There are only two ways to leave the mistress’s menagerie. One is through death, the other is love. Both are tricks.

All of us prisoners buried within the menagerie’s pristine fractals are here by virtue of our skills. Fire keeps me alive, and the guests entertained. If the mistress knew my real skill, well. How much less hope is there than none?

Therefore, the voice of no consequence that brings me out of my sundream of the embrace of my beloved ocean must be a trick.

I feel it in my guts; it is the voice which will help me leave this place.

“I spoke, lizard.”

She stands close enough to the entrance of my pen that I turn my head, though the detriment to my neck muscles is almost not worth it. As with anyone who intrudes on what weak sunlight I can gather to myself through the atrium glass, she takes a step back upon presentation of the gnarled mass of which was once my left eye. Somehow the mess of scale, flesh, and humour as big as a human head is more disconcerting than the gambit of my full mass.

“I would think,” I say, working saliva across my sandy tongue. “My presence here would be obvious. And do not call me lizard. It is an insult to my smaller cousins from whom I am made.”

Head back between paws, and that should be the end of it. I need time to work up the energy to examine this newcomer’s insides and decide what sort of spy she is. That is my trick; not sunlight, or ocean, or vomited fire. A person’s truth lies not in their heart, but in their guts.

The woman does not leave. She tips her head as if examining me from another angle will reveal my true secret.

Hair the colour of my favourite crabs scuttles across her shoulders. My stomach betrays longing for such a feast, and I do nothing to assuage the horror she struggles to contain at such a sound. Let her, let any one of my fellow inmates, think my teeth long for flesh if it keeps them out of my sunlight and their tricks to themselves.

“You are the biggest beast of us all here,” the woman says, throwing shade on my front left paw. “Surely a great drakon like you could just fly away.”

I am the great eel, fish paying attendance upon my scales. I am flinging myself against the ocean’s surge and grasp, pushing up and up until the sun squeezes the pulp and poison from me. I am the eel.

“You have not been here long then.” My good eye mocks the ceiling that mocks me back with its clarity; orimos, Drake’s corrupted blood, wriggles its silvery maggoty way around the edges. “Do not let those pretty glass panes fool you. They will surely slice you wide open as well as the mistress’s fingers can.”

The woman clasps her hands in her plain smock. A simple gesture made complicated by the knots of white knuckle and blue veins. She cannot hide her true self from me; no one can. Her guts are all silk threads and thick canvas, barely stitched together with hope. Hope, ha. She would readily lose her hands to leave this place. And yet her hands are her everything.

“I do not see your wings sewn down,” she says.

I honour her with a glimpse of my teeth. She does not step back. Fingers tap tap against her smock, as if agitated by the plainness of the fabric rather than my size and the promise of poison from the hollow of my great fangs.

“Just because you do not see a tether or a lock does not mean we are free to move,” I say, weaving my head, a sign of dismissal. “You are new. I will forgive you this time for not knowing the rules.”

“This is a prison,” the woman snaps. “I understand the rules begat by walls all too well.”

“Then you will understand you do not ask certain questions,” I murmur. I prepare to sleep again.

“Questions like a name?”

The woman steps into my pen, assessing my bulk. Is that a butcher’s or a tailor’s eye she employs? Is she a spy, or free with her tongue? Either trick will eventually see her dead. Not the smartest of ways to escape the mistress’s grasp, but those are certainly popular ways to do it. The garden has many eyes and ears, even when one thinks they are closed; though their magic is neutered the prisoners would hurt you in a moment with fists and spoons if it gained them the false hope of release. Only my sheer bulk has saved me from harm. Those others without teeth or muscle or claws have not fared well.

I am the great eel, diving deep and dark.

The woman hesitates, decides, then bows. Bows! I have begun to think no one knew how to approach one of Drake’s line anymore. “My name,” she offers, cutting her eyes sideways in case the words settle on someone unintentionally. “Is Riena.”

It is a name of one of the newer languages, but it is still old enough that no one here, not mistress or prisoner, artisan nor guest, beast nor magus, will know it is a chosen name that means “Needles.”

