Page 67 of To Touch A Silent Fury
I approached her slowly. One step. Into the range of her tail. Her eye was ever steady on me. Another. The edge of where her wing had rested before. She huffed out a breath, and I sensed her impatience.
I sighed. She was right, if she wanted me dead, I’d already be long dead.
Trying to ignore my shaking limbs, I moved up to her belly and dropped the sticks only a few feet from her. I could see the edge of the egg up close, its knitted scales so precise it looked carved.
Vellintris kept her wing raised as I backed away, and I paused, seeing again the huge gash lancing from her belly downwards. It looked like… claw marks. But what could hurt a beast like her?
I shuddered, looking at the festering wound. She must have been flying with it for days, the muscular flesh around it was red and inflamed.
I looked at her huge eye as she lowered her wing with a small grunt, her body shaking the very ground. “I’ll find something for that.”
I retreated a few steps before running back into the forest. This time, instead of wood, I ran straight for the patch of ashraf leaves I’d seen clinging to the roots of a squat pine earlier. I pulled off my gloves when I found the place, needing the dexterity of my fingers. I retrieved my hunting knife and pared the leaves from the branch until my hands were full. As I had with the wolf, I chewed the bitter leaves into a mush and spat them back into my hands. I kept going, chewing and stripping the leaves as fast as I could until I had a thick wad of mashed leaves in my cold, red hands and my tongue was near numb with it.
This time, when I entered the clearing, she opened her wing immediately. The Sons still eyed me with open suspicion, but they made no move to stop me. They probably had a far better sense of self-preservation than me. Or more likely, their Fates did not hinge on this very moment.
I walked straight up to Vellintris and realised immediately I did not have enough leaf mush to layer the wound as I would have liked. But it would do something.
The dragon looked at me as I came within a few steps of her belly. She made a disgruntled noise, baring teeth as long as my arm. I swallowed and rolled my shoulders back.
I held my hands out so she could see there was nothing in them but leaves. She flared her nostrils and relaxed slightly. Istepped towards her side, and she tensed again. Great Amune, what was I doing?
Then I stepped under her wing and reached my shaking hand towards the wound. I moved painfully slowly. I told myself I was giving her the opportunity to stop me, and that was mostly true, but I was also more scared than I had been in my entire life. There was no escape if I hurt her, if she decided she didn’t want my help. I should have just stuck to the fire.
Blowing out a breath, I closed the distance.
My fingers brushed the skin to the side of her wound.
Both of us flinched at once.
Mistrust, pain, anger, terror, and desperation flooded through me. I jolted as I looked into her calculating, tensing eye, now boring into mine with an entirely new fascination. She was curious about me, but terrified. However, her terror wasn’t aimed at me. I knew instinctively she was scared for her egg, that she might be too weak to hatch it.
Before, it had only truly worked on humans. But I couldfeelher.
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Her emotions flooded me, so intelligent and distinct. There was nothing animalistic in them, bar that maternal urge to keep me far away from her baby, which was as human as anything.
I had to stay focused. The last of the light was fading, and soon I wouldn’t be able to see my own hands. I returned to my task, relieved that at least she didn’t seem to want to kill me at this very moment.
The wound was the size of my leg, and I focused on where it was worse, where the skin heated and broke, oozing a mixture of old blood and new pus. I pressed the first leaves to it, as my shadow trotted up, dropping another large stick next to Vellintris.
Amusement flared, and my jaw fell open for a second when I realised the emotion washers.
I pressed the rest of the leaves to the wound carefully, concentrating them where they were most needed. Then, with a strangereluctance, I moved my hand away from her, my access to her feelings dropping with it in an instant.
I knelt, ignoring the hulking size of her and keeping my focus on my hands as I found bits and pieces from my pile which would catch easily. I grabbed the fire-starting bundle from my small pack and used the striker and flint against a crumbling handful of dried moss.
The salve of leaves was too mild to heal her alone, but I couldn’t see a wound like that and not trysomething.Yvon would likely call it cacof behavior. I snorted softly to myself. No, if she saw me here, starting a fire under an ancient sapphire dragon, I think she would find something worse to call me.
If Vellintris was too weak to produce her own fire, I would do it for her.
Vellintris’ breathing was laboured as the first spark caught. I picked up the small bundle and cradled it in my hands, nursing the spark as I blew into it softly. A gust of wind drove through the clearing, and I put my back to it, protecting the small growing flame. Once it had grown hot, catching from cobwebs and feathers to the smaller pieces of bark, I carefully set it down on a dry piece of wood next to her belly. I laid a few of the smaller sticks over it and sent a prayer under my breath to anything that could hear me.
The fire caught onto the narrow branch as the light of the day faded to nothing. I blew into my hands as I stared at the tiny fire. I stoked it with care, moving the fire until it was up beside her belly. In all the diagrams I could remember, the hatching egg and the dragon themselves were lying on an active blaze. Vellintris would not have pulled the sticks alongside her body if that were not her intention.
When it had taken, I finally stood and took a few steps back, watching the orange dancing flames with blurry eyes. Iappraised the dragon then, finding her calm. She shuffled on the warming branches, letting out a rumbling noise.
