I never knew just how freeing the sky would be.

  Sure, gliding from tree to tree was fun. The furthest I’d ever flown before was from one side of the glade back to the Den. My Huntress had scolded me for flying into the front door, but her smile let me know that she was secretly delighted at what I’d accomplished. I desperately wanted to see that smile again.

  I’d do anything for it.

  The sky gave a new perspective on certain matters. I could see the mountain where I’d been born in the distance. It was like a white smudge on the horizon, a cloud bound permanently to the ground. The forest I’d called my home was far smaller than I’d imagined. The Dark Wood was little more than a black stain creeping at its edges.

  I looked down at My Huntress, dangling in my claws. Like the forest, the dark stain of her wounds marred her beauty. I would see it all set to right.

  Where would a healer be if I was one? Probably among those like My Huntress. A memory came unbidden to my mind. Humans. They were called humans. I didn’t think My Huntress had ever told me that word, but it fit. Just like how ‘dragon’ rang true to myself.

  My Huntress liked to kindle fire at night for its light and warmth. Humans were weak creatures that needed fire that wasn’t their own, along with clothing to protect them where their own bodies were inadequate. Surely a collection of humans would have more fires in the same place.

  Beyond the forest there were rolling hills. Small copses of trees dotted some, but many were marked with patterns that seemed too regular to be natural. Like someone had drawn great lines in the dirt. Rocks were piled together in lines as well, forming boundaries between one bit of dirt and the next.

  Humans were strange like that, with odd notions about fake lines between each other. My Huntress hadn’t spoken about other humans much, but the way she set boundaries within our Den was definitely a human trait.

  I followed the patterns. In the distance there was a collection of low mounds. Late winter snow disguised their shape, but the telltale sign of smoke rising from chimneys gave away that this was a human place. I fanned my wings and took greater speed, clutching My Huntress to my body to protect her from the chill wind.

  Even as fast as I flew, it felt like an agonizingly long time before I drew close to the humans’ homes. There were only a couple dozen structures, but even if was only one human per hut, that was far more than I was prepared to handle.

  But My Huntress needed help.

  Where was the healer? My Huntress had sometimes used what she called herbs and poultices to heal minor cuts and bruises. A healer’s house should smell like those things. Circling in the darkness above the village, I breathed in deeply through my nostrils. A cavalcade of strange scents assaulted me.

  Human scents, far too many to pick out individuals. Animals that the humans kept with them. A strange notion. No animal would make a proper companion like a dragon. More scents. Food. Burning wood smoke. Plants, but of the food kind My Huntress used to eat. Something sharp and tangy, hot without fire.

  Wait. There.

  I dropped out of the night sky with a thump. My forelimbs were occupied, so my landing was unsteady. Even still, it was quiet enough that perhaps the other humans wouldn’t notice. I only needed the healer. Other humans would only complicate things.

  This human home was different than My Huntress’s den. It was made out of stone piled together, which was then covered in a white mud mixed with straw. More straw, woven together, made its roof. The door was made of heavy wood and banded with iron. The windows were shuttered closed, but I could make out bits of a clear yet solid material like gemstone hidden behind.

  Perhaps this human was unusually wealthy. It would make sense if a healer commanded great respect and wealth. I did not know what I could offer such a person, but I had to try. Cradling My Huntress to my chest, I bumped my fledgling horns against the door. Once, twice, thrice.

  I knew someone was awake. There was a fire lit at this hearth. I could smell the scent of a human inside. Two, maybe? I was uncertain. Just as I moved to knock on the door again, there was movement inside the house.

  It took an agonizingly long time for the door to crack open. The barest sliver of a face looked out into the night.

  The door slammed shut again.

  I blinked, barely able to comprehend what had just happened.

  The door opened again, as if the occupant couldn’t believe it either.

  Before the door could be slammed, I shoved my snout through the opening. The occupant did in fact try to slam the door again, which hurt like hell. My patience was quickly running thin.

  “HELP.”

  It wasn’t a request, it was an imperative. I had not known how to use my maw to make such words until recently. The confrontation with the Rotting Bear was the first time I had used my voice to project power outside of myself. Whoever was behind the door gave a sound of surprise and moved back, which let me shoulder the rest of my way in.

