Moonrock

Perhaps it was that he was gray-born, and should have been grateful to have hatched in a forward-thinking lair where he was not cast out for that alone. Certainly they reminded him often enough that he ought to be grateful and ought to do everything he could to fit in. Perhaps it was his Shadow nature coming through, insisting on being contrary, always looking for the hidden way. The other Coatl sang; he thumped. He loved the way the resonance felt, coming in from the outside. They wanted continuous variation, he wanted rhythm. They wanted subtle complexities; he wanted thunder. He was a percussionist trapped in the flute section, always interrupting and overwhelming without meaning to, and yet always having to hold back.

There came a day he gave up on words-- that was what they said, the way they put it. It wasn't true; he could not give up on words when he had no faith in words in the first place. Words could never speak the truth of a heartbeat, of eager footfalls, or reluctant ones, of the beat of wings rising into the air. They didn't understand; he had not given up on words-- he had given up on trying to make them happy.

It was inevitable that he should leave in search of those ready to dance to a different drummer. And how could he not seek out the sea? He wanted to feel the world quiver as the heavy hand of the moon stroked the water; he wanted to feel that unending beat slide over him and into him and through him.

It had not occurred to him that he would not be alone in that desire, until he found someone else at the shoreline.



The Fae danced on a massive driftwood log that lay half-sunken in the sand, her wings and her crests undulating in the air in sync with the waves. She was small and bright and silly, all pale green wrapped up in deep blue feathers. He felt almost ungainly next to her. He knew other dragons spoke another language he had never learned, and he had been warned against Fae in particular-- "incomprehensible little squeakers," they'd said, but he'd had so little use for so much of what they had said.

He never meant to sneak up on her; he had no idea that she could not hear him approach. He frightened her right off the log. She skittered away into the air, then twisted fleetly and darted inside the deep hollow of the log where he could not reach.

If he could have, he would have told her he was sorry for frightening her, but more than ever words were no use to him. He had always believed no words speak like a heartbeat; his art was the only chance he had to offer an apology, make some connection. The Coatl who had been mocked for the heaviness and crudeness of his compulsive pattering now tapped the log as tenderly as a pulse, as gracefully as the raindrops of a gentle morning shower. The log hummed as he drummed out the softest sound of the waves, the rippling inhale as the water pulled back from the sand. He drew her back out into the air with the sound of the sea drawing the waves home. Her little face peaked up through a hole in the log, her crests flattened against her neck. He continued the rippling pattern, now adding a snap from his wings to punctuate the end.

Her little head withdrew, then returned, now sliding around the far end of the log. Her crests were high now. She crept out and over the lip of the log, spreading her body and her wings over the hollow surface, embracing the sounds he was making. Her feather-wrapped tail snaked up in the air and twitched in time to the beat. He mimicked her with his own tail, putting more of a sway in the motion of his drumming. She copied him in turn, beginning to lift herself a little ways off the log as she rocked to the beat.

Then, with his heart in his throat and taking great care not to break his rhythm, he brought his hind-hands into play, easing himself up on to the end of the log opposite her, spreading himself out just like she was. Mirroring one another as best they could, crests fanned out and tails flipping, he followed her movements as she followed his beat. Together they drummed and danced as if they were one being, the vibrations along the log like an electric current connecting them.

He was much too intensely involved to notice the great Guardian silently riding the surf into shore. Only when the massive water-warrior reached the shallows and brought her great wings up into the air, so close by that her shadow fell over them, did he become aware. There was no thought in that moment. For once he used his voice. With a hideous, discordant scream he threw himself at the new arrival, instinctively rising up on his back legs and splaying his wings the better to block the small fae from the giant. The Guardian drew back her head, clearly taken aback. He pressed home the advantage of surprise; if he could just keep her distracted, his little friend would a chance. There was no hope for him at this distance; he might as well go out in a moment of glory, doing what he loved best. Rising high on his high legs, the gray Coatl drummed the air with his wings for all the world like a grouse basilisk, waves of sounds like thunder rolling off his feathers to drown out the surf itself. His head bowed with determination, his crests high in defiance, and his throat silent, the Coatl roared his challenge with the beat that was his true voice and steeled himself to go down fighting.

