested in the icky parts of life. Kajira told her parents what she and the dragon had talked about, how sad she thought he was, and that she was sure he was really and truly a good dragon, all in all.
Now, it may seem odd to you, being where you are, out there where dragons hide so very well it is almost as if they aren't there at all, that a little girl and a dragon may converse. And so it would have seemed odd to Kajira's parents, had they not known their daughter was unusual from the beginning. She had a gift, they said, to be able to talk to any animal, any animal at all, and have them talk back. It is one thing to talk to an animal. Folks do it all the time, you see. But rare it is for the animal to talk back, and rarer still for a conversation to take place.
Kajira had been talking to animals since the very day she was born, and the first animal she spoke to was a bird that had lighted on the windowsill to whistle at the new born. Little newborn Kajira, still a babe wrapped in her birthing clothes, whistled back and giggled. She didn't share the joke with anyone other than the bird, because Kajira hadn't learned to speak human yet.
So well known was her gift throughout the village, that no one thought it odd that she would be talking to the dragon. They thought it might be a tad bit dangerous, and possibly a great lot dangerous, what with dragon teeth and claw and tail, but they certainly did not think the talking part was odd in the slightest, not the very least. At least not for Kajira.
It was early in the morning, with the sun shining so incredibly bright and the wind blowing little dandelion fuzz all around, that Kajira packed a little basket full of red apples, and another basket full of bright and merry flowers. Kissing her sleeping parents on each of their sleeping cheeks, Kajira headed out the door and straight down to the dragon. She sat there, in the same spot she had sat before and waited.
While she waited, and she was prepared to wait a long time, she ate an apple, red and juicy. The dragon, opening one eye, watched her with a disdainful, but curious interest.
Kajira took one long bite from her apple and watched the dragon back. The Dragon watched her. It took a long time to chew that bite, because it was a very long and very big bite. She chewed it with relish and a single drop of apple juice ran down her chin, to drop, falling onto the ground.
Kajira slowly swallowed, never taking her eyes off the dragon. Breaking the silence between them with a very small sound for a very large throat, the dragon cleared his throat. "Arumph", he said. Kajira stopped chewing and waited. When nothing further came, she took another long bite from the apple and resumed her slow process of chewing.
"Arumph," arumphed the dragon again. This time it carried the hint, the slightest of hint, that the arumph might have been the tiniest of questions.
Kajira stopped chewing again, swallowed a very big bite and asked "Yes?"
"Not that it really matters much to me at all," said the dragon in a way that anybody else might have though was the dragon talking to himself, "but what is that you are eating?"
Kajira raised one small eyebrow, a trick she also learned from her mother, and took a much smaller bite. After chewing politely and swallowing, she said with the sound of surprise, "Why dragon, this is an apple. Have you not seen an apple before?"
"No," the dragon snorted, "I have never seen an apple. What sort of beast is it, it has no legs, it has no head, and it looks like it bleeds clear blood. It must be a very strange beast indeed." The dragon grimaced harshly. "Unnggg," he said.
Kajira's face suddenly wore an expression of concern. "Are you all right?"
"Besides dying? Yes, antling, I am as fine as I can possibly be. What is an apple?" the dragon shifted his position just a bit, and the look of pain eased from his enormous face just a bit.
"An apple," she began, using a voice she had learned from her father, "is a fruit. It is not a beast. It is not something that you hunt and kill. It grows on a tree, and is quite delicious. Would you like to have one? I have many here." She showed the dragon her basket full of red apples and pushed it towards him, just a little.
"How is it that you can eat something that is not a beast, that does not bleed? How do you get the joy of the hunt, of the chase? What is the pleasure in eating something that does not struggle?"
"Oh dragon", she cried, "Why would I find pleasure in the hunting and killing of an animal? This apple comes from a tree that my father planted and grew with his own hands. It traveled from far away, and my mother carried it as seeds in her apron pocket all the way from her home when she was a child. This apple came from a lot of work, from the sweat and the dirt of the land, as my father says. This apple carries with it all that makes my father and my mother who they are, and with every bite I can feel their love for me"
Now, dear reader, you might be wondering how such a little girl can be speaking so large, as if she was an adult. This is one of the gifts and one of the curses that the BeastSpeakers carried. Because of the connection to every animal on the planet, they were often forced to grow up, facing death and life, birth and destruction on a daily basis. They lived many lifetimes every day of their lives, living lifetimes through all of the animal minds that they touched and spoke to. Indeed, it made her much, much older than her days, and indeed, it also made her much, much, much lonelier. Still, she was a very brave little girl, Kajira was, and recognized that sometimes life is just life, and is dealt with best with your chin up, your eyes forward.
