Where have the dragons gone, and why is the land dying?
Blue Shark sets out from her distant island home for the continent of Pyrrhia, brimming with excitement and determined to prove herself to her family.
But something is very wrong.
Dragons ar...
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The wind screamed outside, and the lilting cry of a wolf joined it. Blue Shark ignored them both, busy scraping hides in the dim light of the keep.
Up, down, across.
Up, down, across.
She ran her claws over the smooth surface of the underside and sighed in relief. That was the last one. She had been working all morning, trimming caribou hides and cleaning them for tanning. Finally it was over, and she could sprawl out on the furs on the floor of the great hall and sleep in the warmth of the fire.
She had chosen to work of her own volition. It had been almost four weeks since her arrival at the castle and she could now limp about on three legs fairly well. She decided to start repaying her debt in any way she could, sweeping, organizing herbs in the infirmary, or any small jobs she could perform with one operable talon. Sosna usually refused to let her work, pressing her to rest and take it easy, but eventually he relented under her determination to help. He had said that she could clean hides with one talon, so she joined him in the keep, where he sat tying the scraped deerskins onto frames to tan.
It had been a horrid, cold, wet sort of day, the kind that would have made one absolutely wretched if one had been out in it for very long. But Coll's Keep was warm, and she had been quite comfortable for the first few hours. Then her foreleg began to ache, then her neck began to ache, and eventually she regretted leaving the infirmary at all that morning. Sosna did not make the time pass more easily, as he usually did with humorous remarks and polite discussions of Pyrrhian affairs. To be fair, she usually began those talks; otherwise he would probably never say anything at all. But he seemed perfectly willing to speak once she had started it. There was also occasionally storytelling or singing, but that was rarer. Blue enjoyed resting in the firelight of the great hall in the evenings and listening to him—he had a fine voice, and knew many beautiful songs and ballads.
Today, however, he worked in silence, bundling furs and stretching pelts. She had attempted to initiate a conversation once or twice, but he seemed particularly quiet, almost morose, today and his responses were monosyllabic. He seemed to be awaiting something, and the tip of his tail twitched nervously as he ran a leather thong through the edge of the hide and fastened it to the frame. It was intriguing—she had never seen him so unsettled.
Balling up her finished deerskin with her left talon, she threw it across the room to where Sosna sat. "That's the last one," she said, and hastily exited the keep before he could say anything.
Rest at last. And that stolid pinecone can't make me get up to finish the ones I shoved under the table. I'll sleep till next morning—at least, I feel like I can.
She stretched luxuriously and yawned, shivering with delight at the warmth of the fire. Turning in three circles, she let her hindquarters drop to the rug, then eased down her front. She stretched again, extending all three legs out stiff in front of her and arching her neck, then let them relax, curling her tail over her flank with a contented sigh.
