Tomorrow, she’d apply her scrubbing brush and clean off the last of the embedded mud and slime.After a rapid towel down, she padded to her bedroom and slid between the sheets naked.She’d save her nightwear for when she had to share the house with her fellow workers or female scientists who visited during summer.
Nyree issued a happy sigh.This was how life should be—hard work and the satisfaction of a job well done.
Friendship without fear and the acquisition of knowledge and experiences.
Freedom.
The start of a new life without fear and trouble.
Tawera sat inside the tiny room where the woman had left him.He stared in the only direction available to him—forward—peering through the transparent wall, which was clear apart from the water droplets studding its surface.Acute shock had his mind spinning.
The dragon had responded to him.
A woman.
No one had reacted to him before, no matter how hard he’d tried to communicate.
It had been a brief window where he’d been able to focus on sending her his thoughts, and he’d ended up with a hell of a headache, but still—this was a tremendous victory.
She’d carried him to this settlement and brought him into the interior of a building.This unknown world comprised strange things he’d never encountered before, and he wished to investigate the marvels that both astounded and left him stunned.The water that had poured out on command and still dribbled on his head.Drip.Drip.Drip.Hot water that warmed him through and chased the chill from his bones.
Then there was the dragon-woman.She might be a taniwha since her skin, while in a two-legged form, was a honey-brown like his.Her hair was long and black like her sooty dragon, and her eyes were a golden brown.
A taniwha from his home country ofAotearoa, New Zealand.
A flutter started in his belly and spread outward until his entire body tingled.Hope, he realized.That he might touch and speak and smell the world around him again.
While the black dragon had been sleek and elegant, even a fraction haughty, the woman was slender as the Maori maidens of his youth.That was where the similarities ended because the clothes she wore were those of the European arrivals.Even stranger, she wore attire more suitable for a male, which left nothing to the imagination.In contrast, her underclothes were unusual and revealed rather than concealed.She’d seemed comfortable with her nakedness, unlike the prudish white women who’d sneered at him and his friends when they’d spotted them in town.Those ladies had wrinkled their noses at his flaxpiupiuand feather cloak and whisked up their skirts as if an accidental touch might harm them.
He wished he knew this woman’s name and more about her.Could he trust her for one?Would she help him further now that she had removed him from the distant cove where he’d spent countless years?Was communication with her possible again?
He’d tried while she was washing, but she’d ignored his pleas for aid.
For hundreds of years, the stone had trapped him.He’d prayed for help.Railed and cried, yet until the dragon’s appearance, nothing had worked.
He’d never communicated with anyone else.
The only difference was the dragon.Was that the answer?It was possible to transmit messages from taniwha to taniwha, but not while the curse kept him a prisoner, and she was in her two-legged form?
He’d need to exercise patience.Experiment.Listen and learn to understand where he was and how to return home.He eagerly anticipated confronting his brother and accusing him to his face.
He’d never imagined a family member acting with such treachery.
A soft curse escaped him, and it seemed to echo, rebounding back to him.
Patience.
After all this time, waiting should be second nature, but he found himself restive and eager to see more of the woman who had spoken with him like a friend.His savior.
If only he could escape this rock prison…
A vision of his brother’s face when Tawera challenged him had kept him sane during the endless years.
Revenge would be his, and he felt confident the woman’s curiosity and kindness in rescuing him from the sea was the impetus for the start of his journey toutu.
4
Moonlust Strikes