  The inside of the home was very human. A low fire burned in a hearth. A collection of seats surrounded a table. Lots of things that only humans seemed to need crowded every available flat surface. It wasn’t the furniture that concerned me, however. It was the occupant.

  She was a human female. Her skin was deeply tanned, or perhaps naturally darker toned, with dark black hair drawn into a tight bun behind her head. She positively reeked of herbs. She was also halfway through grabbing a long stick with straw tied at the end to strike me.

  My tail caught the door and pushed it shut. I spoke again.

  “Help. Help her.” It was not a command, exactly. I needed this healer’s aid.

  Perhaps the novelty of a speaking giant lizard had worn off a bit, but the healer woman was able to notice the bundle I carried in my forelimbs. I had to give her some credit, she was able to readjust her actions quickly when needed.

  “Somebody comes knocking past midnight in the dead of winter, and it’s a bloody dragon. Hedge take me. And it demands ‘help’? Whatever will I dream of next.” The woman seemed to like talking more than I preferred. She sometimes spoke to herself. Other times, she spoke at me, but she was still actually talking to herself.

  “Come on, yon beasty. Over here. Put them on the table, nice and gentle now.” Whatever had been on the table before was quite literally swept off of it by the woman’s broomstick. Now that it had come time to place My Huntress down, I was suddenly reluctant.

  What if, when I let her go, she was already gone?

  I received a bonk to my snout with a broomstick for my hesitation. I was so shocked and befuddled, that I did what I’d been asked straight away. With as much delicacy as I could manage, I settled My Huntress onto the table. I felt weak, suddenly, when I let go. I dropped back onto my haunches, one forelimb clinging onto the table surface.

  The healer woman gave a sharp gasp when she saw My Huntress’s condition. Whatever words she’d been nattering on with died in her throat. She became deathly serious, like My Huntress when she was stalking her prey. Except, this woman was stalking My Huntress. Her wellbeing, anyway. I had to hope that was what her expression meant.

  Quiet footsteps rushed over to My Huntress, checking for something. She touched on to a point at My Huntress’s neck. A slight easing of tension came to the healer’s shoulders, but she did not slow down. Cabinets were thrown open and ransacked for many things I had no knowledge of. Some smelled like herbs. Others were bits of metal and wood, fresh cloth and string.

  “You. What happened? Did you do this?” I was shaken out of my trance by the woman’s words. I growled at the accusation. “Don’t you get snippy with me, mister. Did you? Or what else did it?”

  I struggled to gather my thoughts. How could I communicate what I had seen? Even now my mind fought to purge itself of the worst bits of the Dark Wood and the Vile Tree.

  “No. Not me. Bear… bad… bad bear, bad bad tree. Dead… not dead?” With every bit of human speech that I could muster, I tried to describe the horrible things that had defiled my precious Huntress and wounded her.

  “Bear fight Huntress… Then… tree, hurt.”

  “... You’re saying an evil bear fought her, then an even more evil undead tree hurt her?”

  I bobbed my head up and down. Yes that sounded correct. The healer woman had not stopped working while we conversed. It was painful to my heart, to see what needed to be done to heal my Huntress. Healing was not pretty with sparkles. It was messy and made noises that had my stomach do flips. I worried at times that the healer was hurting My Huntress more than helping her.

  Only the calm but serious expression on her face kept me from interfering.

  “... You’re fuckin’ serious ain’t ye? Where the hells were ye at, the Cursed Forest?”

  I didn’t know it by that name, but I bobbed my head again. The ‘Cursed Forest’ sounded like a good name for the wretched place.

  “... Was that you that lit up the night sky not long ago?”

  Another nod.

  “... Did you kill the evil fuckers?”

  That took some serious thought to answer. Could you kill something that wasn’t alive? For sake of simplicity I decided that ‘vaporizing it from existence with dragonfire’ was sufficiently kill-y to deserve another nod.

  “Grab that pot over there, take it outside, fill it full of fresh white snow, then drag it in by the fire. Can you do that for me, big beasty?

  I didn’t like her chosen title for me, but if it helped my Huntress, the healer would get a pass. For now. The pot in question wasn’t hard to find. It was in fact, hard to miss. If I had an inexplicable desire to hop in the pot, I could probably do so. My Huntress might even be able to join me comfortably.

