I totally needed to be an animator for this chapter. Or at least a sound designer.
Shout out to Phoebe Miller for beta reading!
Fact #119: It takes a world traveler to know the ins and outs of dragons, and even then some of it is still a mystery.
Season: Between 4th and 5th Seasons
They had stayed at Jayne's camp late that night until they finally moseyed through the dark back over to theirs. She'd been kind enough to give them some of her dinner since Steve's plan of fishing had disintegrated upon meeting her.
Through the entire night Danny tossed and turned, wondering about all the things she had told him. Cliffs weren't as rare as he was once led to believe. Still the least common of all the types, so much so that he'd never encountered one outside of his pa and now Jayne, but not as scarce as he'd thought.
First light had barely colored the eastern sky a purplish gray when he decided to finally get up. Steve wasn't far behind.
"Daniel Williams up before the sun?" Steve said as he pulled a sweatshirt over his head. He deftly got the fire going in their pit and sat on a stump, arms crossed over his chest and eyes squinting at Danny. "Couldn't sleep?"
He shrugged. "Oh, you know me. I'm an insomniac. Couldn't handle all the sounds of nature last night."
Steve nodded. "Okay. Thought it might have been something to do with finding out you're not one of the last Cliffs left, but whatever you say, man."
Danny plopped down on a stump next to Steve. He rubbed his hands and then fingered his hair into some tamed state. "You don't know what it's like, babe. Thinking you might be the last person left of an entire type. I mean, I had a feeling that I wasn't the only Cliff on the face of the planet, but it sure felt like it sometimes."
Steve stared into the growing flames of the fire. Words weren't needed. Danny could see the gears turning in his head, the questions and concerns and emotions he usually didn't say aloud all swirling behind his eyes.
"You think she's telling the truth?" he asked suddenly.
Danny blinked. "Do I think she's telling the truth?"
Steve scrubbed his hands over his face and then tucked them back under his arms. "I just don't want you to get your hopes up if she's lying."
It took him a moment to process that. "Why would she lie? What makes you think she'd lie to us over how many Cliffs are left, or where my family's from? Why can't you just be happy for me, huh? I found out something about myself that I never knew and now you're questioning the accuracy of the whole thing."
"I'm sorry," Steve said.
Danny sensed more behind his worries, but let it be for the time being. He'd grill him about it later.
The sun spilled streams of golden light over the sea of grass in the valley. Its presence was finally chasing away the chill of the night and warming up the air around them, threatening to burn off the fine mist that hung between the trees like cobwebs.
Danny almost didn't hear Jayne land. She breezed in and put down softly, unlike the day before.
"Good morning," she greeted. Dewdrops glistened on her river stone colored scales, gathered from the blades of grass, a trail visible in her wake as she walked towards them. "Are you out romping about, or do you have more questions for me?"
Danny's wings trembled slightly. He'd never had much fear of talking to people, but there was something about talking to a woman who knew so much about a part of his life he kept so secret.
"What my partner here wanted to ask was how you learned to fly," Steve said flatly.
He found his tonuge again. "I know it sounds kinda dumb, and I'm not always one to admit my shortcomings, but I've had a hard time learning to fly. Even as a teen I had a hard time. Almost killed myself one time trying."
Jayne snorted. "Believe it or not, I did not come out of the womb with my wings spread wide and ready to take on the skies. I learned through trial and error in my teens, but only really learned in my mid-twenties."
"How?" Danny asked.
"A very nice, very old Wyvern in the Andes," she said. She shook the water off her wings and folded them in. "And from there, various people I've met through my travels."
Steve frowned. "What do you do?"
"I studied anthropology at university, but much prefer meeting people and writing about them," she explained. "You would be surprised by the cultures living in seclusion away from the rest of the world. You would also be surprised by how much more welcoming they are to a dragon versus a human."
Danny had typically found the opposite true. People usually feared dragons or were obsessed with them in an unhealthy fashion. Perhaps that was just the culture he'd been raised in. Steve and the cousins had always spoken of how the Hawaiians and Maori and other peoples of Oceania revered and valued dragons as leaders and warriors and priests.
"Steve, you're a skilled glider. Haven't you taught Danny anything about flying?" Jayne questioned.
Steve didn't look too sure on whether or not he should puff up proudly at the compliment or growl at the suggestion that he'd been slacking in the tutelage department.
"I have," he said. "But, he needs someone who flies, not glides."
The lightbulb clicked on in Danny's head. Steve was jealous. He was jealous that Jayne knew more about dragons than either of them and could offer Danny more help than Steve could. That's why he'd been suspicious this morning and in a bit of a mood.
Jayne eyed the pair of them carefully. She seemed to know something was going on, but not what exactly. "Alright, then. I can't promise you'll be doing loops, but I can show you the most useful trick that most Cliffs in western culture lack."
"And that is?" Danny asked.