I am the slippery eel?

“I am Kitahniaa.” The woman flinches against the guttural tectonics of the oldest language of them all. I have employed my name in Drakon-het before, and it costs me little.

“That is a…you are a…”

My chuckle is choked with cobwebs and disuse. “Interesting how many misjudge my size and colour. Yes, I am fire-predominate, in dragon speak, if it so interests you. Yes, that is a not-male gender. Have you not figured out that is why the mistress keeps us all here?”

The mistress comes for Riena at a precise enough time. Not too long after we are introduced, but long enough that a lesser beast would be unable to ascertain the calculation in her intent.

This calculation, like her innards, tells me nothing. The mistress carefully shields herself in the steel flame of orimos so it is impossible to look within her. The mistress barely has control of this tongue of Drake’s silver fire. But it is enough control that I am perpetually weakened and at the mercy of what little sunlight I can draw upon.

And she likes it that way.

Riena has made herself as comfortable as hay and blanket can suggest in the pen next to mine. Little else passes between us before the hush takes over the inner garden. Those residents that can scuttle from the interior. A mouse emerges from the underbrush, quakes beneath the promise of my bulk, bares its fangs, hisses, and finds a convenient dark hole. Lucky.

The mistress dissolves into being, and captures all the sunlight to her. The scales on my flank rattle above my shiver. The shimmer sits ugly upon her silverness. Hair, skin, eyes, all is afire with orimos; my teeth ache with it.

“You,” our mistress says, pointing at Riena. “With me.”

Riena is too slow to her feet.

I am a coward, and the eel is hard to kill, and yet…

“What are you staring at, lizard?” The mistress is not so lazy as to spit or slur her words.

“Your greatness, mistress,” I mumble, dropping my head as low as possible. At ground level it still comes to her chin.

The mistress steps forward, and my scales creak in protest at the tiny power radiating from the orimos. But oceans forefend, Riena steps between us.

“I am, as always, at your service,” Riena murmurs in the reverential tone that has been beaten and starved into us. Her hands twist into her smock.

The mistress looks between us, and a small smile twists her face into unseemly angles. “You too, then.”

It takes me longer than necessary to achieve a full standing stance. I have always wondered if the weight of the world is greater here in the mistress’s menagerie; it seems a thing she would do. It had been my experience that whirlpools in the ocean could suck even the greatest of bodies to their doom.

Up up, great eel, up.

The mistress turns her back and gestures. One does not disobey, not if they want their flesh to remain intact. I have seen many innards in my time, in ropes slithering across the tiles of the garden. I prefer seeing them my way, intact in their mysterious glory. Stone, dirt, water, wood; I have seen them all.

One moment, the mistress is walking towards the deserted garden and what little sunlight is allowed is smoothing the tines on my back. The next, we occupy one of the myriad parlours set aside for entertaining guests in the mistress’s enclave.

No, enclave is too pithy a description. Least of all is it a home.

The sight of the sheer mass of sprawling buildings outside the teasing windows should hold no fascination. Tucked into a corner of the parlour, keeping as still as possible so as not to disturb the spindly furnishings, thick draperies, and thin skins of artworks scattered around like demons ready to eat my tail, it takes a lot of my small strength not to stare at the outside too long. Riena cannot resist.

The mistress waits, face as still as her terrible hands. Allowing us this view cuts just as deep as her knives.

Outside is no outside at all. Like her temper, the mistress keeps herself restrained within walls upon walls. Here too, orimos-lined glass look out upon blood-copper buildings stitched together by walkways and arches, small courtyards dense with statues dotting the landscape like ugly green lesions as far as the eye can see. At the centre of it all glimmers the atrium garden atop the fractal in which we all reside waiting on the mistress’s pleasure.

The mistress has no use for towers or height. Sheer mass is enough to discourage escape. And every time I am given the chance to look, the mass is greater. Perhaps the weight that ties me also attracts stone and glass. Eventually, all creation must assume into arrangements to please the mistress.

