Y'all are so punny with your "Cliff-hanger". Oh, and the Cliff's voice is inspired by Cate Blanchett.
Shout out to Phoebe Miller for continually putting up with me.
Fact #118: A lifetime of learning still only yields a fraction of what there is to know.
Season: Between 4th and 5th Seasons
Danny did the first thing that always came to mind when faced with a dangerous situation: he started talking.
"Hey, hey! We don't want any trouble, okay? We didn't mean to trespass on your turf or whatever, huh?" he said.
He was painfully aware of how locked his wings were against his sides. Usually, his instinct was to flare them out to make himself bigger looking. But seeing the other's wings stretched out in a dominating display had made him unconsciously snap them closed.
The other Cliff dropped from its hindlegs down onto all fours, its head coming a little shorter than his own.
"Pardon the rather theatrical introduction," the Cliff said. A woman judging by the voice. "I tend to forget that that greeting isn't popular in every part of the world."
His wings loosened from their clamped position and he saw Steve relax slightly out of the corner of his eye.
His heart slowing from its pounding pace, he cocked his head to the side and waved his claws around, his gaze glued to the mesmerizing sight before him. "Coming screaming out of the sky is a greeting in some places?"
"Probably not where you grew up, if that New Jersey accent is any indication."
"And who are you? Where are you from?" Steve questioned.
She glanced at him with cool gray eyes. Danny could tell she haled from somewhere in England by accent alone, but she lifted up a wing to display the pattern on the underside as if it would answer their question. The ventral side was marbled with milky white and storm grays like churning clouds shot through with lightning bolts of silver. When they just stared at her blankly, she furled her wings back to her sides like ship sails.
"Don't feel bad, now. Few people can read lineages in wings," she said, her attention going back to Danny. "My name's Jayne."
Still sensing the tension rolling off his partner, Danny set about trying to create some ease. "I'm Danny, and this is my friend Steve. This guy thought it'd be a great idea to hike way out into the middle of nowhere and camp. I'm sorry if we trespassed or something."
Jayne chuckled. Tendrils of smoke wisped from her nostrils and the scent of pine washed over him. "No. I'm as much of a trespasser as you are. I enjoy those ridges, too. They're perfect for learning the basics of flying."
Danny frowned. "That bad, huh?"
"I bet you live in a city or densely populated area. Not a lot of room or privacy to spread your wings very often," she said knowingly. She tipped her head back to look at Steve. "And I'm guessing you were some form of military judging by the control of your gliding and the stance you dropped into when I arrived."
Steve's face remained neutral, but he gave a subtle nod. "Navy, ma'am."
"Not surprised." She tapped the back of her claws on his shoulder as she walked by. "A group like the SEALs would like a big Amphibian/Arboreal boy like you."
Danny pivoted to watch her as she strode away through the billowing grass. She was the first Cliff outside of his pa that he'd seen in real life. Sure, he'd seen them in books and museums and movies, and he'd seen the picture of little Logan off Marilyn's ships, but that was extremely different compared to seeing another living, breathing member of his type. The rarest type.
"Hold on, hold on," he said and bounded after her, catching up in a few short hops.
She looked at him narrowly.
"Please hold on?" he tried.
Her face softened, though the nose horn and dual ridges coming off it gave her expression a sharp edge. "I'm one of the only Cliffs you've seen outside of your immediate family, aren't I?"
This wasn't something he talked about with anyone outside of Steve or his siblings. Not even Rachel had known about how much fear being a Cliff had brought him, or how many questions it raised.
"My pa's a Cliff, but his wings are stunted." He gestured to her massive wings that were currently tucked against her sides. "And then there was me, and that was it."
She inhaled and blew out a breath clouded with smoke and ash. Her eyes switched from his to Steve's and then back to his. "Come with me back to my camp. I'm sure there are a few things I can tell you."
Her camp was situated on the other side of the valley.
They followed her across the sea of grass and into the rows of towering trees. This side had already been cast into shadows. Thankfully, it wasn't very dark nor was it very cold. At least, Danny didn't think it was. His heavy scales retained heat well.
The trees abruptly stopped. A small lake stretched out, its surface glassy except for the ripples of fish snatching bugs out of the evening air. Frogs and crickets croaked and chirped, competing with the twittering of the birds getting ready to bunk down in the trees for the night.
"Do you still live in New Jersey or did I miss the mark on that one?" Jayne asked over her shoulder.
"No, no. You were right. I grew up in Jersey, but I moved out to Oahu to be with my daughter," Danny said.
"And what about the SEAL?" she asked.
"Born and raised on Oahu, ma'am," Steve said.
Normally, Danny liked to think he wouldn't have followed a strange woman back to her camp just because she had wings like him. But the curiosity had been too strong. Another Cliff. And unless he had completely misjudged, one older than himself and one who seemingly had more knowledge on Cliffs than he ever did or probably ever would.
His heart pounded. Having Steve walking alongside him, shoulder bumping his every so often, offered some comfort and courage.
"Make yourselves comfortable," Jayne said.
Her camp had obviously been set up for a while. A hammock swayed between two spruces, stumps for seats had been placed around a well-constructed firepit, and her tent looked lived in.
