Filed to story: When the Moon Hatched Book
Kaan’s rules.
Such bullshit.
Furious, yet desperate to get back to Sl?tra, I did as he asked—slurping down the stew so fast I only realized the meal was too rich and spicy when it was far too late, a small sun burning in my gurgling gut. I made it to the privy just in time for my stomach to turn inside out. Or at least that’s how it felt.
When I came back, the door was unlocked.
Kaan was gone.
The following slumber, he was there again, but this time there was a much smaller serving of a much milder stew that almost reminded me of home—with notes of jumplin bulb and frostfruit. There was also a glass of colk milk which cleansed my mouth and belly from the mild amount of spice.
Every slumber since has been the same strange routine. Me sitting in his vast atmosphere while I fill my belly with meals I can feel flooding me with strength.
We don’t talk. He simply plays while I eat and earn the key that unlocks Sl?tra’s hutch. Then I leave, his plucked chords chasing me down the tunnel where I huddle within the curve of Sl?tra’s tail, lulled to sleep by the baritone tune …
I don’t understand what he’s doing. Why he’s doing it.
I don’t understand why I’m starting to look forward to it.
Sunshine punches the side of my face as I climb the jagged stairwell scored into the mountainside, my laden leather satchel banging against my leg every time I take a step. The aurora’s yet to rise, the city silent, the air still thick from the downpour.
Objectively, I should wait a few cycles before I set out for Arithia in search of Elluin’s diary. Take time to prepare for the lengthy journey. But I have the patience of a Sabersythe and twice the energy—making for a sleepless slumber fraught with spiky thoughts and feet so itchy I finally gave up and packed a bag.
The path cuts left, then flattens into a wide stone shelf dedicated to some of the larger burrows. Like cells of a b?sinbee hive, the hutch has been integrated into the mountainside, bearing two hundred twenty-seven holes in all different shapes and sizes.
Some Sabersythes like to tuck deep within the mountain, others shallow. Some prefer a wide space, others tight and cozy so they can blow the burrow full of flame, then curl up pressed against near-molten walls like they’re still tucked in an egg.
Like Rygun, the adorable monster.
I smile at the thought, sweeping my hair back behind my ear, but then a different thought slaps that smile straight off my face. “Shit,” I mutter. “Tick prongs.”
Did I pack them? I can’t remember. Kaan may be fine with ripping them off with his bare hands, but that never works for me. The head always dislodges and then I have to get my fingers in there and fish it out.
I lump my pack on the ground and crouch over it, shifting through things I don’t remember stuffing in here—no idea why I’d need two forks.
My hyperactive, sleep-deprived brain had its reasons, I’m sure.
I continue rifling through, trying not to look to my right. To the burrow that’s been abandoned since I was five phases old.
Threading my entire arm into my satchel and feeling around the bottom, my thoughts churn into a black smog as I cast my stare up at the large thorny moon perched directly above the Stronghold. A little lower than many of the other moons in the sky.
J?go.
Mah’s beloved dragon that she nursed back to health after finding him kicked from a nest as a hatchling.
After she passed, I’m told J?go refused to leave the big round burrow to my right—an abnormality for a Sabersythe, since they like to switch dens more often than a huttlecrab switches shells. The very reason we provide so many burrows. An effort to keep our charmed beasts content enough not to mourn their hatching grounds.
J?go’s uninterest in emerging was the first sign something was wrong. That he’d fallen into a different form of mourning.
The only time I ever saw the light hit his beautiful bronze scales was when I sat on this very plateau waiting for Kaan to finish tending a tear in Rygun’s wing. J?go emerged, hobbling. Barely able to keep his head off the ground.
He’d looked me in the eye, huffed a hot breath upon my face, and I’d never been so scared. Then he made a sharp mewling sound, squinted up at the sky, tilled his droopy wings, and flew.
Five phases old, and I watched him ball up and die in the sky. Something else for Pah to blame on me. Being so young, I actually believed it was my fault, until I grew old enough to understand the beast was mourning Mah. Then I knew for certain it was.
I shove the prickly thought aside, clearing my throat.
