It was called Antirrhinum, Snapdragon Island, and there was little for the tiny promontory of rock in the Burning Sea, too small to appear on any chart or map, to boast of - apart from a profusion of that particular flower. The name itself bespoke of human settlers from the Five Kingdoms, but of them little remained but one interbred extended family of fisherfolk, whose knowledge of the outside world consisted of the odd sight of a far off sail on the horizon or dragon flying in the sky: high, high in the clouds.

Aga did not know her age, or even what age was: she knew she was bigger than some of her siblings and smaller than others and smaller yet than the men and women who had to work and toil to feed them all. Sometimes the Mother one, the one to whom she sometimes clung, gave her tasks: but she was small and clumsy and not much use at all. She could not cast a net, or plant root vegetable seeds, or carry a big pot of fresh water from the pool, or even make a pot using clay and water and fire. 

She could pick flowers. 

That is what she was doing when the dragon landed on her. 

To be fair, Gruduux did not do it on purpose: he was deep in thought, or what passed for thought in a Ddraig whose heart was bigger than his brain. Yet, asked the poet, "where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?" As he lay on the island, which had literally shook when he landed: he was more brooding than thinking, massaging the same negative emotions over and over again: How he despised the apes. Those nasty little hairy apelings that clambered and crawled all over his kind like lice. How he laughed at the Drakeri with their hubris, and their pretensions to be better than the other apelings: the humans they were called: the humans were just slightly deaf Drakeri in his book. Drakeri who could not hear the song. 

Ah that song: so sweet a torture. How strong it was in She. She who must be obeyed, She whom he disobeyed; She he hated, She he loved, and She of whom he had grown inordinately jealous. Apeling! Hairy trash. Drakeri slut opening herself to a human; why, she had disgraced herself even by her own standards. Apeling. When he started repeating insults, he knew that he was going around in circles again. 

Horrific the thought: but were he too an ape, a Drakeri, or were they both Ddraig, He and She, they could at least settle things biologically: by coupling, or killing each other, either would be preferable to this torture. There was something wrong with him, or Her: other dragons and their bonded riders didn't have these problems, did they? Or maybe they did: maybe it was such a big taboo that nobody ever talked about it, or even dared think about it. Well, he had to think about it: so he had flown, flown so far away, to this island in the middle of nowhere.

His mind, his heart, his soul: they circled and circled and circled and never reached escape velocity to escape from it, the dense high gravity dark hole that was his jealousy over Wynn and Aldebrand. He wanted to lie there and, like his grandmother Akulatraxa, brood and brood and brood until centuries passed and he became so covered in dust that he became a mountain and had a city built on top of himself. Then he would burst out, killing everybody in the city and that would teach Her a lesson. All those people dead, and all Her fault. 

But She would be long dead by then, wouldn't she? Short-lived apeling. She would never appreciate how she had wronged him. 

Hmmm. Gruudax was enjoying wallowing in this jacuzzi of self-pity when he involuntarily sniffed the air. Ugh. She was coming. Rhagarth.

 Stormwolfe 

Rhagarth circled ever higher in the sky, enjoying the feeling of the warm sun on her wide wings and the scales of her back. It was a glorious day even if her task was somewhat onerous. It was only her devotion to the Windmaster that made her agree to seek out the youngling. Then the offspring of Akulatraxa were never the most stable creatures. Their tempers and emotions ran high. More troubling, however, was the fact that they tended toward a peculiar loathing of the Bipeds. The mighty copper-gold she-dragon heaved a sigh as she began to home in on Gruudux’s location.

It was past time for a visit to Falcor. Rhagarth would speak to Breccan and Grayfury. For the most part, Claen Gael stood apart from the Free Riders of Falcor. It was rumored that even non-Drakeri rode Ddraig into battle although Rhagarth had also heard that this was a myth, that the non-Drakeri only rode the skrill. Inadvertently, Rhagarth’s lips drew back from her long pointed, serrated teeth. The skrill were wyverns! Cannibals and carrion eaters!

