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Chapter Six

Kylah stroked my neck for a little while as she held my head against her chest. Her warmth was comforting, and so were her arms encircling my neck. How long has it been since someone had held me like that? Years and years, at least, and never a human. But the touch was no less comforting at that moment just because she wasn't a dragon. I was starting to think my sinking ship idea was right. We were both adrift in a cold sea and clinging to whatever tiny fragment of hope floated our way.

Eventually we pulled away from each other, and we each looked away, sharing a moment of silence as awkward as the last few moments had been comforting. I cleared my throat with a growl, and dragged a few unsheathed claws across the floor. Time to change the subject to something I was sure we could both agree on; food.

"So, I believe I promised you roasted meat today?" As if on cue, her stomach rumbled in a way which may have been quiet to her but was more then loud enough to be easily audible to a dragon's ears, and I smirked at her, swiveling my ears forward a little. "I'll take that to mean you're more then ready for some of that meat now."

She laughed, her face flushing just a little. "You'd be right. Let me find my boots."

"You can look through my collection and see if there's anything else you'd rather wear, if you like."

Seeing as how the last pair of boots she had was stolen, she was happy to take me up on the suggestion. For a few minutes she dug through crate and chest and trunk and made quite a mess of my floor with all the discarding clothing she tossed about. I say that as though I hadn't already made a mess of it with years of piling trophies and stolen goods and well, junk all over the place. She finally located a few pairs of shoes and boots down in the bottom of one of the trunk, and pulled out a pair that looked about her size. She compared one to her foot, and then pulled it on.

"It's not quite a perfect fit," she said, bending over to lace it up, and providing me a view of her curvy rump pressed against her breeches that was rather surprisingly alluring. Hell, had it been so long since I'd been with a female that I was looking at the haunches of humans now? I glanced away, muzzle flushed slightly, when she went on. "But it's better then my last pair. They're just a little big is all, not bad at all."

She retrieved the other boot and laced it up as well, and then returned to me. Glancing down at the haphazard sprawl of multihued clothing around her feet, she laughed. "Sorry about the mess. I'll clean it up later."

I snorted. "Sure you will. Don't worry about it, my home was hardly a well defended bastion of neatness before you arrived."

Kylah reached out and rubbed my nose, which made me purr just a little. "True. Are you blushing again?"

"No," I lied through my teeth. "Just a little warm."

"Oh, I thought maybe you were embarrassed about looking at me when I was bent over," she said with a sly smirk and a casual wave of her hand. "Anyway, shall we go?"

If I wasn't embarrassed about it before, I certainly was now! And like an inexperienced youngling getting caught peaking under a female's tail, rather then say something smooth to make it seem like a misunderstanding, I may as well have opened my muzzle and shoved my paw right into it. "How'd you know I was looking?"

Vraal, you are one smooth old lizard.

Kylah just laughed at me and patted my head. "I'd say because you're a man, but you're not. You're a dragon. Though, we have already established you were male. I just thought I saw you turn your head away real fast, and when I saw you blushing I took a guess. Shall we go?"

"By all means," I said, eager to end this conversation then and there. It wasn't that I felt like an odd pervert or anything, I just felt more then a little awkward getting caught peeking at a human female's rump! Granted, she had just sort of bent over in front of me, and I was just a little curious, I suppose. I lay myself down on the ground, and lowered my wings for her. "You may as well climb up now, since I'm going to have to fly you down into the valley anyway. But no grabbing my ear this time."

"I'll do my best."

This time she had a little more ease climbing onto my back then she had the day before. It took only two attempts, and she not only managed to avoid yanking and stretching my sensitive ear, but she avoided digging her nails into my wing joint this time. Once she was settled against my scaled back with a leg on either side of me I rose back up and started out of my home. Walking at my normal pace, the walk up the tunnel that lead to the ledge didn't seem so long as it did when I'd been walking slowly to allow her to easily keep up.

"Mind the slime," she playfully reminded me, patting my neck.

"Yes, thank you, I'll try and keep that in mind."

As we neared the ledge, she rubbed her upper arms and shivered against my back. "It's a little cold up here, isn't it. I hadn't realized how much warmer your main chambers are until just now."

She was right about that. Despite my distaste for the rather damp confines in which I made my home, and my general bitterness at being forced to hide myself from the world for my very survival, I did like one aspect of living deep inside a mountain. The temperature remained nearly constant throughout the year. In the hottest days of summer, it was a little cool, and in the bitter cold of the mountain winters, it was always a little bit warm. Near the end of the tunnel where the chill outside winds swirled about my ledge and snaked their way inside, the cold began to creep up on me. She clearly felt it first, and I was probably more used to it anyway. But I soon felt it washing across my scales, and as the cool breeze tickled my wings with icy fingers, I couldn't help but shiver beneath her as well, my scales clicking together a little. Suddenly her weight against my back was not nearly as obvious as her warmth pressed against me, and around the base of my neck when she pulled her legs in tightly.

"It's cute when you shiver! Your scales make this little rattling, clicking noise sometimes."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes a little bit at the idea of that being "cute", and glanced back at her, a few of my sharp teeth glinting in the sun as I smirked, and stepped out onto the ledge. "If you say so. Now hold on, I'm going to jump off this ledge and while I'm not going to dive like I usually would, I am going to fall a little before I catch myself. I don't want to have to fold my wings and chase after you if you fall off of me."

Kylah shivered again, and this time with better reason then cold air. I was serious about that as well, she wasn't exactly secured against my back after all. I let her get a good grip around my neck, and when she was ready, I jumped off the ledge. Just as I suspected, she immediately rose off my back as I fell away beneath her, her hands jerking against my throat. Before she even had a chance to finish screaming she'd already come back down against me, almost hard enough to bruise my shoulders. Enough so that I hoped the rest of the flight down and the eventual flight back up wouldn't be too uncomfortable for her.

Once I'd spread my wings and stopped my descent, I basically just glided the rest of the way down. I pumped my wings now and then to help control my descent, and keep myself from gliding too swiftly. I only flared my sails a few times to catch a warm current, using to keep myself aloft just a little longer until I'd neared the part of the valley I planned to set her down in. I dipped my right wing, and circled around a tall grove of aspens and some rather hardy lower mountain oaks, both just recently changing from summer greens to autumn yellows and reds. I circled a few times, dropping a little lower each time, until I finally touched my hind paws down against the soft grass. My front paws were next and I trotted to a stop, then dropped to my belly so that she could dismount.

She hopped off me, wobbling a little before she got her balance. She ran her hands back through her hair, once again blown totally out of any sort of order by the winds that had whipped around her throughout the descent. After a moment, she gave a frustrated sigh and gave up trying to make any sort of sense out of tangled dark brown locks, and then gave me a sheepish smile. "You weren't kidding about that drop."

"No, I wasn't." I looked around the area a little. "How's this? I figured you could wait here while I go and find you some meat to cook."

Kylah turned in a slow circle and surveyed the area. It was a relatively flat, grassy area near the center of the meadow, and the thick green grasses were dotted with late season wild flowers. The grove of trees I'd set her down at the edge of stretched onward for quite a ways, almost forming a miniature forest of it's on. A shallow, winding stream wove it's way through the grass and eventually, the trees, forming a larger and relatively deep, clear pool where a family of beavers had long ago dammed up the stream just before it entered the forest. The beavers were long gone, but their dam and it's tiny lake remained. I figured she had sun to warm herself, and shade if she got too warm, plus water to drink or bathe in.

"Perfect" she smiled, and patted my nose.

I nuzzled her palm a little, and then backed away to make room to take off. "Good. I'll be back when I find us some food, then."

Though I had already shown her I could take off from a standing position, I preferred a good, running start. I could leapt higher into the air that way, and get a little more momentum with my take off. So once she was out of the way, I bound a good half dozen steps forward, and then leapt as hard as I could. My gray tipped wings caught the air, and in a few beats of my heart I was already high above her.

I spiraled as I ascended, higher and higher into the sky and covering more and more ground. Once I was up high enough to get a good look at the area below me, I began to survey it for prey. There had always been a good supply of game in our valley, and back when there was a clan here to share it with me, it had kept us fed. It hadn't always kept us well fed, but there was usually enough to go around. The few times we'd nearly depleted it had forced dragons to look elsewhere for food, and that rarely ended well. Then again, the depletion of game and forests by humanity is part of what forced the last of us to seek refuge in such an insolated area to begin with.

If there was one small bright spot in the vast darkness that was my isolated life, it was that the game reserves had plenty of time to mount a come back, and now there was far more prey in the valley then I could ever eat by myself. I wasn't sure how much she could eat, but when I spotted one of several herds of reddish brown furred deer that roamed my meadow, I assumed a single deer haunch would probably fill her belly. If not, I could give her the rest of the deer and go hunt another for myself.

As I circled the herd, keeping my shadow just out of their line of sight, I watched them graze for a little bit. They looked almost majestic, slowly and calmly moving along the valley, lowering their heads now and then to feast on the still-green grass that would soon be covered with snow. Though, they were not as majestic as a dragon in full hunting dive! As I watched them, my belly rumbled, my fire bile gland dribbled it's potent liquids against my tongue, and my heart began to thud in my chest.

I felt my blood pounding through my body, pulsing through my outstretched wings, beating within the minor-heart buried near the base of my tail, and throughout the rest of my body as the thrill of the hunt took hold. I had already picked out my target, a young doe probably coming up on her first full season, which ironically enough, would also be her only season. She walked with an odd limp, either she'd been born with it or had injured herself early on in a way that would never quite heal. She lagged behind the rest of the herd, and it was time to thin her out.

I circled around one last time focusing just on her, and then I folded my wings and dove. As soon as they heard the wind whistling over my body they scattered. The sound of a diving dragon had long been ingrained in the herds here, and I imagined it was a sound they would hear in their nightmares long after I was gone. But the injured female couldn't scatter long enough, and even as the rest of the deer bolted away from my shadow, she found herself stuck with in it.

