She looked up at the sky, and she exhaled with mist in her eyes.
Five
The last dragonreturned to the lake before sunrise, staying hidden in the trees along the northern edge of the water. It was a dangerous thing to stay in one place for so long, and yet, he had.
He convinced himself that it was to make sure the humans did not come to this place, searching for the missing goat, but part of him just wanted to see the woman again.
When she emerged from the opposite side of the woods, her hair was loose around her shoulders and her face was flushed prettily with sunlight.
He simply watched her. Watched her drink, watched her bathe, watched her go about her little rituals: collecting water, digging in the dirt, laughing at the fish.
Laughing.
The sound startled him. He had not heard such a thing in decades. The last time he had, the laughter had been laced with malice and triumph.
But hers? It was soft, real, and joyful.
He shifted slightly in the shadows at the noise. She did not notice.
She began to hum then, and he closed his eyes to listen. The notes made no sense, and the tune seemed to chase no melody, but there was somehow still something…soothingabout the sound.
He tried to memorize a pattern that was not there.
He had never trusted humans—not after what they did to him, to his kind. This human girl was no different. He did not trust her, and every instinct he had told him to move quickly and scorch the clearing with her in it. To finally reveal to the humans that he still existed. That they did not wipe out the dragons as they once thought. He wanted to instill the fear in humans that they made him feel as a hatchling.
And yet still, this human did not feel like the others. She was not armored, and she did not carry a weapon. Instead, she wandered, she listened, and she gathered what she could while respecting the peace of the forest.
He watched her until the sunset began to paint the sky in warm shades of orange and pink, and until she stood again. She brushed grass from her skirt and tucked her water skin into her satchel before turning back to the woods.
He stayed where he was until her scent faded into a memory. Only then, did he move to return to his cave.
When he was there, one treasure in particular caught his eye.
A golden statue of a woman—the one with gentle hands. He stared at the figure for a longtime, tilting his head from side to side as if expecting the human girl to emerge from the gold.
She did not.
Because she was not a treasure. She was a human. And humans were dangerous and destructive.
Even the gentle ones. Even her.
Six
The Council had issuednew orders that morning. Stricter rations, earlier curfews, more contraband searches. They said it was for safety. But to Elowen, it was nothing more than a noose around her neck.
Worried that they would restrict her permission to go into the forest, Elowen slipped away from the town even earlier than normal, looking for something,anythinguseful in the forest that would make the Council feel that her trips were still valuable to the village.
She slipped through the trees before the sun had risen, her satchel empty, her steps quick. She followed the familiar trail that led to the lake, the morning light shimmering off the surface when she finally arrived. Dragonflies flew erratically like hot embers across the water as she knelt to fill her waterskin with the crisp drink.
That’s when she saw it: something shimmering, half buried in the reeds, just at the edge of the muddy shore.
Her hands reached for it before she had time to think,fingers brushing the dirt and grit away from the object, and lifting it from the soil.
Not a stone. Too heavy. Too smooth in some places and too jagged in others. Triangular. Thick at the base and tapering to a fine edge like an arrowhead. It was black as coal, but when the sun hit it just right, it glowed with a rich gold.
And more than that, it felt warm, like fire burned under the surface. Alive, almost.
Elowen turned it in her hands, examining it from every angle, smelling it—biting it even, frowning when she could not recognize the strange object.
