A dragon and her boy

Beritru dozed in the clearing. She peeked up at the setting sun with violet eyes and sighed. Vonrael will be returning soon, she knew. She closed her eyes to wait for the boy. What thoughts will he share with me today?

Rapid footfalls came bounding towards her from the west. Beritru couldn't help the grin that spread across her fearsome features. She hid it quickly as Vonrael's labored breathing grew closer. The sun's heat vanished from her face as it sank below the tree line.

"This is the third time you have been late in as many days, Vonrael," she chided gently. She opened her eyes to watch Vonrael stumble into the clearing. "Is this going to become a habit?"

Vonrael lowered himself to the ground, his skin nearly as dark as the dust now. He threw out one arm to point at Beritru's black scales. "I'm not late yet," he protested in gasping breaths. "The sun is still touching you."

Beritru lifted her great head to look at where he was pointing on her tail. "Hmph. Only because I am stretched out." She rose, curled around herself, and settled back down into the shadows. "There, now you are late."

Vonrael let out an exasperated groan. "But-"

"Do you intend to argue with an Inferno?"

"No," sighed the boy. He pursed his lips in quiet frustration.

This worried Beritru. The black dragon didn't like it when Vonrael maintained a silence after a day spent at the ridge. It meant his thoughts had been heavy. If only I could help to bear those burdens, but I am surely the reason for many of them. She broke the silence first. "How were the flowers on the ridge today? Have the irises begun to bloom yet?"

"When will I meet the other dragons?"

The question caught Beritru off guard. She supplied her usual answer: "You will meet them when it is time."

"But I'm ready now."

"That does not mean that they are ready to meet you, Vonrael."

"I want to see the curled horns of the Stones and the Winds' six wings," he continued as though he hadn't heard her, "and I want to listen to all the Infernos speak at once. You all must sound like a huge forest fire."

"And what of the Storms, Crucibles, Aquas, and Frosts? Do you not wish to see them?" Beritru inquired with feigned shock. "I will have to inform them at the next Council meeting."

Vonrael jumped up in alarm. "No! Then they won't like me!"

Beritru laughed at the look of utter panic on his face. "They will like you, my pride, there is no need to worry about that. Well, perhaps the Aquas will not but you must not take it personally. They care only for themselves."

The boy frowned as he laid back down in the darkening clearing. "They can't be that bad. They're dragons, after all."

Beritru stared at Vonrael. His brown eyes were lost in the blazing clouds above them. Perhaps you should have been raised by your own kind. It is my fault that you are here in this clearing tonight. Your kindness to the dragons will be misunderstood and taken as naivete or weakness. The dragons would kill you for simply being human and the humans would kill you because you know too much about us. Her obsidian claws sank into the earth in humbling terror. What have I done?

Slowly, Beritru gathered her thoughts. "Vonrael, there are a great many things that you must understand before you are truly ready to meet the dragons." She knew what his counterpoint would be before he even said it.

"Like what? I've read all the tomes in your hoard."

"Yes, you have been studying diligently just as I have asked of you. But do you truly understand the meaning of what you are reading?"

Vonrael scrunched up his face in thought. Beritru never thought she could come to love a human expression so much. "I think?"

"Then how did the Infernos get their purple fire?" asked the Inferno.

The boy answered hesitantly, "Your ancestors asked the stars for it."

"Why was it difficult for them to do that?"

"Because they had to travel to the territory of the Frosts?"

Beritru shook her head. "That was a grueling journey, but that was not what made it difficult. What made asking the stars difficult was the pride of the Infernos. We had to overcome what we contained within ourselves," she said gently. The sun had fully set now and the night stars were emerging to take up their solemn vigils. "We humbled ourselves in a foreign land to receive the fire that would always set us apart. That is what you must understand about the Infernos."

"What else should I understand? How much else is there to know?"

"Vonrael, every star in the sky could tell you a story and you still would not understand all there is to know," answered the dragon with an infinite patience. "I will find that old tome of myths I have and we will look through it tomorrow."

Vonrael could only reply with one disappointed word: "Tomorrow?"

"Yes, my pride, tomorrow. Now run back to the cave and get some sleep, the sun will return before you know it."

The boy raced by her to do as she said. "Good night, Beritru!"

"Good night, Vonrael," she called back.

Left alone once more, Beritru returned her violet gaze to the stars. They twinkled and she knew they would hear her. If you had told the old Beritru that one day she would relinquish her place on the battlefield, she would have laughed. If you had told her that she would choose to raise a human on top of all that, she would have thought you all insane and turned her back on you. She growled faintly as she rose from the dusty clearing. But it is you who have turned your backs on me. I have not heard so much as a single word from you in centuries. I am now merely the embers of who I once was. There is no more Beritru the Brutal, she thought as she stalked back to the cave, just a dragon and her boy.