Chapter Five
A/N: Special thanks to Benry Gale, so far you're my only reviewer and I appreciate it. I'm glad you seem to enjoy my work, thank you.
Because I haven't been able to find any exact dates or years (as of yet) that specify how old Brom was when he was given an egg (and everything suggests riders are given eggs when they're children) I have taken the liberty of guessing. I'm probably not even close. All I know is Saphira died young and Brom grew old alone. So here we go into the depths of the FF abyss. My idea comes to life and the flames begin!
Brom stood there, dumbfounded. Could she hear Saphira? He met Saphira's gaze. She shook her head.
"I don't understand it anymore than you." Brom heard the rustle of grass and turned in time to see Sareh running back through the meadow.
"SAREH!" Brom yelled rushing after her, Saphira took flight, easily overtaking the young woman and landing in front of her.
"If you truly can hear me, then we must understand why since you clearly aren't a dragon rider." Sareh looked at the dragon, face white.
"Oh, clearly." Brom had caught up by then.
"Sareh, I know you must be scared. Hearing a dragon for the first time is a strange and almost overwhelming experience."
"And it isn't unheard of for someone who is not a rider to be able to hear a dragon." Sareh looked to Brom who gave a slight nod.
"It's rare—"
"And, considered rude." Sareh looked at Saphira, nearly choking on her rage.
"You think I want to hear you? I don't know the first thing about dragons and I'm starting to think I don't want to know about them anyway." The dragon and the woman stared each other down. Unblinking for a few moments until Brom became frustrated with both of them.
"Saphira, Sareh… This needs to stop. Now this is quite the mystery, we need to figure out what's happening." The feelings both had for Brom, whether through the bond of being dragon and rider, or simply falling in love made them see their argument was a silly one. They broke eye contact and muttered somewhat weak apologies. Finally Brom walked to Sareh, he put his hands to her face, making them look toward one another.
"Can you think of anything, or any time this has happened before?" Sareh thought for a moment, the warmth of Brom's hands on her face fought away the cold she was feeling. She thought back through the years and it suddenly hit her, all the times she had thought she had heard a voice and waved it off as her imagination and all the times she had seen things that inexplicably came true later. They were all connected. The look on her face must have given Brom a clue because his own countenance became questioning.
"There has been something, hasn't there?" he asked. Sareh wasn't sure, but nodded hesitantly with face captured between two sword calloused hands.
"I thought I was just making things up, that my imagination got the best of me." Brom stroked ridge of her cheeks with his thumbs, brushing away a few stray tears.
"What sorts of things?" Sareh sighed and closed her eyes for a moment.
"I heard voices, I thought someone had spoken to me, but when I answered there was no one in the room, or no one had said anything. I saw flashes of things in my mind. I remember I saw Amani, in a dream, she had gotten lost in the forest. The next day, she disappeared and it took us the whole day to find her. I thought it was just coincidence." Saphira looked at Brom,
"I've heard of people learning how to communicate with dragons, but never having the ability to see the future. Maybe she's wrong." Sareh looked at the dragon, her look angry.
"I can still hear you." Saphira gave a sheepish look and waited for someone else to say something. As for brilliant theories, Brom was fresh out of them. According to Sareh there had been nothing in her life that could account for her sudden telepathic abilities. Except—Brom snapped his eyes up to meet Sareh's gaze
"Sareh, when you were drowning you said you heard a voice, and back at the lake you said it was Saphira's voice you heard." Sareh nodded.
"It is." The two of them looked at Saphira who could only give a dragon's version of a blank look.
"I don't remember anything of the sort." Brom ran a hand over his face, the sharp bristles of his clipped beard catching his palm, reminding him that this was real.
"What if it was when we were first training Saphira?" Saphira's great blue eyes shifted as she thought about his question.
"That was a long time ago Brom."
"I know, just think Saphira, maybe something will remind you." Brom stroked Saphira's long neck, the great muscles twitched from his touch, the scales rippling. The movement caused the sun to glance off of them. The light from them struck Sareh's eyes.
"I remember seeing reflections in the water. Bright blue, and that's when I heard the voice. It told me to hold on that help was coming and then I heard something in the Ancient Language—Reisa wiol adurna." Both Brom and Saphira looked surprised.
"Rise from the water?" Brom said looking at Saphira who had gone oddly still. Sareh looked between dragon and rider.
"What, does that mean something?" Brom shook his head, still looking at Saphira.
"I don't know, Saphira?" the dragon sighed, the breath from her mouth blowing the hair back from their foreheads.
"I remember." Sareh's head snapped back and her gaze met Saphira's.
"Then it was you I heard that day." Saphira bobbed her head in agreement.
"I remember that it was the first time I had ever used magic." This Brom was confused,
" And where was I?"
"Riding of course. We were training, you weren't paying attention when I saw a little girl in the water." Brom was dumbfounded.
"Did you even bother to say anything to me about it?" Saphira shook her head no.
"I was arrogant then, I thought I could handle it on my own." Brom sighed and looked at Sareh. She was biting her lip attempting to absorb all of the information she had just been given. It was not an easy task. Brom pushed at Saphira's shoulder.
"You said you used magic, what exactly did you intend?" Saphira looked at her rider.
"I believe I meant to lift her out of the water." Brom ran a hand through his hair, realizing that Saphira may have opened a door that shouldn't have been.
"How old were you when this happened Sareh?" Sareh thought for a moment,
"I think was eight summers old." Brom looked at Saphira again this time ready to challenge what she had said.
"That would have made me ten. Saphira, at that age, neither one of us was old enough to use the Ancient Language." Saphira gave a slight snarl apparently this meant Brom was wrong.