---

SummersDay cocked her head at the gray Coatl, her blue eyes wide. Eventually he grew too tired to keep up that amazing sound. It took much longer than she had thought it would; he was a healthy young drake, for sure, for all the Coatl superstition towards the softer colors. Panting, wings drooping, crests flagging, still he stood trying to stare her down.

Petrichor did a loop-de-loop in the air on her way over, and then whipped a hovering spiral, tail curling like a corckscrew. SummersDay sighed, thinking for the thousandth time what a fine warrior Petrichor would make if only she'd had the slightest inclination; no one else could move so precisely as the lithe dancer, not even whirlwind Abra. "Yes, I saw; he's absolutely wonderful... a keeper if ever I saw one." The Guardian chattered freely, as she pointed at the Coatl with a foretalon and made the sign for home, followed by the question shrugs. Petrichor enthusiastically agreed, and swooped back to the log, grabbing hold of a spar with all four hands and making grand sweeps of her wings as though she intended to haul the whole thing up out of the sand herself. SummersDay dropped her head down and forward in the scooping "yes" motion. Then she turned to the Coatl, who had dropped to all fours at last and was looking back and forth between them in astonishment. The Guardian held his eyes, pointed at him, and then moved the four fingers of her forehands in a walking motion. The Coatl obligingly got out off the way, and SummersDay moved on to shore. A moment later the great driftwood log was free of the sand and rolling into the water-- it would be more fun to float it back to the cavern than to carry it. She followed it and snagged it, keeping it from bashing back into the beach, then arched her neck like a swan to look back at the two smaller dragons on the shore. With a twinkle in her eye. the Guardian stretched out one blue-green wing until the tip touched the sand just in front of them.

Delighted by the invitation, Petrichor scampered up to the joint and turned there, rising up to clutch her forehands against her chest in a little pleading gesture as she looked at the Coatl on the shore. Then she dropped back down and took a few hesitant steps back towards him, and stopped again, as if to indicate that she was willing to go whichever way he choose. But the young gray drake was nothing if not up to a challenge; with a visible deep breath, he launched himself into the air, and settled between SummersDay's wings. She felt him tuck himself into a loaf just to one side of her spines.

"Oh, won't they throw a party tonight over you," she said as she swam, pushing the big log before her.

---

They did, too. It was the first party with his drumming as the centerpiece, the one everyone would remember forever. It was Juniper who gave him his new name, since there was no way for any of them to learn what he had been called before. Petrichor danced its meaning for him, until he understood that they saw the mystery of the moon in his gray and black markings, and his rocking rhythms like the moon's pull on the waters. The grown-up fae held the hatchlings back from following the drummer and the dancer, later, when the two of them went together up to the cliff heights to look at the moon. Petrichor leaned against his side there. A shiver of shock ran through him. She backed away in an instant, and there was nothing he could say. The two of them looked at each other, the silence that had connected them suddenly a wall between them. Then, carefully, she stretched out her own wings, and ran the edge of her little mouth against one of the plumes she wore, as if her finery were a living thing she was tenderly grooming. She held his eyes, then, swooped her head down and forward, and made the double shrug he had seen the other dragons use to signify a question. Yes?

She was asking to touch him. She was actually asking to touch his gray feathers.

Moonrock blinked back tears. He curled his limbs under him and stretched his wings out to the ground, the pale circles there echoing the moon. He swooped his own head down and forward, and then let his neck, too, lay passive on the ground, all of him as close to her level as he could reach. Yes.

And as the little fae settled with a sigh into the cradle of the curve between his neck and shoulder and pressed her small head against his stuttering pulse, he reflected that touch, too, made a better language than words ever could.






Kingfisher is one of the three Tundra who came home with Tigerlily at the end of Tiger's career working with Tundra who had become separated from their clans and lost the trail home. Kingfisher is a wiry, edgy Tundra. The clan suspects Spiral in his ancestry... that, or peacock. He is impossibly vain and any unoccupied moment will find him combing and twirling his own fur.