Silent Flame

I wasn't sure what possessed me to question a dragon and I had regretted it all once it turned its gaze back to me. We couldn't understand each other, but it was safe to assume it could distinguish my tone. Luckily, I couldn't see any malice in its eyes, only mild curiosity.

I tried gesturing towards it with my outstretched palms and that somehow seem to get the point across. The dragon said something in its unfamiliar tongue, pointing with its head towards the forest. Faced with my blank stare, it repeated the words very slowly, pointing a claw in the same direction, then to the ground. I got the meaning this time.

They - back.

Of course, the orcs were bound to return. They would never suffer defeat without thirsting for retribution. Even beside that, I was their target now. Whether prey or intruder, as soon as the dragon was gone, they would be on my ass again, and this time they would finish the job.

The dragon was staying to protect me.

I knew not what to say. What would my words even mean to it? I intruded on its territory and stole its food... and for some reason it decided to help me!

"Was this you?" I asked, showing it the knife. The dragon looked at it but said nothing, laying its head back down. "I guess it was, wasn't it? Who else?" I mumbled more to myself than the beast. "Were you following me?"

No response again. The dragon curled its long tail around itself, covering its head under one of its wings. I reckoned that was the end of the conversation.

I laid down on the ground as well, clutching the knife close. I knew it wouldn't be of any help if the orcs returned, but it made me feel safer. I was too tired to try and start a fire and wanted nothing more than to give in to dreams. I listened to the quiet sounds of the dragon's slow breathing, hoping sleep would help calm the storm brewing in my mind.

***

When I woke up, the dragon was gone. I half considered whether it had all been just a terrible dream, but there were still signs of battle all around me. Sleep had not helped at all. I felt like it all hit me just now, my heart pounding like a drum as the events recounted in my head.

I could not stay a minute longer in that place, I wanted to get away as far as possible. At the very least I had remembered to check my trap before I left. I didn't want to go back to the forest, but alas. After a minute I had found it and cursed! The trap had been sprung, but the noose was torn clean off. One of the orcs must have stumbled into it.

"Fuck!"

I yelled for a good while, letting out all the bottled emotions before untying the remaining rope and winding it over my shoulder. I set out again, following the mountains southeast, this time trying to stay as close to the foothills as possible. I did not feel safe in the shade of the trees anymore. The hunger started to get to me again and I had barely found any water all day. I made it my priority to find a means to store water as soon as possible.

Come midday, I had managed to find a growing patch of gourds. I rejoiced! This could take care of my food and water problem. I picked one and cut off the top. The inside didn't taste very well, but I was yet to hear of a poisonous gourd, so I scooped up all of it until completely hollowed out. I ate until I could stomach no more, then chose a decently sized shell that could still fit in my pocket that I could use to store water. I didn't have the means to carry any more than one gourd with me on the journey, but I also felt like I never wanted to see one again, so I marked down the day as a win and moved on.

I had decided to make camp early today and found a nice spot in the foothills amid some tall rocks. I had already gathered some firewood as I travelled, so I didn't have to creep through the forest in the dark, ever afraid that the band of orcs might be tracking me. I decided to fight my paranoia and started working on the fire.

I heard it before I saw it. When the first stars began to show, my hands were all bruised from spinning the twig and I wasn't any closer to starting a fire. It wasn't good firewood, but I hadn't found anything dryer. Then a sound, deep and rhythmical, like the beating of massive wings washed over the foothills and dragged my attention skyward. The dragon's black figure descended upon my campsite and landed... in its claws a body of a small deer. Fresh kill.

I could do naught but blink. The dragon had - again - showed up at my camp, bringing food to offer. It didn't seem in any hurry to leave though. It laid the deer on the stone ground, already skinned, and began to divide it into pieces with nothing but its claws. The titanic muscles of its forelimbs bulged through the armor-like scales as it disassembled its meal, the black, glossy skin shifting like the ocean surface. It was a minute or two before I caught myself staring and shook my eyes away from the dragon's biceps.

I tried to keep calm and continued on my fire, pretending we didn't see each other. Then the wyrm made a sound to draw my attention and pushed a chunk of meat my way. I shuffled over and picked it up. It was more than enough for one man, even a starving one like me. It would likely make for a breakfast as well.

