2
By Any Other Name
TW: An unpleasant corpse. Also, bees.
It was a low-striking sunbeam that woke Tori the next morning—first a persistent warmth on his face and then, when he finally pried open one eye, a stabbing dazzle that stung him out of any lingering remnant of drowsiness. Blinking, he stood up and shook the stiffness out of his limbs. It had been cool overnight, which made him think about how the season was turning on toward winter—the Plateau’s winds were generally balmy enough that it never got truly frigid, but it could definitely get chilly, especially when the nights were long and dark. Maybe he should think about where he was going, where he might find shelter.
Where...
they were going.
Sheshu’s eyes had opened as soon as he started moving; they watched him, half-lidded, a little too intent to truly be called lazy but still showing no sign that she was in any hurry to get up. It was only once he’d scratched the morning itches and licked the corners of his eyes clean and started slinking off to take care of stinkier business that Sheshu began to stir. By the time he came back, the pile of rugs lay abandoned, and she was sitting up on top of the earthen bank, staring off into the distance.
With an easy leap and a half flap of his wings, Tori joined her. The ever-present breeze fanned at their faces; it had shifted about to come at them from the south, and as he scented at it, he half imagined that he could already smell fading autumn leaves and the storm-tang of the southern ocean. It sent a small thrill through him—of anxiety or anticipation, he couldn’t say.
“D’you ever have the feeling,” Sheshu murmured suddenly, “that you’re supposed to be going somewhere?”
There was something odd about her tone; it was abrupt as always, but strangely subdued. The shift threw him off balance, startled a wry snort out of him.
“We’re all supposed to be going somewhere,” he said. “That’s what Wind dragons do—we go where the winds take us.” How did that song go?
Winds of the world, winds of the heart, winds of the soul….
“Yeah, but like—somewhere in specific?” Sheshu gave a huffing chuckle and then shook her head, her wings twitching as she shrugged off that moment of introspection. “Ah, well, I guess I’ll figure it out.”
A rustle seized both of their attentions in the same instant, and they jerked around to stare at the tufty grass along the lip of the bank. An aggravated-looking mouse pulled itself up through the grasses, squeaked at them, and then began irately grooming its whiskers.
“Ha, ha!—sorry, Squeaky, but ya snooze, ya get left behind.” Turning back, Sheshu yawned into the breeze, then snapped her jaws shut with a grin. “So hey, Tori, let’s have some of those left-over squirrels, and then we can take a look around this place. Whaddya say?”
It didn’t seem like a bad idea, even if it didn’t bring them any closer to answering their questions, so Tori nodded and let Sheshu lead the way.
They set off across the grasslands, having left Sheshu’s mouse behind at their overnight camp (“Guard the rugs, Squeaky—ha!”). Their casual nosing about didn’t uncover any prey, although oddly enough they did find a scattering of more rugs, as well as some other junk. The mystery of where those had come from was solved when they came across the ruin of an old cart. Sheshu showed only a passing interest in it, but Tori’s curiosity was piqued. Who would have been traveling out here? Not many dragons used carts or wagons, preferring instead to fly their wares over long distances—could it have been Beastclans? He didn’t think there was any ’Clan territory nearby. The wind-weathered cart held no scent clues; he cast about farther, and was rewarded when he stumbled across a faded track. “Aha.”
“What’d you find?” Sheshu was at his shoulder in an instant; he hadn’t realized she’d been following him that closely.
“Look, it’s an old road.”
“Roooad.” Sheshu rolled the word around in her mouth like an unfamiliar flavor, and Tori sighed inwardly, trying to think of how best to explain.
“It’s like a...path that landtravelers follow.” Was a road really any different than a path? Tori groped after a distinction. “It’s...see, those are wheel tracks.”
“Funny tracks.” Sheshu stared down at them. “Do wheels taste good?”
“What—no. They’re—” Trying to explain suddenly seemed far too complicated. He thought of taking her back to the ruined cart, but then he’d have to get into what the broken wheels were actually
supposed to look like, and how they worked, and—just, no. “Never mind. They’re not something to eat, anyway.”
“Eh.” Losing interest, Sheshu began trotting along the trail, and Tori followed the idle swish of her tail, the swing of her narrow hips that for some reason he found distracting enough that when she stopped short he nearly ran into her. Her head was up, listening, and then he heard it too: a low, thrumming buzz. The back of his shoulders prickled.
