And now, next chapter. It's not going to have a lot of action in this one, although it's crucial in Tempest and Sweyn's growing relationship.

Thanks to all those who've reviewed and are staying with me! It makes me happy and write better! Enjoy.


Fear-Driven

For the entire next week, I avoided the hatchling.

I didn't know why…No, I do know why, but I needed time. I have to think things through. The hatchling had changed me too much. It was scary, and I don't want that. No, I really don't, as fun as it was to experience new things. I have almost thrown away everything that is sacred to dragons, I've realized as I flew home from the last meeting. I've spared the child, I've almost befriended him, I've let him touch me willingly, I've won his trust.

What have I become? Where is Winter? Where is that Timberjack dragoness who relished in cat-and-mouse games in which the loser is the dead? What am I now? What do I have anymore?

Well, for starter, there was Sweyn who was probably questioning my sanity and randomness in his human dwellings. What kind of dragon wins his trust and then burst out flying in, what, fifteen minutes? I wondered if he made it back to his home safely –

Oh, Thor, there I was again. Worrying about one of my supposed foods if he was living fine or not. We've not known each other all that long and already the hatchling had started to change me. He'd made me question things that I shouldn't have. He'd made me change too much. I feared that. I feared change.

I feared him.

But after the week, though, I found that I missed the penetrating grey eyes. There were so many things about the child that I wanted to learn. He has, after all, not scared me on purpose. There was no lie in that child, it seems. So why shouldn't I cast away the fear and go a bit deeper? No matter what, after everything is said and done, he is still fascinating.

Greed of knowledge had always been my weakness and admittedly, it had gotten me into trouble before, but the thirst was sometimes irrepressible. Besides, I'm in my nineties, and although that was pretty young among dragons, I am no longer being controlled or watched over by anybody else but myself. It kind of stung with nobody out there to care enough anymore, but we are traditional loners. Well, not exactly like the Night Furies who seemed to have some conflicts about living anywhere a hundred and two miles close to each other except when they mate, but Timberjack dragons lived in a loose society.

After that one week of deliberately avoiding the valley and pretending I couldn't see Sweyn lurking in and out of the forest while I hunted close to him but unseen, his hand gripping a bow, I decided it was time to meet up again. I could not hide forever, after all. We will meet again sometimes, whether in a raid or in an encounter in the woods.

I went to that valley again that morning. The sky was, thankfully, clear blue. I had been right. It wouldn't snow for another week if we were lucky. If we weren't…well, maybe tomorrow there'll be a blizzard. Death Rock weather wasn't made to be predictable.

To my surprise, the hatchling was not there, but there were remnants of his scent all over the place. I followed it to the edge of the forest and groaned. How am I supposed to find a tree in the middle of the forest? Had he smell of human, I would've been able to detect him. But no, he would just have to have the scent of crushed pine-needle.

It was probably the wisest thing the hatchling could've done just yet. That at least made it hard to track him if I had the intention of dining on his bones. It worked two-ways, though, and now I will have to go search for him. The old-fashioned chop-the-woods-till-you-get-the-kid way.

Sighing in irritation, I went into the woods. I couldn't fly because if I did, I wouldn't be able to land. The trees were way too narrow for that. It was a curse we gigantic dragons had always suffered. Especially the Timberjack, since our wingspan was about twice the size of a full-grown Nightmare when we were in our adult years. Oh, yes, I can chop down the trees easily enough, but that would no doubt draw a battalion of crazed Vikings to me.

I wasn't in the mood for little games that day.

Clinging to the faint, faint scent of human pheromones nearby, I followed the pine-needle scent further into the forest, stopping now and then to check if any other obnoxious human beings or dragons were around. I ran into six different ones and a Gronkle high on kitty grass, but they left me alone to do whatever I wanted. Dragons generally don't care about what each other was doing. As for the humans…they made about as much noise as a Zippleback with its two heads in a heated argument over a bit of deer. I had never understood why they fought. Didn't the meat go into the same stomach no matter which way it comes in?

An hour, many moments of losing directions, running into empty valleys and ravines later, I found the hatchling.

He was sitting in that ravine he'd shown me earlier last week with his back against one of the two oak trees, curled up in a ball. It was kind of hard to make out the small figure in the dark shade the tree gave, what with his clothes and black hair. Beside him lied a piece of curved wood with its ends connected by a string and a cylinder container next to it, feathers, straight and numerous, sticking out of the opening. It was the humans' traditional hunting tools.

Silently, I covered the hill with one effortless jump and landed a few meters from the hatchling. Approaching him, my head lowered in curiosity, I found that he didn't move even when I made as much noise as I had in the crunchy snow. He hadn't looked up, so how did he know it was me? It could be any other dragon; the forest was flooded with them. And if it had been another dragon, he would have been dead.

I sniffed the air. There was a salty touch to his scent, like very mild seawater. My brain took a moment before it supplied me with the memory of the scent's origin. "Tears," I whispered, remembering the clear, curious liquid filling humans' eyes before they spilled over and trickled down their cheeks. It was a reaction to fear or too much smoke, I remembered.

There was no movement from the child as I closed in enough that I could easily touch the top of his head with my snout if I wanted. His breathings were rhythmic, indicating that he was probably asleep. That surprised me a bit. As wary as he'd been, I'd expected him to at least stay slightly alert here in the middle of the forest.

It would be so easy to strike him down, right then, right there. The hatchling would probably never even feel the pain. And he'd made my future take an unstable turn after all. If I kill him now, I will allay all those fears with ease. Just one move. Just one fireball. Just one bite. Just one bite and everything will go back to the way they always had been. My life will be more steady. I can continue to go on without having to always think about a human hatchling, his foolishness and his stubbornness and how he deliberately clung on to life no matter if he was pushed against a cliff or against a wall.