"But I am a dragon!" One sharp dragon eyebrow raised high. "I cannot eat just any old thing, and most definitely not something that doesn't bleat, moo or fight back! It just wouldn't be right, it just wouldn't be... dragonish."
"Piffle", Kajira piffled and she waved one small hand in the air, brushing the dragon's words away. "You are the last dragon, who better to decide what is dragonish and what isn't" She plucked a very large, very red apple from the basket. "I think you should try one."
"I would just as soon eat you, little antling", he said with disdain and a bit of humor, which Kajira did indeed notice.
Kajira stood up with her hands on her hips and faced the dragon squarely. "Dragon," she said, "my name is Kajira, not antling, if you please. And my race is human, not antling, besides."
"What matters it to me what your name is, antling?" The dragon said, with a stubborn tone. "I am a dragon, the last dragon, and I am dying. Who better to decide what I call you and your tiny race?"
"Oh. I'm very sorry for that, indeed," Kajira said, a bit stiffly and with just a trace of childlike anger. "In that case, I will leave you to your misery, Sir Dragon. Good day." With that, she gathered up her basket of apples and her basket of flowers and turned to move down the path, away from the dragon.
"BUT," the dragon interjected after arumphing a very large arumph, "if it pleases you, then I will use that name for you."
Kajira turned back, being very careful not to smile no matter how much she wanted to. "And I am not an antling," she said.
The dragon sighed a very large dragonish sigh and said "Very well...."
Kajira came back down the path and stood before the dragon, closer than she had been before. "And what is your name, dragon. I can't go around calling you dragon all the time, and I can't just call you any old name, now can I?"
"My name is Gladure, ant... Kajira"
"It is very nice to meet you, Gladure." Kajira gave a curtsey and continued, "Kajira means sacrifice. My mother tells me she named me that simply because she liked the sound of it, but I kind of think that she wanted a deeper meaning to it. What does your name mean?"
The dragon thought about it for a while and then replied "Gladure means Radiant One. My egg mother and father named me thus so that I would grow into the name. Radiant One means King"
Kajira held an apple out to Gladure. "Here, eat this." She pushed it past the dragon's front teeth and onto his tongue. This might sound like a very icky thing to have done, but Kajira had spent most of her life nursing animals to health, and she was used to icky things. "It seems pretty useless to me to be King, if you are King of nothing at all."
Gladure swallowed quickly, without chewing. "To be King is to be King. It does not matter if you are King of yourself, or King of all there is. This apple has no taste."
"That's because you didn't chew it, silly. Here, try another one." Kajira put another apple into the dragon's mouth. "Now chew it, don't just swallow it. It's not a sheep, you know," she said in her best motherly sounding voice.
Gladure moved the apple between two of his great teeth and with a crunch, exploded the apple into his mouth. His eyes opened a bit wider, and snorted a small sort of surprise. "So that's an apple. I must say, I don't know what I expected, but I do think you made far too much of such a little thing." Still, he swallowed the apple and quietly asked, "Can I have another?"
"Of course you may," said Kajira. Her large smile almost crept out between her lips. She settled for her small polite smile instead.
And that was how they spent that whole day, eating apples and making small talk about nothing at all. Great terrible dragon and small blonde haired girl, talking. Talking about the village and about Kajira's family and about gliding on the currents and about living in a cave. Gladure listened and learned about talking to small animals and life as a human, and Kajira listened and learned about what it is like to be a dragon sitting on a mountain top.
And this is how we shall leave them, today, beloveds. I do not want to leave, but here are errands to run, and things to see, and people to speak with. As the story unfolds this evening, I will write more.
