Poisoned Truths
Book 2
By: Eärillë

9. Alna

Rating: PG-13 (T)
Warnings: dark themes, implied torture and violence, moderate violence, sensitive topics
Genres: Action, Character Study, Dark Fluff, Framed Story, Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy
Word Count: 2,065

Evening, Day 26 of Summer, Year 74 of Second Age, Year 874 of Human Age
Hill at Morzan's Stronghold, Northwest of Leona Lake, Foothills of the Spine

None of the servants and guards dare approach the hill where … well, where Orri's dragon – I wish I remember her name – roosts, although they confessed of no direct command from their master not to come any close to the place, unlike what he did to some sections of the grounds. I did not understand because, before the Fall, any dragon resting on the ground would be quickly ambushed by adoring crowds, be they elves or humans.

But now I do understand.

The red dragon touches down on the violently-turned-up soil of the hilltop with a jarring thump, looking at present like a blood-bathed small hill herself under the dying summer sunlight. She looks far from majestic now though; she does not even look and feel like a dragon at all to my senses: She is like a red-died giant lizard who is terribly angry – madly angry – and terrified and confused – disorientated – at the same time. And on top of her shoulders sits a slump figure in tattared and bloody clothes with a naked blood-red Rider sword hanging in a slack grip in his left hand, with his black hair dirty and unkempt and fully concealing his features, with his shoulders rounded in despair and the air of brokenness and defeat acting as his cloak.

Not like a dragon, not like a Rider.

Horror, revulsion, grief, terror, and fury – fury not to the pitiful pair of dragon and Rider before me, but to those who made them so – war in me, chokes me, freezes my mind in an icy numbness.

So this is the result of what those wild dragons did – Du Namar Aurboda, the Banishing of the Names? Sacriligious! They have violated the sacred pact between dragons and Riders, then! I –

Her nose finds me, and her eyes follows, and the man sitting atop her stirs and straightens and looks at me with the wild eyes of a wounded, cornered wolf. Breath catches in my airway, and all muscles in my body tense in response to the unexpected, unwanted, unnerving attention. With them being maddened like this and with me being weaponless and dragonless, I am severely at a disadvantage. Worse, I am quite not in the mood of fighting anybody at present. But still, I must –

The man raises his sword, jumps – stumbles – down the giant, enraged, maddened beast, charging towards me with the red blade brandished, ready to slash, and a contorted snarl on his sickly-pale face.

Primal fear takes over me.

I stumble back, turn around, run down the hill: away, away, away, flee the hill as fast as I can.

But I am small, and he is tall and big, and she is huge.

Something cold and sharp slices down my back: from my right shoulder down to my left hip. Intense pain burns down the line and warm liquid travels down it from the topmost edge, sending agony along the same line.

I scream. Too sudden, too painful. My muscles clench for half a moment, then slacken and tremble, and I fall onto the ground on my knees, with my legs unable to support me any longer. Behind me, a – very, very – familiar voice lets out a broken, tortured howl, a distant, clanking sound of metal hitting a semi-hard surface fills my dimming hearing, and a dull thump whispers in my ears as a soft tremor travels through my shaking knees.

So familiar, too familiar.

My son?

But if it were he, then he has been the one who has just bladed open my back – !

So dizzy, so nauseated, so painful: burning, piercing, throbbing pain – my knees lose their strength and my body slams onto the grassy dirt.

I would howl myself if I were not choking on the agony, as the gash is jarred by my fall. But I let out a gagging sound anyway, and shamed by it.

All is silent.

Too silent.

But there are still two presences behind me. Strange.

My awareness flickers, dims.

I cannot hold on, black out.

My awareness flickers, brightens.

Sharpens … No pain? Where is the pain? It was agony. Now nothing is there, not even the slight cuts and bruises on my knees and elbows resulting from my staggered fall.

I hold my breath. It is not so silent anymore. Odd. A keening noise – I hear a pair of keening voices, and a somewhat-familiar low growl. What – who is – are? – keening? Why? Pained? Grieving? Wounded?

There were two presences. There are still two presences. But the two are closer together now, and they are closer to where I have fallen, to where I am still sprawled at present.

My chest squeezes. My awareness flickers alarmingly again, this time because of the furthering of the lack of fresh air in my lungs. But I cannot help it. Although the pain – the agony – is no longer there, the memory is still there. Although the burn – Where is the burn?!

Where is it? Where is it gone to?!

Orri – !

I gasp, scramble to all-fours, scramble to my knees, pivot around.

And gape.

The red dragon is so near, just a snout-reach away. The low growling and one of the keening sounds are hers – a dragon's – yes, now I realise and remember it. But the other – there is somebody pinned under her right-foot claws, face-down and sprawled helplessly even nearer to me, as if the person – the man? – was in the process of reaching for me with his hand.

Empty hand.

Where is the sword?

And he is bleeding.

Bleeding on his back.

Black, long, thick, tangled hair; a knuckle of finger missing from his right hand's middle finger; dirty, tattared long-sleeved tunic, cloth trousers and leather boots concealing most of everything from view.

Orailesk.