I flared my wings and pulled up at the last possible moment, swooping out across the ground mere leg-lengths from carpet of green grass and blue flowers that whizzed by beneath me. Extending my talons, I lashed out with both front legs and sunk my claws into the hapless deer. She mewled in pain and fear as I hoisted her off the ground, struggling and futilely kicking her hooves. I dipped a wing just a little, pivoting in the air towards a nearby tree, and though I spun away from it at the last moment, I hurled the deer headfirst into it's sturdy trunk. Her neck and skull broke much easier then the wood, and she fell in a lifeless heap as I lazily circled the tree. No need for her experience any more pain or fear then necessary.

As I landed and felt the soft grass beneath my bloodied paws, I tipped my head back and gave a victorious roar. Though it had been a long time since there'd been anyone to answer me, I still enjoyed giving a loud roar at the end of a successful hunt. With the way it echoed across the valley I was sure Kylah heard it, and I hope she didn't think it meant I was angry with her. Normally I'd eat my kill then and there, feasting on the meat while it was still steaming and before the blood even had a chance to cool, but for once I had someone else to feed.

So after resting my wings for just a moment, and letting my thudding heart calm down, I sank my claws back into the already bloodied carcass and took back to the skies. With a destination in mind I didn't need to spend extra time circling and searching for prey. Instead I just winged my way swiftly back to the grove of trees where I'd left Kylah.

As I neared the grove, I saw a little bit of gray smoke rising and lazily coiling in the cold air, hanging above the grove like a rain cloud still struggling to gather enough strength to become a storm. Fire flickered on the ground, and Kylah crouched near it, prodding it with a stick. She'd been busy while I was gone, gathering wood and building a fire. I had no idea how she'd built the fire, but she clearly had a reliable method.

I dropped the deer nearby with a thudding crunch that was a little more sickening then I'd intended, and soon settled down onto the grass as well. I walked over, beaming and quite proud of myself for my good kill. I hadn't been able to show off my hunting skills in a long time, and I couldn't help but perk my ears and flare up all my crests and spines in pride. I pointed to the carcass with a paw, grinning. "Breakfast!"

Kylah looked back and forth between the dead deer and me a few times, and finally burst out laughing. "Well don't you just look like the cat who finally caught the canary!"

I blinked in momentary confusion, lowering my crests back against my head a little. "That's a deer, not a canary..."

"It's an expression, silly dragon," she said, still laughing. "Is that all for me?"

I looked back at the deer, my muzzle twisting up into a dubious grimace. If she could eat that whole thing, I'd have to go and catch another. Then again, the deer wasn't much smaller then she was! Surely she was joking. "If you really want it all...I was planning to split it up."

"That's good, because I don't think I could eat that whole deer in a week. You'll have to put the rest of it in that foul smelling little storage chamber of yours."

I rolled my eyes, and lowered my head to sink my teeth into the deer's leg. I dragged it over towards the fire, and spat it out when I felt the heat of the flames starting to warm my scales. "It is not foul smelling." Alright, perhaps it did smell a little bad, but I wasn't going to admit that. "It is the scent of well aged meat."

"It's the scent of rotten meat," she said with a smile, putting her hands on her hips. She looked down at the deer a moment, then patted her hip, and grimaced. "Damn. I keep forgetting I don't even have my knives anymore. I used to always carry knives...I should have brought that sword of yours down here to skin this deer with."

"Hmmph." I snorted, and rolled the deer onto it's back. With a single claw, I sliced through the hide along her belly, near her hind legs, and then up towards her throat. Still warm blood ran steaming into the air, though without the beating of her heart, it was only the blood that had settled since I'd dropped her. "I can do anything I knife can."

"Then you should have started your incision a little further back."

I lowered my eye ridges a little as I glared at her playfully smirking face. "I'm not making a blanket out of her. If I was alone, I'd just eat her. Which part do you want? A hind leg?"

"I can't eat all that. Though I could roast it all and eat the rest later, I think."

"Leg it is." I pressed one paw against the deer's bloodied belly, holding the carcass down, and with the other I gripped the hind as high up as I could get my paw around. I wrenched it out to the side further then the hind legs of deer and dragons were meant to flex, and popped the joint. Twisting it around and back and forth a little, I was soon snapping tendons and tearing flesh, and eventually breaking bones. I finally yanked on the nearly freed leg, and tore the entire limb away. Blood ran and covered the ground and dripped from the severed haunch I tried to hand her. "Here you are."

Kylah made a disgusted face, scrunching up her lips and sucking in her cheeks as though she'd just taken a big bite out of the sourest fruit she'd ever tasted. "That was...a little disgusting. Did you have to do it like that?"

Disgusting or not, she did not hesitate to take the deer haunch from me, and take it over to the fire. She seemed to strain a little with the weight of it, but not so much that she looked as though she needed, or wanted any help. She took it to the fire, and worked to singe off all the fur she could, blackening some of the skin a little in the process. When the fur was singed away and the outside of the skin and meat was seared, she moved it back a little and lay it down across several flat rocks among the many that she'd stacked up in a large circle around the fire.

"I'm going to have to teach you how to cut meat," she said, shaking her head and laughing a little. "I thought you were going to cut me some strips of meat from it's haunch, not give me the entire leg! Next time I'll be sure to bring something sharp from that little collection you have up there, and I'll cut it down to size."

"It's always something with you humans," I muttered as I lay down in front of the bloodied deer, though I meant it playfully enough. I waved a fore paw in the air, twisting my voice to as high and nasally a tone as I could, trying to imitate a human's voice. "Eww, dragons, they're evil! They steal all our game, they rape all our women, and eat all our virgins! They burn down our villages. Oh, sure, he brought me a whole deer to eat, but he's a dragon so he didn't bring me a deer in the right way! It's not enough he brings me food, cause he doesn't bring it to me the right way...cause he's a big dumb evil dragon!"

I was glad to see that somewhere along the way, my playful rant had reduced her to a fit of laughter. As her deer sizzled on the fire-heated stones, she held her belly as she sat down, trying not to fall over in laughter. When she finally had enough breath to speak, she gave me a playful glare, mirth glittering in her emerald eyes. "We do not sound like that."

"You most certainly do. Your species all sound like hatchlings with congested muzzles."

"Oh? Well, if the rest of the dragons sound like you, your voices all sound like big growly belches!"

That made me laugh, as well. "We do not. We sound like thunder, echoing across the valleys. I was going to say you were the only human with a pleasing voice, but now I'm not going too."

"You think I have a pleasing voice?"

I wasn't sure I wanted to answer that now. In truth, I did, and it surprised me to realize it. She was far from the grating tone I'd adopted to imitate her people. Instead, her voice had a soft, musical quality to it that I found quite pleasing. But now, I wasn't about to admit it. To do so would be to admit defeat in the little game we seemed to have adopted.

"Your deer is burning."

"Hmm?" She glanced down to see that the thick end of the haunch, where I'd ripped it from the animals body, had gotten a little too close to the flame. It was now not only charred, but literally on fire. "Oh, balls!" She quickly grabbed it by the hoof, still cool as it was far from the flames, and tugged it a little further away, then turned it to start to cook the other side against the hot stones.

Her little outburst made me laugh again. That wasn't really something I would have expected from a human woman. "No, no balls I'm afraid. If you wanted a buck you should have said so."

"Hush dragon," she said, still fiddling with the deer. "Or it'll be your balls again."

I just laughed to myself, and settled in for my own breakfast. Unlike her, I wasn't the least bit concerned about cooking it, or skinning it! Instead I just bite deep into the flesh along it's back, near the still remaining haunch. My teeth sunk easily through the furred hide, and while I wasn't too keen on eating the fur, fire bile would help to digest the worst of it. Though once I had gulped down enough fresh meat to ease the ache in my belly, I peeled away a little of the fur to expose more of the bloodied flesh beneath, I enjoyed the fattiness of the hide, but didn't like the feel of the fur in my teeth. I suppose there was one thing to say about fire and food, seared skin became delightfully crispy.

I feasted on the deer's hind leg, and all the muscles along it's back and shoulders before I cracked upon it's ribs and sternum, and opened it's abdomen to feast on it's entrails. The belly and bowels I wasn't too keen on; aside from the obvious reasons pertaining to the lower bowels the stomach of deer tasted far too much like sour grass even when empty to be enjoyable to me. When food was scarce it was different and everything would be eaten, but now, alone, I left the most distasteful parts for the scavengers. They would not go waste.

Kylah glanced over at me now and then, and when she saw me slowly, and admittedly messily devouring the deer's liver, she made a face, and laughed. "You are the messiest eater I have ever seen. You've got blood all over your face already! I swear if I didn't know better I'd think you just shoved your whole face inside that deer."

She must not have been watching me very closely, because that was pretty close to what I'd done. "I should have thought you'd be more put off by the fact I was eating it's entrails then the blood I got on myself in the process."

She shrugged, and shook her head. "Not at all. I butchered plenty of sheep back home, and we always ate everything we could. We'd make pies from the kidneys and dice up the heart and liver, and stuff them along with some herbs and some fruits into the stomach and bake it all. It was delicious."

I licked my muzzle at that idea, wiping a little of the blood away. Right before I lowered my head to dig out another morsel, and coated my snout with crimson once more. "That sounds delightful, actually. I didn't know you humans ever made anything good to eat."

"Everything we make is good! If you'd like, I'm sure I could make something you'd enjoy. Give you a little taste of humanity you'd appreciate for once."

"Such as?" I asked, licking my muzzle again. From what I could see, my black and gray tinged muzzle had been stained almost completely crimson, as had my paws. And I knew plenty of that blood was dribbling down my throat as well. Nothing a bath in the nearby beaver pond wouldn't cure. Though I could smell little else then the blood of prey right now, somehow the scents of cooking venison were making their way into my nose, and I had to admit, it smelled good enough to make me wonder what else these humans might do with their food.

