003. [Broadcast mind.]
You are dining in the hall of the wolf-headed boy, and there's blood in every cup you can see. It wouldn't trouble you so, but you dislike the taste of blood, of raw flesh - you are like your dragons, a creature of fire who charrs her bones before she gnaws them clean. And, like your dragons, you prefer animal to human. And, like a civilized person, you do not drink blood. Still, you have it -filling an ornate golden goblet set beside your meal of bloody red.
When you look into your goblet, into the dark liquid there, you see your reflection in its glossy surface.
Not that it matters. As soon as you set your glass down, it's vanished - wrapped in the hands of a fat lord who greets you from just inside a red door. He raises the goblet to his lips - wine, now, you know - and from deep inside the cavernous hole behind him, you can hear the terrifying bellow of a dragon. Not a baby dragon, you know. Not an adolescent, as are yours. The music of their screams sets your heart to pounding, and you rush past the fat man into the house behind him. You expect a great stone cave and a dragon the size of a building. Instead, you find your brother, pink and crowned with gold and dead - younger than he ever wanted you to know, and weaker than you'd ever realized.
He was no dragon, you think as you slip your fingers over his eyelids, closing them forever. He only liked to make the noise of one. And as you turn away, you see that your silver awaits you - her coat shimmering all platinum and diamonds in the moonlight. You're on the grass, though you never left that house, and you want to go west, of course you go east. Behind you follows a trail of children, watering the great grass sea with their sweat and their tears. Their arms are in shackles, but as you trot and they follow, their manacles fall away.
So you sit with them in the grass, under the light of the sun and the glimmering stars. Staring at those lights in the sky - sun and stars; you once had a sun and stars - watching them together, you feel comforted, and you feel alone.
You curl up to sleep, and in your dreams, you hear the beating of great wings.
When you look into your goblet, into the dark liquid there, you see your reflection in its glossy surface.
Not that it matters. As soon as you set your glass down, it's vanished - wrapped in the hands of a fat lord who greets you from just inside a red door. He raises the goblet to his lips - wine, now, you know - and from deep inside the cavernous hole behind him, you can hear the terrifying bellow of a dragon. Not a baby dragon, you know. Not an adolescent, as are yours. The music of their screams sets your heart to pounding, and you rush past the fat man into the house behind him. You expect a great stone cave and a dragon the size of a building. Instead, you find your brother, pink and crowned with gold and dead - younger than he ever wanted you to know, and weaker than you'd ever realized.
He was no dragon, you think as you slip your fingers over his eyelids, closing them forever. He only liked to make the noise of one. And as you turn away, you see that your silver awaits you - her coat shimmering all platinum and diamonds in the moonlight. You're on the grass, though you never left that house, and you want to go west, of course you go east. Behind you follows a trail of children, watering the great grass sea with their sweat and their tears. Their arms are in shackles, but as you trot and they follow, their manacles fall away.
So you sit with them in the grass, under the light of the sun and the glimmering stars. Staring at those lights in the sky - sun and stars; you once had a sun and stars - watching them together, you feel comforted, and you feel alone.
You curl up to sleep, and in your dreams, you hear the beating of great wings.