I swing my right foot, freeze on midstep in the air, have just remembered that he is pinned under a dragon's talon, a most-likely-less-than-sane dragon at that.

I return my foot to its former position, turn my attention to the dragon, regard her silently, try to ignore the keening and the growling and my own fears, wait for her to acknowledge me, as taught by the Code of the Dragon Riders during my training days. (She used to greet me before I could greet her anyway, before this, as we all still lived as a huge, mismatched-looking family.)

But she is regarding me just as silently: no longer so wild but too passive, too mindless, too wary, too timid for my peace of mind.

"Don't you recognise me?" Just a whisper: a tremulous, silent whisper. I cannot make my voice steady, cannot make my voice louder, cannot even look at her now. Grief and horror choke all thoughts and all breath from me. She was so lively in her own way, so cunning and intelligent, so witty and playful, so eager and curious about everything, so earnest and wordlessly sincere in the open, frank, straightforward manner of a childlike being, just like Orri himself when in the presence of his family alone. But now …

A rough-scaled nose bumps against my own short, small nose. The tip of a rough-surfaced tongue swipes at the side of my neck. Sniffing, tasting, just like Orri, just like … like her, before all the madness and ferocity of hidden, long-buried grudges were let loose and exploded in those … those years, those years of distruction and savagery and revolution and breaking and scattering and grief and loss.

I put my arms around the proffered snout, plant my face onto the small, rough scales, inhale a deep breath, savour it, keening myself – grief: deep grief, wordless grief, unexplainable, piercing like a hot, jagged, poisoned knife.

I cannot remember her name, but I can remember her scent. Nobody shall ever tear that from me. They have already torn most of her identity away; but they did not take this from her, from him, from me, and I am glad to find out.

She called me "Né'a," when she had her mental voice, when she had her words, when she had her thoughts and plans and pranks and humanoid emotions. Orailesk, seven years old and fiercely loving and loyal and caring and proud and close to the little blood-red-scaled hatchling, insisted that she be also my child, his twin sister in fact despite my insisting back that she was born seven years after he had been born himself; and then I heard her voice in my head for the first time, saying just one word: "Né'a" – solemn, simple, sincere, open, matter-of-fact.

He told me then, proudly and honestly and frankly and with a lit-up, beaming face that he rarely displayed to anybody, that it had been the second word she could utter, the first being "Orri."

I could not say no. I would not say no, not with how highly he regarded her, not with how highly she regarded me, not when I had been taking care of her alongside my own son anyway, given how he refused to part with her all day and night even when – no, especially – when he was sleeping. So she became my other child, my first daughter, my son's first sister, his younger twin – I insisted on that – and it staid that way till we faced each other as semi-enemies in that wretched battle outside Dorú Araeba.

And even until beyond that.

Because there is no ex-parent, no ex-child.

Mothers and females and hatchlings and eggs are regarded highly among the dragons, rooted in their psyche; and perhaps, not even those vicious, idiotic, imbisilic, thoughtless, heartless, mindless wild dragons that caused all this dared to go against this one law as well. Because somehow, she still recognises me. Because now she is crouched down in an almost-relaxed manner, settling on her haunches and licking my cheeks, replacing my tears with a little bit of her saliva.

I wonder if she still remembers Enn my own 'twin', if she still remembers Talita her egg-mother …

But she has not let go of Orri, and I need to tend to him.

Because there is no ex-parent, no ex-child, despite of everything.

"Would you let Orri go, please?" I ask her, wheedle, glad that my voice is nearly back to normal. "I have forgiven him, you know; You should, too. We just lost our minds for a little while, yes? But he is your brother, and I am your mother, and we are back again now, together."

I extend a tendril of thought tentatively, gingerly, seeking for hers, wanting her to know – no, wanting to reunite with her.

And then I am awashed in disorientating, disconcerting, powerful, wild, vivid sensations, trapped in her mind and looking at myself from her point of view: her new way of acknowledging me, perhaps – and her new way of acquiescing to my request too, because she is shifting now, lifting her right forefoot from on top of her Rider – no, her twin brother.

But somehow, I do not mind being subjected to this reeling experience of merging my consciousness with hers, not so much, not as much as it is safe, perhaps, but I rarely care about my own safety.

If she is only able to express herself like this now, then so be it. I shall accept it as it is; because she is my daughter, and there is nothing and nobody that can change that.

Orri shies away from my hands, keening louder, choking, flailing when I ignore his attempt to escape me and hook my arms around his armpits anyway, hauling the top of his body onto my lap.

But he freezes, falls silent, when I gather water from the dewy air around us and bathe his wound, and then heal it – heal what should have been inflicted on my back. And he goes limp as I shift the top of his body higher, put his head on my right shoulder as my arms encircle his torso and support him half-upright. And as I kiss his exposed left ear, he takes a deep, shuddering inhale with his nose pressed against my neck.

I smile against his ear. A long moment later, he smiles against my neck. And above us, his self-proclaimed twin sister embraces us with one red wing and nestles her nose on the junction between our heads.

Sometimes, words unsaid feel better than the sweetest, deepest of poems.