"Oh, I don't know yet. It was just a whim. But with all the stuff you've got hidden away up there in your house, I'm sure I can think of something. We'll have to see if you have any cook ware hidden in there. Even if you don't have any pots and pans, I'll make a spit, and I can harvest some berries and herbs and things in this valley, and use some of that old wine sitting up there. I could stuff a deer or a wild boar or anything, really, or marinate it, roast it in the spit. I think you'll enjoy it."

Though I only knew half the words she just used, somehow it made my belly rumble even though it was already full, and caused my fire bile gland to act up just a bit more then it already had. "That all sounds quite delicious."

"Good! It'll give me something to do while I'm stuck up here with a boring old dragon." She shot me a sidelong smirk to let me know she was joking.

I snorted anyway, flaring my center crest and flicking my tail. "As if I'm making you stay! You're hardly some kidnapped princess."

"And you're hardly a pleasant eater!" She stuck her tongue out at me.

Though it was a very human gesture, I found myself emulating it, opening my muzzle and letting my tongue protrude at her. It made her laugh, and though I still wasn't exactly sure why, that made me smile. I liked it when she laughed.

I went back to my meal, and as I finished off what was left of the deer, she picked up a couple rocks she'd collected earlier and began to hit them together. I wasn't sure what she was doing, at least not at first. I knew the rocks she was using, gray and white granite with black and gold flecks, and shiny, glossy black obsidian. She kept striking the obsidian with the granite at angles that seemed to be awfully precise. If nothing else, she spent an awfully long time studying the obsidian between each strike. I didn't pay her too much attention until I'd finished my meal, and only when I was done, and she seemed satisfied with her work did I realize what she'd done.

She dropped the lump of granite, and held up the black stone in the sunlight to examine it from a few different angles. I finally realized that she'd transformed a relatively mundane lump of black stone into what looked like a very sharp edged, if primitive, knife. She kept one side fat and rounded to fit in her hand, and the other side was now slightly carved, and very sharp looking.

"Is that half as sharp as it looks?"

She smiled at me. "Let's find out." She drew the blade along the top of the nearly cooked deer, and the flesh parted around the stone like a blossoming flower, spreading out and flopping open, clear, cooked juices running out. "I'd say it's pretty sharp."

"How did you do that?"

"Easy. I just used the harder stone to chip away at the more fragile stone until I had a nice, sharp edge."

I grunted, tilting my head a little. I had to admit, I was impressed. "Something else you learned in your village?"

"Yeah. My father taught me when I was young. He wanted to make sure that before I went hunting, I was ready to survive in the wilderness if I had too. We might not always have our own weapons or even knives, so we all learned how to fashion weapons or tools from what we could find in the world around us."

"Very impressive," I offered, though I had to wonder why if she was that good at survival, she was soon interested in coming back to stay with me. I supposed all the survival tools and skills in the world wouldn't do her any good if one of those soldiers found her and put an arrow in her heart.

"Thank you," she replied with a smile, and began to cut herself slices of venison, careful not to burn her fingers.

I was quite impressed by the sharpness of the obsidian knife she'd made herself. I knew well enough that humans were very good at crafting tools, armor, and weapons, and that their well honed steel could certainly pierce our scales. The gray scars that marked my black scales here and there were proof enough of that. But those weapons took lots and lots of work to forge, and Kylah had just made this little dagger in a matter of minutes while we'd been talking.

I shouldn't have been surprised, humans had always been ingenious little bastards.

Kylah sliced herself all the venison she could eat, and laid the long strips out on the heated rocks to sizzle a little more, and keep warm while she moved the rest of the leg of deer closer to the fire. The meat nearest the bone was not yet completely cooked, and she turned it over a few times, once again letting each side get seared against the hot stones. She turned it towards the fire a little more, cooking the last of the meat while she began to eat the strips that she'd already sliced off.

"I figure I could probably do a better job slicing all the meat away from the bone with a knife of my own then you could. Besides, I don't want your dirty old claws all over my food."

"Hey," I snorted, tilting my head to glare down at her as she playfully smirked. "My claws are not dirty! I bathed while you were sleeping this morning."

Kylah shrugged, thoughtfully gnawing on a strip of venison, a droplet of juice running down her chin before she wiped it off. "Be that as it may, that doesn't change the fact that you've been walking around on them ever since. They must be filthy by now."

That actually gave me pause. I had never really thought about that to be honest. I lifted one of my paws and stared at it. Was it really that dirty? At the moment it was too covered in deer blood for me to tell, so I licked the blood away from my paw pad. The pale gray skin beneath the blood certainly didn't look all that dirty.

"And now you've gone and licked all the dirt off. Dragons are gross."

I knew she was teasing me, so I thought I may as well tease her back. I made a show of cleaning my paws with my tongue, as I'd done time and time again after hunting. Blood was good! And good for you, so why not? I did not feel as though my paws were that dirty, and if dragons had been doing it for generations without a problem, why stop now? When I licked the last of the blood from my paw, I smirked at Kylah, showing my bloodied fangs, and she made a face.

"You're worse then a dog," she laughed. "At least you're not licking your privates."

That too, gave me pause. I peered down at myself. "Should I be?"

"No!" she said, laughing harder. "Especially not in front of me."

I shrugged my wings. "Suit yourself."

With a little work, tore away the other hind limb from the deer carcass, and soon gnawed away the remainder of the meat and all the rent tendons hanging from it. Kylah was trying to ignore my messy eating habits, and for once I wasn't trying to tease her. When the deer's femur was mostly bare, I set it down, and looked around for a relatively sharp edged rock. I found one that Kylah had put near the fire, it wasn't too hot and I picked it up. Then I pressed the sharper edge of the flat stone against the bone, and hit the top of it with my other paw. The stone cracked through the bone, shearing it in half with a wet crack. Kylah winced but kept watching, curious about my intentions.

I put the stone back, and lifted up the two halves of the bone, and showed her one of the wet, broken ends. A little reddish slightly gooey marrow was exposed inside the broken bone, and once I'd shown her what I was after, I turned the broken end towards my muzzle and started lapping at the sticky, fatty treat. I licked it up and then carefully suckled the bone to pull more of it out and into my mouth.

"Are you trying to make me sick?" Kylah asked, folding her arms but laughing a little more.

"Of course not. It's very good! You should try it."

"I've eaten marrow," she said. "But not raw!"

"It's better this way," I assured her and when the smaller end of the bone was empty, I turned to the larger section of femur, and began slurping on it as well.

"I'll take your word for it."

I still remembered the first time I even lapped marrow from a bone. It was a common treat for me when I'd been young, my mother and father would break open the largest bones of their kills for me and hold them while I lapped away at all the gelatinous goodness inside. The first time I'd ever had it was the first time they took me hunting with them, and while I had been too young to hunt myself, I got to watch them dance in the sky together, showing off for me as they sent the herd to scattering to pick out their prey. I got to watch both of them dive as one, hitting the herd from either side, and they each came up with deer. We feasted in the sun, and they showed me how to break the bones apart to get to the treats within. Then we all napped in the sun together, and everything seemed so simple, and peaceful.

I must have sighed a little, because Kylah suddenly sounded less concerned for my eating habits, and more concerned for my well being. "You alright, Vraal?"

I licked at the last of the marrow I could get at, and decided I was probably pressing my luck trying to get any more. My stomach was already stretched to near painful levels. I smiled at her, and nodded. "Yes, I'm fine, thank you. Just reminiscing about my parents."

"Oh," she said, and gave me a little wistful smile. She looked as though she was afraid of intruding on my memories, and worried about asking questions she shouldn't. "Are they..."

"Yes," I said softly. "They are. For quite a while now."

Kylah cast her eyes down, running her thumb against the edge of the glossy black knife she'd made herself. "So are mine."

Kylah reached up to her neck, only to realize the pendant I guessed she was searching for wasn't there. Thankfully, it was safe. The man who'd taken it from her was dead, and she'd taken it back to my home with me. After the bath she'd taken the previous night she'd wrapped it up in a spare blouse for safe keeping. When she remembered that, she smiled a little, and pulled the venison haunch away from the fire to start slicing the last of the meat away.

"Was it a good reminiscence?" she asked as she carved the meat.

"Yes," I said, pushing the bones away and laying down to sprawl out in the sun for a little while. I spread my gray tipped black wings out to warm, and lay my head down in the soft grass. "I was just thinking about the first time they took me hunting. I wasn't old enough to hunt myself yet, but I got to watch them do so. They worked together as a team, scattering the herds of prey and picking off the stragglers together. I remember thinking there couldn't possibly have been anything more graceful or beautiful then them as they hunted, their scales gleaming in the sunlight as they danced together in the morning air."

"That sounds like a great memory."

"It is," I said, smiling and picturing them in my mind.

It had been many years now since they'd shared the world of the living with me, and I suppose my memories of them had faded a little more then memories of Niara and my children had. But some of them were still vivid, still indelibly etched upon the canvas of my mind. The time I watched them hunt, the first time they took me flying, watching them paint each other for the feasts, and later doing my best attempt as a hatchling to paint them myself. One of the last such memories, happiness on their faces when they came to see our first egg. My father had been mostly scaled in black, like me, with dark blue highlights. My mother had been a very dark green, and I had inherited few of her colors, though as a youngling I had dark green highlights of my own that had faded with age. A few of them were again present on my daughter, but like me, they had already started to fade the last time I'd seen her, and the blues she inherited from her mother were becoming all the more present.

We came in all colors. Dragons, I mean. Colors of the earth and forest were quite common, greens and dark earthen browns, colors of the sky and water were common as well, and even more exotic colors. Dragons like me who seemed to be cut from the same pattern as the night itself were not totally uncommon, that I knew of, though my family line was the only one in our clan to have so much black in it. A dragon could be one color or many, and when dragons of different colors mated, the young could take after one parent or both, or even after their ancestry. It was said that there had once been many breeds of dragons, and that when we had ruled the world, it was common for dragons of similar colors and bloodlines to form clans together. But ever since we found ourselves on the losing side of history's great divide, we banded together where we could, and took mates where we found a chance to continue our species, or, if we were lucky as Niara and I had been, when we found love.