"How to get up off the ground."
Jayne snapped out her wings fully, sending tendrils of mist spiraling away. The veins of silver glittered in the morning sun. A hint of light shined through the membrane of her wings, shadows of actual blood carrying veins vaguely visible.
Danny opened his wings. He spotted Steve off to the side, watching intently.
"Bigger wings may be able to sustain you for a while once up, but they can be a bit cumbersome to get off the ground with," she said, twisting and angling her wings.
Here in stronger light, he could see nicks and scars he'd missed the evening before. One place in her right wing looked like it had taken buckshot to the membrane near where her wing joined her body.
"I'm a bit of a rubbish teacher when it comes to this sort of thing, my apologies," she said. Her wings folded in partially. "Watch closely."
She hunched in the grass. Her wings reached up above her head, pushing down powerfully as she leapt up into the air. Another downbeat and she was airborne.
She circled back around and landed where she'd taken off.
"The key is to scoop the air with your wings, like you would scoop water with your hands while swimming," she said and sat back.
He took a deep breath in.
Hunch. Wings up. Jump. Wings down.
Back on the ground.
"Cliffs have a particularly difficult time fine tuning the motor skills of their wings," Jayne said, not making any comment about his failed attempt. "They are, in essence, a third pair of limbs that we lack in human form and thus don't use as often as our arms and legs. Even Wyverns have an easier time learning to fly than Cliffs."
"So, basically, my brain doesn't know how to operate my wings?" he asked. He looked at one wing and flexed the fingerbones running the length of it. Trying to curl one without the others all folding was like trying to move his fingers after his hand had fallen asleep.
"Crudely put, yes," she said. "But, your brain will build new pathways to remember muscle movements once you teach it."
"Just gotta fall on my face a few more times before it finally learns, huh?"
"It's okay, bud. I don't know how many times I crashed before I finally got gliding down," Steve said supportively from the sidelines. "Probably less than you."
"Shut up."
It was a skill he was going to have to work on whenever he could, and he was sure Steve would be happy to have an excuse now to take them up in the jungle for more combat training and flying lessons.
He'd managed to get airborne twice. The problem was that he wasn't one hundred percent sure what to do once he was in the air other than glide back down.
Some part of his brain, somewhere way in the back, whispered to him to flap. But he didn't want to make anymore of a fool of himself in front of Jayne than he already had.
Instead, she wanted to teach him something else.
"All dragons have voices unique to their type, and unique to them," she was saying. She was currently talking to Steve. Danny wasn't sure if she'd picked up on him feeling left out and jealous or what, but he appreciated her taking an interest in him. It gave him time for his wings to quit shaking.
"Dragon bugles," Steve said, proving that he wasn't completely clueless. In fact, he probably knew more about dragons than Danny did. No, he definitely knew more. Jayne and Mauna just blew them out of the water with their knowledge and experience, though. "Or dragon songs."
Jayne grinned. "Not many people know about them, let alone have heard real ones outside of those fictionalized ones in movies and shows. You either were or still are a SEAL. You've been some place where they still use them, I bet."
Danny grunted when his partner nodded. He'd never been told about these dragon calls.
"It's classified where I was, but I've heard them," he said.
So, he wasn't the only one that got the classified card from him.
"In the trees, pretty far from civilization," he continued.
Jayne looked enthralled. He could tell this was what she lived for. This was her passion, learning about dragons.
"And what did they sound like to you?" she asked. "Some people say they sound like screams in the night, others say they sound like trumpets, still others say they sound like women singing."
"One of the men in my company said they sounded like wooden flutes," Steve said. "I thought they sounded like voices."
"You were probably somewhere in China, near the Tibetan border," Jayne said. "That's the only place I've heard a flute sounding call. Serpents most likely. Possibly Wyverns. They make higher sounds."
Though Steve's face remained placid, Danny knew she'd hit the nail on the head by the subtle widening of his eyes.
"Can you make one?" she asked.
Danny's brow ridges went up. "Yeah, Steve, can you make one?"
Steve shot a scowl at him.
He'd heard him roar and screech before, and growl. He had the creepiest growl. Low and vibrating, coming straight from the chest. Steve had told him that he had an even lower growl, but apparently he'd only made it when he had been drugged and on a rampage. Danny himself hadn't heard it.
Steve's chest belled out with breath.
The sound was creepier than the growl. It sent chills down Danny's spine and made the ridge of elongated scales stand up.
It was a humming sound, caught somewhere between the call of a man and the low tone of a brass horn.
"The hell was that? I've never heard you make that noise," Danny said and flung a set of claws out at him.
"Because it's not something that's ever come in handy," Steve said.
"Listen, if we're ever in the jungle with a creepy suspect again, just make that sound and I'm sure you'll scare him shi-"
"Trust me, that's not as eerie as dragon calls can get," Jayne interrupted. "There's a group of Native Americans that use a screaming call to communicate back and forth across canyons. Absolutely terrifying."