  ‘Stop with the weird human thoughts. Get on with moving the pot,’ I ordered myself.

  Moving the massive pot across the floor was a struggle in itself. Whatever flood of strength had enabled me to carry my Huntress across the sky, it was long gone. Here again I found myself exhausted, hungry, and desperately wishing for my comfortable Den. I kept dragging the stupidly heavy pot anyways.

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  The healer seemed a bit surprised when I was able to open the door on my own. Dragging the pot outside took some careful wedging, but it was eventually accomplished. I kept an eye on the healer, looking out for some ploy in case she tried to close and bar the door behind me. Thankfully, she didn't. I left the door open just a crack so I could get back in.

  Filling the pot with snow was… not glamorous. I understood the difference between muddy snow, snow with other stuff mixed in, and the pure white snow that was good for making water over a fire. It was one of the mundane tasks that I could actually help with, in keeping my Huntress’s Den.

  Would I ever do this for anyone else on the face of the world? No. Definitely not. But this was for My Huntress. I had just blown up half the Cursed Forest for her. Shoveling snow with my claws was nothing compared to that. I made sure that the pot was completely full, with none of the voids light fluffy snow liked to leave. The pot was dragging back to the house, now even heavier on the return trip.

  Back inside the house, getting the snow filled pot over to the fire without spilling any was more than my exhausted body could handle. I got it to the fire with the majority of its contents. Blearily, I looked back the way I’d come. Small piles of snow had followed me, or dropped out of the pot. They were melting slowly. I backed myself up wearily, brushing the snow with my tail until I’d gotten it to the door. Then I flicked it all outside, along with shaking off my clawed feet, and shut the door again.

  I looked at the Healer. My Huntress was still breathing. Something in the sound was doing better than it was before. Her scent, while still painful, was cleaner than when I’d arrived. I needed sleep and there was nothing else I could do for now. I lumbered back over to the fire, found a nice open bit of hearthstone, and curled up into a ball, covering myself with my wing.

  The Healer’s gaze had followed me the entire time. She slowly looked back at her newest patient in mild shock.

  “You must be awful special lass. I ain’t never heard of someone house training a bloody dragon before.”

  My dreams were often shapeless. Not exactly a black void. Rather, it was a slowly stirring lack of color. As I slept now, being dropped into a sea of color was a novel experience. One bled into the next without rhyme or reason. Impossible combinations and synchronizations flowed together around me and through me.

  It felt like I was falling, but there was no discernable up or down. The only context I had for space was myself. In this place, I was a singular point of solidity amongst an ocean of uncertainty. Although it was strange, I did not find myself frightened.

  If anything, there was a peace to this existence that I did not feel in the waking world. The closest I had ever come was when I drew on the power in my blood to guide me through the Dark Wood. As I thought about that, I became sure that I could do much the same here with little effort.

  I sought out the things that were mine in this place. As easy as breathing, I felt myself move towards them. Thought became movement through the colorful sea. What I sought stood out to me in the depths like stars in the night sky. These ones I could reach, rather than forever lying beyond me above.

  The colors gained form as I came close to my goal. The shape of things was still loose, like they had been diluted by water flowing through them. In spite of that, the place felt intensely familiar. The longer I looked at it, the more it came into clarity.

  This was My Huntress’s den, or least an impression of it. Some parts were in much sharper focus than others. Things that I didn’t remember well stood out in much greater detail. If I had to guess, this was My Huntress’s memory of our Den, rather than mine.

  Hopefully that meant she was here.

  As I came closer, more details stood out. This place looked newer than I remembered it. The wood was not weather stained or sun bleached. Hinges that were rusty in my memory stood out as if freshly forged. A certain amount of clutter that occurs to all Dens when occupied for a long time had not happened yet.

  When I came to the door, I heard laughter from inside. One voice was My Huntress’s. That I was sure of. There were others, which sounded familiar yet foreign. For a moment I hesitated. This was a part of My Huntress that I did not know. She sounded happier than I had ever known her.

  Did I have a right to intrude on that?

  From inside, I heard the voices change. One of them was coming to the door. If I left now, I could be gone before the door opened. My Huntress could have her moment of peace without me. That felt like the right thing to do.