Finally finding the prongs, I shake them victoriously, then tuck them into a pocket that’s easy to access, tossing my bag over my shoulder again. I’m just walking past Rygun’s burrow—the mouth of it gouged from the way he scraped against it while preparing for his last shed—when I see Kaan bent over a saddlebag he’s currently repacking.
I pause, looking into the burrow’s rumbling depths where Rygun is likely sleeping with one eye open, well aware Kaan is about to force him from his tight, heated nook.
“Where are you going?” I ask, watching Kaan tuck one of his packs full of dried flaps of dahpa bread. Enough that I realize he has every intention of being away for more than a few slumbers.
He cuts a glance at me over his shoulder, brow creased. “Ticks are out with a vengeance,” he mutters, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a rumpled parchment lark. “A charmed beast turned rabid and torched half a village.”
Frowning, I set down my pack and advance, taking the lark from his outstretched hand. I smooth it against my thigh, skimming the messy script. “Bl?m?
Chief Thron’s beast?”
Kaan grunts.
Creators …
“He blazed an entire herd of colk with no intention of eating. If the beast is left, there are many other villages nearby that he’ll decimate before the poison corrodes his heart. I’m getting a head start. Grihm’s gathering his gear, then meeting me on the way if he can catch up. The keepers are helping to saddle one of the carters for him now. Lane’s beast, I think.”
“Nevut?”
“Correct. She’s the fastest Sabersythe in the hutch that hasn’t yet been turned out for The Great Flurrt, and haste is of the essence.”
My gaze drifts to the three metal spears resting on the ground in a bundled heap, bound with a leather holster that’ll attach to Rygun’s saddle. I nod, not that he sees it, his attention cast back on his pack, movements stiff and precise as he stuffs it full.
Poor Kaan. There’s nothing worse than hunting a rabid dragon. It’s hard to convince yourself that you’ve put a beast out of its misery when it falls to the ground rather than soars into the sky, curling up beside its ancestors.
For his sake—and for the sake of his massive, tender heart—I hope someone else has grounded the beast before he makes it there. Help folk rebuild their stone homes and you’re a hero. Slaughter a Sabersythe and you’re a fucking murderer, no matter how many pats on the back you get.
No matter how many folk you save.
Clearing my throat, I fold the lark in half and pass it back.
“I saw you lead …
her toward your suite. Please tell me you didn’t take her to your shrine.”
Kaan pauses, then continues rearranging his pack as if I didn’t speak at all. He pulls the drawstring taut, knuckles blanched with tension as he knots the strips of leather.
Guess that’s a yes.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, eyes squeezed shut. “You said slowly ease
…”
“I did.”
“This is not that.”
“It’s not.”
I sigh, opening my eyes. “I assume by your general demeanor that she didn’t throw herself into your arms before the corpse of her dead dragon and thank you for the missing piece of her mind puzzle?”
“No, Veya. She didn’t.”
“Shocker,” I say on a faux laugh, threading my hands through my hair, contemplating the possibility that his mind’s just as lost as the beast he’s flying off to slay. “So, what, you gave her enough gold to buy her safe passage across the Boltanic Plains so she can chase her welling bloodlust? Where there’s a big chance she’ll eventually be recognized by either of the twins, both of which have access to a certain tool. Perfect leverage to fold her into submission once they blow the lid off that jar. Lovely.”
Kaan stands, crosses his arms, and frowns down at me—his black and red riding leathers sculpting him into a larger, fiercer, more formidable form of our pah. Something I’m certain he despises every time he looks in the mirror.
“They get hold of her, we’re dead, Kaan. How long do you think it’ll be before they’re swarming our borders, ready to paint this city red and carve into our rich, untapped reserve of bloodstone? We’re living on borrowed time, and you fucking know it.”
“You done?”
I plant my hands on my hips, tossing my stare skyward.
Why is he calm? The kingdom he’s worked so hard to capture, protect, and grow is probably going to be ripped to shreds, all because he dropped the Elluin boulder on Raeve before we had a chance to assess the situation from all angles.
It’s a disaster.