"Uhm... thank you!" I said to the dragon. Gods, putting the act into words truly showed how ridiculous the situation I had found myself in was. The beast didn't seem to share my sentiment. Its red eyes appraised me inquisitively, as if trying to assess whether its gift was enough.

I laid the meat back on the ground and looked around for my stick. Noticing what I was doing, the dragon appeared to have a different idea. It stood up and leaned over my to-be campfire, its mouth opening wide like a hungry sea serpent, showing the neat row of white, razor-sharp teeth as it inhaled. A burst of flame erupted from its gullet, short but bright enough to blind me in the gloomy dusk. I blinked the flash away until my vision cleared. The dragon licked its thin lips and returned to its portion of the deer, my bundle of wood now engulfed in fire, throwing sparks into the darkening sky.

I looked at the pitiful stick left in my hand. "That does it," I commented and thew it into the flames. I picked up the long, straight branch I was planning to sharpen into a makeshift spear and pulled out my knife. Once the tip was nice and pointy, I used it to skewer the meat and hold it above the fire. It could still serve as a spear afterwards.

Fifteen minutes later, the meat was still not cooked all the way through. I cut it up into smaller pieces already, but it took its time, and my spear was starting to look a bit charred. The dragon, at least, seemed to have finished gutting the animal and picked it up again. Instead of tearing into it as it was, it lifted it above its head by one leg and inhaled deeply, spewing a cone of flame directly over it. I shielded my eyes until the fire stopped. Apparently satisfied, the dragon now finally tore a piece of meat off and chewed on it.

The smell of cooked flesh (which did not come from my own skewer) washed over me and my mouth filled with saliva. My belly made a rumbling sound making the dragon stop mid bite and shoot a bewildered glance my way, an oversized piece of deer filling its mouth. We awkwardly faced each other, then I looked apologetically at my skewer. The creature appeared unsure for a moment, then proceeded to tear off a piece from its own portion with its claws and laid it in front of me. It waited, watching me until I picked it up and responded.

"Thanks," I said and took a bite. It was rather charred, almost burned, but still good. I ate the piece while my skewer cooked, and the dragon returned to munching on its own dinner. I almost didn't notice I was getting the edges burned while I was busy licking my fingers and proceeded to hastily take the meat off the stick.

Once we finished eating, we threw the bones into the fire. All but one femur that the dragon seemed to enjoy cleaning off. I watched it until the moon was up high, studying the way its limbs moved, the way its scales overlapped and connected all together. They got smaller towards its neck and chest, fading into a paler grey than the rest of its black body.

The more I observed it, the less threatening the dragon appeared. Not any less dangerous. I had no illusions about its capacity for violence, especially after the previous night. But, watching it now, it put me less in mind of a rampaging monster and more of a... person. Even munching on a bone like a dog, the dragon seemed more graceful somehow. It held the bone in its forelimb, the five clawed fingers somewhat reminiscent of a human hand.

No. Not a beast at all...

"What is your name?" I asked once we began to doze off. The dragon glanced at me but didn't show a sign of understanding. "Edmund," I said, pointing to my chest. "Edmund. You?" I pointed towards it.

It stared at me for a minute before answering quietly: "Eisherath."

"Eisherath," I repeated, savoring the syllables like an unfamiliar meal.

"Mind if I call you Eishe?"

No answer.

"Well, thank you, Eishe. For everything."

My sentiment seemed to fall on deaf ears. Indifferent, Eisherath closed their eyes and embraced sleep.

***

Surprised, I awoke to find Eishe still lying beside the burned-out fireplace. Unsurprisingly, they didn't say much, even in response to my "good morning".

The meat had indeed lasted me till dawn, so I ate the remains and drank the last drops of water from the gourd. It wasn't dried yet and the water tasted after it, but right then, it was the best water I'd ever had.

"Hey, do you know where to find water?" I asked, pointing in the empty gourd. When that didn't work, I mimicked the motion of drinking, which seemed to get the point across. With a yawn that offered me a front row view of their razor-sharp teeth, Eisherath got to their feet and with a mighty leap took to the skies. The force of their wings blew the ashes from the campfire all around and over me. I coughed and brushed it off as well as I could. When I looked up, after a while I found the dragon's silhouette flying in circles some half an hour west.