"And that sound you made yesterday, that's your call?" Danny asked.
"It's a call. That one actually resembles kulning closer than my call. People in Sweden used to kulning to call the herds in from the pastures and down from the mountains," she said. She cleared her throat and shook her head. "This would be my call."
It was a high breathy sound that echoed through the valley. Also creepy.
"Are all calls freaky or is it just you two?" he waved his claws at the pair of them.
"Come on, Danno, you try," Steve coaxed.
"I'm not even sure what you two are doing to get noises like that," he said.
"It's all up here," Jayne said and tapped the bridge of her nose. "Most dragons have a resonating chamber here in their skulls. Of course, there are a variety of ways to make different calls, but this is where your call comes from."
He exhaled. While he may have unwittingly made a deep growl at one point, he was pretty sure he'd never knowingly or unknowingly made a sound like that. A dragon call.
"Put your tongue to the roof of your mouth, breathe out through your nose, and hum," she instructed.
He did as she said. Just his usual annoyed hum and a snicker from Steve.
"Harder. Like you're pissed at me," Steve said.
"Keep talking, that'll make it easier," he quipped.
He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and blew with more force. All of the sudden, it felt like a switch got flipped and the air diverted from its usual path.
Low and rumbling, still somewhere in the growl territory. He changed the pitch of his hum, creating an upsweep at the end.
"Damn, Danno, and you gave me crap about mine being creepy," Steve huffed.
Danny smirked. He glanced at Jayne. "And what purpose does that serve, anyway? How many people actually speak with those types of sounds?"
"Like I said, you'd be surprised," she said. "There are a few groups of dragons living in various isolated places around the world with unique languages and customs. You should read one of my books."
"What's the strangest thing you've seen traveling?" Steve asked.
She shook her head, looking up at an angle like she was trying to grasp at memories floating in the air around her. She narrowed her eyes. "Honestly, anything Wyvern related. They have what we call slippery genomes. It makes them subject to any variety of mutations, whether natural or manmade."
Didn't they know it. The fifteen foot tall, skeletal, screeching, white dragon experiment turned loose on the island several months ago was a prime example.
"We've witnessed something along those lines," Steve said.
Danny was about to add more to that when a flicker of movement at the edge of the open sea of grass caught his eye. He froze once he'd locked onto the creature bounding through the grass at them.
"Danny?" Steve asked.
"Bear," he hissed.
Jayne barely twitched. "Grizzly. Fascinating creatures to watch. I believe she has two cubs."
"Don't they normally eat people between them and their cubs? You know, the whole mama bear thing?" Danny snapped.
The shaggy bear stopped in the grass not even a hundred feet away from them. She stood up on her hind legs, bringing her to a height that would tower over a man. She grunted and grumbled at them.
"Well that's what you get for leaving your cubs on that side of the grass, you great hairy beast," Jayne said. She nudged Danny on the shoulder as she trotted by, leaving the way to the trees open. "Go on, go fetch your brood."
The bear didn't appear that happy, but dropped back down to all fours and lumbered into the grove of evergreens and aspens. She didn't even bother to look back at them.
"I told you there would be a bear!" Danny rounded on Steve.
"But it didn't eat you," Steve objected.
Jayne snorted out a laugh. "You two are strange. You realize there are no land predators alive today that will willingly take on an adult dragon, don't you?"
"Did you see how big that bear was? A freaking grizzly!" Danny cast a look at where the bear had disappeared and didn't see hair nor hide.
"And you are a fire breathing dragon with armor strong enough to withstand her claws," she said. She turned and walked away through the grass, spreading her wings out to drag over the tips of the blades and dislodge the last drops of dew. "Now, the ocean is another story."
Steve's eyes brightened.
"Oh, I see. It's not okay when she knows about me, but she mentions your beloved ocean and all of the sudden you've gotta hear what she has to say," Danny muttered.
At least Steve had it in him to look sheepish. "Sorry, Danno. I know I can be a bit overprotective."
"Or obsessive, but sure, let's go with overprotective," he said with a sigh. He waggled his claws between his partner and the retreating Cliff. "So, you want to hear the rest of what she's got to say about the ocean or would you rather go twiddle our thumbs at the campsite?"
Steve's boyish grin confirmed his assumption.
"Jayne, wait up!"
Next week on "Dragons", Danny and Steve meet up with Eric and Jessa at the cabin she's managed to get a hold of.
Hey, I'm going to be taking two weeks off over the end of the year. So no new chapters on Dec 31st and Jan 7th. I'm going to be visiting family and haven't had enough time to create a backlog to post. Sorry guys.
In other news, I do have some things planned out for when I return. Mostly two plots I've been wanting to do for a while. And I thank you guys for reading, reviewing, faving, and following!