Whatever breeds and colors we might have once been, we were now a dwindling race of mixed breed mutts, not much different then common stray mongrels wandering city streets at night. Perhaps that was too harsh, in the end it really didn't matter what our parentage was. We were all dragons, and that made us the same. Beyond that, little mattered. Besides, for all I knew that talk of clans and breeds was just wishful thinking, the ramblings of elders who remembered things in a brighter light then had ever truly been shed upon them.

We were dragons. We grew up beloved of our families, loyal to our tiny clan, and afraid of the vast world that seemed so determined to bury us beneath the crushing stones of history. In the end, that was all that really mattered and I would not have traded my parents for all the so-called pure blooded clans that might have ever existed.

"Vraal?"

"Hrrrm?" I half groaned, half growled as I lifted my head and opened my eyes. Full of belly and warmed by the sun, I'd been half dozing off while lost in my thoughts. Perhaps I was getting older then I thought. Maybe I should have counted all those years after all. "Did you say something?"

"I said your name," Kylah chuckled. "I'm going to take a bath. You should take one too, you messy lizard."

I glanced down at the dwindling fire to see that Kylah had finished eating her breakfast, and had neatly piled up all the leftover meat she'd cut from the bone. It would make another good meal for her later but I wasn't sure how she was going to get it home. I supposed I could fly back to my cave and get something for her to carry it all in, and come back for her. It wouldn't be too much trouble.

I yawned, and my pointed pink tongue curled inside my black and gray muzzle. "Am I really that messy?"

Kylah walked to the edge of the beaver pond, and peered into the water. She crouched down to unlace her boots and then pulled them from her feet. I walked up beside her, and she pointed at the still waters. "See for yourself."

I peered down at my reflection and snorted. My black scaled snout and my gray chin completely caked with deer blood, much of the red liquid now drying to a rusty brown hue. Somehow it even seemed to coat my cheeks, and even flecked one of my ears, and a crest. I flicked my ear a few times to no avail. I lifted a paw to rub at my ear, noticing that my paw was covered in half dried blood as well. Tilting my head back, I could see red streaks running down the gray and black scales of my throat. I swiveled my ears back, and grumbled.

"You seem to have a point."

"Told you," Kylah said, giving my haunch a smack for good measure. "Now take a bath."

"Yes, mother," I muttered, wading into the water. It was cold, especially against my paw pads, and I shivered a little bit, my scales clicking. "It's cold!"

"Oh, don't complain. It can't be any colder then that water back in your cave you usually bathe in."

I snorted, wading out a little deeper. I knew it was going to get much colder as soon as it reached the more sensitive areas along my underbelly, and then again when it reached my wings, so I thought I may as well get it over with. I took a few more steps and as I felt the bank dropping away, I took a deep breath, and let my legs give way beneath me, plunging myself completely beneath the water. The cold was that surrounded every inch of my body was shocking against my scales, and even worse where I had none. I missed my spot in the sun immediately, and I quickly came up sputtering.

"That is much colder then my bathing pool back in the cave!"

"Oh hush, you big baby," Kylah giggled. "It can't be that bad."

It probably wasn't. I would adjust to it soon enough, but it sure felt like a shock going from the warm sun to the cold water. What was that gesture she'd given me earlier with her tongue? Ah, yes. When I saw her looking at me, I opened my muzzle and pushed my tongue out and held it for a moment. She laughed and stuck her tongue right back out at me.

After a moment I pulled my tongue back. Cold water sluiced down the scales of my head, dripped from my ears as I flicked them. The cold had all my head and neck spines sticking up, and my crests flared out as if in agitation. Nonetheless I found myself smiling at her, enjoying our little exchange of tongues. That...did not sound the way I meant it.

Kylah began to remove her blue and silver tunic, but stopped when she realized I was watching her. She cleared her throat, then folded her arms beneath her breasts. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all," I said, lifting a dripping paw from the water to gesture with it a little bit. "Go ahead."

"That's not what I-!" From the way her face flushed scarlet, I knew I probably wasn't supposed to be watching. I kept my own face as emotionless as possible, no need to let her know if I knew what she really meant and was teasing her or if I really didn't understand what she was asking. "Oh! You...you dragons..."

She finally huffed, and quickly stripped off her clothes. Curious, I found my eyes roaming her naked body. Her skin elsewhere looked a little paler then that of her face, a few bruises marked her belly, no doubt obtained from the men I'd killed. An older scar or two marred her skin, though if she were anything like a dragon, she bore them proudly as marks of battles survived. The swell of her breasts intrigued me, as did the little pink bits that stuck out just slightly, and that I didn't know the names of. My eyes roamed lower, between her thighs, then down along her legs and back up.

"You aren't supposed to look," she huffed, storming into the water and submerging herself as quickly as possible. From the way she came right back up with a shocked gasp, I knew the water was just as cold for her as it was for me. I also knew she wasn't about to admit it, and so I didn't bother to point it out. This time.

"You looked at me," I said with a small smirk, flicking my ears.

"Firstly," she said, holding up a finger in front of my face. "I did not look. Secondly," she added, holding up a second finger. "You don't cover yourself anyway, so what do you care."

"Thirdly," I said with a grin, lifting my paw and holding up three digits, then flicking water into her face. "You're not covered now. So what's the difference?"

"The difference," she started, sputtering from both the water I flicked in her face and the embarrassed frustration that seemed to have begun to mount. "The difference...well...it's...you see...damn it, you're a dragon."

"Exactly." I smirked, thumping my paw back into the water with enough force to splash us both. I flicked water off my ears. "So I don't have the same sort of interest in you a human male would. I'm merely curious on an intellectual level."

"Curious my ass," she muttered, sinking further beneath the cold water till just her head was showing, her head floating on the surface about her shoulders, shining golden brown in the sun like fresh wheat.

"No, I've seen that already."

"Oh, shut your muzzle," she spat, though she was starting to laugh again. She came back up just enough to cup her palm and slap it against the water, sending a little cascade washing across my muzzle. I yelped and backed up out of range. "Serves you right, lizard!"

Oh, well, didn't that just do it. "I am curious, though, and not about your ass..." I said, doing everything I could to keep from grinning, not wanting to let her on that I was only teasing her. "But why does it have hair?"

"Why does what..." Then the way she gasped, and dunked herself completely beneath the water told me she knew exactly what I was referring too. By the time she came back up, her face was as red as I'd ever seen it, and she quickly turned away from me. "It just does!"

I couldn't hold it in any more, I started laughing at her! I lashed my tail beneath the water, and rose up enough to splash at her with a paw again. "But doesn't it get in the way?"

"No!"

"Not even when the male..."

"No!"

_"_But what if he..."

She sank beneath the water, and I was sure for a moment I'd embarrassed her so badly she'd decided to just drown herself rather then face me again. Well, it wasn't my fault if humans were a little too reserved and shy on some subjects! Though just when I was convinced I may have gone somewhere between three and five steps too far, she suddenly popped back up out of the water with double handful of mud held high up over her head.

"Attack!" she screamed, and threw all the mud right down on my face.

"GAAACK!" I shrieked in surprise, cold mud splattering my black scaled face. Brown sludge coated me from the tip of my nose all the way up back between my horns, and dripped down my cheeks and my gray scaled chin in thick, disgusting glop. And just as I was trying to wipe it away from my eyes so I could see straight again, I heard her bellow something else about opening fire, and soon two more big handfuls of slimy muck smacked into my, one across my cheek and one along my neck.

"Take that, you big dirty lizard!" Kylah cheered herself on through her increasingly infectious laughter.

"Oh, that is it now, human!" I dunked myself under the water and shook my head back and forth to rinse off as much of the mud as I could, and then scooped up two huge pawfuls of mud, bringing my paws together just beneath the soft bottom of the pond. I reared back up on my hind legs, half my body coming up above the water in what I hoped was a fierce some sight. A towering black and gray dragon rising up out of the water, flaring his vast shadowy wings, and snarling in fury. She seemed slightly less intimidated then I'd hoped as I suddenly got a shot of mud right across my mouth, splattering the fangs revealed with my snarl.

Coughing, I blinked the water out of my eyes, and as soon as I spotted her laughing and backpedaling away, I hurled the massive double pawful of mud down at her, and dropped back to all fours. She screamed as the mud hit her right in the head and face and knocked her back under the water, causing her to disappear in a swirling cloud of muddy brown water.

Laughing, I awaited her inevitable counterattack. I started to get nervous when she didn't resurface. It wasn't so much that I was worried I'd hurt her, it was just mud. But I was worried that she might come up from a different direction. I wasn't sure how long she could hold her breath, so I didn't know how long I had to be on guard for. I dropped my head into the water to swish some of it through my mouth and clean my mud stained teeth, then gave a yelp of surprise when I felt something on my tail.

I jerked my head back up, droplets flung in all directions and sparkling like bright diamond stars in the sunlight. I tried to pull my tail away and twist myself through the water, but the resistance slowed me down, and Kylah quickly pulled herself up my tail, and was soon scrambling up my back. Before I knew it she was right between my wings and wrapping an arm around my neck!

"Sneak attack! Assassin in the night!" She cried out, whatever that meant, right before she deposited another handful of slimy disgusting mud right atop my head. She plastered it against the central crest just between my horns and soon I could feel it dripping and running down my neck like some slippery swamp monster seeking to take over my entire body.

As I made a disgusted noise and went to wipe my head off, she leapt off my back and back into the water. Before I'd even wiped most of the mud off, she resurfaced in front of me again, thrusting her hands up over her head in a sign of victory, and laughing like a mad woman. "I win! I have conquered the mighty dragon with a hail of mud and a daring sneak attack!"