StoryTeller
Long, long ago, in a land far, far away, nestled between twin mountains, and snuggled at the fork of a river, there was a small village. It was an unusual village as everyone in it was a Shopkeeper, with a Capital S. Oh, not everyone was in the village, as there were farmers and ranchers and such that lived on the outside of the village, but the village itself, well... the village was an unusual place. That, however, is not what this story is about. This story is about a time when the village was quite small, and the lands around it were very dangerous. You see... there used to be dragons there.
Many years before the first man found the little valley, there were hundreds of dragons, all whirly flying around, high, high in the sky, and crabbily calling out to and challenging each other as they flew around doing their dragony business. They were the kings of their world, of this little valley, and they were very proud and very jealous of each other's territory.
What this meant is that every so often there would be a big battle, where all sorts of nasty things happened with dragons flying around and gnashing of beaks and teeth and claws snapping and tails a lashing. There were quite a bit fewer dragons flying around after one of those battles let me tell you.
It was so bad that, in a very short time (only a hundred years, or so), there were only 2 dragons left.
They were the meanest, toughest, most dragony dragons there were that have ever lived. They would sit, one on each mountaintop, and throw insults at each other and be just generally as mean to each other as they possibly could. What sort of insults did they say? Now, gentle readers, they were not the sort of talk that gentle folk should hear, and besides, I don't speak dragon. I couldn't tell you if I wanted to. And I wouldn't even if I did.
These two dragons kept being angry at each other for years and years and even more years than that. They were angry though the days when the first man came to the valley, washed up on the shore like some piece of driftwood. They were angry at each other when the first Shopkeeper showed up with his gaily painted boat and smoking smokestack. They were angry at each other when the first family showed up, to till the fields and turn the land. Needless to say, these were two angry dragons.
It came to pass, then, as it always does, that one dragon decided he had had enough. That it was time to be over and done with. So he called out the dragon's challenge, and flew up into the clouds. The other dragon, hearing the dragon's challenge, became outraged and flew to answer the challenge. This would decide it then. Who would be final King of the Dragons, with a capital K. It would prove, once and for all, who was rightfully King and who was rightfully dead.
The villagers far below gathered to watch the battle. To their eyes, the dragons started out as tiny, tiny dragon winged specks, floating high, high in the sky, wheeling and darting at each other, spinning together and then roaring apart with a fearsome roar and cry.
Far in the sky, with claw and tooth, deadly tails lashing out and darting back, the dragons fought a horrible fight. Tears and rends in their wings forced them to fly lower and lower until they were barely above the tops of the trees. The villagers, frightened by the sights and sounds, ran and hid in their shops, and their houses. It was terrible, with dragon blood splashing down onto the earth, and dragon blood is terrible in itself, as it burns bright blue upon contact with whatever it touches. It was terrible in that the grass burned and wilted, and the water steamed when the dragon's flew overhead.
Everyone ran and hid, except for one small girl, who was transfixed by the battle and cried out "NO!", whenever it seemed that one of the dragons or the other had dealt the last final strike. She cried tears and she felt their pain and she just couldn't move away and NOT watch the war, the battle, the fight. Every claw slash, every tooth bite would cause more and more tears to stream down her face, her hands were tangled in her long blonde hair and she simply could not, could not, and could not turn away.
Harder and harder, the dragons fought. More and more of the blood splashed down upon the earth scorching the ground and burning the water. Some of the buildings on the outside of the Village caught fire and burned, but none of the Shops caught fire, because, as we know, they were magical.
Eventually the dragons crashed down onto the earth, near the where the river ran and near where the tiny boats were tied to simple wooden piers. The dragons great sharp claws scored the ground, and their snapping jaws crashed and tore into each other.
The little blonde girl drew closer and closer until she was no more than two cart lengths away. Horrible was the sight, and terrible was the noise, but she still she stood, as still as a grain of sand, and her tears mingled with the blood on the ground.
With a great roar, one of the dragons seized the neck of the other and twisted, with a capital T, as hard as it could until with a tremendous SNAP, the other dragon fell limp and dead.
The last living dragon lifted his head and roared forth a mighty roar, letting the world know who was King and who was dead. He stood to rise, but couldn't. So much blood had been lost and so much damage had been done, he simply, plainly couldn't stand or crawl or fly or do anything at all. He was dying as well from the wounds he had been given. With a hiss and a shudder, he fell back to the ground, head upon his great paws and eyes closed. There he lay, and there he suffered.