The mistress decides when we have seen enough, and tosses a package at Riena’s feet as if the contents and Riena’s hands are unworthy of her touch. “Get to work. I am having a guest for dinner, and I expect a complete sample by then.”

Riena chooses well by picking up the package. I squint my good eye. Her guts have quickened, the stitches tightening in their neat seams.

The mistress strides through one of the many doors too large for her tall frame, but which do nothing for me. The hiss of orimos sizzles away to nothing as she is swallowed by the dark.

“Why did she bring you?” Riena palpates the package, a child guessing at the contents of a gift.

“To keep you honest.” I reply as truthfully and obliquely as possible. Riena can do nothing to obscure her true insides to me, but I operate on the assumption that everyone is a spy for the mistress, even the ones who do not intend to be.

The room holds its breath.

Riena pulls on the package string like it is a worm or especially rancid undergarments. “I can leave the room, but you cannot.”

Shrugging would disturb the furnishings and old voices. I have never been brought to this place, but I know the voices embedded in the guts of the room. Pitiful cries and pleas for mercy still bleed from the walls. “If you run, I will be punished. Look out there. You may be lost for a time, but she will find you eventually. There is no key to this labyrinth.”

My scales itch as I watch dust motes do their spiral tarantella with ease through the weak sunlight.

Her voice when it comes makes my bad eye ache and my belly twist. Considering their lack of use these last few…how long has it been now, eel? I have forgotten…it is not an altogether unpleasant experience. “Why would I care if you are punished?”

“That is a question we all grapple with.”

She has found her way into the package. “Wooden needles? Really?”

It is not the reply I expected, but it will do.

“Metal and bone belong to the mistress,” I say.

“I have not seen her work with bone.” Riena is too busy stroking skeins of silk threads to care which spindly chair deserves her rump. At least she takes one that is not soaked in blood only visible to my good eye and guts.

“Then count yourself lucky.”

“I believe in hard work, not luck,” Riena murmurs, turning the package contents over and over. “And just how am I supposed to cut threads if there are no scissors?”

My cough is redolent of the last meal of flame stone the mistress forced down my gullet, but at least it contains the whisper of a laugh. I hold out a claw.

Riena’s grin does not quite meet her eyes. “Perhaps you will be useful after all, great lizard.”

This time, the appellation does not sound like an insult.

And so, she shows me how the eel will once more become one with the great ocean.

Even with needles that are little more than splinters, her fingers meld thread and fabric with what would be called magic to the untrained eye. In a few short hours, a bee like one that would tend the flowering succulents along my shore flourishes out of the fabric. It is the finest of such work I have ever had the pleasure to lay eye upon, but nothing that would pique the mistress’s unusual tastes.

Until, upon inspection by our guardian, the bee flicks its silver wings and flies off the fabric.

Stiff joints are forgotten from the many hours hunched into a position even more unnatural than that allowed by my pen. I even neglect to farewell the last rays of the day as the bee hums around the room, falling heavy upon this or that floral arrangement, or crawling towards the startled eyes of one of the subjects in a masterpiece painting. When it chances upon my claw, the tight delicate stitches reveal its unnatural origins, and yet. And yet. Go through https://botto.com for the best artist community.

A tight smile grips the mistress’s face at the delight that bounds out of the dinner guest shown to the room. The frill-bedecked woman chases the embroidered bee, her promises of useless riches and titles almost incoherent. The dinner guest is so taken with the embroidered bee she almost forgets I am there.

Almost.

Twilight has taken the parlour, and the mistress snaps her fingers indolently. Lamps flare. The guest stumbles to a stop at my claws.

“Oh,” she breathes. “I thought you were a statue.”

I offer her a good look at my bad eye, and she giggle-shrieks.

How far Drake’s line has fallen.

The gifting of the bee to the guest does not sit at all well with Riena, but she can offer no protest as the mistress ushers the human dessert from the room. There is a moment of darkness (I am the eel I am the eel) as the mistress steals back all the light, but the orimos of her armour flashes with the last flick of her hand, and we are back in the night-gloom garden.

