Miranda awoke disoriented from her spot drowsing in the warm afternoon sunlight. She straightened her scaled crimson forelimbs, soft black topsoil churned under sharp claws. Blinking, she raised her head and looked around, uncertain why she’d awakened from her nap.
The view extended around her looked structurally the same as it had since she’d first arrived ten years ago. An orchard stretched to the northwest, a lake to the east, a cabin to the south, surrounded by forest. To the north, the mountain chain with its white peaks towered, jagged teeth that bound the horizon. The Great Mountain loomed large and forbidding above all the rest.
The changes were small but vital. The orchard’s trees were no longer dried and half-dead from benign neglect, as they had been when she’d started her exile. Now they sparkled in orderly rows, almost-ripe jeweled stonefruits gleaming rainbows in the light. The cabin roof had been repaired from leaks and rot both, and extended into a cool, dry network of natural caverns. Even the lake improved from swampy muck after blockage had been cleared and aquatic plants filtered.
She had done this, Miranda thought with satisfaction, a smile cresting her face. A lifetime of uselessness purged along with her penance for sins past, all poured instead into creating life from nothing, order from resounding chaos.
The stonefruits she grew were sold as jewels and jewelry to foreign lands, allowing the countryside to recover from a long and disastrous war. She helped her country by avoiding it, and Miranda was pleased with both.
Legend spoke of the stones’ ability to enhance dragon magic, tipping the balance toward the light in the wars. Legend, and the secrets she had paid dearly in costs more than coin to keep.
A rustling in the tree above her head interrupted her ruminations. Miranda tipped her head back, languid movements still protesting wakefulness. She recognized the tiny green eyes staring down from the perch and moved her head toward the branch in greeting. A miniscule tongue darted out and licked her nose, while oversized fuzzy ears rotated batlike, as if seeking invisible aerial signals.
“Brat,” she grumbled at the cat. “Why aren’t you afraid to wake me up? I could eat you in one bite, and instead you wake me for tea.” The grey tabby mewled and hopped onto her horns, trotting down her neck spines to land and flex against the ground with easy grace before shaking his head.
Miranda mimicked the stretch as she yawned. Snapping her wings open, she rose to head back to the cabin. “You’re right, of course, Greystone. The book bearer is due soon.” The cat nodded, increasing his size to trot alongside her as they headed for home. Spots dappled his fur with a shimmer, the tabby stripes fading from view with each step.
Home, she thought. She was content in the peaceful countryside. Surrounded by trees and a loyal companion, left alone by the world. It was a far cry from her childhood. What more could any dragon ask?
Greystone darted ahead through the open gate with the whisk of a black-tipped tail. Miranda paused, scanning the horizon one last time, inexplicably unnerved.
She curled her lip back and snarled softly into the silence. There was a scent she didn’t like in the air of the homestead she’d so proudly built, and one she couldn’t fully articulate. Like the scent of a distant fire, the campgrounds of the inbound marching army, a portent not yet fully realized.
***
This week, Leigh Kimmel prompted me with “Something in the air, like the smoke of a distant fire,” which worked out well for Miranda’s introduction. This is a bit of a cheat, as it’s a rewrite from an earlier start of In Defense of Dragons, but that’s all I’ve got for this week.
Meanwhile, I prompted AC Young with ““Oh, that’s just Glenda, the theater ghost. Don’t worry. She just wants to make you sneeze.”” Go check it out at More Odds Than Ends, and join in next week’s!