The little girl edged closer to where the great beast lay. "Dragon?", she said, quietly, softly, so soft that the falling of a dandelion seed made more noise.
The dragon gave no response. She waited, and waited and waited. "Dragon?" she asked again, a bit louder, but still softer than the babbling of the river nearby. The dragon opened one of his eyes and flicked a look at the girl. Then he closed his eye and went back to the wherever he his brain had taken him, waiting to die.
The girl crept closer, only a few inches, not too close, but closer. "Dragon?", she tried again. Her voice was louder than the river this time, and carried with it the softness that only little children can do. The dragon opened one great terrible eye again and turned his head ever so slightly as to look at the girl. And that was all he did, just look.
The girl looked up at the dragon's one great terrible eye, and asked, "Does it hurt much?"
The dragon huffed out a great cloud of blue grayish steam and said, "Does it hurt much? Does fighting tooth and claw to the death, to find victory in battle, to have been wounded to the point of not being able to fly triumphantly away hurt much? No, antling (for that was what they thought of humans), it does not hurt much."
"These wounds are fatal," the dragon said, in a deep voice that sounded like a ton of small stones running down a long metal flume, "and I know that I'm going to die. It is a good thing, because I am the last one, the King of the Dragons, and it is something that makes my dragon's heart soar!" The dragon's excitement lived only briefly, and he coughed greatly with a heavy and liquid sound, his eyes squished shut in pain that was obvious and strong.
When he had regained himself, from wherever he had gone, the dragon inhaled painfully and continued. "I only speak to you because I know that I am King, and I know that I am dying. It is nothing to me that I speak to you. does it hurt? No, little antling, it does not hurt as much as it feels very good to be the King of the Dragons"
"No", said the little girl, carefully edging closer, so that she could feel the heat radiating off the great beast, but not so close that the dragon could snap her up like a noonday snack.
"No, dragon," she repeated. "What I meant was, does it hurt to be alone? To be the last of your kind, to know that you are King of the Dragons, but to be the very last dragon there is? Does that hurt?"
The dragon opened his other great eye and gave the girl a hard look. He looked so very hard that the grass around her turned to glass and broke away. He looked so hard that the very air became like crystal and thick, but the little girl didn't notice at all. She just continued to gaze quietly at the dragon, her eyes big and still wet from crying.
The dragon huffed again, and was silent for a very long time. The little girl just waited and waited. After the sun had started to drop below the midpoint, the dragon once again huffed and said "I don't know," he said, a bit grumpily, which for a dragon was pretty fearsome. "I don't know, little ant. I've never thought about it."
The little girl came closer, almost close enough to touch, but still far enough to run away and said, "I'm sure it must hurt very much to be so alone, to not have anyone nearby when you... when you... it must be very sad." Another tear ran from the corner of her blue eye, down her nose and dripped from the pert little nose-end.
"Dragons don't feel sadness, dragons are supposed to be alone", said the dragon, huffing up and trying to look his dragon proudest. "Dragons are used to being alone when they..." he stopped and closed his eyes. "Go away, little ant. It is not safe here. I may just decide to eat you as look at you."
"I'll go away, dragon," the little girl said and she turned away. She walked a a few steps, just a little teeny bit, and then turned back. She shook her fingers at the dragon and said, in the exact same tone she had heard her mother use many times, "but I'll be back again tomorrow". She left the dragon where he lay, and she left the dragon things to wonder and ponder about, hugely and largely, as only dragons can.
The dragon spent a very hard night lying on the ground near the docks. His many wounds bled freely and the blood left smoking trails on the ground where he lay. His fitful dreams were full of darkness and rocks and he could not rest at all. He missed his bed of mountain snow, and he missed his breakfasts of mountain rabbit, mountain goat, and mountain... mountain whatever happened to be the catch of the day. Though he told the little girl that he did not hurt, he did indeed, hurt quite a bit! Indeed he did. Muscle and bone had been torn, flesh and scales had been ripped, and blood had been spilled. The dragon hurt quite a bit, and the dragon knew he was going to die.