  My awakened blood disagreed. That was the Fear speaking. My fear of rejection. This was not the nest of the First. I knew My Huntress. It was time to step forward and show her who I was.

  One of my claws tapped on the door, asking to be let in. A moment later, the door opened for me. I looked inside, not seeing anyone, before looking down. It was My Huntress. This was a new perspective. For all the time that I had known her, she had stood taller than me.

  In this place, our point of views were inverted. If this place reflected something about myself, it was that I felt larger than my physical body. I loomed over My Huntress as she stared up at me from the doorway. For her part, she looked much smaller. Her features were more compact and softer. If I were to guess, this was how she looked as a juvenile.

  “Hello young lady, may I come in?” I asked her with a bow of my head. My voice sounded as it did within my own mind here, deep and sonorous. When My Huntress spoke, she sounded soft but with a higher pitch than I was used to.

  “I don’t know. Do you intend to jump on my bed and make a mess again?” It sounded like a joke, but there was a veiled undercurrent of injury to her tone. Just by being here, I had interrupted her happiness and reminded her of sadder times. But, when I glanced down, I saw that even in this form she had my gemstone around her neck.

  “I cannot promise that I will never make a mess again, but I swear that I will always clean up after myself if I do,” I said while dipping my head low. Those words rang true to me. I could not deny what I was, but that did not mean that what came tomorrow could not be better than what was today.

  My Huntress stared up at me appraisingly. After a long silence, she gave a quiet sigh and stepped away from the door to let me in.

  “I suppose with how big you think of yourself, someone has to be around to remind you that you started off stealing chickens.”

  I flicked my tail in irritation, but ducked down to come inside. By the unspoken rules of this place, I was able to fit despite my larger stature. By the time I had sat next to the fireplace, I was closer to my physical size. I supposed that was the nature of our accord. I would always be a dragon, but to live together, some things could change.

  When I turned to look for My Huntress, she had shut the door and gone into a room that I had little to no memory of. It was next to her bedroom. She had always kept that door shut, with various things piled in front of it so that a curious dragon didn’t go looking inside.

  She came out of that unknown room with a book in her small arms. My Huntress had a couple of them that I knew of, but they were in her box of things I wasn’t meant to look at. This one was larger and had a fancy trim that gleamed in the dream’s firelight.

  With some difficulty, her small form carried it over to my side. I was curled on my side, on the fur rug in front of the fire. My Huntress sat down next to me and leaned against my flank, the big book in her lap. She was wearing a dress the color of meadow grass. The Huntress I’d known only ever wore pantaloons and hunting garb, though I was pretty sure she did possess a dress in her ‘young lady’ box.

  “Quit calling me ‘Huntress’ in your head, you silly dragon,” she said with a huff. “I know I don’t use it often, but I did tell you what it was…” She gave a pout, her lips pursed together in an all too familiar manner. Usually she started calling me ‘bad dragon’ soon after she made that face.

  “You can hear what I’m thinking?” I asked with some confusion.

  “Not really,” she said back. “It’s more like… one of my gut feelings. You practically scream what you’re thinking from how you act anyhow. Sometimes-” She reached up and gently traced her fingers across my gemstone on her chest. “-when we’re both sleeping, I can feel little bits. Like a song I can remember from a few notes.” She shook her head.

  “Quit avoiding it. I know it’s not an easy name… but it’s mine. …Please?”

  “Cassia-Róisín O’Coille.”

  When I said it, she made a smug little face and scooched back to nestle against me. She knew damn well that the loopy high tone vowels in her name were hard for my real maw to make. I’d tried for an entire evening to get it right when she told me the first time. In the end I had a sore jaw and avoided the subject from then on.

  “I don’t know if this is a one time thing. Just in case, I expect you to use my name lots while we’re still here. Out in the world, you’re going to at least call me Cassia. Do you understand?” She narrowed her eyes at me.

  “Yes My-” She glared harder. “Yes Cassia-Róisín.” Her gaze finally turned away from me. She looked down at the big book in her lap. It had a castle on the cover, with an artist’s best attempt at depicting a knight fighting a dragon. Based on the dragon, neither were particularly accurate to reality.

  “Most of those stories that I told you by the fire weren’t ones I made. They came out of this book… My parents always read it to me when I was little.” She brushed her fingers lovingly across the book’s cover.