Yes. It would be sensible to kill him now. Dragons are, after all, born to slaughter humans. I might lose a potential studying subject, but I can always find another. We are practically immortal. I can live and I can wait until another peculiar little human popped up and observe him from afar. I will not make the mistake of contact as with this one. That human won't change me and I won't change him. We'll all live as happy as we can with the constant civil war on this island.

That's right. If this one is dead, everything will come back to being normal and safe. No more wonders, no more fear of change, no more of a future that spun out of control too fast. I will be safe. I will be doing myself a huge favor. I can live happy if I can just do this.

Fire gas started building in my mouth. Yes, just one spark, that's all it takes. That's all it takes for this human to be gone. He'd earned my respect and my curiosity, but he'd thrown me into danger. He'd thrown my way of thinking into danger. I can't have him around. I will have to end this here, now.

The gas was ready. I can shoot now. Taking a deep, deliberate breath and stepping back, I prepared to do what my instincts told me to do with that silent, still figure under that huge oak tree. I'm doing myself a favor, I kept thinking. It's for my own good.

One breath. One breath. That was all it takes.

Just one breath. Release it, Winter. Release it and free yourself from this human. Now is the perfect chance. You won't have to see the hurt and the betrayal in his eyes if you do this now. Do it, coward. Do it. Now or never.

I took in a little more air. The blast will be powerful. The gas was starting to burn my mouth.

I took yet another little bit of air. Yet I didn't let it loose.

No, that's not right. It wasn't that I didn't let it loose. I can't let it loose.

For a moment, as I looked down on the top of the black head, I saw a pair of determined grey eyes, piercing and wary. Then I saw a figure atop a boulder, shivering with his lips and nose turning blue despite the fire in front of him. That image was then overtaken by the eyes again, this time mocking, challenging.

Then there was that smile. A soft, trusting smile that had somehow made my insides warm up. To be trusted. I have been trusted. By a human. By anybody except for my brothers and sisters; no, even they didn't give me as much trust as that smile had given me.

I barely noticed that the gas in my throat was burning. My gaze was focused on the curled-up figure in the snow, remembering the hatchling's hard-to-sway nature, remembering how long it'd taken me to get close to him with permission, remembering how he'd finally handed me his trust. If I decide to end his life here, I will lose all of those. I will regret, but time will erase everything, right? I will forget eventually. I will forget that there was once a human child who was fun to have about and had smiled at a dragon without the intention of poking her eyes out.

The figure suddenly stirred. Startled, I jerked back and released the breath I've been holding, making a powerful blast twice the size of my usual fireballs to hit the higher area of the tall oak tree (it was about five meters taller than even me) and emitting a resounding boom.

"Odin!" the familiar voice yelped as the tree shook dangerously. Almost on instinct, I slammed my wing against the trunk some distance above the hatchling's head as embers and lit leaves rained down. My bones wouldn't burn that easily. Human hair…they've always been interesting fire-making material.

The ancient plant's quake stilled after half a minute and I removed my wing gingerly to peer at the boy underneath. Wide, alarm grey eyes locked with mine for ten seconds before Sweyn's tense body relaxed and he stood up, shaken slightly by the sudden wake-up call he'd been given.

He stepped toward me and turned around to glance at the charred tree and the deep gash where my wing had cut into the wood with a whistle. "Any other person would've thought you've tried to kill me there," Sweyn remarked, and my heart jumped. Did he…?

We were silent as Sweyn examined the tree before turning back with a grimace. He looked at me in the eyes again, like he'd always done. "What were you shooting at anyway?" the hatchling asked, picking his abandoned bow and pointing at the black charred mass with one of its tips. His voice was humorous. "Up for fried squirrels?"

I looked away. If only he'd known where that fireball was originally aimed at.

Another pause of slight awkwardness.

"Well, since you woke me up in such a flamboyant manner," Sweyn said and caused me to turn to look at him, seeing him rolling his eyes. What is "flamboyant"? Another advanced term for "fancy", maybe, judging from the way he was using the word. "I think you owe me a hunt together," he finished, smirking, as he put a gloved hand against my lower neck.

He broke the contact after five seconds and trotted toward the edge of the wood. "C'mon, Tempest," Sweyn shouted mockingly. "Too old and withered to catch up to a human youth or what?"

My pride momentarily flared and covered up my shame and shock of the misguided fireball. Snarling back playfully, I covered the ground between he and I in one leap before accompanying him into the woods.

As I watched the hatchling knelt onto the ground and tried to find tracks later on, I thought about what had happened before. I can't kill him. I really can't kill him. His trust and his smile and his demeanor as a whole was like kitty grass to me. Too much of the thing could keep you in a dangerous high and fictional world that can get you killed, but it was addicting. I can't let go anymore.

"I've never known that dragons zone out," Sweyn remarked suddenly, grinning in the fading light of the day. "What are you? Lady Peculiar in a community of Winged Deaths?"

Snorting in teasing derision, I swung my tail around and tapped him slightly on the head. It earned me a chuckle from the hatchling. "Well, let's get moving," he said, jumping over a tree trunk and looking back at me. "The mule isn't gonna wait for us to drag our sorry hides to it."

I followed him.

This might be fun. Let's forget about everything else for the moment and pretend that I wasn't a dragon and he wasn't a human. We were just two living beings on a hunting trip together. Two friends, even. Yes, that makes this more bearable even if just for awhile, I thought, nodding. Let's all forget that we are supposed to kill each other, not have fun together. Let's all hide in our own little fantasies for a short time.

My mind, though, will never accept any excuse for the fact that I've nearly destroyed Sweyn's trust and life in one go.


I hope the kid doesn't find out about this too soon.