Blooding

Lusik

Lusik tore the pheasant out of the trap. Its legs hung limp. Blood stained its fur. The stuff leaked out of its neck and splashed onto the snow. He slung it over his back and trudged back into his camp. The tundra wailed on the wind and smoke wisped from his fire. He had left the burner in the village. This fire was orange, natural and required fuel.

Fuel that some nights he was scant able to gather.

He had not taken the burner with him, because he had no ownership over it. His brothers had reclaimed it, sullen looks pervaded their muzzles as they carried it away. He had stolen it. Now it was returned. Lusik thought that was a fair transaction. If he was to freeze, then that was his fate. Yet he wasn't afraid, Lusik had an intimate liaison with the cold. He knew its caress, knew when its taught talons gripped his bones, knew when it chattered his teeth. With such a razor-sharp muzzle, he had almost bit off his tongue.

The first night he had wept. His head had been in his talons as his campfire smouldered, a tiny flicker swam in its heart for a moment, then vanished, taking his hope with it to the afterlife for failed campfires. He hadn't slept, the cold wouldn't allow his eyes to droop. He wished he could slip into a coma and become buried under fleets of snow. In a hypothermic stupor, he might have dreamed of her. That was his wish.

Dawn had yawned over the horizon and he rose. He hadn't died, this both liberated and depressed him. The next night his campfire worked.

That night his neck had ached from gazing up at the sky. Emerald tendrils drifted in the space between clouds, they twirled and danced like eels in a pond. Their multi-hued bodies faded through fog and mist. They concealed the stars. Lusik awed at the display. Power, unknowable. Not that Lusik knew, but he had witnessed Aurora Borealis. The dissemination of radioactive particles into the atmosphere – that created the dancing lights.

Magic could not create such a display. This was the raw display of nature's random beauty.

As he had watched, the tendrils had swirled together. They wrapped around and tightened into an image. Whether it was the cold, or his drake eyesight, Lusik had leapt to his talons and roared. It sent critters and foxes for kilometres scurrying into the underbrush. The Aurora had the face of a Griffon. Her. His Griffon.

He roared until his voice cracked. He fell to his haunches and slammed the snow with his claws, showering the fire; it sizzled and smoked. There were no tears. He had cried enough until his eyes cut like stone. He moaned.

The Aurora loomed over him, he felt eclipsed by it. He kept his head down, his eyes clamped shut and his talons dug into the ground. Her face remained etched into the blackness.

It was an accusation. Her life traded for his, and his brothers. The very same gang that had tried to kill her. Maul her. And he had sat by and watched. The thread of that thought dangled in his mind like it was a fuse to a pile of gunpowder. He planted his face into the snow and screamed. The cold touched the tip of his teeth – his scream grew in volume – his claws came down and pounded the ground. Came down and pounded nature; nature that had borne him her beauty, tantalised him with it, gave it to him without defence, only to have his cowardice retract any consideration of what he felt for her.

But deep into night, when wrapped in his covers with the moon presiding over the world, that feeling rose up in him. A feeling trying to swim to the surface for oxygen. He chocked it – held its tail and kept it drowning. What would everyone say? He told himself that was his fear, the endless sea of eyes accusing him for his desire. Yes, that's my fear, I dare not oppose it. Even that was a farce, a mask concealing the ugliest, darkest boogeydrake that hid under his bed.

What would she think?

That thought was the coal that fuelled his craven furnace.

He refused to rise from the snow. He couldn't. His muscles locked up, his tail went taut and his frill tightened. He wasn't worthy, never was. The regret weighed on his back like a tonne of lead. There was no gaze he could give that would equal hers, no virtue of his life that could prove her sacrifice. Every beat of his heart only proved his guilt.