Heart of a Dragon

Part 4

Though the drowsiness of night was strong, Lunora awoke to the pattering of something walking on her window sill. No longer unnerved by the night's hollow whisperings, she smiled to herself and thought, How ridiculous we were! And the night before an Incendation too. Blinking thoroughly to banish any stray imaginings that might threaten her day, Lunora tossed her long hair from her face and sat up. She squinted at the window. The window was swathed with a red silk sheet to dim the Sun's rays in the morning to a bloody hue, and upon its surface was intricate stitching of mountains and some exotic towers, one of which was crowned with a dragon whose wings swept out grandly. In the wind, the images would seem to move, and the dragon flap his wings. Yet behind this sheet, a shadow was now visible. It was clearly a cat, one with tufted fur on her cheeks. She was sitting on the sill with a calm demeanour that only felines can make appear menacing, her tail slowly swaying back and forth. Lunora had never seen a cat in the Greatwood, and for some reason, she felt wary about it. So to prove to herself that this was ridiculous, she slipped out from her red velvet covers and tiptoed to the window.

Before Lunora could open the curtains, the cat turned her head so Lunora could see her in profile. There was something long sticking out of her mouth. Lunora frowned, and the cat set the item down on the sill. Lunora then took hold of the curtains and pulled them open.

"No," she said to herself, as if contradicting her vision would somehow set it right. For there was no sign of the cat.

She stuck her head out the window, looked down, up, and even bent out to look over and underneath the ledge, but there was not even a flick of a tail. She knew she couldn't have imagined the cat. And what's more, that item was right where the cat had left it. It was a paintbrush, one with a bulging crystalline handle that had an opening at the top into which ink could be poured so that it would flow out through the bristles of the brush with a consistency that depended on how the brush was squeezed. It was Wyn's invention, and unmistakably one of his egg-painting brushes by the golden vines wrapped above the tip and tiny engravings of creatures.

Lunora picked the brush up and twirled it in her fingers. So Wyn must have come late last night. She couldn't imagine him sending a cat to put a paintbrush on her window sill, but she could imagine that a cat had followed his slow pony here and had taken the paintbrush on its own accord. Yet how had the cat just vanished? Perhaps another magician had come with an egg, and this was his cat.

When Lunora turned back to her bed to get dressed for the Incendation, not at all tired despite a scant few hours of sleep, she gasped upon seeing a lump curled up in her Flarien blanket. Swooping to the bed, she threw the covers off, only to be met by the sleeping face of Daylan. His dark locks were plastered to his forehead and the sides of his face with sweat, and he held the insides of the blanket tightly as if he expected to fall at any moment. Lunora sighed and shook her head. What had been stirring her to such agitation? Who else could have been in her room? Seeing Daylan press his runny nose onto her blanket, Lunora pulled it from him and unwound him from his nighttime cocoon. Daylan gasped as he spun and fell on his belly in the middle of Lunora's bed, his eyes in a sleepy frenzy.

"There was a cat," Lunora said, folding her precious blanket and returning it to her wardrobe. She got her wooden hairbrush and brushed her long hair as she continued. "She had Wyn's paintbrush. He must have finished painting the egg by now—let's go see."

Daylan, kneeling up on Lunora's bed, only blinked in confusion. Lunora shook her head and pulled him to his feet, pushing his hair from his eyes. She put her boots back on, deciding that she had better forgo changing for helping with the gylf.

"There was a cat, Daylan," she repeated, pulling Daylan with her as she left the room. "Just on the windowsill. I only saw her shadow, and when I opened the curtains, she was gone. Vanished. And only Wyn's paintbrush was left."