There! A speck of rock, not much more than a promontory jutting from the waters of the Burning Sea. At least Rhagarth was not going to have to trail the young drake into the vastness of the reaches that surrounded Claen Gael. She did not bother to cloak herself as she spiraled down to land on Snapdragon Island, alighting gently and folding her massive, nearly one-hundred foot wings. Her opalescent emerald eyes whirled as she gazed at the dark Ddraig in front of her.

‘You are again indulging in sulking,’ Rhagarth stated via mindspeech as she gazed at the young Ddraig.

Javia

‘You are again indulging in sulking,’ Rhagarth stated via mindspeech as she gazed at the young Ddraig.

Gruudux maintained his dignity as best he could considering the taunt and also the tickling of the human child beneath him, who apparently, had not been completely squashed: perhaps she had been lucky enough to find herself protected in some depression in the ground as deep as the sleek young dragon's depressed mood.

"I am Thinking, Old One."

'Old One' - It was a formulaic form of respectful address, but not the way he thought it!

"I suppose you have come to tell me I should follow her." he guessed in his mind's eye. By 'her' he meant his bonded rider Wynn Rhew Gaeaf, of course. He snorted dangerously and a tiny muffled voice beneath him squeaked "Hot!"

Gruudux ignored it, and the little fists that pummeled ineffectively on his underscales. 

"She needs me even less than I need her. Your ideas of Ddraig and Drakeri bondage are outmoded, Old One. I would as well have this retarded human half-form beneath my belly ride me, than her." he huffed in his mind-speak.

Stormwolfe

"She needs me even less than I need her. Your ideas of Ddraig and Drakeri bondage are outmoded, Old One. I would as well have this retarded human half-form beneath my belly ride me, than her." he huffed in his mind-speak.

Rhagarth tilted her head and studied the younger Ddraig. She knew little of how the free-riders of Falcor dealt with their Ddraig companions and even less of Gruudux's history. It was apparent, however, that he strongly resented the Drakeri woman that was his wing-bond. She did not even want to contemplate how he was going to deal with the humans of Brydd when it came time for Wynn to follow her new husband to his homeland. She feared she was witnessing a disaster in the making.

Before addressing the youngster again, she turned her attention to the sounds emanating from beneath him. She allowed a bit of annoyance to creep into her lilting mindspeech, "Get up and let the human go free," she commanded. It was unheard of for a male Ddraig to openly challenge a female to combat, but Rhagarth was well aware of how strongly Gruudux resented being ordered by anyone.

Tags Javia

"Get up and let the human go free," she commanded. 

The lean and muscular black ddraig might have had the emotional intelligence of a human teenager, but that didn't make him any less dangerous as an opponent in a fight, but after allowing himself a few seconds of defiance, he did shift his body slightly, thus uncovering the depression in the ground where the girl was trapped. She scrambled out immediately and looked suitably terrified by the sight of not one but two of the enormous scaly monsters in front of her. 

For a second it looked like she would faint but, remarkably, she stayed upright. Rhagarth could, no doubt, hear Gruudux chuckling with schadenfreude at the girl's terror. The girl, considered by the islanders a simpleton, could hear it too: in fact, she could hear the mindspeak of both dragons, intermingled with a third voice: one she heard sometimes when she was out alone collecting flowers on the grassy clifftops of the scarce remembered, seldom visited island. 

She opened her mouth: perhaps to scream, perhaps to beg for mercy: for them not to gobble her up or burn her to a crisp, but, instead, strange words flew from her lips: old words in an ancient language that the young Gruudux knew not. The words echoed, mindspeak and oral speech at the same time, and the big, tough black ddraig drew back. "What witchery is this?!" he thought out loud.

The girl ignored him, for now, it was to the older she-dragon that she spake.

"Rhagarth, daughter of Menrath, Erais speaks through me!"

Well, a bold enough claim, and one that anyone could make, if they dared: but not one that would be expected from the lips an ignorant human child.

"The time is coming, Rhagarth, when Chaos will reign again, the Humans and the Ddraig will war across the whole of Aereth and Tar’garath will once again be empowered! The destruction of the Humans must be swift and absolute." 

"What is she saying?!" asked Gruudux, unnerved.

Stormwolfe