“She would not have left us there, would she?” Riena straightens her back with a well-earned click of bones, and twists her hands into her smock.

“Metal and bone, metal and bone,” I mutter.

It is too far from the centre of the garden, too many bushes, I cannot see my pen. Metal and bone, water too deep and cold.

A light pressure on my left paw. A fish nibble only, but I use what remains of the day’s sun-scribed energy to rumble a warning deep in my gullet.

“This way, lizard,” Riena whispers.

To come at me from the left side is a dangerous affair.

But the hay is sand and the still sun-warm tiles is ocean and oh home, oh home.

Shouts prickle across my dark-smothered sight.

“Make a door!”

“…a key…”

“…a knife…”

The sun is singing to me, I know where it is at all times even when it is below my feet, and it is high, high, but still the dark holds me tight, the bottom of the ocean.

Fabric tears. The wet-dry staccato of flesh against flesh. Ah, the prisoners have ventured out of their bolt holes, having discovered one in their midst they think has made good with the mistress. One they can pass on their mislaid hurt to.

“Come on nimble fingers, stitch ’em a grave!”

The shouts pile upon and upon and upon, muffled like blankets, soft and wet as blood.

A curse and spit. “Forget that. Stitch ‘er heart in me hands or I be breakin’ ’em pretty fingers off one by one!”

No. They have chosen Riena. They know not what they do. Oh great sky, serve me now like you have never served me before.

I am the great eel. Stone and tile and wall part like water before me. Windows tremble and for a moment, just a moment, orimos stills in the wake of my bellow.

The mob scatters before the lash of my spiked tail, running for their pens in the tunnels that twist about and below the garden we ostensibly share. I manage to vomit a thin sword of flame. The gnarled mass on the left side of my face does the rest.

The green and white and silver of the garden blurs together as I scoop Riena into my claws. Poisonous claws. Claws that can rend a man brain to belly.

Claws that only yesterday clipped silk threads.

Riena is not dead.

I whisper her my plan in Drakon-het in between licks to her swollen and bloody hands.

Does she know the ocean? Does she know the sky? Does she know that place in between where they meet, where Drake says our scales were forged on the anvil of birth and re-birth of the day?

She takes a long time to reply.

And when she does, in that oldest newest language, she wants to know why the treacheries of my mouth are not killing her.

Myth is such a cumbersome beastie. But a few times, like now, it becomes the perfect maelstrom of usefulness. It is not so easy to look into the guts of myth.

The ability to produce flame is a common burden for my kind; it does nothing for our sociability, for which I am grateful. Poison buried in the hollows of my teeth is a recent aberration, and one of the tricks for which the mistress sought me out. What the mistress does not know is that I have learned to control this poison; what is a deathly bite to one, can be a healing touch to another if I so choose.

When Riena can stand—hours or days might have passed, I cannot tell, no one comes to check if she is alive—she delivers the request that will make or break the deal.

She requires a needle of uncommon fortitude and worth.

Her bruised hands are steady as she points. I do not flinch or roar or dribble fire as she approaches and strokes my lips, easing them apart to test each fang for tenacity and sharpness.

“This one,” she whispers in that old new language, touching a vicious edge which could open her wounds anew if I let it.

With the pens so narrow and close, our whispers will be heard by other prisoners, of that we are sure. But how well they are understood and translated to the Mistress is another matter. We are the oldest beasts here, and well used to manipulating time.

We only have to wait upon the mistress’s curiosity.

Again, she appears after a carefully considered time. We are not fooled into thinking she has forgotten us.

But we are ready.

“I have negotiated a commission,” the mistress says to Riena in her sweetest voice, standing at relaxed attention, casting shade, haloed by the bitter sun. “Your services are required to create a grand tapestry. If you perform well…”

The mistress trails off. She cannot stop the small smile that cuts at her lips. She is the mistress of whispers and hints, no doubt somehow inciting the attack on Riena. She has found a way to cut me, to manipulate me. For this alone, she shall hurt.