“Trouble,” he muttered, and Sheshu canted her head toward him, although she remained focused on the sound. Sinking down, she padded forward in a low, slow slink, and he shadowed her, looking all around for any sign of motion. It was the buzzing that changed first, though, becoming louder and sharper, clearer. “Here they come,” he said, just as several large insect forms flew up above one of the rolling swells of the grasslands. “They’re bumbles—watch out, they have enough magic to zap—”
“Hrrar!” Sheshu launched herself with gleeful ferocity at the approaching bees, and Tori hissed in annoyance. She
could have waited another moment for him to finish.
The fight was fierce and confusing, as the two mirrors sprang and snapped and dodged and the bumbles darted in and out of reach, firing off their magic blasts. It was over almost before Tori knew it; bewildered, he turned in a circle to see if there were any more enemies, staggering a little from a particularly hard blow to the head. Sheshu was grinning viciously—she snatched up one of the fallen insects in her jaws, shook it with triumphant delight, chomped down into it, and then spat out a mouthful of fuzz and crunchy bits. “Blah!”
“Are you all right?” His legs were getting steadier, and he moved closer to her. She wiped at her mouth, made a disgusted face, and then smirked at him.
“That was fun! Let’s see if we can find some more.”
“Let’s
not,” Tori muttered as they set off again—but actually, he was rather proud of himself, a strange, hot feeling that welled up inside his chest as he thought about the fight and the fact that he’d not only survived but had taken down his fair share of targets.
Victory—he’d hardly even hunted for himself before he left the clan, and now he was not only providing food, he was killing dangerous enemies. He felt strong, and cunning, and—
—
savage.
He growled to himself, pushing aside that old, dry whisper, that judgment out of the past. Sheshu glanced over briefly at the sound, but said nothing.
They did encounter a few more scattered bumbles, and as the fights progressed, they both became better at anticipating the bees’ movements, striking through their defenses, and working in coordination with each other. Tori found himself constantly scanning their surroundings as they wandered on, half-eager for more attackers. Despite his alertness, though, it was Sheshu who froze, half rose up on her back legs, and then dropped and bolted forward along the track, a long, low white streak flashing through the grasses.
“Ha!”
Tori dashed after her, not even sure what she’d seen until he glimpsed some sort of bird flutter up above a low rise and then drop back out of sight. They left the track to cut straight up over the hill, and as they crested the top the scene became clear: a wagon, wrecked but not as ruinous as the other one, lay upside down next to the road. There was a dark lump, a body of some kind, farther down the track, but the attention of the birds—there was more than one, he realized—was on the wagon. They hovered about it, zipping forward to peck at the wood with their long, sharp beaks, sometimes fluttering upward only to swoop and dive back down—threatening each other or the wagon, he wasn’t quite sure. There wasn’t time for figuring anyway, just the dash, the wing-spread leap, jaws agape and claws extended, the soft, dying weight in his jaws and the angry skreeking of the other birds....
It was a hard fight, half aerial and half land bound, but eventually the last of the birds was flopping and expiring on the ground. Both mirrors were panting with pleasantly tired satisfaction as they rejoined each other at the wagon. Tori studied the vehicle—it looked as though a wheel had gone into a furrow or ditch, and then the whole thing had just rolled over. It must have been traveling fairly quickly at the time. He reached up, gave an undamaged wheel a spin, and watched it revolve. “This,” he told Sheshu, who was sprawled on the ground, resting, “is a wheel.”
“Yeaaaah, I don’t think I’d be eating tha—ho, ho,
ho! What’s this?” Sheshu rolled back up to her feet and lunged toward the wagon, thrusting her nose into the gap where the top didn’t quite lie flush against the ground and snuffling eagerly. Tori heard a scratching, a rustle, but before he could make out what it was—or decide if he should pull Sheshu back before some new enemy bit her on the muzzle—Sheshu curled her claws under the wagon’s boards and heaved it upward. The vehicle tipped up and then over, falling onto its side with a heavy thud, and Tori stared at the little white dragon that was revealed underneath it.
It was a hatchling—quite a young one, barely out of the nest. Little, he’d called it, and it was certainly much smaller than either of them, but it dwarfed the skydancer hatchlings he’d known. It had relatively large, leathery wings in a purplish gray color; its underbelly was a muted pink, and its pale green eyes were fixed on Sheshu, wide with alarm. Letting out a high-pitched creaking squawk, it spread its wings and stomped its forefeet, the fanlike fins on either side of its face opening and closing.
