Like Rygun, the adorable monster.
I smile at the thought, sweeping my hair back behind my ear, but then a different thought slaps that smile straight off my face. “Shit,” I mutter. “Tick prongs.”
Did I pack them? I can’t remember. Kaan may be fine with ripping them off with his bare hands, but that never works for me. The head always dislodges and then I have to get my fingers in there and fish it out.
I lump my pack on the ground and crouch over it, shifting through things I don’t remember stuffing in here—no idea why I’d need two forks.
My hyperactive, sleep-deprived brain had its reasons, I’m sure.
I continue rifling through, trying not to look to my right. To the burrow that’s been abandoned since I was five phases old.
Threading my entire arm into my satchel and feeling around the bottom, my thoughts churn into a black smog as I cast my stare up at the large thorny moon perched directly above the Stronghold. A little lower than many of the other moons in the sky.
Jógo.
Mah’s beloved dragon that she nursed back to health after finding him kicked from a nest as a hatchling.
After she passed, I’m told Jógo refused to leave the big round burrow to my right—an abnormality for a Sabersythe, since they like to switch dens more often than a huttlecrab switches shells. The very reason we provide so many burrows. An effort to keep our charmed beasts content enough not to mourn their hatching grounds.
Jógo’s uninterest in emerging was the first sign something was wrong. That he’d fallen into a different form of mourning.
The only time I ever saw the light hit his beautiful bronze scales was when I sat on this very plateau waiting for Kaan to finish tending a tear in Rygun’s wing. Jógo emerged, hobbling. Barely able to keep his head off the ground.
He’d looked me in the eye, huffed a hot breath upon my face, and I’d never been so scared. Then he made a sharp mewling sound, squinted up at the sky, tilled his droopy wings, and flew.
Five phases old, and I watched him ball up and die in the sky. Something else for Pah to blame on me. Being so young, I actually believed it was my fault, until I grew old enough to understand the beast was mourning Mah. Then I knew for certain it was.
I shove the prickly thought aside, clearing my throat.
Finally finding the prongs, I shake them victoriously, then tuck them into a pocket that’s easy to access, tossing my bag over my shoulder again. I’m just walking past Rygun’s burrow—the mouth of it gouged from the way he scraped against it while preparing for his last shed—when I see Kaan bent over a saddlebag he’s currently repacking.
I pause, looking into the burrow’s rumbling depths where Rygun is likely sleeping with one eye open, well aware Kaan is about to force him from his tight, heated nook.
“Where are you going?” I ask, watching Kaan tuck one of his packs full of dried flaps of dahpa bread. Enough that I realize he has every intention of being away for more than a few slumbers.
He cuts a glance at me over his shoulder, brow creased. “Ticks are out with a vengeance,” he mutters, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a rumpled parchment lark. “A charmed beast turned rabid and torched half a village.”
Frowning, I set down my pack and advance, taking the lark from his outstretched hand. I smooth it against my thigh, skimming the messy script. “Blóm? Chief Thron’s beast?”
Kaan grunts.
Creators …
“He blazed an entire herd of colk with no intention of eating. If the beast is left, there are many other villages nearby that he’ll decimate before the poison corrodes his heart. I’m getting a head start. Grihm’s gathering his gear, then meeting me on the way if he can catch up. The keepers are helping to saddle one of the carters for him now. Lane’s beast, I think.”
“Nevut?”
“Correct. She’s the fastest Sabersythe in the hutch that hasn’t yet been turned out for The Great Flurrt, and haste is of the essence.”
My gaze drifts to the three metal spears resting on the ground in a bundled heap, bound with a leather holster that’ll attach to Rygun’s saddle. I nod, not that he sees it, his attention cast back on his pack, movements stiff and precise as he stuffs it full.
Poor Kaan. There’s nothing worse than hunting a rabid dragon. It’s hard to convince yourself that you’ve put a beast out of its misery when it falls to the ground rather than soars into the sky, curling up beside its ancestors.
For his sake—and for the sake of his massive, tender heart—I hope someone else has grounded the beast before he makes it there. Help folk rebuild their stone homes and you’re a hero. Slaughter a Sabersythe and you’re a fucking murderer, no matter how many pats on the back you get.