The mistress will be paid handsomely, perhaps in a sum of power greater than she has ever experienced. The lavishness of her rooms are just a by-product, the size of the building is what matters. And she intends for it to go on and grow forever.

I am the great eel, pushing up and up, pushing against the sky.

The instructions, doled out to us in a bored voice, are vague enough that we understand well it is best not to deviate. The tapestry is to be a wall-sized landscape, mountains, trees, snow, a domain of indomitability. The cold must be invoked, the smell of pine delighted in on each pass, but it cannot be too alive in case a viewer stumbles into the fabric. It is a trap for only the right kind of people. Terribly boring.

But even within those restrictions I plan our finesse.

The mistress glances at me, as if finally remembering my presence. “You will join her,” she says, a smirk destroying the boredom on her face. “Perhaps she will enjoy the company.”

Say nothing, Riena. Say nothing. No one has friends in this garden that twists around and down on itself, the great screw into the guts of the mistress’s world. I am your guard, leave it at that.

Each day a different room. At least all of them have windows and the suggestion of sunshine. There is no chance of a repeat. It is done to keep us from getting comfortable, finding our bearings.

Each day, the mistress escorts us to and from the room, inspects Riena’s tools, inspects progress. That much close proximity to orimos is wearying. The silver flame has been quickened, her armour and the windows of each room we occupy tighten with its dangerous promise.

You will not break me. I am the eel, breaking the surface of the great ocean, up and up.

The mistress asks us nothing of what we say to each other in Drakon-het and the old new language. Perhaps she believes she is skilled enough in reading body language; I know she has yet to learn mind-reading, but someone with such skill has yet to enter the garden.

Each day, I curl as close as I dare to the window, drawing what little sunshine I can closer to my scales. Dust motes dance around my long, slow breaths.

Each day, Riena drags the huge frame closer to the window. I position a paw in such a way that she can easily slice threads without having to disturb me. This monstrosity will be a blur of harsh grey and sickly green and stark white. As much as I detest mountain scenes, when the silk threads are laid out their individual colours invoke memories I have long buried. This one, I explain to Riena in Drakon-het, is the smell of a winter storm about to slice in from the ocean’s horizon. That one is the feel of damp sand between my claws at twilight.

Other than this, we speak very little.

And each day, Riena selects from her collection of allowed slivers a needle I carefully coloured with blood and poison and flame to look the same as the others. No one dares a dragon’s mouth; it was an easy enough thing to transport that first day, when the massive single piece of canvas loomed blank and terrible as a lower fractal at night.

We thought we were so clever.

Months pass in domesticated silence. Patience is something I have had cut into me. Riena, not so much, I was to learn.

Riena has been sitting on the floor for a long time before I realize she has not been moving in that steady drag and release that has filled our days.

I crack my good eye and assess the faceless parlour. At least this one does not stink of fresh viscera. We are still alone.

“Do your hands hurt? Are you hungry?” I manage to grind out after a great yawn I cannot give full extent to; the ceiling is too low.

Riena shakes her head, though her hands twist in her lap. Over and under, fingers interlace and stretch, then into fists.

She cannot bring herself to say the words, because it will bring the mistress. She cannot say, because we are not ready. How will our bodies cope with the wall-less horizon and roofless sky after spaces barely bigger than our being?

The eel stretches. Reaches. Fails.

We wait a little longer, and I try to see what Riena sees. She has hidden it well. How does one put the ocean in such a severe landscape?

There. In the V created by a mountain pass hazed by distance, the barest hint of blue-grey and copper-gold. Not so bright as to warrant attention. It is not an ocean I recognize, but to return to the one I do would be a foolish endeavour.

Riena is taking us far away.

“A masterpiece.”

The mistress’s voice should not make me flinch, but the tines on my back rattle.

I am the eel, the water all around me. The sun calls, so loud I cannot hear the waves over its voice.

