Page 244 of Hunters and Prey

“What is that creature with him?” I stepped closer to the wall, gripping his hand to bring him with me. “It looks almost like another dragon––”

Black frowned, staring at where I pointed.

“Tortoise, I think?” Black said. “I remember something about that, about the two of them together. There’s some kind of dual function they perform… like balancing the world? Or the Barrier field around the worlds? Honestly, I was a kid when I heard most of this. They didn’t really teach kids the more nuanced versions of the myths.”

“But are they related?” I said, still staring at the mural.

Stepping closer, I traced out where the two images connected, and the curls of light between them, trailing my fingers on the stone.

“Look. The Tortoise’s feet merge into the Dragon’s back. The shell becomes the wings. The Dragon’s fire becomes the Tortoise’s head.” My fingers still touching the painting, I looked back at him. “It looks like they were painted that way on purpose. Even the Bridge and Sword are painted as separate. Their actual body parts aren’t merged together.”

Black nodded, tilting his head as he gazed at the same image.

“I see it, too.”

“But you don’t know what it means?”

“No,” he admitted. “I was pretty young, like I said. I’m not sure of the exact––”

A voice interrupted, coming up from behind Black.

“They are very definitely related,” it said, a calm, deep, cultured-sounding voice. “It is a very old myth, brother and sister… one unknown in many of the modern retellings.”

The nearness of the voice made me jump.

It wasn’t only the nearness though, I realized immediately after.

Whoever it was, he had spoken English, like Black and I had been.

I turned from the mural to find a gray-eyed seer standing there, with reddish-brown hair, sprinkles of gray at his temples. He was handsome, startlingly so. He looked more human than I think any seer I’d ever seen up until then, including Black. I couldn’t have put my finger on what it was about him that looked so human, but it disoriented me.

He didn’t seem to notice my stare.

I felt Black notice it, but when I glanced at him, his expression was blank.

The older seer went on.

“I know Alyson had to study the old books for some time… and to meditate for many months… before she was able to complete this piece.”

I stared, looking from him to the mural.

“Allie painted this?” I said, dumbfounded. “Really?”

The new seer nodded.

He continued to look up at the mural, pointing gracefully with a hand.

However human he looked, he definitely moved like a seer.

“Dragon is said to be the raw, creative force,” the male seer explained. “The masculine creative… meaning ‘masculine’ purely in the symbolic sense, of course, or that’s how it was taught to me.”

He glanced at me, smiling.

When I smiled back, he went on in that same calm, semi-academic voice.

“Dragon is unstable,” he added. “He is a constant churn of creative energy, both light and dark… like something between states in alchemy. A sort of manifestation of the primordial soup, one that can be charged into a living, moving, disruptive or creative force. He is constantly changing forms, constantly in motion. That constant change makes him potentially powerful in both directions. Dark and light, as I said.”

His finger shifted to the other image, the one Black had called “Tortoise.”

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