Dragon, the Beautiful

They exit the Eastern Gate. Once they are out of view of the watchtowers, Silovar throws his cane aside and breaks into a run. Osthryn easily matches his pace. Running at a Dragon's uncanny speed between long stretches of unpopulated countryside is the closest Osthryn allowed herself to get to flying in Bettramon. The freedom of it never fails to fill her with glee.


"Where are we going?" She asks again, leaping and stepping lightly between the small stones and rocks on the trail path. She is grateful for her kirtle and its familiar hemline. "Sunderland!" Silovar calls out just ahead of her. Sunderland. The mysterious place everyone in Mountainkeep assigns as the "North" when she tells them where she is from. The trail begins to slope upward, and Silovar picks up the pace. Osthryn strains to keep up with him.


He holds his hand out behind him, "Come, this is good practice." Osthryn does not take it yet, "Can't we just run there?" she asks hopefully, not sure how flight would fare with her on a day like this.

"And run for a week straight? We can, but that is not the timeline we have. Come!"

Osthryn grits her teeth and grabs Silovar's hand. He pulls her close to him, his grip like an iron vice. Their arms and legs pump with impossibly high cadence. The trail takes a turn, but Silovar keeps running straight at the edge of the peak. "Let's go!" He calls out excitedly. Osthryn commands herself to leap, letting her body take over. She does not think. Her hand closes tighter around Silovar's, her knuckles turning white.

The air whips past her as she falls. It is fast. So fast. Silovar spreads out his arms, and she mimics him. Their descent slows with the increased air resistance. Silovar smiles at her, and then releases his grip on her hand with a forceful flick.

Her fear must be put in its place. It will never leave, but she can make it smaller than her. It is subservient to her. Fear is a survival instinct, it is a servant. The Dragon within her cannot bow to it. She is larger than the fear. Nothing, nobody, can make her smaller than what she should be.

Silovar soars past her, great silver wings beating with a force that will make the wind bend oak trees.

There is no Dragon inside her.

The Dragon is her.


--- *** ---

Silovar had started out slow, but now he begins gradually picking up the pace. Osthryn is grateful for the running start before they leaped off the peak. The forward momentum it offered allows her time to coast while mapping out the unfamiliar sensation of her wings.


She is determined to overcome the awkward mechanics that defined her first flight. She experiments, contracting and relaxing each muscle group down her back. Osthryn marvels, it is almost as if her mind is quicker to map the new, well, original, nerve endings and structures. She opened herself to it. She accepted it as herself. Her wings begin beating, slowly, rhythmically, and then it becomes unconscious. Like an instinctive open run, she closes in on Silovar.


Silovar senses her presence, and begins flying faster, coaxing her further. He is a large Dragon relative to Osthryn. His wingspan is one and a half times longer than hers, and as such, he is capable of much greater speed. She pushes the thought out of her mind -- comparison will not help her keep up with him. She isolates her thoughts from Silovar's pace. She is flying. She is doing what she always wanted to do. So she flies.


It quickly becomes apparent that wingspan is not the sole determinant of a Dragon's speed. Her mind turns off. All she knows is her senses. The force of the wind resistance pressing against her grows stronger and stronger, but she pushes herself yet faster. She does not know what she can do, so she does not know what she cannot. She instinctively bows her long neck forward, jutting her face straight ahead. She folds her limbs tightly under her. The resistance grows stronger, but the land beneath her becomes like a smudge of a brush dragged through a wet painting.


The resistance breaks. Her wings flounder for a moment at the sudden change in pressure, but she keeps going. Faster, and faster. Her ears feel strange, ringing, but she ignores it. The air feels like it is sparse, thin, as if a shield has formed around her and is plowing the wind apart before her. The roar of her wings and the world rushing by her is all-encompassing. Her mind is still.


"Osthryn!" Silovar's voice pierces her mind, followed by another shift in the pressure around her. "Osthryn! This way! Turn to the North! You are too far east!"


Osthryn slows, and banks to the North. Silovar comes up beside her from behind. It is with a small leap of pride within her that Osthryn realises she overtook him.


Silovar sweeps in front of her, hovering, forcing her to a stop.


"That was beautiful!" Silovar exclaims, his laugh resounding in her head. Osthryn mimics Silovar's movement as she hovers, unsure of what she had just done. Whatever it was, it felt... right. Silovar just looks at her, his glowing blue eyes studying her with reverent precision.

"You are so beautiful", he says simply.

The words fall softly in her mind, like fresh snow on parched ground. Osthryn tries to respond, but she does not know how. Her heart feels like it will rebel against her ribcage and explode outward. She heard those words many times before -- her human form was not one that avoided admiration. She had not realised until this moment how much she longed to hear them from Silovar. Her defenses tell her to dismiss them as flattery, but her better self knows he is genuine. Silovar would not lie to her. He would not tease her with this.

A warm feeling, like the impression of a smile, fills her awareness. Silovar's face is impassive, as expressionless as a Dragon's face could be, but she knows he is smiling at her.

She summons her will, and tries to impart something of her heart back to him. She does not know how to express herself -- the practical reality of communicating as a fully transformed Dragon is just one obstacle to that. But she gathers everything. She gathers her fear, she gathers her hope. She gathers the warmth of his words, the beauty of his soul, and the fullness of her trust. There are no words for what she gathers together, but she gives it to him.


They hover there, silently. Osthryn feels laid bare, but she watches him, hoping that she will not regret what she has just done. Trusting that he understood her.


Silovar's positive response to such an admission is something Osthryn would have expected to be exuberant, loud. She thought it would be like a dive headfirst, like Silovar expected her to love him, and that this admission was just a matter of time. He was always so blunt, so clear with what exactly he thought.


Instead, the tentative spectre of a cautious hand slips around her consciousness. Delicate, like Silovar feared he would squash what was just given to him if he spoke too loudly or moved too quickly. Gently, his consciousness holds hers. It lingers, probing what she gave, and then folds it neatly and wraps it in his vulnerability. The exchange is wordless, but words are not required. He places the parcel deep in her heart, and she knows what he thinks of her. Pride, admiration, fascination.


Love.


"Beautiful." The words echo in her mind. "You are so beautiful."