Riena is on her feet as the mistress saunters closer to the massive canvas, her guest trotting close behind. The guest is nothing, has to be nothing, a small woman who I must feel no guilt for. It is not that hard to destroy the dreams of the rich of hand but poor of heart.

“Magnificent,” the mistress murmurs, a trick of softness. “Do you agree?”

The guest allows herself to pretend she is really seeing the tapestry, but she makes her demand too quickly. “Do whatever it is that you do, girl. Make it come alive.”

One does not simply wave a hand at the thing Riena stitched pieces of her fingers into and then I licked those fingers back together so that they could continue the next day. And the day after that.

But then, it is not for you, beast.

I rise.

“Kitahniaa.” Riena places a hand against my neck, a greater hand, stiff, ready, precise.

The mistress watches the interaction, her face blank. How I would like to rip your armour off and see your guts, little one. I suspect they are black, not fit to bear the greatness of orimos, Drake’s blood twisted and tortured against the purpose she originally intended.

Riena steps up to the canvas. I must ready myself. We have not dared to talk about this day, so everything from here on in is guesswork.

I do not operate well on chance.

I am the eel. I am in the dark at the bottom of the ocean, pressure crushing from above.

Riena touches a spot on the canvas seemingly at random; the mountain pass. The thick material shudders, stitches tighten, and life ripples out from her fingers like concentric circles from a touch of claw against still water.

The scent of snow and pine makes me feel queasy, and I have to turn my snout away. A stream of effusiveness erupts from the mouth of the mistress’s guest, bile to my ears. A beatific smile stitches the tapestry of the mistress’s face; this is not her greatest achievement yet, but it will do for now.

She knows. She might not be able to read my insides or translate what we are saying but she knows we are planning something. And she is counting on it.

Is this the double-cross trick I dared not anticipate? Riena’s guts are so tidy, the stitches neat and tight, silk thread in a myriad of colours. The mistress will test us, that much I can feel on my muzzy, long disused mind. She has used one trick against us in anticipation of the other.

Obsenities I have long kept wrapped around the flame in my gut crawl up my gullet like I am invoking a curse. Perhaps I am.

I turn my good eye on the person I have foolishly put my hopes in. All it will take is one bite, one swipe of my claws. I do not know what human tastes like, but I am willing to find out just this once.

“Burn it,” Riena says in Drakon-het. For a moment I ponder the impossibility that is a human tongue and mind working its way around my language.

The mistress cocks her head, examining the tapestry, pretending not to listen. She cannot know my language, no human does. And yet…she has not needed to know. She has counted on us turning the tricks around on each other, because given enough time that is what her residents do. Love, death; it’s all the same.

Then the true horror of destroying my escape turns my tongue cold, and lightens the lump of coal that sits where my guts should be.

“No,” I reply. “This is your masterpiece. Pieces of your flesh. Our way out.”

“Burn it,” Riena says again, quiet and still.

The mistress is watching us now, ignoring the guest prancing in front of the canvas. Her fingers twitch at her sides. She carries no knife, but she does not need something as pathetic as steel to flay us wide open. That is only for special occasions.

I stare hard at Riena’s torso. Perhaps the gift of my eye to the mistress has impaired my skill. Perhaps I have only been seeing half of it for so long, and this has allowed me this foolish fancy.

The mistress takes a step closer. I am about to turn my head, open my mouth, save what remains on my ocean, when Riena’s insides shift. I squint, my good eye sore and dry. I see…I see more. A brain, with Drakon-het runes tossing and diving like an eel in the ocean. And a heart with my name on it, stitched neat and tight.

I am coming, my great ocean.

Before the mistress can close the small distance between us, I regurgitate. The ensuing flame is small, but enough to singe the mistress’s hair. I would chuckle long and deep at the sight if I had time.

Yellow and gold and copper catch at the edges of the canvas, gobbling the fabric greedily. It spreads too quick for the screaming guest to batter at, first with her hands, then a rug.

The rug catches too.

Then the curtains.