  “Every night, a different story. Tales of princesses and paupers. Faeries and magic. Knights and dragons. The stories always made the dragon out to be the bad guy. Something bothered me about those stories. Why should something be ‘bad’ just for acting on its nature?”

  She looked back at me. I turned my long neck and pressed my snout against the side of her face. One of her small hands reached up and rubbed along my jawline.

  “Before I was born, my parents had to go live in the Cursed Forest. They didn’t tell me why, but I think it had to do with them just being themselves.” I gave a low rumble, nuzzling against her. She did not shy away from it. Instead, she pressed her face against my scales.

  “They were good parents, I think. I don’t know what other problems they had, but they taught me to hunt, made sure I grew up healthy, and made sure I knew they loved me.” I felt the wetness from her eyes run across my scales. The small drops rolled down, dropping off to fall onto the book’s cover.

  “One day my father came back hurt. He said it was just an accident and that he would be fine.” She took a great breath. “He was not fine. He slowly got worse and worse. My mother knew all the plants of the forest and tried so many things to help him. One day, she said that she was going out for something deep in the woods. I wasn’t allowed to follow her.” The tears fell onto the book cover like rain.

  “She never returned. After a couple of days, my father went after her. He had been stuck in bed for weeks, but he somehow stood up, put on his cloak, and went into the woods. I begged him. I screamed at him. I said so many hurtful things to try and keep him from going.”

  “In the end, I forced him to stay with my bow and arrows. He apologized and said he would make some tea to help us calm down… When I woke up, he was gone. I searched the forest from end to end so many times, but I never found them.”

  “I waited for them for so long, hoping that one day they’d come back. Even when… even when I told you to leave, I was still waiting for them. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  My Cassia turned from where she sat, the book falling onto the hearthstone. I thought she was going to run away again to be by herself, but instead she flung her arms around my neck. As she dug her nails into the scales along my back, she was no longer that little girl clinging to the memory of her parents.

  She was the Cassia I knew, the one that bore all the scars of a hard life alone in the woods. On her chest sat the gem I had given her, the symbol of our bond. Her tears were ones of loss and loneliness.

  My Cassia was the one who made every meal feel well earned, rather than mere sustenance. She was the one who scolded me when I was being foolish; who taught me not just how to hunt but how to live properly. She was the one who told stories even when the one listening did not yet understand what they meant. She was so many more things than her loss and pain.

  Just because things were messy now, did not mean that tomorrow couldn’t be better.

  I could feel that the dream was ending now. The memory that my Cassia had clung to for so long was fading with the rising of the sun. We would soon need to wake.

  But I was a greedy dragon. I could do better for my Cassia than a tearful embrace.

  Memories that were not my own floated here in the realm of color and dreams. As my Cassia clung to me, I breathed in the cascading rainbow sea. Like the first beat of a hand across the surface of a drum, it rang true to my intent in the silence. I breathed out and the colors flowed to my call. Each breath the sea into me.

  What I was looking for was something forgotten to those who still lived. Cassia felt the change. She still held onto me, but her eyes turned to follow mine. Out there, just beyond her reach, was what I wanted her to see.

  A woman stood beneath a great oak tree. Her familiar ruddy brunette hair was draped across her shoulders. She held a man’s hand in her own, the other resting on her belly. Their wrists were bound together with a simple braid of flowers and grass. The man was broad shouldered, his skin hard from a life in the sun. The both of them looked at the flowering oak as the sun rose behind it.

  “Do you think she’ll be happy, love?” The man asked his spouse, tightening his grip on her hand. Already, their features were indistinct to me. This sight was not for my eyes.

  “I think… it won’t be easy. There will be times that she’ll be sad or lonely,” the woman said softly.

  “I wish we could have done more.”

  “We did what we could. Let us hope together, that was enough.”

  The sun rose at last, after many years of painful waiting. The oak and the memories of those that had been trapped with it burned in dragonfire. Cassia clung to me ever tighter.

  That, I considered, was good enough for my Cassia.

  In a certain glen, a small oak sapling sprouted from the bottom of a bowl of charred glass. A vulture that had been quite content to rule its new roost woke up, saw the sapling, and began to reconsider whether it ought to fly very far from a stupid dragon. With the rising of the sun, the bird spread its wings and took to the sky.