I found myself laughing along with her after I dunked my head to rinse off the last of the mud. "I'd hardly call that a resounding victory, but I'll let you have it if it makes you feel better. Besides, I thought the point of taking a bath was getting clean, not dirty."

She sank down beneath the water again till just her hair was floating around on the surface, framing her face as it barely rose above the waters. "I couldn't let you get away with impugning my honor like that. I had to defend myself against the foul dragon and his crude tongue."

"My tongue is far from crude, my dear."

"You're a dirty old lizard, you know that?"

"Yes, because someone keeps throwing mud at me."

She laughed, and took a deep breath, and soon she had begun to float around on her back. She glanced over at me with a small smile, then turned her attention towards the bright blue sky. "I'm starting to like it here with you."

I smiled. Much as I hated to admit it, that was a sentiment I was beginning to share.

Chapter Seven

That night I had a terrible dream. After Kylah and I had dried off and she'd gotten dressed we spent the rest of the day lounging around in the valley, and I showed her a few of the sights. Not that there was anything especially fascinating about that little valley to someone who hadn't grown up there. I took her to the small hill that seemed to be inexplicably covered with purple and red and blue wildflowers throughout the year, as long as it wasn't also covered with snow. I took her to the tall rounded boulder made of rough, red sandstone. It totally stood out from all the granite and shale in the mountains around us, and no one knew how it got there. In my youth it had been gouged and marked all across it's surface by the claws of hatchlings playing Lord of the Mountain, climbing atop the boulder and shoving each other off. The hatchlings were all long gone now, and the stone's strange red color had long since been hidden by the thick carpet of moss that had long since overtaken it. The only red visible now were the tiny red bulbs at the end of the forest of little orange stalks poking up from the thick velvet green moss. We wandered the meadow together, and eventually we ate dinner, more venison, and I took her home to my cave again. Once more we drank together, but this time we were sure not to say anything painful to eat other. We shared a few tales of our childhoods, and eventually we drifted to sleep. I wasn't sure how long it took for my dreams to take that dark turn, but sooner or later they did.

I had a good dream too, before the terrible one, but the cold fear that clutched at my heart when I awoke and the creeping anxiety that remained long and sent icy shivers across my wings and down my tail long after I'd opened my eyes chased away any lingering chance of recalling the more pleasant images from the eyes of my slumber.

It started as the sort of unpleasant dream I am sure everyone has eventually, even humans. The sort of dream that's not exactly terrifying the way a true nightmare is, but is still far from pleasant, the sort of dream that leaves a lingering sadness tugging at the heat of men and beasts even as the fabric of the dream itself tears away beneath the claws of the waking world.

I was with my family again, Niara and Venargravax and Reenasarana were all there. We were all running together through an endless green field. There were mountains there, but I never saw them, in the dream I simply sensed their presence and knew that somewhere, there were mountains. And atop those unseen mountains were unseen humans, though I could hear their voices. Muttered, angry voices much like my own when I spoke of their kind. For some reason, my children kept straying closer and closer to the mountains. And though I could not see them, in the dream I knew they were getting closer and closer to the humans there, as well. Niara as well, and soon she was leading my children across the vast plain towards the mountains, and the dangers within. And though I could never see the mountains rising, I felt them getting closer and closer even as I felt my family getting further and further away. I cried out to them, I yelled to them, I begged them not to go the way I probably should have begged in reality. And then they were gone, and with them the humans and the mountains I'd felt but never seen.

I was alone again in the endless green meadow, a beautiful peaceful place with no one to share it with. I began to wander, and had the dream ended there I'd have felt lonely when I woke, but not afraid. Yet as dreams often do it twisted into something more surreal, and far less peaceful. As I walked I found myself in the air, and when I realized I was in the air, I began to fall. I screamed in terror, I was a youth again and did not know how to use my wings. Yet there was no ground rushing up to meet me, there was only the endless fear of an uncontrollable dive.

And then suddenly there were buildings all around me, human buildings of stone and wood that towered above. Humans were everywhere in the streets, but they ignored me, they scorned me. They knew I was a dragon, and though I was grown again, in the dream I was too scared, too cowardly to attack the humans I hated so much. And they knew it. And in the dream, things grew worse. I heard a scream which I immediately recognized as Kylah. The only human I had ever liked was in trouble somewhere, in danger. I ran towards the scream, and row after row of endless buildings passed me by. Her scream grew louder and louder, and still I could not find her. And soon it was joined by more screams all around me. I turned to find that all around me the buildings were on fire, and humans dressed like the men I'd killed were slaughtering their own species. My long held desire to see the humans wipe themselves out was coming true, only it was far more horrible and heart wrenching then I had ever imagined it. The people dying begged for mercy, they begged me to save them, and I found myself unwilling, or unable. I was too afraid of what would happen to me, and what would happen to the last of my species if I intervened. And so in the dream I watched them die, I watched an entire town slaughtered before my eyes. I walked on, and I finally found Kylah, and in the dream she was screaming because she was being raped. Only then did I find the strength in me to fight for someone else, and by then it was too late. Just as I tore the man off her, another man slit her throat.

Before I had to watch her die, I mercifully awoke.

I cried out as I opened my eyes, jerked my head up from my paws and looked around the room, half expecting to see murdered humans strewn about the floor of my sleeping chamber. I blinked a few times, my eyes were still bleary, but I was glad to see nothing of the sort revealed in the faint blue light. At night when I slept I often draped furs over most of the light spheres, and took them off again when I awoke in the morning. Afraid I'd woken Kylah, I turned towards her only to find that she was no longer there.

For a moment, my heart skipped a beat while my minor heart thudded and trembled near my tail. I rose up onto all fours, my wings shaking in fear. Where was she? What if something horrible really had happened to her? What if the dream came true, what if men were holding her down somewhere right now? I whimpered, but grit my teeth and forced myself to draw in a slow, calming breath. That was almost literally impossible right now, I told myself. I unsheathed my claws, and sheathed them again, repeating the motion a few times. A nervous tic I had picked up at some point, along with half unfurling my wings and then folding them back against my sides again, over and over. I found myself doing both now as I looked around for Kylah.

I tilted my head back till my horns brushed the back of my neck, dread tingling along the base of my spiny frills. Far, far up at the ceiling of my sleeping chamber I could see a few vague points of light puncturing the shadows, where a little sunlight found it's way through the air vent holes in my stony mountain roof. It was morning, at least. Maybe she'd gone to take a bath or get something to drink.

I lowered my nose to the floor and sniffed around until I picked up the trail of her scent. As the only human who'd ever set foot in my lair, and the only person other then myself to enter it at all in many years, ( And yes I considered myself a person. ) her scent was not all that hard to find. Soon I had located the freshest traces of it, a bit of perfume mixed with the soft slightly sweet scent of her skin, and I followed a moment. She had paced back and forth in my sleeping chamber, and finally made her way towards the tunnel that lead out.

The pace of my heart quickened. What if she tried to leave on her own and fell? If she was ready to go I would certainly take her home, she had but to ask! As I started up the tunnel, my claws half unsheathed and clicking against the stone floor, I cringed. She had no home to go too. I felt guilty that I kept forgetting that. Still, if she was ready for me to take her somewhere else, that was fine. I had enjoyed a brief respite from my solitude but I would enjoy it once more when I had peace and quiet again. Wouldn't I? Surely I would. But I didn't want her to injure herself!

More worried then I'd ever expected to find myself for a human I began to trot down the tunnel, narrowly avoiding slipping on the patch of slime that seemed to grow by the day. I was going to have to scrape it out again. Still, at least it was not as bad as the bat shit I'd previously had to scrape off the floor, and much to my disgust, several times off my scales when they had taken to roosting above my sleeping chamber. A few bursts of fire had taken care of that little problem.

I emerged into the sunlight at the end of the tunnel to find Kylah safe and sound on the ledge that jutted out from the entrance to my home. Well, relatively safe anyway. She was seated on the very edge of the ledge, hanging her bare feet over it and leaning back onto her arms. For a moment I thought of pulling her away, or asking her what she was doing! Telling her that one hard gust of wind and she'd be asking herself the same question, all the way down to the valley below. But then I realized how much that would make me sound like a stodgy old elder as though I were her grandfather instead of...instead of her friend.

So instead I did much the same thing. I walked to the edge of the ledge and settled down next to her, though I did let my tail coil rather protectively around her waist. She lifted a hand and rubbed the gray scales at the tip of my tail, near where they melted into black a little further up it towards my body. She looked up at me with a wistful smile, and then turned her gaze back to the far horizon. It was a little later in the morning then I'd thought, the sun had crested the mountains some time ago and I'd been too busy watching dream-humans die to realize it.

"Good morning, Vraal," she said, her voice as far off as her gaze.

"Good morning, Kylah. What...what are you doing?"

"Just...just thinking, I suppose. Wondering how things are going back home. If my people are safe, if they're being mistreated, if they're all giving in. I don't want anyone else to be hurt, but I don't want them to just roll over and submit, either."

"I see," I said, not really knowing how else to reply. This wasn't exactly the happy morning conversation that lead the way to an enjoyable day. And it wasn't helping me shake off the lingering fears and unnecessary guilt that lingered from such a nightmare, either. "Who...who are they? The men I killed, the ones taking over your village."

"The soldiers of a local man who fancies himself a duke, or a king, or some such nonsense," Kylah said, waving her hand. The cold mountain breeze caused her hair to swirl around her head like a sea creature flailing it's tentacles but she didn't seem to notice. "He's none of those things. He's just a cold, petty man who thinks he can push us around because he has more men then we do. He's like a childhood bully who thinks just because he's bigger then you he can take whatever he wants."

"Oh," I said, as if she'd made it all crystal clear.

"The king isn't doing anything about it, either. Not that I should have expected him too."

"This king...rules you?" I took a guess. I was not exactly familiar with human politics.