"No, you were not old enough. Dragons are born with such power it is a trait you riders would sorely miss if we weren't. I wasn't experienced enough to use it without you, the doubling of power, because she never surfaced." Sareh agreed, putting a hand on Brom's arm.
"After I heard Saphira's voice in my head everything went black. My father had to swim beneath the surface to get me." Brom's lips tightened with his frustration, he just couldn't seem to explain why Sareh had these powers.
"Was there anything else that seemed strange, before you realized you were hearing other's thoughts in your head?" Sareh flipped through the memories in her mind, of waking up to her mother's frightened face, her father crying on a stool by her bed as she healed, the chicken broth her mother had made her, her shoulder being sore.
"My mother told me as I was getting well that she couldn't tell why I was so weak. That when my father had brought me back to our home, that no water was in my lungs, but I wasn't even conscious for two days. She also noticed that I would cry out if anyone touched my shoulder. She said there's a scar there, but I've never been able to see it." Brom didn't know what to make of that.
"May I see?" Sareh hesitated. It was one thing to let a stranger know one of your greatest fears, it was another to bare skin for them. When she looked into Brom's eyes though, she didn't see any nefarious intent. He was truly trying to help her figure out what was happening to her, not take advantage of her.
Sareh didn't want to know how she had known that just by looking at him.
She turned her back to Brom and carefully lowered the sleeve of her left arm. Saphira craned her long neck to look around Sareh's side to look at the now exposed flash of her shoulder. Brom was silent as he saw what he saw. If Sareh truly hadn't been able to see what was on her shoulder before, she'd be able to see it now.
Upon her shoulder was a nicely sized mark. It was silver, not unlike the gedwëy ignasia Brom bore on his own hand. It shined brightly now, almost on it's own in the shape of a serpentine dragon. A long tail and head conjoined by a thin body, it's maw wide as though looking to consume Sareh's shoulder. It reached from mid-shoulder blade to the curve of her neck and shoulder. Brom traced the sliver lines with his finger, sending a shiver down Sareh's back and raising goose bumps on her skin. Brom and Saphira met each other's gazes; the concern for what was going on evident on both of their faces.
"Saphira, what did you do?" Saphira's eyes grew wide, the sapphire in them darkening.
"I don't know Brom… She lived, I didn't realize I had done anything that might have changed her." Sareh lifted her sleeve, covering her own dragon.
"You mean to say that because you said those words while I was drowning, it caused me to be able to hear your thoughts without even trying?" Saphira looked at her sadly, her answer obviously yes. Brom pinched the bridge of his nose, whether trying to pull everything he knew about the Ancient Language directly from his mind or to keep a headache from beginning, no one could tell.
"In a sense, yes… According to Saphira what she intended was to pull you from the water, but in the Ancient Language you must be ever so careful to say exactly what you mean or the words you use may end up not doing what you expect. Saphira may have inadvertently prevented water from entering our lungs and opened your mind to the minds of dragons; the gift she didn't know she was giving may also have included the ability to prophesize." Sareh looked at Saphira, unsure of whether she should scream or cry.
Previous to her meeting Brom, she had never met a Shur'tugal, and she had certainly never met a dragon. Though when they flew over Carvahall, she remembered thinking she could almost hear their thoughts. Now that she was looking at Saphira and could hear the thoughts of self-loathing and lack of faith in her powers, Sareh couldn't help but go to the dragon and wrap her arms around the great sapphire neck in front of her.
"I know you were trying to help Saphira." She lifted her face from the scaly skin and looked Saphira in the eye,
"I know you didn't mean for this to happen." Saphira's great eyes loosed a few generously proportioned tears, and the great dragon laid her head Sareh's shoulder.
"I'm sorry Sareh… Will you forgive my arrogance?" Sareh smiled and nodded into rough skin. Whatever initial impression she might have had when she had met Saphira, she now knew they were incorrect. When she had listened to Saphira's thoughts, the fear the dragon had felt when she had spotted she and Brom kissing in the lake; the fear of losing her rider had shot through her like lightening.
Apparently Brom wasn't one to stay committed. Oh, he liked women; he just didn't know what it meant to be loyal to one. When Saphira had flown over the lake and felt what Brom had been feeling, she had been afraid that he would no longer be faithful to his dragon. Sareh stepped back to look Saphira in the eye once more.
"Brom's love for you won't change Saphira, this I know. You two are bound in ways I cannot ever break. You are dragon and rider that is a union that will withstand every Sareh that enters your lives." Brom looked at Saphira and saw that it was true. In his desires to meet Sareh and pursue her, he had allowed himself to be blind to the feelings and thoughts of his dragon. He hadn't realized what a danger Saphira had thought Sareh was. And, now that they were even more connected with Saphira's unintentional gift, the tension had only gotten worse.
"Will the both of you forgive me for bungling this up again?" The two broke their hug and looked at Brom.
"What?" "What?" Brom shuffled his toe into the dirt beneath his still bare feet.
"I never seem to introduce anyone properly. Not even myself. Then things like this happen." Sareh and Saphira looked at one another and then pulled apart enough to let Brom join them.
"Oh, you're such a child!" Saphira scolded, wrapping a clawed foot around her rider and pulling him to her. Sareh held her own free arm open and helped gather Brom in.
For a few moments, the three stood linked, Saphira the middle ground for her rider and her new friend. Through her they were able to see into the hearts of one another.
It is an inevitable human nature to believe that love cannot happen instantaneously, that the process must take time. This inevitable belief is challenged daily but hastily reapplied with the glue of doubt. Love begins at the first spark; time simply feeds that spark until it becomes the passionate fire that love represents. For Brom and Sareh that spark was there, and they both knew it.
