New life, New identity Chapter 2
Cynus saw the village she grew up in disappear from her vision as the dragon took her further and further away. Strangely, she did not feel as upset as she should be. Never mind that, she should be furious with the dragon, after all, she may not like what she would have to do in the future but it was still her home. Her family was there, not wherever the night fury was going to take her.
On the other hand, Cynus felt relief, if she never returned, she would never have to trap dragons again. No one leaves the village without a valid reason and the valid reasons are only death or out to trap. Right now, they probably thought she was killed and eaten during the battle. If she returned, she would definitely be forced to marry another family, as she had proven to be incapable of fighting, not to mention getting kidnapped by a dragon, no less. And her father would be disappointed with her too.
As she thought that, she felt a sharp pain in her chest, thinking about her family hurts. She did not even get to say goodbye before the dragon took off with her. She could see them, fighting their way towards her. She saw their tears as she was taken away. She hated the fact that she caused them pain, like mother's death caused them pain too. But what could she do now? Even if she manage to escape and go back, she would be a bride, unwillingly.
Cynus broke out of her chain of thoughts when she felt pain in her arm. Not the major arm-breaking pain, but the bruising kind of pain, but if she was going to be carried like that while the dragon flies. Her arm would surely break or dislocate sooner or later, hopefully later.
Thank the lords, the night fury decided to take a break. It slowly glided down closer to the ground and released its grip on Cynus' arm. Cynus landed rather ungracefully, before rolling to a stop with no injuries, just a few bruises here and there. The dragon was not as lucky, it had a pretty painful crash, judging by the tree that it crashed into. And it was injured too. A cut right on the junction where the wing connects to its body.
"Must be during the battle at the village" Cynus thought while staring at the blood that dripped onto the ground, staining it a bright red.
Just as she started to panic at the amount of blood on the ground, Cynus spotted healing herbs growing nearby. Somehow, the angel and demon sides of her mind started an argument, help the dragon or not. This time, the angel side wanted to leave the dragon behind and head back home, while the demon side wanted to help the dragon. Strange argument, with the angel fixated on going home, but eventually Cynus' compassionate heart won. And she decided to help.
Grabbing one of the herbs and crushing it until liquid seeps out from its crushed form, it becomes a paste that can be applied on wounds. And it has anti-microbial and clotting properties too. Back at the village, when her brother always comes back injured, Cynus went to the village healer who taught her a few tricks.
With the paste done, Cynus moved to apply it on the wound, the dragon flinched before backing away from her. As she moved closer, the pattern of flinching and backing away continued. Oddly enough, this pattern seems familiar. Her brother reacts the exact way, to medicine at least. And he would be pissed if he knew that they acted the same way. First, the flinching, then slowly backing away before running, far away from her and her paste-covered hands.
"Well," Cynus thought, "time for my secret weapon. Hope this works."
A soft melody fills the air as she hums her mother's lullaby. Her sweet, entrancing voice captured the dragon's attention, completely. Its movements stopped as it stood there, listening to the beautiful sounds.
Cynus continues to hum, getting louder as she moved closer and closer. Then she stopped and the night fury looked at her with confusion in its eyes. Sensing the pain gone, it looked at the girl's clean hands and put the clues together. Medicine applied successfully with no further injuries. Cynus just smiled.
The dragon happily rolled around the small clearing in some forest, until it touched the wound. Cynus knew that happened because it suddenly tensed and she was sure she heard a whine too. Looking at the dragon, Cynus made up her mind. She would stay until it is fully healed then she would leave for home.
She turned a full circle where she stood, just to find out where she is. Only to have no idea where she is. Despaired, she turned to her only hope, the night fury, who was currently chasing its own tail. Looks like she is on her own.
Taking a deep breath, Cynus surveyed her surroundings for anything remotely familiar, while Eret's words of advice went on in her head and used her own observations to help her navigate.
'Judging from the landing, I can estimate the direction before the crash. If I remember correctly, the front gate was behind me, so we should be travelling south. And there was a river too before we crashed, so find that river first then head north.'
Decision made, hopefully those calculations were correct, and Cynus set off. She did not want to leave an injured dragon alone, so she got it to follow her with her singing. After a few days, the dragon was fully healed. It could leave at any point of time, but it seemed to want to stay with her. She would have to get it to leave, before it followed straight into her village, which would not end well for them.
It took Cynus a week before she finally reached familiar territories, close to the outskirts of the village. She was happy, finally she could see her father again. Before she left the covers of the forest, she heard something from the women near the water well.
"Have you heard? Eret died last night, the healers say it was from a broken heart."
"Which do you think caused it? The dead daughter or the runaway son?"
"Anyway, the funeral is happening later in the afternoon. Do you know who is attending?"