"No," she said, and when she glanced up at me, I must have looked awfully confused with one ear perked, and the other twisted back, and only one of my crests half flared. She laughed at my expression, and reached up to pet my nose. "My village doesn't belong to anyone, we're well outside the borders of any established kingdom. At least, we were. Those men you killed claim that we are part of their kingdom, now, we and all the other villages in our area. From what I understand, he's little more then a bandit lord who stole himself enough money to start his own barony, build himself a nice little fortress and start hiring thugs and mercenaries to help him expand it. Somehow he's already written up a truce with the nearest _real_kingdom, someone we used to have regular trade with, in order to keep them from attacking to protect us. Basically that king is just sitting on his hands because he doesn't want to get into an unnecessary fight. I suppose I shouldn't blame him, he's not exactly the king of a large kingdom, and if he got into a fight with an army of mercenaries, even an exceedingly small one, it would give his other enemies an excuse to invade."

I blinked and lifted a paw to scratch my head, around my horns. Kylah obviously knew what she was talking about, but I had no clue. Kings, baronies, armies, invasion, enemies, trade routes, mercenaries, kingdoms, villages. It was all well over my head as far as the workings of human society went. "So...your village...is invaded by a king...and..."

"No, no, Vraal," Kylah said with a little laugh, scratching under my chin in a way that had me purring almost immediately. "I guess...it doesn't really matter. It's not like I can do anything about it. All you really need to know is that some very bad people have occupied my village. They take our crops, they take our money, and if we disobey them, they take our lives. And suffice to say...the next generation of our villages children will not be fathered by the same men as the last."

"...Oh." That much I understood. Her whole village had been taken over by men every bit as cruel and heartless as the men I'll killed to save her life. Even if she could go back to it without forfeiting her life, what would it get her? A life of servitude to someone who had a bigger sword then her own people did. Possibly beaten, or even killed anyway. And wherever she went now, all she would be able to think about is what was going on back home, and whether the tyrants had spread their blackened fingers to the other villages in her area. "So...is there any way to stop them?"

Kylah shrugged, and kept scratching at the thin, sensitive scales beneath my chin. "I don't know. You already know I nearly got myself killed trying. Maybe if more people had rallied behind me, or if they hadn't found us out so soon. From what I know, the king we used to have a trade agreement with is just waiting to see how things pan out. I had hoped that if he heard that we had kicked the men out of our village, if we had freed ourselves from their yoke, that he might step out and take action, and help us route them completely before they can really take hold. He can't honestly want a neighboring country springing up that's run by bandits and murderers and mercenaries, can he? Their numbers are small right now, that's why they have to content themselves with seizing control of small villages, one at a time. I had thought if we were able to kick them out, then the king might spare troops to help us finish them off. But...obviously...that never happened."

"And...if say, your people were able to band together again, and throw them out? Do you think that still might happen?"

"I've no idea," she admitted. "It's really all I've got left to hope for if I ever want to see my home again. I...I don't think that will happen now, though."

"You deserve better, Kylah." The words left my mouth before I even realized what I meant by them. "You're a good person."

Kylah gave me a small smile. "Thank you, Vraal." She hugged my head against her chest. "You're a good person, too."

That, at last, helped banish the worst of my dream time fears. When she finished hugging me, she moved a little closer to lean up against my side. The winds swirled cold around us, and I noticed her shivering, so I opened a wing and gently folded it around her, and she thankfully snuggled into my warmth. I was starting to see that something might have been happening between us, and for some reason that frightened me. I felt as though humans should not be friends with dragons, and they certainly should not be more. True, it was far too early for anything like that to really reveal itself, but there was a closeness that had just begun to develop between us, faster then I would have expected with a dragon, let alone a human.

Yet though it frightened me, I did not pull my wing away. And the silence that settled over us was not awkward, but comforting. At that moment we were simply two lost creatures with little left in the world but our lives. Our lives and this sudden and likely temporary friendship we'd somehow struck up together. I did not really wish to see her go now, but part of me felt as though she had too. Dragons and humans were practically natural enemies, and when she was gone I could return to hating them and living out my last days in peace. It wasn't as though I had stopped hating humans. It was just...well, as she'd put it, I didn't hate her. Quite the contrary in fact, I liked her enough now that I might actually miss her when she was gone.

For a little while, anyway.

"Do you have...friends?" I asked, feeling a little awkward bringing it up. "In other villages, I mean. Someone you could stay with, when you're ready to leave here and they've stopped looking for you."

She glanced up at me, brushing brown locks of her face with her fingers. She pressed her lips together, an odd gesture dragons couldn't imitate as well as I could imitate the thing she did when she presented her tongue. "Not really, no. Everyone I know is either in our village, or in the surrounding villages. I've been to some of the larger cities before but I don't really know anyone there. That...that'll probably be the best place for me to go, though. Some big city somewhere I can just melt away into the crowd and...and try to start a new life. I suppose I can get work serving drinks to drunken louts or something." She made a face that told me it wasn't exactly an optimal life for a human.

"I see." I looked down at my front paws, unsheathing my claw tips to click them against the stone ledge beneath my feet. "When we think it's safe, I'll take you as close as I can to any city of your choice."

She gently rubbed the edge of my wing with a hand. Her fingers felt good against the sensitive membranes, and I purred a little more. "Thank you, Vraal. You've already done more for me then I had any right to ask of you."

"Yes, I have," I replied with a sly smirk. Then I got a little more thoughtful. "You know if we'd been thinking ahead, you should have taken your clothes off in that clearing."

Kylah blinked, and furrowed her brows. "Excuse me?"

I suppose to a human that could have been taken any number of ways. "When I first met you. If we thought about it, you could have taken off that blue dress and I could have shredded it a little with my teeth and claws, smeared it in the men's blood. You could have put on one of the soldier's uniforms instead, before I dropped the bodies in the lake. We could have even left one of the bodies there. Then when someone found it, they'd assume that I just killed you as well, and call off the search."

When she figured out what I meant, she nodded. "That's actually a pretty good idea. Too bad we didn't think of it earlier." She pulled her hand away from wing and folded her arms beneath her breasts, thinking to herself for a few minutes. "They've probably found the camp sight by now. I would imagine that they're in the middle of searching for me and their men, assuming the bodies haven't floated to shore. They'll probably give up within a week or two anyway, especially if it looks as much like a dragon attack as I suspect it does. But leaving a bloodied and torn dress definitely would have helped."

I chuckled a little, and though I noted the fact that while she'd originally asked to stay a few days, now she seemed content to stay for as long as two weeks, I did not bring it up. "It looks like a dragon attack because it was a dragon attack. For once they have something to blame on us that really was caused by a dragon. Not that they didn't deserve it."

She laughed a little at that, and twisted around under my wing, sitting up a bit straighter to state out over the valley. The sun was gradually rising, high enough now that the sharp golden light of dawn had faded into a bright morning, and the still verdant green valley looked lush as ever as it spread out beneath us, the small hills and trees like rolling waves and floating mats of vegetation on an emerald ocean. And all the blossoms of autumns final wildflowers were like the glittering of the sun atop that rolling sea. It was a beautiful sight now, all it needed was a group of dragons romping and playing and dancing in the skies, and it would have been perfect.

"You really hate humans, don't you."

"Yes," I said, then quickly added, "But I don't hate you."

"That part's good at least," she replied with a little chuckle. "Why do you hate us so much?"

"Because humans hate dragons."

Kylah was silent for a little bit, and I could feel her drawing little circles on the scales of my side with her fingers. I couldn't decide if I liked it or if it tickled a little too much. "That's an awfully roundabout of looking at it, don't you think?"

"Hrrm?" I gave a confused growl. "What do you mean?"

"If you hate humans because they hate you..." She pulled her hand away from my side to gesture with her hands, eventually holding them both palm up. "And humans hate dragons because dragons hate us..." She brought her hands back together, wringing them out. "Isn't that just going to continue the cycle of hatred?"

I saw her point, but I flexed my wings in an indifferent shrug. "It's a little late for that to really matter."

"How can it be too late? It's never too late to make a difference for your people."

For a moment, I wasn't sure if she meant my people, the dragons, or her people in her village. But I could hear it in her voice that she wasn't simply going to abandon her village, or her fight, no matter what it meant for her. "You're going back there, aren't you."

Kylah glanced up at me with a sly smirk of her own, side stepping the question in a way that still gave me my answer. And not the answer I wanted. "That's not the question, Vraal. The question was how can it be too late?"

So that was the game she wanted to play, hmm? "It's too late because humanity has already nearly wiped out my species."

Kylah folded her arms again. "You know, I keep hearing that from you, but as far as I can remember, dragons have always been rare. Maybe there weren't as many of you as you thought. Maybe your old clan was always that size."

That was the wrong way to go about winning this particular argument. "No, Kylah," I said with a little chuckle. We were many once, and I knew it. I had proof, and not just in the tales I'd been told, though that was always my first point to note. "There were many, many of us, long ago. Tens of thousands at least, maybe more, no one really knows for sure. When your race was young, ours was already old, and the world was ours to rule as we saw fit." I waved my paw through the air as though dramatically painting the sky. "We were the kings and queens of everything we could see, and from the sky we could see it all. We had the world itself in our grasp, and we thought destiny was ours to shape. For a while, it was. But...your people grew in number, and they were not content to live out their lives as a lesser race. They were not content to serve us tribute."

"Well..."

I knew where she was going, and I held up my paw again to silence her before she got started. "Don't take this part of the tale the wrong way. I do not blame humans for having no desire to serve our kind. What being in it's right mind truly wishes to live it's life in servitude? But simply seizing their own destiny was not enough, and by the time humanity realized they could create the tools to shoot us from the skies, the weapons to penetrate our scales and drive deep into our hearts, they also realized they would rather have this world to themselves. Not merely content to force us to share it, they took it upon themselves to rid this world of dragon kind. Driven by their own self importance, and from what I understand a religious mandate that compares us to your greatest evil, because of our appearance, you understood a crusade a species to destroy our race. And so you have."