The little girl, whose name was Kajira (a lovely name, thought her mother, for a lovely girl), had gone home that night to a million kazillion questions from her parents. However, not a single one of the questions involved staying away from the dragon, because her parents both knew Kajira was a bit... unusual. The questions were more like "What did you two talk about?", and "Is he in pain?", and "What did he smell like?" The last was from her older brother, because brothers are always interested in the icky parts of life. Kajira told her parents what she and the dragon had talked about, how sad she thought he was, and that she was sure he was really and truly a good dragon, all in all.
Now, it may seem odd to you, being where you are, out there where dragons hide so very well it is almost as if they aren't there at all, that a little girl and a dragon may converse. And so it would have seemed odd to Kajira's parents, had they not known their daughter was unusual from the beginning. She had a gift, they said, to be able to talk to any animal, any animal at all, and have them talk back. It is one thing to talk to an animal. Folks do it all the time, you see. But rare it is for the animal to talk back, and rarer still for a conversation to take place.
Kajira had been talking to animals since the very day she was born, and the first animal she spoke to was a bird that had lighted on the windowsill to whistle at the new born. Little newborn Kajira, still a babe wrapped in her birthing clothes, whistled back and giggled. She didn't share the joke with anyone other than the bird, because Kajira hadn't learned to speak human yet.
So well known was her gift throughout the village, that no one thought it odd that she would be talking to the dragon. They thought it might be a tad bit dangerous, and possibly a great lot dangerous, what with dragon teeth and claw and tail, but they certainly did not think the talking part was odd in the slightest, not the very least. At least not for Kajira.
It was early in the morning, with the sun shining so incredibly bright and the wind blowing little dandelion fuzz all around, that Kajira packed a little basket full of red apples, and another basket full of bright and merry flowers. Kissing her sleeping parents on each of their sleeping cheeks, Kajira headed out the door and straight down to the dragon. She sat there, in the same spot she had sat before and waited.
While she waited, and she was prepared to wait a long time, she ate an apple, red and juicy. The dragon, opening one eye, watched her with a disdainful, but curious interest.
Kajira took one long bite from her apple and watched the dragon back. The Dragon watched her. It took a long time to chew that bite, because it was a very long and very big bite. She chewed it with relish and a single drop of apple juice ran down her chin, to drop, falling onto the ground.
Kajira slowly swallowed, never taking her eyes off the dragon. Breaking the silence between them with a very small sound for a very large throat, the dragon cleared his throat. "Arumph", he said. Kajira stopped chewing and waited. When nothing further came, she took another long bite from the apple and resumed her slow process of chewing.
"Arumph," arumphed the dragon again. This time it carried the hint, the slightest of hint, that the arumph might have been the tiniest of questions.
Kajira stopped chewing again, swallowed a very big bite and asked "Yes?"
"Not that it really matters much to me at all," said the dragon in a way that anybody else might have though was the dragon talking to himself, "but what is that you are eating?"
Kajira raised one small eyebrow, a trick she also learned from her mother, and took a much smaller bite. After chewing politely and swallowing, she said with the sound of surprise, "Why dragon, this is an apple. Have you not seen an apple before?"
"No," the dragon snorted, "I have never seen an apple. What sort of beast is it, it has no legs, it has no head, and it looks like it bleeds clear blood. It must be a very strange beast indeed." The dragon grimaced harshly. "Unnggg," he said.
Kajira's face suddenly wore an expression of concern. "Are you all right?"
"Besides dying? Yes, antling, I am as fine as I can possibly be. What is an apple?" the dragon shifted his position just a bit, and the look of pain eased from his enormous face just a bit.
"An apple," she began, using a voice she had learned from her father, "is a fruit. It is not a beast. It is not something that you hunt and kill. It grows on a tree, and is quite delicious. Would you like to have one? I have many here." She showed the dragon her basket full of red apples and pushed it towards him, just a little.
"How is it that you can eat something that is not a beast, that does not bleed? How do you get the joy of the hunt, of the chase? What is the pleasure in eating something that does not struggle?"
