The Fields of Fire

Chapter 9: Tau Adana

Her hand extended, blazing a path of its own, a path that was fearless. Her heart was pounding so fast it didn't seem like they were separate beats, just a river of thumping so close and indiscriminate as to feel like the roll of a drum. She wondered now, if her eyes were like its. If it saw in her what she could see in it. She thought about what she saw, but her body, no her soul, dreamed only of what she could feel. The dragon's head lowered to meet her hand, as if it too desired to know the wondrous possibility that lie within their connection. The creature's posture seemed to lose all its defensiveness as it resigned itself to feeling the grace of her touch. Then in a miraculous instant too quick to see and yet too slow to count, they met. When her hand found the black scales of the dragons temple, her senses were invaded by a wave of beauty. Her mind saw a flash of color so spectacular it could barely comprehend what it was seeing, but they heard only two words. Two words so loud and yet seemingly with no source, two words that she could not decipher the origin of. She couldn't tell if the words came from her own consciousness, from the Dragon's roaring spirit, or from some beautiful merger of the two. Despite the ambiguity of their beginnings, the words rang clear in her mind.

Dream Wing

    "Your name." She smiled, moving her hand softly across the jagged edges of the Dragons Scales. She spoke it to herself, "Dream Wing." Time seemed to blur and pass without reason as she was drawn deeper into the moment. She wanted nothing more than to take off with the dragon, she felt as though the world could be theirs. She realized, everything. Her father, her lack of a father, what she did, her joining the airforce, the war, her getting shot down, her being rescued, all of that had led to this moment. The dragon had been waiting there this whole time. Even when she was younger, when she had the audacity and defiance to brave her stepfathers fire for but a glimpse of freedom, Dream Wing was there, waiting for her. Fate had brought them together. She felt drawn back to the sky, like she knew that's where they belonged.

    "I can't believe it." The trance broke as she turned around to see Xaren standing there, tears welling up in his eyes, "I can't... I-, you never even trained, you, you can't even use magic, and I-" he turned around, seeming to want to shield his despair. Tau couldn't even imagine how much it hurt him, to see some random girl he'd rescued from a burning plane succeed where he failed.

    "Xaren." Tau said, in a remorseful tone. She agreed that it was unfair, that she had found something magical that was so obviously lost on the boy, "Xaren please I-"

    His fists clenched as electricity bristled from the bottom of his hands then up through his arm. The lightning then faded as the boy turned slowly back around. He had tears streaming down his face and an obviously fake smile, "I think you're super cool. Don't let me take this away from you. Have fun, Dragon Rider." He put emphasis on those last two words, like they meant something to him.

He turned around again and headed back towards another dragon. Tau felt guilt seize at her soul as she watched the boy's somber walk away from his dream. He looked as broken as broken gets, his spirit shattered at her feet. She hated the feeling, this boy she only knew for a few days had grown to feel like a brother to her. It hurt to seem him so wounded.

Tau shook her head, and returned her gaze to the Dragon upon who's wings she'd soar home. She felt it, that pull to the sky, a feeling she'd known all her life. A feeling she'd known when she watched the planes buzz above her school the potato fields of home, that total sense of awe she'd experienced when watching the Gliding seeds of the aelor vines on the farm, that inescapable attraction to the unending blue of the sky that tugged at her very soul since the day she arrived on that farm and all she could do was look up. She naturally reached up and grabbed onto a dull point on the creatures scales with one hand and using her leg to push up from the creatures foot, she heaved herself up sideways onto the Dragon's back. Her body was sideways on the dragon but she reached her arm around the dragons neck and swung her legs over so that they were both sitting opposite each other, with the dragons scales between them. It was like riding a horse, except she was closer to the Dragon's neck than how most people ride horse. And she quickly remembered she'd never ridden a horse in her life, so a Dragon was going to be one heck of an undertaking. She looked to her left and right to see the other dragonriders had also found their mounts, most of them were riding further up on the backs of their dragons than she was, and they mostly had saddles too. Tau didn't think a saddle was necessary, the scales on its back were significantly less jagged than on the rest of its body. She ran her fingers along the dragon's neck, and leaned forward towards the dragon's head, "How about we ditch this place?" she asked smiling, "I've actually got a destination in mind."