Kylah pulled away from me and out of my wing, and for a moment I thought I'd upset her. I hoped not, that had not been my intention. But she'd asked me questions that had difficult answers, and I had answered them truthfully. I was glad to see that she was not angry with me, she was merely taken to pacing back and forth in thought. I twisted myself around a little, moving to settle nearer the entrance to my home and further away from the ledge itself so that I could watch her, and talk to her face to face.

"You seem to take an awful lot of leaps of faith with that story, Vraal. If there were really that many dragons it seems like it would have been nearly impossible for the humans to wipe you all out. You took out those four men by yourself with out a problem."

"Almost without a problem," I reminded her, rubbing my injured shoulder. I'd already shed the itchy bandage, dragons healed fairly swiftly and my shoulder wound was closing up nicely, though it left an angry pink scar that was still quite sore. "Four men is one thing. Forty is something else entirely, to say nothing of four hundred. Or four thousand. Your greatest strength was always in your numbers, and in your resolve. When you set your mind to something it seems nothing can stop you. And no matter how many of us there were at our peak, there were always many, many more humans. We watched you spread across the world like a plague, unstoppable and creeping ever closer. If there were a hundred dragons, you'd sent a thousand men. If they split up to hide, you'd track them down with teams of soldiers and dragon slayers. If we came in peace, you'd call us liars and cut out our tongues along with our hearts. If we took to your skies, you would bring us down with a hail of arrows, and ballistas. I sometimes wonder if we should have fought harder. Much as I blame humanity, I reserve some of the blame for my own species. I wonder if once we saw our own fate looming distant on the horizon like a ship sailing towards a rocky shoreline, if we ever truly did anything to change our course, or if we simply resigned ourselves to shattering against the shore."

"I think you may be resigning yourself to shattering against the shore, Vraal."

Kylah's voice was soft, she meant no insult and no anger by her words, but I wasn't sure what she meant. "How do you mean?"

She wrung her hands again. I could tell she didn't want to anger me, and didn't want to hurt me. She knew how close her verbal knife had come to my heart the other night, and she did not wish to wound me so again. She came towards me and gently took my muzzle in her hands, her palms against my chin, her fingers splayed across my snout, warm and comforting against the fine scales there.

"Don't you ever want to go and find your family?"

I didn't know how to answer that. For a moment I searched her emarald eyes with mine, unsure what she wanted me from me, what she wanted me to say. I could only stare into her eyes for a moment before he had to look away, ashamed of myself for reasons I wasn't totally sure.

"Why do you stay here, Vraal? I can see it in your eyes how much you miss them, how much you still love them. I know it's hard for you to talk about, but...why do you stay here?"

"...Pride," I said softly, closing my eyes for a moment. My voice was suddenly quite hoarse, little more then a bitter whisper. "Stubborn, foolish old pride."

"How does pride keep you here?"

"Because I refuse to give in to humanity. I refuse to abandon this place to them. For as long as there has been someone to measure time, there have been dragons living here, in these mountains, and far beyond. Once we held the lands further then you can possible see from even the greatest heights we can attain upon our wings. We lived in the forests that sprawl between the lowest of the foothills, and we lived in the highest peaks that now surround us. These mountains were always a special place for us, possibly even sacred to our ancestors. Most of our culture has been lost, and twisted by the ravages of tales told through time, so I don't know for sure. I think we believed in a god...or gods...I don't really know."

"That's...that's a little sad, actually."

I nodded, and nuzzled against Kylah's hand as she rubbed the end of my muzzle. "We didn't always live in caves like this, you know." I flicked my tail towards the entrance to my home. "When we were great, we lived in palaces and soaring stone towers, like citadels and castles and beautiful places we carved from stone and earth. But as the humans began to drag us by our tails from our homes, began to still the beating of our hearts, one by one, we were forced to abandon all the beautiful creations we'd made to live in. We had to flee our lush, peaceful forests, and our sun baked vistas. We had to slip higher and higher into the mountains into terrain that was less and less hospitable and had less and less game to go around. From fat and healthy and happy to slender and malnourished and scared. In the end, we had to crawl into every damp little hole we could find just to try and hide ourselves from the armies of humans who wanted nothing more then to watch us die.

"The last of us...at least, the dragons who lived in this part of the world, we ended up here. This entire mountain range has always been the domain of dragons, and though we once lived lower in areas not so cold, this valley was part of it as well. It is the most sheltered place this high up in the mountains, and some of us always lived here. Though in truth, I think the network of caves my clan called home was probably once little more then storage for the dragons who lived in the mountain palaces. Yet even generations before I was born, it became a sort of sanctuary for us, a refuge from the humans, one of the last places they had not yet been able to breach.

"When I hatched, my clan was already small, only a few dozen dragons in all, and even that was a gathering that was dangerously large. We knew the more of us who lingered in any one place, the easier it was for humans to find us. When game was scarce, and someone went too far away from the valley to hunt, we knew what had happened if they never returned. As I grew, my parents told me tales of our greatness, tales that had happened even long before they were born, yet stuck in their minds throughout their life. They did not want me to grow up without knowing what we had once been, and my grandparents did not want me to grow up without knowing what terrible things the humans had done to us.

"Over time, the valley slowly emptied out. I lost friends to your kind, Kylah, and while I would never blame you for their deaths, I do blame your people. A close friend in my youth was dared by the other young dragons to venture further then he ever should have, and...he did not make it back. A few of the elders went to find him, and they found that they had nothing left to come home with but vengeance. They buried what was left of him where they found him, and they left the remains of the dragon slayers they took vengeance upon to rot in the sun."

Kylah cringed at my story, and pulled my head against her again, hugging me. I realized that I was getting off track once more, but as I have said in the past I am not used to telling tales. I was even less used to telling them when I spoke to Kylah that day on the ledge. She'd asked me a simple question, and had gotten a longer story then she'd ever wanted to hear in reply.

I was grateful for her comfort, and for the fact that while I knew she still had questions and arguments to make, she withheld them for the moment. "Over the years, more of my kind passed on. Some were killed, others simply died of old age, a few of sickness. We knew the humans were getting closer to finding us, year by year, and so others took to their wings and left, hoping to find somewhere the humans could never reach. Rumors persisted of such a place. Now and then in my youth a dragon from somewhere else in the world would visit, almost always on their own journey to find this place. It became almost mythical in my clan, some great and beautiful place that was said to exist, somewhere that only dragons could reach, that only wings you could carry you too."

"But I..." I paused a moment, pulling my head back from her to keep speaking. "I thought they were fools. Surely if there was such a place, we would have already gone there generations ago. Our valley was the closest thing we had, and it was only a matter of time before it too, was found, and the last of us were dragged from our homes. All we had left to do was wait, and I merely hoped that when the time came, I would be brave enough to die fighting, and not begging for my life like a coward, and that the rest of my people would do the same. Let us die like dragons, not prey. I grew up hating humans for everything they had done, everything they were, and everything I imagined they must have done to us. They killed my friends, they drove us from our lands, and they called us evil. And for a time, I hated my own people for letting them do that to us. I decided at a young age that no matter what happened, I would never in all my life give in to humanity the way so many others had. We lived in the last remaining land of dragons, land we had always held, land I refused to give up to them.

"Over time, the rest of my clan began to fade. Some of them died, the rest of them left. I fell in love, I sired children, and we shared this beautiful valley and the last of our traditions for many wonderful years. I was happier with my mate and my children then I had been since my own childhood, and only wished there were more dragons left to share it, but each year another one left, and by the time my children had hatched, there were only a handful of us left."

It occurred to me that I was getting dangerously close to telling her the tale of the last few days my mate spent with me, what happened to my son, and the fight I had with her in the aftermath of that attack. I wasn't yet prepared to tell that part of the story, not so early in the morning, not so early in our friendship. I finally gave a little sigh, and pulled my head back, licking her palm then chuckling.

"To answer your question, pride keeps me here because I am the absolute last dragon left alive and still in possession of the last of the dragon's ancestral lands. Humanity has taken absolutely everything from us...everything but these mountains, and this valley. To leave them now would be to abandon the last thing a dragon yet owns to the race that has taken everything else from us. Pride...stubborn dragon pride will simply not let me do that. I refuse to give this land of dragons up to humans for anything less then the loss of my life at their hands." I looked down at my paws a moment, somewhat ashamed of my foolish decision, but sticking by it anyway. "Not even to go and search for my family."

Kylah was silent for a little while, and once more pulled my horned head up against her body, and held it there. She gently ran her fingers back and forth against the soft scales of my snout, and I found her attempts at being comforting to be exactly that, and not the least bit patronizing. I purred a little more and nuzzled against her, only slightly ashamed to find myself taking such comfort in the arms of a human. The arms of my enemies. No, I thought to myself. Kylah may have been human but she was far from an enemy.

"That's just what I mean Vraal," she finally said, rubbing one of my frilled ears a bit before releasing my head. "Your species, your people...maybe they could have done something about their decline, but they didn't. But just because you're in the same sort of position doesn't mean you have to make the same mistakes they did. You still have time to change your own fate. You don't have to sit here, all alone for the rest of your life. If you choose to stay on what you call dragon lands out of pride alone, then that's your choice. But it's not a choice you have to make, you don't have to shatter yourself on that very same shoreline."

I rustled my wings a little, and flicked my tail tip against the stones. Thoughtful, I unsheathed the claws of my right paw and dragged them all across the stone, adding a few more marks to the many gouges that generations of dragons had already left behind. Though I could see all the fresh marks quite clearly right now, in time they would fade away into the morass of other marks I had left behind, atop those left by my ancestors and their ancestors left before them. Whether or not I stayed here, those marks would remain, and eventually they would become indistinguishable from one another, weathered away by the inevitable flow of time. If mankind did not take this place from me, time itself eventually would. Yet I would rather forfeit our home to the flow of river of time then the greedy little paws of humans.