"Oh dragon", she cried, "Why would I find pleasure in the hunting and killing of an animal? This apple comes from a tree that my father planted and grew with his own hands. It traveled from far away, and my mother carried it as seeds in her apron pocket all the way from her home when she was a child. This apple came from a lot of work, from the sweat and the dirt of the land, as my father says. This apple carries with it all that makes my father and my mother who they are, and with every bite I can feel their love for me"
Now, dear reader, you might be wondering how such a little girl can be speaking so large, as if she was an adult. This is one of the gifts and one of the curses that the BeastSpeakers carried. Because of the connection to every animal on the planet, they were often forced to grow up, facing death and life, birth and destruction on a daily basis. They lived many lifetimes every day of their lives, living lifetimes through all of the animal minds that they touched and spoke to. Indeed, it made her much, much older than her days, and indeed, it also made her much, much, much lonelier. Still, she was a very brave little girl, Kajira was, and recognized that sometimes life is just life, and is dealt with best with your chin up, your eyes forward.
"But I am a dragon!" One sharp dragon eyebrow raised high. "I cannot eat just any old thing, and most definitely not something that doesn't bleat, moo or fight back! It just wouldn't be right, it just wouldn't be... dragonish."
"Piffle", Kajira piffled and she waved one small hand in the air, brushing the dragon's words away. "You are the last dragon, who better to decide what is dragonish and what isn't" She plucked a very large, very red apple from the basket. "I think you should try one."
"I would just as soon eat you, little antling", he said with disdain and a bit of humor, which Kajira did indeed notice.
Kajira stood up with her hands on her hips and faced the dragon squarely. "Dragon," she said, "my name is Kajira, not antling, if you please. And my race is human, not antling, besides."
"What matters it to me what your name is, antling?" The dragon said, with a stubborn tone. "I am a dragon, the last dragon, and I am dying. Who better to decide what I call you and your tiny race?"
"Oh. I'm very sorry for that, indeed," Kajira said, a bit stiffly and with just a trace of childlike anger. "In that case, I will leave you to your misery, Sir Dragon. Good day." With that, she gathered up her basket of apples and her basket of flowers and turned to move down the path, away from the dragon.
"BUT," the dragon interjected after arumphing a very large arumph, "if it pleases you, then I will use that name for you."
Kajira turned back, being very careful not to smile no matter how much she wanted to. "And I am not an antling," she said.
The dragon sighed a very large dragonish sigh and said "Very well...."
Kajira came back down the path and stood before the dragon, closer than she had been before. "And what is your name, dragon. I can't go around calling you dragon all the time, and I can't just call you any old name, now can I?"
"My name is Gladure, ant... Kajira"
"It is very nice to meet you, Gladure." Kajira gave a curtsey and continued, "Kajira means sacrifice. My mother tells me she named me that simply because she liked the sound of it, but I kind of think that she wanted a deeper meaning to it. What does your name mean?"
The dragon thought about it for a while and then replied "Gladure means Radiant One. My egg mother and father named me thus so that I would grow into the name. Radiant One means King"
Kajira held an apple out to Gladure. "Here, eat this." She pushed it past the dragon's front teeth and onto his tongue. This might sound like a very icky thing to have done, but Kajira had spent most of her life nursing animals to health, and she was used to icky things. "It seems pretty useless to me to be King, if you are King of nothing at all."
Gladure swallowed quickly, without chewing. "To be King is to be King. It does not matter if you are King of yourself, or King of all there is. This apple has no taste."
"That's because you didn't chew it, silly. Here, try another one." Kajira put another apple into the dragon's mouth. "Now chew it, don't just swallow it. It's not a sheep, you know," she said in her best motherly sounding voice.
Gladure moved the apple between two of his great teeth and with a crunch, exploded the apple into his mouth. His eyes opened a bit wider, and snorted a small sort of surprise. "So that's an apple. I must say, I don't know what I expected, but I do think you made far too much of such a little thing." Still, he swallowed the apple and quietly asked, "Can I have another?"
"Of course you may," said Kajira. Her large smile almost crept out between her lips. She settled for her small polite smile instead.
And that was how they spent that whole day, eating apples and making small talk about nothing at all. Great terrible dragon and small blonde haired girl, talking. Talking about the village and about Kajira's family and about gliding on the currents and about living in a cave. Gladure listened and learned about talking to small animals and life as a human, and Kajira listened and learned about what it is like to be a dragon sitting on a mountain top.
And this is how we shall leave them, today, beloveds. I do not want to leave, but here are errands to run, and things to see, and people to speak with. As the story unfolds this evening, I will write more.
StoryTeller