“Woohoo!” Snatching the hatchling up in her foreclaws, Sheshu sat up on her haunches and held it high in the air, grinning as it kicked its back feet futilely and made shrill complaining noises. It tried to bite at her foreleg—she swung it around, then rolled it onto the ground and started tickling its stomach. “Look at this little guy—” she sniffed it over, “—uh, girl.”
“What’s she doing way out here?” Tori wondered. His gaze slid toward the body farther down the road. No dragon, that.
“Let’s call her Pink.” Tori glanced back at Sheshu. The hatchling’s noises had subsided to a squarble that sounded more indignant than alarmed or angry; she had grabbed one of Sheshu’s hands and was gnawing on it in something closer to play-biting.
Tori sighed. “You can’t call her Pink.”
“Why not? She’s pink.”
“Her belly is pink.” This was not an effective counter argument. “Look, she’s a
guardian, and—”
Big, powerful, dignified,his mind whirled: again, too much to explain. “Couldn’t you at least call her ‘Rose’?”
Sheshu frowned. “Rose?”
“It’s a,” he faltered, “it’s a flower.” A noble and distinguished flower, at least. Sheshu scrunched up her muzzle, looking highly dubious. Sitting up, she gazed down at the hatchling, who was lying on her back, squirming wildly and kicking her tiny clawed feet in the air.
“Whaddya think, little fart?” Sheshu said. “Do you want to be Rose, or Pink?” With a heave, the hatchling rolled herself over and up into a sitting position and stared at Sheshu with an air of intense inquiry. “Rooose,” Sheshu drew out the word long and slow, “or Piiiiink?”
“P’i’k!” the hatchling squeaked in her throaty little voice, with a little bounce-pounce of excitement, and it was decided.
“Okay, she’s Pink,” Tori sighed. It could’ve been much worse, he supposed. Sheshu could have named her Squawky. Or Fart.
As Sheshu laughed and went back to playing with Pink, Tori padded over to the dead body. It was largish wingless creature that had a four-legged lower body and an upright front portion with two additional limbs. Long hair grew on its head and tail, but otherwise it was covered with a short, dark pelt. It wore a cloak, now wrapped in a hopeless tangle about the upper body, arm bracers, a quiver of arrows, and the remnants of what looked like a leather harness; a broken bow lay on the ground a little distance away. Tori cast about the area, sniffing, but he found no signs of any other creatures. By the time he came back to the corpse, Sheshu had wandered over, the hatchling bumbling along in her wake.
“That’s not a dragon,” Sheshu said, tilting her head curiously.
“It’s a centaur. They’re one of the Beastclans—the ‘Clans, they’re sort of in this weird place between the animals and monsters and us. They’re intelligent and they organize themselves into groups like we do, but they’re not dragons.”
Sheshu was eying the distinctive swellings on the creature’s head and flanks. “Bumbles got it, huh.”
“Yeah. Look.” Tori gestured at its hind legs. “It looks like it broke a leg when the cart went over—it tried to run after that, but it didn’t get far.” In addition to the shattered leg and bumble zaps, there was a cavity carved or gnawed into of its abdomen. Sheshu poked at the opening, then stuck her claws into it and pulled out a dripping chunk of honeycomb. With an incredulous, faintly outraged expression, she sniffed at the honey, flicked her tongue gingerly across it, and then made an exaggerated gagging noise.
“
Ew! Who ruins meat by smearing sweet stuff all over it?”
“Bumbles, I guess.” Tori shrugged. Sheshu spat to one side in disgust, then glanced down at Pink who had come over to investigate and was staring at the honeycomb with huge eyes. Sheshu held the honeycomb out to her—Pink snuffled at it, then grabbed it with both foreclaws and stuffed it into her mouth with a ravenous
umngfh!
At some point, Tori figured, he’d better tell Sheshu that she should be more careful about letting a hatchling put strange things in her mouth, food or not. But a little honey was probably harmless, and Pink looked laughably adorable with that golden stickiness smeared all over her tiny, blissful face.
Besides, all things considered, he should probably just be glad that Sheshu wasn’t trying to
eat the hatchling.
Meet Pink, the first addition to the clan! (Rules blah-blah about her acquisition
here.)
(I didn't manage to get this chapter finished and posted before Pink grew up, so I had to use the Scrying Workshop image so you could see her full cuteness. :D )
Hopefully now that work has stopped punching me in the face, I'll be able to keep up with this a little better....
Edited to add two things:
1. No, I did not set out to have an entire lair of white dragons (LOL).
2. Sheshu should not be allowed to name anything. Ever. (Well, except herself...she did a pretty good job with that.)
