The mountain face rushed toward us. The dragon in front—Ami—banked and began pumping her wings before catching an updraft and soaring toward the mountain peak.
Do not try that, you shit-hamper, I thought-yelled at my dragon. Don’t try it! We’re not experienced enough. Remember last time? We fucking crashed last time. We’ve only been doing this for three da-ays—
My stupid dragon never listened to me. She was getting back at me for all those times she wanted to go to Nyfain and I refused to let her. Except those instances hadn’t been life-threatening, and these—
She banked like the dragon in front, beat her wings…and caught the underside of the updraft. Rather than lifting us above the peak, it shoved us into the mountain.
I screamed inside her head as she swore and tried to shove my presence down. Our chest scraped against the rock, and our knees buckled with the onslaught. Gravity grabbed hold, and then we were falling, rolling down the hill and knocking our body and limbs as we did so.
Give me back control, I begged, wanting to teach her how to fall gracefully, if nothing else.
I’d begged to help off and on since we’d haphazardly risen into the sky that first time. Thank the goddess Claudile and Ami had quickly shifted and met us up there, or we would’ve downed at least three trees with a sudden crash landing.
This time, though, it seemed she was tired of my nagging.
You want control? Fine, have control.
Suddenly my presence embodied this new, enormous shape covered in glittering scales reflecting sun. Four legs rather than two, ending in claws instead of toes. A weight off our back in the form of a long, spiked tail. We fell fast toward the side of the mountain. If I didn’t find some kind of purchase, we were going to be dead as fuck.
I made a weird sort of maaarrr sound as I attempted to scream—first instinct—and then our ass hit the mountain. My legs—too many fucking legs!—scrabbled for purchase.
Just…need…the…first…couple… I worked my front legs, digging into the rocky dirt to slow the slide. Then, with effort, my back.
The mountain face slid loose beneath my claws, dumping me down the steep slide.
That wasn’t my fault, I thought, shoving off with both feet and twisting in the air.
What are you doing?
Flying!
You don’t know how to work the wings!
I’ve never really tried, have I?
I worked them like I might my arms, waving them in the air as gravity once again took hold. Except they didn’t work like arms. Not even close. The muscle at the top of the wing spiderwebbed through the rest of it, connecting with bones and sinew and veins and all this other shit that I didn’t know how to deal with. I probably looked like a kid jumping off a roof with a kite strapped to each arm. Eventually I’d hit the ground and break my leg. Or head.
Okay, okay, hurry! I relinquished control to her, getting the hell out of the way.
The dragon filled the space immediately, taking over our wings. They caught the air and worked frantically, trying to stop our downward plummet. The side of the mountain came to meet us, but there was no wind to shove us around, so she pushed off with our legs, and we were in the air again, flying out to meet Ami, Claudile, and their friend Gunduin, our flight instructors for the day.
Ami had been a merciless instructor. She’d started fast and challenged us immediately, even when there was a very real threat of crash-landing into trees…or the side of the mountain. She’d had incredibly high expectations and given us almost zero room for error.
We weren’t the type to back down from a challenge. Even a harebrained one.
Again, my dragon thought, not following the others back toward the village. We almost had it.
We didn’t come close to having it! We just didn’t crash as hard. You’re welcome.
You know what they say…
She didn’t finish her thought as she approached the updraft again.
No, seriously! I thought desperately. Maybe let them show us one more time!
Nah, I got this. This is going to work, my dragon thought. You’ll see.
Yeah, I’d see as we crashed into the side of the fucking mountain.
A couple of hours and a few crashes later, we finally allowed Ami and friends to fly us to the wood where we could touch down and shift back into human form. Dragons weren’t supposed to be in the village proper, given there were plenty of things—and people—to trample. So when the townsfolk wanted to fly, they walked out to the wood and shifted there.
I sat down onto the ground heavily, my body dripping with fatigue. Flying was hard work.
“You’re fearless.” Gunduin grinned at me, showing straight white teeth in a ruggedly handsome face. He was about Ami’s age, maybe a little older, with crystal-clear green eyes and sandy-blond hair.
“That or crazy.” Claudile bent to grab my clothes from the base of the tree, throwing them at me. She hesitated at the sword, reaching out to grab it but stopping short of touching it. “Tell me again why you cart this thing everywhere? There’s no need for it here.”
Panting, I pushed to standing and quickly pulled on my clothes. I retrieved the sword out from under her hand. “It reminds me of someone I miss.”
“It’s a keepsake from her loved one.” Ami pulled on her shirt. “Or maybe she stole it and intends to sell it.”
I strapped the sword around my hips. “I’m also training with it.”
“Who’s training you?” Claudile gave me some side-eye as we headed back to the everlass field. Hannon, who’d waited there patiently for our return, gave us a slight nod, but didn’t move to join us as we entered the rows of plants. Ami had tried to help him shift, but no luck. In the end, the three dragons had ruled that Hannon wasn’t one of us. The nature of his animal remained to be seen.
“Someone from the queen’s guard from my kingdom. She knows what she’s doing.”
“Does she?” Claudile asked. “I know what I’m doing. Maybe you’d like to spar with me?”
“Not hardly. You’d probably stab me in the leg and tell me it was a learning experience.” I lifted my brows. “I know, why don’t you spar with her? That would help me out. I’m tired of sucking at it. Just give me a dagger and send me on my way. A sword is a genteel sort of weapon, and I’m not genteel.”
“Then why were you given a sword?” Gunduin asked.
I ran my hands over the leaves of the everlass plants, closing my eyes and soaking up the glow of the day.
“She has told her story already, Gunduin,” Ami said as she and the others fanned out through the field. “It’s not one she probably wants to repeat. I’ll fill you in another time.”
He shrugged as he bent to prune one of the plants. And that was how we passed another hour, working in quiet, or mostly quiet, harmony. Ami or Claudile sang to the plants occasionally in another language I didn’t know and not many seemed to use, and I muttered to them. Even though the women still seemed distant and sometimes a bit cold (Claudile especially), it lifted my spirits and relieved my mind to feel camaraderie with people who gave everlass the respect and care it cherished. We had found one commonality, and we didn’t need to be friends to appreciate it.
Hannon waited patiently, whittling something out of a sliver of log or gazing into the healthy wood surrounding us. It was a pleasant sort of place, without the pressures and demands of a curse, demons, and people dying.