Miranda curled up with a promising new book, reading glasses nestled on her crimson snout. Greystone sprawled in his snow leopard form before the glowing hearth, flattening his aged frame until he mimicked the rug he lay upon. It was a pose that never failed to bring a smile, no matter how often she saw it. No matter how odd others thought their pairing was, she could regret nothing.
“If anything, every magebond should link dragon and cat,” she said aloud. The fire popping was her only answer, although she didn’t doubt the gleam of emerald eye she’d glimpsed behind the leather binding.
She drew the heavy knit afghan across her lower limbs and settled into the enormous bag that served as her reading cushion, but Miranda didn’t get more than five words into the story before the patter of rapidly racing feet had her holding the book safely aloft before three blurs catapulted themselves into her lap.
“Grandma! Tell us a story! Grandma!”
The overlapping trio of voices echoed in a musical scale that made Greystone stretch and waltz aloft, ears flickering and tail high with quiet indignation at being driven from the fireside.
Miranda gave her best dragonic smile. She couldn’t wait to hear them sing properly. Who knew my sad genes could produce such diversely talented progeny, and now this trio of miracles?
“I don’t think this book is right for you,” she said slowly, and set it aside.
The librarian had praised the mystery with excited wing flutters, calling it “more gruesome than usual, but you won’t notice it until you have nightmares.” Miranda had snapped it up — as if her past exploits would allow for such petty nuisances that disturbed her sleep.
“No,” Jer said with an undulating hiss and bobbed his azure head to match.
Sal mimicked his movement with her golden scales gleaming in the firelight. “We want a different story.”
“We want a you story,” added Aster, her violet darkened to the deep iris color that she’d likely grow into as she aged in the dimly lit reading room.
“A you story,” the trio repeated, swaying, and began a crescendo of rounds. “A you – a you – story story – a you story, a you story, a —”
“Settle, settle,” Miranda said mildly. “Hmm.”
This was a new request, and one she took seriously. The dragonets should learn history. That lack was how her father had gotten himself and the country into the whole mess to begin with.
And as her daughter Pilik poked an apologetic snout into the room, Miranda knew the story she had to tell.
She crooked a shining scarlet claw at her daughter, who eased onto a cushion quietly, and took a deep breath.
“In the way of dragons, once there was, and once there was not. Some tales have never been spoken aloud before, and this is one of them — a tale not told, a song left unsung.”
She glanced again toward the entry, meeting Greystone’s watchful eyes for a lengthy pause. He nodded sharply, and returned to curl by the fireplace.
“Too few remember,” he said softly, then winced with flattened ears as the terrible trio crooned their violent agreement.
“Before the Minor Wars, before the house feuds began with my father the murdered king, before the night witch returned from the mountain,” Miranda began, and felt her voice break. She coughed, and settled her hands on her grandchildren’s scales.
“Before all these events comes the tale of how the night witch was trapped within the fires of the mountain to prevent a war, and the story of a crimson dragon, a princess trained as a spy to save the kingdom when the king could not.”
***
Thanks to nother Mike for this week’s prompt: The dragon curled up with a good book, its reading glasses nestled on its snout…
Mine went to Becky Jones: He was falling, falling, until the precipice was out of view, and still he had not landed…
Check out more or play along over at More Odds Than Ends!
