The Dragon Prince's Consort

Fifty-Seven

Fang's dreams were murky and unsettling, vague images of her parents trapped and crying out for help. She saw them wandering the rubbled streets of Kitsara, their clothes and hair singed and blackened with ash, looking for her among the smoking ruins: Meilin, her back bent from decades of working to keep her family afloat, hobbled along on arthritic knees kicking up clouds of dust with her scuffed work-boots, while Charlie struggled at her side dragging his battered metal walker through drifts of ashy snow up to his shins. He brought a faded red cloth up to his mouth and coughed, thin body wracked by the spasms, until he gasped for breath and wiped blood from his lips. 'Fang, honey, where are you? Your mother's worried sick!' Fang woke with a start when something heavy landed on her shoulder, but as she came around she recognized the gentle dig of Valen's gold-plated claws in her flesh. Fang rolled over, coming up against the hard wall of Valen's body and its rough scaled skin, hands grasping for her in the dark. "Valen?"

"Hngh." His arm curled around her. "Sorry I woke you."

"It's fine. You okay?"

His horns made a shhh-shhh sound on his pillow and his voice sounded thick. "No."

With a sigh Fang squirmed and rolled to her other side. "Me either." She wiggled until her body lay alongside his, and as she felt around with her feet his tail swished over her ankles. She found his arm and pulled. "Come here." She heard him sniff and then he resumed his hold on her body. "Did you sleep any?"

"A little."

Fang raised her head to find the control panel with its chronometer readout. "It's only been a couple of hours, we have time. Try to rest, they'll handle it."

"I just wish I could do more–"

"Shh. You're doing the best you can." Fang worked her arm around his neck and stroked his hair. "You can't be a doctor, a firefighter, a tracker and a rescue specialist all at once. You've already got the Fed coming, and the Dreen, and all the other people who've offered their help, now you just have to tell everyone to be patient and keep doing their jobs and it'll be okay."

Valen huffed. "You sound so sure, maybe you should be in charge."

"I'm just telling you what I'd want to hear. Your job is to make people feel like everything's under control, that you're going to bring them all through this. They're going to get through it anyway, so you might as well act like you know what you're doing." Valen didn't have a reply to that, and Fang didn't feel like belaboring the point. For now, she was content to lie in the quiet and the dark and try not to think about the smoking piles of debris where the dream-image of her parents shuffled through cinders searching for their daughter, calling her name. Mom, Dad, I know you're both dead. Please don't do this to me, please don't make me feel even more useless than I already do. Charles and Meilin would never blame their only child for such a catastrophe, but with thousands of Drass dead or dying trapped in ruins it was hard enough not to feel guilty for lying comfortably in her bed several million kilometers away.

"Fang?"

"Hmm?"

"I don't..." Valen's breath hitched. "I don't know what's going to happen now, I don't know if I'll be able to keep my promise to you."

Her heart thumped and Fang was grateful for the darkness that hid her wince. "It's okay, we'll figure something out." Valen's promise to free her, she knew, still hung heavy in his thoughts. "You've got bigger things to worry about."

"I promised you," he said stubbornly.

"I know, but there's no need to rush." Indeed, it wouldn't be the first time Fang had set aside something she wanted to focus on bigger needs; even in childhood she'd understood the difference between receiving a new toy and getting to eat that day; most children her age never had to worry about such things, their bellies were always full no matter how many dolls and games they had. Now there were others whose homes, jobs and livelihoods had been ripped away, and Fang wondered how they'd survive without an enormous, concentrated outpouring of assistance. It's going to cost the empire hundreds of millions to rebuild, and more to feed and support all those Drass. Where would all those funds come from? The Drassian Empire was the richest civilization in the galaxy, but most of that kai was tied up in funding for current programs, like the one running the Baishin colony. Where would they find extra cash to support the survivors, pay for their medical costs, relocate them and clean up the ash and rubble left behind? Not to mention the counseling needed to restore their confidence and ease their anxieties following this disaster. "Is there anything I can do to help?"