I collected my few possessions and set forth as signaled, using my "spear" as a walking stick. It took a bit longer than I had hoped and it was a slight detour from my course, but eventually I emerged on a clearing with a small lake hidden away in the middle of the grove. Indeed, I never would have found it had I stuck to my original route.

Eishe dove from the sky like an arrow and glided over the water, landing right in the middle of the lake. I watched as the dragon disappeared beneath the surface, then reemerged in an explosion of splashes, gracefully gliding through the water like a mythical sea creature.

I looked down at my grime encrusted skin and filthy clothes. I had long since stopped noticing my odor, but that hardly meant I had grown comfortable with my current state.

"Well, I would have been satisfied with something to drink, buuut..."

I wiggled out of my clothing and cautiously walked into the water. It was cold but refreshing. I haven't felt that awake ever since the shipwreck washed me up on the shore. I found myself enjoying floating freely in the lake, no dirtied clothing sticking to my skin, no worn-down shoes constraining my feet. If it wasn't for the creeping feeling of exposedness, I would even say I was having fun. At least the dragon seemed busy for the moment.

I scrubbed off all the accumulated filth from myself, then fetched my clothes from the rocky lakeside. My trousers and undergarments had seen better days, but after some thorough laundering and wringing, they were clean and perfectly wearable considering the circumstances. My shirt, on the other hand, was done for. It was torn in so many places, it resembled sails after canon fire more than clothing. Still, I washed the garment thoroughly then let it dry on a big stone. If nothing else, I could always salvage it for fabric.

I relaxed in the lake, waiting for my clothes to dry, when a wave rolled over me as Eisherath clambered on the shore. The dragon walked right by me, its large figure looming above, and, after shaking off the excess water, they laid down on the pebbly ground.

Correction: she laid down on the ground.

I turned away and tried to shake that image out of my head. All of a sudden, I became irrationally aware of my own nakedness. I sat awkwardly in the lake, waiting for the sun to dry my clothes while the dragon stretched herself across the shore, drying off her scales. I knew I shouldn't be worrying about my nudity. Eishe didn't seem to care about her own... exposure either. Plus, it's not like it was any different than if she had been male! But to my stupid human head, filled since childhood with rules of modesty and proper behavior in front of women, this felt all kinds of weird.

Once my clothes seemed sufficiently dry, I crawled out of the lake and went to get dressed. To my displeasure, Eishe, who until then had seemed asleep, raised her head and glanced my way, watching what I was doing with curiosity. I stood facing away from her and used the fabric of my shirt as a towel. There was no way I was waiting for the sun to dry me.

"Why don't dragons wear clothes anyway?" I said as I fastened my belt on. "You're smart, you could make some if you wanted to." The feeling of clean clothes after such a long time made me feel all correct again. Eishe seemed confused but intrigued at my apparent joy from putting on some woven pieces of linen. It was then that I realized she must not have seen many humans before. If any at all.

"I suppose if I had armor for skin and fire in my chest I wouldn't much worry about clothes either."

I sat down by her and stared at the lake. I kept my shoes off for now, enjoying the feeling of the round pebbles beneath my feet. "Do dragons even get cold?" I looked at her, meeting her fiery eyes. It's not like she could answer me anyway. If only I could get through this stupid language barrier...

An idea sparked in my head. I walked over to the forest edge where the pebbles gave way to dirt and picked up a pointy stick. Eishe craned her neck to watch and when she realized I was drawing, got up and sat beside me. In a few seconds, I had before me a map of the Southern Reaches as I knew it from memory.

"We," I said, pointing to the two of us, "are here." I drew a wide circle at the eastern side of the continent, right west of the mountain range I had been following, which separated me from the shore.

I was hoping Eishe might have a good picture of the continent from her aerial travels. And I was correct! She had caught on quicker than I expected, for she smudged my circle and mountains, drawing a more accurate version with her claw. She finished by marking our precise location with a dot.