"Who else but his closest friends? Remember, he was not originally from this place and he doesn't have any children left."
Cynus felt her heart stop, knees trembling as she tried to process the information.
'There's no one left here for me to return to. Father's gone. Big brother's gone too.'
While she would not step foot into the village, she was determined to see her father one last time. Cynus knew they would put the body on a ship and set it aflame, as per tradition, even if her father wasn't a pure blooded Viking. He married into one, so that made him a Viking too.
Heart set, she set forth towards her destination, the nearby sea, with Blue in toll. Blue was a name she gave the dragon, a dragon that stayed with her for a week. They grew close within that time too.
Sure enough, when Cynus reached the sea, the ship was already a fair distance away from the shore. Slowly, she saw them raise their bows and shot flame-coated arrows at it. Then, one by one, they left the area, leaving the burning ship in a distance.
Cynus climbed on board Blue's back and he flew towards the ship and landed on a fairly safe area to drop her off.
Cynus looked at her father's body, and recalled something.
Father's wish was for her to sing the words he wrote for mother's lullaby at his funeral, and that she would live happy. Cynus made a promise and no burning ship is going to stop her, at least not until she finished the song.
She took a deep breath and started.
Every time I think of you,
My heart is in such pain.
Gathering the roses,
I sang out my grief.
Your very voice is in my heartbeat,
Sweeter than despair.
We were there,
In everlasting love.
Underneath the stars,
Shaded by the flowers.
Everything was sweet by your side, my love.
You are all my pleasure,
My hope and my song.
I will be here dreaming of the past.
Until you come,
Until we close our eyes.
"Rest in peace, father. I promise to take good care of myself, so don't worry about me." Cynus spoke to her father on board the burning ship, trying to be strong even with tears dripping down her face.
Knowing she had to leave her father soon, or the burning ship would take her and Blue down with it to the depths of the ocean. Cynus climbed onto Blue's back, making sure to keep her centre of gravity steady. After taking one last look at her father, Cynus had Blue fly off, leaving the burning ship behind.
Blue kept his flying in one direction towards land while Cynus' tears never stopped flowing. Finally, on solid ground, Cynus cried harder than she ever had. Father's death and her brother gone took its toll on her. That night, Cynus cried herself to sleep, all the while, Blue stayed by her side and only left to make a fire to keep them warm throughout the night.
The next morning, Cynus woke up with swollen and red eyes. After crying so much, she felt better, barely. Her family is gone now. She was all alone in this world, wait, she still has Blue. The week they spent together brought them close, not to mention he never left.
Unconsciously, she started humming mother's lullaby again. It always had a calming effect.
About halfway through the song, Blue came back with a mouth full of fish and spat it out right on front of Cynus. They were near the river, the same one before. Not that she noticed anyway. Blue happily played with his food before swallowing it whole, while Cynus gutted her fish silently and roasted it by the still-burning fire.
While the fish was cooking, Cynus thought of what to call herself if not Cynus. She may not be crying anymore, but thinking about her name made her think about her family. It hurts to bring up the fond memories of her life when she was Cynus. A memory echoed in her mind.
5 year old Cynus was happily singing while she cooked. In her opinion, food always tasted better when she sang to it. Her father was listening too. After she finished, he gave her a pet name. Especially for her only, he said.
"My little siren"
He went on to explain that, in his culture, there were myths about sea creatures called Sirens. And those sirens have very beautiful voices just like her.
That day, Cynus disappeared and Siren was born.
For years, Siren wandered around, she said she would be happy and so happy she would be. Hunting, training and surviving, while accidentally coming across new lands was part of the package. One of those lands was occupied… not that they knew that at first.
Siren had been hunting for edible food in one of the new islands, she was tired of fish. But, just in case she could not find anything, Blue was swimming/fishing in the river nearby.
Siren and Blue had a really close relationship, which is to be expected, they lived together for so long now. Up to the point where they could actually communicate by just looking at each other, no words needed.
Siren, now 19 years of age, so obviously she grew taller. While she could still wear some bits, she cut off the sleeves of the shirt and pants and used those to cover her arms and legs, tying them with some strong fibres that she weaved with a 'device' she made.
First she clamped down one end of the fibres with a rock, further weighed down by Blue's tail, then she grabbed the other ends and started twisting them over each other tightly. Afterwards she bound the ends tightly with a dead knot. Any loose ends were burnt clean off by Blue's fire.
Siren did not want to leave herself vulnerable but she could not fit into some parts of her armour anymore. So she thought to reshape the spare metal into something more useful. The melting part was easy, since she found using Blue's fire breath on it for a while could pretty much melt the thing. But what would she use to shape it?
