Lightborn

CHAPTER NINE

Frost and Glaciers

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Waning gibbous,
Sun in the Northern Serpent,
Year 404,
Kreon's Era
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The sensation of the wind streaming underneath their wing membranes was something so beloved to dragonkind that their old tongues had over fifty different words to describe it. It was a crime that not one of them had made its way into modern dragon vernacular.

Pennerance, Hess spoke into his mind, remembering one of the words as he drew his wings closer and plunged through a grey cloud. Rainwater dribbled down his horns, forming little streams that flowed through the creases of his hide. He emerged from the cloud's underbelly, threw his wings open and glided over the rolling pastures carpeting the foothills of Aika's Crowns. A river meandered through the vast green expanses and deep ravines, leaving the glittering crescents of oxbow lakes near its curves. The cloud dragon flapped his wings to steady his flight and followed the river's course upstream to its origin in the mountains.

The snow-capped white ranges of Aika's Second Crown had many peaks vying to be called the highest but those of Mons Albine easily outclassed them by several thousand wingspans. The river moved along the base of the mountain, leaving tributaries that fed the marshes and watered the woodlands at its base. Looking up, Hess could see dragon representatives from the three major clans of Thalassus swoop down from the cloud cover and land on the gigantic mountain's summit.

He dipped one wing and flew in a spiral, circling the mountain in an easier and energy-efficient way of ascending than flying straight up. The grim grey faces of the mountain were marbled with narrow veins of ice and dusted with thick snow. The air here smelled of virgin ice, granite and pine pollen blown up from the conifer forests downhill. Finally, the ledge he was looking for came into his view, prompting him to tuck his wings, swoop, glide and land. The sun was merciless to barren mountaintops, eager to get the ice on their peaks flowing.

The ledge was occupied by a dragon lying prostrate on an outcrop with her wings draped over the rocks. Before her stretched the eastern side of Thalassus with the curving black beaches of Aika's Bay, the obsidian mountain range of the First Crown and the lush green forests of Aika's Grove. The Cynthean ocean lying beyond the land was a glittering expanse of aquamarine blue that merged into the horizon.

"You're early," Pruina said, her eyes still shut. Her silver mane scales were braided and arranged on her head to resemble roses by her human pets. Hess thought she looked ridiculous.

To the average dragon without human pets, the very thought of tangled manes would come across as something deplorable or unclean. To the dragons who reared humans, the occasional, single mane braid was a sign of love and bonding with their pets. Not long ago, Carnelian high society however had suddenly found themselves coveting the beautiful braids worn by the human rearers, something about them symbolising how compassionate the dragon was to lesser animals. The impossible standards and niceties of the high society courtships took care of the rest and turned the braids into the newest fad. If Hess had a piece of gold ore for each time a Carnelian had solicited his opinion on their braids, he could've fed five generations of his humans with tropical fruits imported from the South.

Hess had almost forgotten about the braid the little boy had made in his mane. Gleyssier would want him to be presentable to the great clans, preferably without him looking like a farmhand who had just walked out of a human sty with a mane full of knots, braids and buns.

To think that all that effort would be lost in a draw of a talon. The little boy had to braid mane scales taller than he was and he had done it so well. The dragon didn't have the heart to undo the child's handiwork.