"Shit," I muttered. It was way off the course I had plotted. Northwest of my circle. It seemed my inaccurate memory of the Reaches gad led me astray from my goal. I needed to go south-south-west. I drew an X at the southernmost point of the continent, right at the canal separating the two landmasses.

"I need to go there!" I said and drew a line from our current location, along the mountain range, all the way to the canal. "There are ships. With humans." I said as I sketched a sailboat in the dirt signifying ocean. I then drew a stick figure of a human. "Human," I repeated, pointing to myself.

Eishe looked at my sketch with a face I could not quite discern. I had found it surprisingly easy to read her emotions despite her limited mouth movement. Most of it was in her eyes. And now, they were signaling something was wrong. It was the look of someone with bad news, who didn't know quite how to say them.

She traced her claw along the dirt, copying the figure I had drawn. Hers was larger though and it stood by the X at the canal. Then, she added two pointy tusks at the figure's mouth.

An orc.

My heart sank as Eishe scratched a jumble of lines between the two landmasses. The orcs had blocked the canal.

That was it then. My one way out of this place. If the orcs had managed to block in the canal, then they were ambushing ships. Primitive as they might be, they were more than capable of pulling off this kind of scheme. No ship would be there to get me...

I fell back to the dirt and stared at the sky. I couldn't help but laugh.

If the ship hadn't crashed, we might have met that exact fate, ambushed and ransacked by a bunch of orc pillagers. In a way, that incompetent idiot had saved my life. What a fucking joke!

"What now?" I asked.

Eishe looked unsure. She kept looking at me and off into nowhere for a while. Then, she raised her claw and put a new X on the map, high in the mountains.

I stared at this new development with quiet incomprehension. "Why?" I asked. "What's in there?" I spread my arms, begging for an answer.

She seemed to understand and drew half a circle above my image of a human. Shelter, I deciphered.

What did that mean? An old structure? A cave? I weighed my options and decided I did not care. It wasn't far. Only a little east from our dot on the map. But it was in the mountains, a hard terrain to travel. It would be a tough journey. But what options did I have?

Eishe then hovered over her sketch of an orc and crossed it out with her claw. No orcs there.

It was decided.

"Alright," I nodded. "We go there." And I drew a line to my new goal.

***

On our way to the mountains, I began gathering provisions on the go. I had tied my former shirt to my spear stick like a sack and filled it with whatever fruits or vegetables I came across. Eishe helped me identify which of them were edible. Or at least, whatever the orcs ate. And when orcs stopped to add a plant to their diet, you know it was the good stuff!

"What about this?" I asked, producing something resembling a large orange raspberry. Eishe examined it closely, sniffed it, then nodded "yes". I had managed to explain what nodding "yes" and "no" meant, which made communication a whole lot easier. I picked off some berries from the small bush and threw them in the sack. I didn't bother picking the shrub clean, they likely wouldn't last through the journey anyway, assuming they didn't get squished between the other stuff.

"And what about this?" I produced a small, red berry. This one, though, I recognized. They called it raven's eyes, and it was often used to make poisons. It could easily kill a grown man. Eishe scowled at the fruit and shook a strong "no".

"Are you sure? Looks good to me!" I said and jokingly maneuvered it towards my mouth. Eishe smacked it out of my hand so hard, she almost broke all my fingers.

"Ow! Okay, it was just a joke!" I laughed.

She did not look amused.

I felt a bit guilty for messing with her. Sure, part of it was harmless fun... but I also wanted to test if I could truly trust her. Both her judgement and in general. But she really did get worried...

"Alright, I'm sorry. Look, it was stupid."

Even if she couldn't understand a word I was saying, she at least got my placating tone and apologetic face. She rolled her eyes and continued walking, smacking me with her tail as she passed me.

The nights were getting colder. Not only each passing day, but with rising altitude as well. We had cleared the lush forest long ago and were now travelling vast fields of short grass and shriveled bushes, pierced in placed by rising rock walls. Eishe lit a fire every night, but wood was growing scarce, and it rarely lasted until morning. With no trees to shield us, the winds were strong, their howls kept me up at night as they blew cold air over me and killed our fire. We took shelter wherever we could find it, but most of the time Eishe simply lay in the direction of the winds, shielding the fire, and myself, from them with her body.