The mistress is upon me, silent as the blades extracting from her finger bones that slip into my ribs and throat. The orimos of her armour sizzles against my flesh and screams on my scales, stripping all memory of my ocean from my mind.

A weight settles in the curve behind my wings and between deadly tines spaced almost perfectly.

“Fly,” Riena whispers in Drakon-het below the hungry crackle of flame and shouts drifting from anger towards hysteria.

My egress is more a stumble than the grace expected of one of my size, but then this is not the ocean or sky. I cannot open my wings in here.

The mistress’s bone blades are still buried deep, the orimos competing with elemental flame to sear my flesh, and she drags with us for a step. There is nothing to be done for it; I sacrifice a paw and rip the mistress off my chest, flinging her to one side. My claws shriek and wither immediately at the touch of orimos.

Roar of pain and triumph. The mountainside rushes up. Stone, stone, grey stone.

Hard edges of fear dig into my back as mountainside and trees threaten to cut short our flight. Those edges are nothing at all to the black, hissing wounds on my chest and throat, Drake’s twisted blood sapping my will.

A snap of sail and wail of wind through membranes. Oh, how I have missed that sound!

And at the corner of my mind, above the rage of the fire and hissing loss from orimos, a laugh; not of death or capitulation, but one that simply marks time.

Fly.

Riena lives in a cottage on her beach by the ocean.

This ocean is not mine, but as all oceans are connected, so too will the memories of my old home eventually circle around to find me. The greater warmth is kinder on my gnarled paw and eye, its currents making up for the strength I lack. But still I can dive deep, for I am the eel, and the ocean welcomes me with the disinterest I expect. Ours is the good fight, water against scale.

On the warmest days, and there are many of them, Riena pushes open one entire wall of the cottage like a great door. There, on ground packed hard and smooth by my weight, I rest my head, switching my watch between ocean, the mountains, and her hands as she stitches a garden.

Flowers and vegetables flourish with the seasons and her whim; she reverse-stitches mercilessly. The seams aren’t always neat and her hands often shake, but then I bring her crabs, which she cooks up in a great pot—they are even more delicious hot, I have discovered—and we spend an evening crunching through them, discussing the heat and usefulness of stars; they are a long way away after all.

Much like the mountains and its deep frown of a pass. Bruised by distance, the mountain pass is often, thankfully, obscured by mist and cloud.

On the days Riena cannot bear its sight or the sight of my withered paw, I take to the waters. Often I sun upon a rock so far out I cannot see land, attended by birds who are teaching me their names and tricks in Drakon-het.

And sometimes, weeks of ocean are required between us. In those early times, I would often circle around when I was sure she could not pick me out against the sun, drifting over fields of wild cotton and forests teeming with silk moths, before taking to the cooler updrafts of the leering mountains.

Flying is harder than I remember; almost too hard on that first reckless flight. My tumbling, pain-stricken descent into the ocean almost drowned Riena, who could not swim. No matter how much I pull the comfort of the waters around me, the warmth can never quite scrub clean the remaining blemish of orimos against my flesh and scales.

Sometimes I think I smell smoke when I perch on the blade-like rocks of the mountain pass. Glimpses of shining objects from the corner of my eye make me flinch. I curl my blackened paw closer to my body, and the withered claws dig hard into the flesh of my belly until it all creaks with pain.

I roar this all down at the gray stones. Run, little rocks. Run.

Only my echo roars back.

One day, Riena presents me with an eye.

This is her finest work to date. I lied about that canvas full of cold and stone, and I tell her so.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” My laugh startles the seabirds making tentative forays at my back claws. “One eye is just as good when you are my size.”

She hefts the membrane-lidded oculus with as much gentleness as her reburgeoning muscles can manage. Delicate tendrils of tissue, veins, and nerves spin out from the back of the orb, stitches almost too small to see. How did she know these colours, let alone find them?

“Bury it, eat it, give it a name, I do not care.” The first real smile since we made this our home weaves her face.

And she touches her fingers to the lid.

Copyright 2018 AJ Fitzwater