She poked at the glowing embers of the fire with a long foreclaw. After placing two chunks of wood on it, she swept leaves and pine needles out of her way and sat near her tent.
Danny sat opposite of her across the growing fire. A nervous feeling bubbled in his gut.
Jayne held one of her wings above the fire. Orange danced on the membrane and made the swirls of grays and white almost liquid, the veins of silver shimmering like hoar frost.
"This is my family's crest," she said quietly. She tilted her wing and new patterns lit up. "It originated from the Isle of Britain, specifically Scotland."
Steve frowned. "But you're not Scottish."
"No, my mother was from Canberra, Australia, lived in Cheshire, England, which is where I was born, but my father was from Edinburgh, and my sister and brother both married back into the Scots," she said, sounding as if she'd spent a long time tracking down her wayward family tree. "And at some point, my mother's side of the family was from Britain and got shipped down to Australia for being criminals."
"Full circle," Danny said.
Jayne shook her head and rubbed her brow with her forefoot. "And for some reason, it was that ancestry project that hooked me when I was sixteen. I must've been a perverse creature that enjoyed the torture. Do you know where you're from, Danny?"
He glanced at the pearly nautilus pattern on the underside of his wings. His pop had a similar pattern on what little membrane was present on his malformed wings, but Bridget lacked any such design.
"I was always told half-English, half-Italian," he said with a shrug.
She flicked her claws at him. "Let me see."
He opened a wing. The firelight caught the smooth membrane and glowed to varying intensities along the curve of the nautilus shell.
"I would say you've been told semi-correctly. That coloration is native to the Dolomite region of Italy."
His wing collapsed back against his side and he sat forward. "What's the other half of the semi-correct part?"
Jayne twisted around and reached into her tent. She pulled out a leather-bound book. "Despite my reputation, I'm not all-knowing when it comes to dragons. There's more to know than can ever be learned in a lifetime."
Danny and Steve shared a look.
"Your reputation?" Steve asked.
She hummed as she flipped through the book with a delicate flick of her claw. "I've authored several books documenting my travels. The people I've met. The cultures I've observed. The oddities of dragons as a whole. Here."
She handed the book over to Danny.
Somewhat clumsily, he held it in his forefoot and peered at the pages she had opened it to. Several different patterns on the undersides of wings were either photographed and taped in or sketched with a pencil with scribbly writing off to the sides in notes he could barely make out.
"Those are the most common crests native to Britain and Ireland," she explained.
Steve leaned over to see.
He was at a loss for words. Books rarely talked about the patterns on Cliff wings, or they made it up for fiction's sake. But this was astounding. He'd never guessed there were not only that many different patterns just from such a small part of the world, but also that many wing shape varieties. The photographs were of the wings only, so he couldn't see most of the rest of the dragon, but they ranged from small and rounded to slender and jagged to broad and massive and everywhere in between.
"Second one from the bottom on the right hand side," she said.
There. A sketch of a single swirled pattern on a wing resembling his own.
He tapped it. "Where's this one from?"
"Wales. They'll fight you on being called English, so you better start saying you're Welsh-Italian," she said with a hint of a smile. "It explains the coloration of your scales."
"It does?"
"The Welsh have a red dragon on their flag. Most of the Cliff lines originating in Britain and northern Europe have darker colors like me, but a few Welsh lines had those warmer tones," she said. Her smile faded. "Unfortunately, during the age of the dragon slayers, most of those lines were wiped out."
That fact might explain why his ancestors had fled to America. Not only had it promised to be a land where people could practice religion freely, but a land where dragons wouldn't be hunted. Of course, it didn't turn out as peachy as some had hoped.
He flipped through the next few pages. Cliffs from the Middle East. Cliffs from the southeastern parts of Africa. Cliffs from India. Cliffs from Nepal. Cliffs from Indonesia. Cliffs from Siberia. Cliffs from Mongolia. Cliffs from northwestern South America. Cliffs from Canada.
The crest of elongated scales stood up on the back of his neck. "I didn't realize there were this many Cliffs. I thought we were the rarest of the types."
Jayne scoffed. "Oh, I could keep you here all night explaining the inadequacies of government censuses and research involving dragons, first of foremost being the categorizing of dragons into types."
"What do you mean? They've only ever recorded six types with outliers," Steve said, looking up from the book.
"And they've order them, as well, from most common to most rare. Drake, Amphibian, Arboreal, Wyvern, Serpent, and Cliff." She puffed out a breath glittering with embers. "Like ordering animals on an endangered list with Drakes being house cats and Cliffs being Sumatran tigers."
"So what are you saying?" Danny asked slowly and shut the book.
Jayne's gray eyes glinted in the firelight. "I'm saying there are a few more Cliffs than people assume, there are far more dragons than the governments are comfortable with, and there are more types than you'll ever know."
Next week on "Dragons", Jayne shows Danny exactly what a Cliff can do, and Steve possibly feels vaguely jealous.
Pic of Jayne up on the art page. PM me if you need the link.
If you guys have any suggestions or ideas or thoughts or questions, send them my way. Seriously. I've been having issues running out of steam working on the last few chapters.
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