I finally gave a great sigh, feeling as though my massive lungs were completely emptied of air, all at once. After I took another breath, I dragged my claws down the stone again, scraping a new set of marks next to the first. "I know," I admitted, almost under my breath. "Yet here I remain. I cannot give this place away to humans. I swore that to myself and to the spirits of my long dead ancestors, and I cannot break that word now."

"I was afraid you'd say that." Kylah frowned, looking down a moment, her brown hair falling across her fair skinned face, green eyes shining between dark strands when she lifted them again. "I don't want to make you angry, so I won't try to change your mind."

"Thank you," I said with a soft chuckle. I flicked my ears a little, twisting them to the sides. I wasn't sure if I was relieved or disappointed.

"You sure do seem to blame humans for a lot."

"You wiped us out," I said, keeping my voice as flat as I could.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose we probably did," Kylah said. She didn't want to start another argument, and neither did I. I certainly didn't want to upset her by telling her the truth about her people, but it wasn't as though I hated humans for nothing. I tilted my head a little as she hooked her hair behind her ears on both sides of her head, then folded her arms beneath her breasts. "But what about all the terrible things that dragons have done to us?"

I dipped my wedge shaped head in agreement. "Some of us have done terrible things to your people." My muzzle twisted up a little in a bitter smirk. "But we haven't wiped you out."

"No," Kylah admitted, peering down at her feet again as though suddenly fascinated by the color of the brown leather boots she wore. "You haven't."

"Do you hate other dragons?"

"I don't know any other dragons," Kylah responded quickly.

"That sounds like a yes," I said with perhaps a little too much smugness in my voice. "If I landed in your old village right now, would the people there hate me?"

"They would fear you," Kylah said honestly, attempting to cover up the obvious truth.

"Would they attack me?"

"As opposed to what? Carrying out a chest of gold coins in tribute? Yes, they would attack you!" She put her hands on her hips, a little fire igniting in those striking green eyes. "But only because they didn't know you. Only because..."

"I'm a dragon," I said, still smug, flaring my crests and puffing up my chest a little.

Kylah came up and poked me hard on the chest, jabbing her finger like a tiny spear aimed at the cluster of gray scales just over my sternum, and my heart. "Yes, because you're a dragon! Yes, because they think you're evil, because they've never heard anything different about dragons. Yes, because you look just like one of the creatures many religious use to symbolize evil, and yes, because they're a bunch of superstitious louts! And because the only time they've ever seen dragons up close, dragons have been attacking or killing people."

She jabbed me again, glaring up at me, her green eyes boring into mine. "You don't have to belittle me, Vraal. You don't have to try and trick me into admitting that humans hate dragons. Yes, yes! We probably put your species on the road to extinction, and yes, every other human I know would either attack you on sight, or run for their lives to find someone who would. Hell, even I attacked you! But I wouldn't any more, and you don't have to insult me or make me feel even worse that you're not at all what people think. So, answer me this! If a human found their way into your valley down below when your clan was still here, what would you have done? Would you have killed them?"

My crests slowly sunk back against my head, flat as could be, and my chest gradually shrunk back down as though all her jabbing had put a hole straight through my lungs. I could hardly lie to her about it now. "Yes. We would have killed them."

"Then I'd say our people are about even in doing the wrong thing to each other."

"I...." I trailed off. I didn't really have anything else to reply to that with. She certainly had a good point, even if I didn't entirely agree with it. But I felt bad that she thought I was belittling her, that hadn't been my intention. I'd only tried to prove my point, but I wasn't exactly used to prolonged social contact these days. My solitude had probably sapped away what little tact I may have once possessed.

"I'm sorry," I said, lowering my head until my muzzle touched the stone ledge beneath both our feet, the once rough granite worn smooth by generations of dragon's paws. "I didn't mean to insult you, or belittle you. That wasn't my intention at all."

Kylah turned her back on me and gave a long sigh followed by longer moments of silence. Just as I was starting to fear I had seriously offended her, she turned back towards me, and to my surprise, she had a small smile on her face. "I know, Vraal. Don't take this the wrong way either, but it's pretty obvious you've been alone for a long time. Your social grace isn't exactly in peak condition. Now lift your head, you look like a dog who's just been scolded and sent out for the night."

I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, I didn't think I looked that much like a dog at all. Sure, I stood on four legs, but I also had wings, scales, a longer neck, and front feet that worked just as well as hands. I'd like to see a dog top that. But I did as she asked, and lifted my head. I pushed it forward to nuzzle at her hands, and gave her fingers a little lick of apology. I wasn't sure she actually understood the gesture, because she giggled at me and pulled her hand away, wiping it on her tunic.

"I thought I said stop acting like a dog!"

"I'm not...oh, never mind. How about we just go get breakfast."

Kylah smiled and patted my head. "I'd like that."

I lowered myself down for her to climb up on my back. After a brief flight down into the valley, we repeated previous morning's routine. I set her down and she built a fire while I was out hunting. I returned with food, this time a large mountain goat, and she cooked her own meal while I ate mine. We talked, but nothing too serious, simply casual chat. The discussion turned to the snows that I explained would soon cover the mountains and the valley as well, and I was happily surprised to find that Kylah enjoyed the snow, just as I did. She found it hard to believe a dragon would like snow, but I reminded her again we were not reptiles. I explained that I'd enjoyed it ever since I could first remember bounding around in it as a hatchling and jumping into a snow drift so tall I disappeared inside it completely. The mental image gave her a fit of the giggles, and soon I was laughing along with her.

When we had eaten we bathed again in the beaver pond, though the morning air was still a bit chilly and we did not linger as long as the day before. We climbed out and she dried herself with her tunic best she could without soaking it, and then together we bathed in the sun as well, warming our bodies as we dried. Once she was dry and dressed, she rose and stretched herself out, then peered off into the mountains for a while.

"Did dragons really have palaces?"

The question took me a little by surprise. I lifted my head from it's very comfortable place on the soft grass, and nodded, flicking my ears. "Yes, we did. But it was a long time ago." I almost added it was before humanity had come to destroy us, but I stopped myself. "A very long time ago. Probably even before my grandparents were born."

Kylah ran a hand back through her hair, trying to straighten it out and calm it's ferocious ways as it finished drying out. "Then how do you know?"

I rose up to all fours, and stretched my back and my wings, yawning deeply. Kylah giggled at me, and told me I looked like a cat getting ready to chase a mouse, which I did my best to ignore. I was hardly some mouse chasing feline! ...I chased much bigger prey. I walked over to her, and as if punishing her for comparing me to a lower life form, I gave her a swat on her rump, though I was careful to keep it quite light. From the way her eyes widened and she gasped in surprise, it occurred me that to a human such a gesture could be considerably more offensive then it would be to a dragon. But a moment later, she smiled and punched me on the shoulder, making me grunt.

"How do I know what?" I asked, lowering my head a little to sniff at her and her hair. She always smelled nice right after she'd bathed, I wasn't really sure why.

Kylah pushed my muzzle away with a hand, laughing. "Cut it out! You really are like a big cat or dog sometimes. And I mean how do you know you really had palaces? I don't mean to sound insulting or that I don't believe you, but how do you know your parents and grand parents weren't just repeating tales told to them? They could have been made up by even older dragons, couldn't they?"

Ah. That made me smile. One of the few claims I made about our people that I could truly back up. I certainly believed many things about us that had probably simply been stories passed down as truths, but our palaces? Our civilization, our culture? The things the humans had robbed from us, aside from our lives? There were parts of that I could prove. Parts of that I never thought I'd want to show a human unless it was to rub it in their silly little flat faces, but now...now I wanted to show it to Kylah for a different reason. I wanted to share with her part of what we'd been, when we were great.

With a smile spreading so far across my muzzle it was threatening to send the top half of my head toppling to the ground, I asked her, "Would you like to see one?"

"One what?" She said, trying to wring a little water out of her ear.

That deflated the grandeur of it for me, but only slightly. "One of our palaces."

"You mean...you mean you have one?" She dropped her hand back down in surprise.

I lashed my tail back and forth in barely contained excitement like the very cat she kept comparing me too. "Well I wouldn't exactly say I have it, I mean I don't own it or anything. But I can take you to one, to see it." I paused, worried I might get her expectations up too far. I wanted her to be impressed, not disappointed. "There's not that much of it left to be honest, it's just a ruin. But it was a dragon palace, once. Or a small city...I'm...not really sure which. My parents first took me too it when I was young, every dragon in the clan had to see it at least once, and most of us went there a time or two a year, sometimes we held celebrations there. Spring festivals, or mating ceremonies for new pairs, that sort of thing. It's a beautiful place, and very secret. If there were other dragons here they wouldn't ever want me taking you to see it. Luckily for you, there aren't! I mean...if...if you want to see it."

Kylah smiled even wider then I'd hoped. "I'd love to see it. Is it where you got that stone dragon's head from?"

"That's exactly the place. I got several things in my collection from there. It was sort of considered a sacred place for us, and when the clan was still here, we weren't supposed to take anything away from it. But, since I'm the only one left, I figured I could take whatever I want!"

Kylah laughed a little, moving to run her hand up and down the scales of my neck. "Makes sense to me. Is it far? Do we have time to see it today?"

"Sure. It might be a late night coming home, but it's not as if we have anything else planned. It's often a bit windy up there and it's chilly, so we should go find you something warmer first."

Before long we had returned to my home, and with a little help Kylah found herself something warm to wear. A thick gray woolen cloak complete with a hood that she could wrap around herself, and even had little metal buttons along the front so that she could button it up to better protect herself from the wind and the cold. Once she was dressed for flight, we took to the skies once more.

I wasn't sure if I should be dismayed or excited to be taking a human to one of our few remaining ruins from our days of greatness. Normally I would never do such a thing, but much as I hated to admit it, I was coming to like Kylah. More so, I was coming to like the fact that she seemed so open minded about our species, so interested in learning about us. So I was going to show her something no other living human had ever seen, or ever appreciate. I was going to show her how great we'd been.

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