The Sacrifice
生け贄
Since time immemorial, gifts given
to that man have been cursed.
Cursed in that they cannot be returned.
"I did it! Nina, check it out!"
Seeing me so excited about something, Nina looked at me strangely.
"... What did you do?"
"Can't you tell by looking?"
My eyes still wide open in surprise, I pointed at my feet with a finger on one of my forelegs.
There were a few centimeters' gap between my feet and the ground.
"I'm flying right now!"
"You've been doing that since I met you though?"
Nina's response to me—still uncontrollably excited—was rather indifferent.
"So you can't tell... what I'm doing right now is floating."
"What's the difference?"
I'm stumped on how to respond, honestly. There's no expression capable of easily making the distinction in Elvish.
"I mean... oh, see how I'm staying in the same spot even without flapping my wings? I'm not flying like a bird, I'm just drifting in the air like a leaf in a pond."
"What's so good about that?"
Nina's simple question put me at a loss for words.
If I had to pick between good and incredible, what I'm doing right now is by far incredible.
"It's magic, Nina. This is magic, too."
I can't say I know just how heavy a dragon's body is, but there's at least one thing that's clear.
The lift that my wings produce definitely isn't enough to support my massive body.
I'm still fairly young as a dragon, yet my body is at least two heads taller than Nina. I'm probably around three meters tall if you included everything to the tip of my tail.
So I'm much, much larger than a bird, let alone my mother, who's easily ten times my size. Common sense would dictate that things like us couldn't fly.
Given that I can do something that shouldn't be possible, magic has to have something to do with it.
And my hopes hit the mark rather magnificently.
"Weren't you happy about not using magic just a bit ago?"
"That was for fire. See? I'm not breathing out fire at all anymore."
I deliberately exhaled in Nina's direction.
"... Yeah... l-looks like you stopped breathing fire..."
"S-sorry!"
My breath caused Nina to tremble all over and to have to reign in her now-disheveled hair, so I quickly apologized.
"And you're going to teach that magic thing?"
"Yeah."
"How?"
Given the same question she'd asked last night, I suddenly noticed...
—I still hadn't solved that problem at all.
All I'd done was become able to purposely use magic.
"I'm beat, I give up."
I smiled wryly and Nina stared at me pointedly.