Luckily, she had a small knife on her that faithful day, add that to her current weapons, she had three. At first, she did not want to waste her blades, so she had to find and use sharp and pointy hard rocks instead. The rocks were surprisingly pretty good for carving and kept those for emergencies. And so Siren got her moulds.
From those moulds, she made a hair stick to bun up her hair and some other extra gear or equipment she might need. And that extra knife found a home inside her gear pouch for mostly cooking and other delicate tasks.
Other thing she made full use of was leather, which was a thing she discovered when Blue dragged a whole deer into their campsite at the time. She was wondering what to do with the skin, so she washed, dried and repeated until she was satisfied. From there, Siren made some shoes for herself, one for full-on protection (made sharp with metal tips) when she needed it during her journeys and one open-toed pair for comfort. Besides that, she made waist pouches for herself and a bag for Blue to carry her stuff, but she would take it off when they were resting or not doing anything in particular. Siren wasn't cruel to her partner.
She used her metal moulding skills to make metal buckles to fasten them on. Since leather was too useful, whenever the pair had meat, Siren would always keep the skins for any future projects. Besides that, she used one of her shoulder armour to double as a small pot and a bowl. That "bowl" was kept in Blue's bag.
At one point, she cut her too long hair with her spare blade, because it was getting too heavy for her to bun it up and that caused it to get in the way of a lot of things. Once, her hair came undone and slapped Blue's face, needless to say, he was not pleased. Hence, her hair is mid-back again.
As Siren walked through the forest, she left a little trail on the ground, with her blades, for her to backtrack to her campsite. Occasionally, she came across a few berry bushes. At first she would not eat them, she observes from a distance and sees if any other animals would eat it or not. If they ate it, she would bring some back, if not, she continued on.
Lucky for her, there were a few small animals that ate the berries, so she picked some and placed it in her pouch. Then a movement in another bush caught her eye, it was a rabbit. Slowly following it and hopefully catch and kill it, Siren was so focused that she did not notice something until it hit her, literally.
"Oof"
"Aah!"
A startled yell let her mouth before she could stop it. Siren looked at whatever it was that made her fall. Turns out the 'it' was a 'he'. A he that laid passed out on the ground.
"Must have hit his head hard" Siren mumbled out loud.
Looking around, she sighed. The rabbit was gone without a trace. Blue landed next to her, seemingly to have heard her yell.
Siren gave Blue a look that said, 'let's bring him back to camp, we cannot leave him alone out here', Blue didn't argue and allowed her to put the unconscious boy on his back. Then they made their way back to camp, with Siren erasing their tracks.
Suddenly, Siren thought, 'if this boy is here, does that mean there are others like him too? He looks too young to be surviving alone.' While she was only about a few years older than him, she was an exception. She had no other choice.
After a while of walking, they finally reached their camp, a fire already started and a pile of fish next to it, courtesy of Blue. The two were hungry, so they placed the boy inside their tent and prepared fish for dinner. Siren cooked a fish soup with herbs from her herb pouch, enough for herself and the boy as well, while Blue ate his raw.
Apparently, her soup smelt really good, because a short while later, the boy started to wake. Concerned, Siren and Blue went to him with a bowl of soup in her hands. That extra bowl was carved out of a chunk of wood when Siren couldn't find her metal one. The carving took her ages and when it was finally ready, her metal bowl appeared. Turns out Blue hid it as revenge for the hair-slapping. That sneaky devil. Hence, the wooden bowl was kept as a spare, in case the sneaky one had other pranks thought up.
Siren sat next to the boy, with Blue at her side and a bowl of soup in her hands. The boy groaned as he opened his eyes.
"Ow, what happened?"
"Well, you fell and hit your head."
Obviously, the boy was not expecting anyone to answer his question, as he froze a little before turning towards her direction and promptly passed out again.
Blue looked at Siren.
'Was that you or me?'
Siren answered, "You, definitely you" and Blue visibly deflated in shock and disbelief as he moved out of the tent and into the forest with a depressed aura hanging on him.
Siren watched with an exasperated expression as Blue leaves. Turning her head back towards the boy, she thought about his reaction.
'Don't tell me the people here hate dragons too. Well, no time to think on that. I think I have just the thing to wake him up.'
Grabbing a bundle of herbs wrapped with leather and unwrapping it, she placed them right under the boy's nose and waited. Sure enough, after a few seconds, the boy jolted awake, simultaneously pinching his nose to stop himself from breathing in the foul smelling herbs.
After seeing him awake and not passing out anytime soon, Siren wrapped up the herbs and placed back in her pouch.
To be polite, Siren greeted him and also told him what happened.
"How do you feel? You hit your head quite hard."
The boy was rather panicky, looking around his surroundings for something. To Siren, that action confirmed her doubts earlier. The people here don't like dragons, even if it's an adorable dragon like her Blue.