The Brave Men Rode Them

Dragonsoul Human

She-Who-Strikes-First is annoyed.

She is very, very annoyed, especially at the small human with fire in his hands (a very dragonish power, his dragon's soul showing through), who cut off her tailfin so that she could not fly. It was unintentional, she knows, he merely wanted to kill her (death would be better than being unable to fly, she mopes).

But instead he spared her life, and she spared his in return, but now she is trapped in a cove with nowhere to go. She has been here for only a day and is already going mad; the angry human clearly did not understand that she wanted him to follow her and now she is alone.

She flicks her tail, rears back so that she is standing on her back legs--and freezes. Humanscent enters her nostrils, but not just any humanscent---dragonsoul human, with fire on his tongue and anger, anger, so much anger. She drops onto all fours and sniffs again and---there he is! He did understand, she realizes, but furrows her brow warily at him. Dragonsoul or no dragonsoul, he's still a Viking, and Vikings kill dragons and he cut off her tail. Part of it, anyway.

She watches his spiky hair weave through the rocks, scarlet eyes that remind her of the Queen (evil Queen bad Queen; the Queen can't touch her anymore) roving over the cove that is both home and prison to her now. Her gaze halts on the sword at his hip and she freezes, immediately swamped by the instinct to flyflyflyawaygetawayVikingwithaswordwillcutyouhurtyoukillyou. She launches herself into the air with a pained shriek, wheeling madly through the sky, unable to get the lift she needs without her tailfin. She slams into the rock, tries to climb it and fails, and drops to the ground with another wordless shriek, this one of disappointment.

She shakes herself off---mustgetoutmustgetout--before leaping into the air again, trying to ascend enough to haul herself free of the cove walls. She can hear the sound of that flat, soft stuff that the humans call paper rustling as the angry human flips through a square of the stuff, but ignores it. "No!" she roars in frustration as she slips, falling hard and crashing into several saplings. She rolls to her feet, aching everywhere, and stomps at the ground, raking it with inch-long claws and hissing angrily.

    Hungry, her stomach rumbles after a moment, and she growls in annoyance, shuffling over to the lake. Her ear-flaps prick up as she spots fish, and she plunges her head into the water, snapping at them. She manages to grab a small guppy, more bones than meat, and swallows with a wince.

I am a Night Fury! I should be ruling the skies, flying free with the dragons of the world. Instead I am bound by a Queen and then bound by gravity. She lowers her head, diminished. "I have failed you, He-Who-Hides-In-Shadow," she whispered, recalling her partner, the dragon who had been captured by Vikings. "You told me to win in your place, to fight like the Alpha of millennia ago, but I could not."

The sound of something falling makes her look up. The dragonsoul human (He-Who-Blazes-Like-Dragons-Of-Old, she has dubbed him---a bit long, but she is pleased with it) stares back at her, wide red eyes wary. She tenses, but he doesn't move.

And they simply watch each other for a long, long time---until rain starts to fall and He-Who-Blazes-Like-Dragons-Of-Old must leave.

She-Who-Strikes-First sleeps in the storm that night, and refuses to admit to herself that she is lonely.

--

She is sunning on a rock when she catches the dragonsoul human's scent again, and hears the wet slap of a fish against the ground. The fish smells good, too--real fish, not the bony ones in the lake with no nutrients, no good meat and no sustenance. Her nostrils flare and she shifts on her rock, eyes narrowing as the small human ducks beneath a round, wooden shield, muttering something about "showing them what focus is" and "I know what fucking side I'm on" and "who the fuck just takes shit for granted and doesn't even fucking try for peace". She can tell from his scent that he has trained to fight against her, and she can smell anger on him--and pain and confusion. He is not supposed to be here, but he is.