Wind Chimes and Dragons

“I love you.”

Sera laughed into her gathered collection of empty glasses. She was still gasping and sweaty from her last dance. A fire burned below her skin, in her chest and belly. She felt so heated, so spectacularly roasted, that it seemed as if her laugh alone could spill flame from her tongue. But she was no dragon, nor a dragon rider. She was simple, plain and poor. Her breath only fogged their surfaces.

The glasses clanked together when she plopped the tray down, reminding her of the silverware, lost bobbles, and malformed links of steel she’d collect as a girl. With her mother’s aid, Sera would tie the pieces together with fishing line. Every spare inch of their little hovel, inside and out, was decorated with their handmade wind chimes. No matter how ugly their creations looked, nothing ever sounded so beautiful.

The clashing of glasses was a far cry from that lovely sound, and yet she still felt so much like the little girl she once was, listening to the songs of her wind chimes as she dreamed of noble knights come to whisk her away. The silliness faded as swiftly as the fog.

Drunken chatter and the hoarse voices of the radio filled her ears, and Sera’s reflection looked back at her from the surface of a large greasy mug. Her face was soft and pink, and hovered over a shallow puddle of leftover black beer. She liked to think herself pretty, and she supposed the proposals she received every evening from the king’s freshest batch of draftees was nothing to scoff at. So what if the men begging for her hand were drunk, far from home, and scared out of their wits. She took pride in their short lived bouts of devotion. Come night, when at long last she was allowed to collapse into bed, she would dream of all the lives she might live had she only said yes. Her answer would always be no, but the dreams were sweet.

“Did you hear me?”

She heard him. His voice strong but kind, gentle in a way so uncommon in the tavern. He sounded concerned, as if he worried she’d gone deaf. And just as she heard him, she saw him. A shrunken, reflected version in a tall skinny glass. He was misshapen in the surface, stretched to a preposterous height. But still beautiful, always beautiful.

Sera spun around with a huff and was met with the sight of a small army. Many of the soldiers now snored into their arms, while others were still rowdy enough to pester the serving girls for dances. But she wasn’t focused on the napping drunkards or their still drinking comrades, just on the sole customer in officer’s dress.

Sir Andu wore the impeccable gold-fastened red and black uniform that proved he was indeed a knight of the kingdom. A warrior, a killer... but he didn't look like a killer. He hardly looked like a man either.

No, Andu was a boy. A sweet boy with hair the color of straw and brown eyes wide and naive. Too handsome for a graceless, gangly Sera. Too handsome. Too important. Too powerful.

He was a dragon rider. She recognized the markings on his uniform, and took noticed of how his eyes glowed in that unnaturally beautiful way. Perhaps not royalty, but close enough for the common folk. If the king was god on earth, Andu could only be one of his angels.

“I have work to do." Sera’s words killed his smile and her belly twisted. "Now off with you."

“I mean it.”

He wasn’t drunk. For the safety of all, dragon riders were forbidden alcohol. The honorable boy had stuck true to his vows regardless of how his men egged him on, and had only ordered tea all night long. But his honor, it seemed, did not extend to truthfulness.

“You’re a good liar, Sir.”

"Don't you believe in love at first sight?"

"Love takes time."

"I’ll give you all the time I have.”

Sera sighed. "Oh, and how long is that?"

Strictly serious, Andu declared, "Three hours."

Sera wanted to laugh in the boy’s face, to tell him to find another girl to speak sweet words to. Another girl to declare his love for tonight and forget by morning. But she couldn’t laugh, couldn’t tell him off. Not when he smiled at her the way he did.

He offered his hand. “Fly with me?”

Studying his face, Sera felt warm all over, just as she did when they danced for the first time, and the second and third— how many dances had they shared? She didn’t know, she didn’t care. And with all the idiotic hopefulness the young are entitled to, she took his hand.

Sera had never felt true fear, never screamed in true desperation, nor ever experience the true exhilarating feel of absolute freedom before flying on dragonback.

Andu had walked her down the city streets, leading her into a deserted square void of any lights save the moon above. For a moment, Sera second guessed her choice, but her worries were dismissed when he squeezed her hand softly. He whistled then, and the moonlight was blacked out for only a moment before a large reptilian form descended from the heavens.

Sera hid behind Andu, her heart pounded against her ribs. She peered out from behind him with wide eyes, finding the beast to be large and yellow, and marked with thick black bands like some monstrous winged serpent masquerading as a bumblebee. It was a terrifying sight, yet she felt brave as Andu gently guided her towards the dragon.

She’d seen dragons before. They flew over the city often enough, but she’d never seen one up close. Never met one’s gaze or heard one breathe. Dragons were holy, like sacred vessels in a liturgy. Their scaly flesh was touched by the hands of their anointed priests, men like the king and his knights. Sera’s hands were clumsy and mortal, and unfit to touch such divinity. Yet Andu guided her finger’s to the dragon’s side and pressed her palm flat against the scales.

Sacrilege. But whose sin was it, the laywoman’s or the priest’s? 

Sera curtsied. It was an embarrassing attempt, made all the more humiliating by the odd, raspy sound the dragon made. Impossible as it seemed, Sera knew it was laughing at her.

“Take it as a compliment,” Andu said, trying not to laugh himself. “He only mocks those he likes.”

“And how does he treat those he dislikes?”

Andu blushed a deep shade of red. Sera found it sweet until he said, “Well, the war effort doesn’t call him the Bone Splitter for nothing.”

Propaganda posters were a common sight throughout the city. Most featured pictures of dragons alongside snappy monikers. You couldn’t turn a corner without coming upon a poster depicting the crown prince astride his beautiful phoenix-like dragon surround by inspiring titles like the Scarlet Swan and the Sunrise Serpent. Then there were the fear mongering ads bearing images of His Majesty the king and his monstrous mount amongst ruby red flames with names like Prayer Maker, the Stygian Scourge, and Doomsday.

Sera suddenly remembered a new series of posters depicting young riders and their mounts. Just yesterday she’d seen one of a yellow dragon breathing pink flames onto piles of blackened shards of bone. And here he was, the bone-splitter in the flesh, staring at her with a mocking glare.

Andu helped her into the saddle at the base of the dragon’s neck. Her legs squeezed tightly against soft brown leather, and her arms were quick to snake around the knight once her settled in front of her. It felt like a second sacrilege to hold him so, but if her legs could straddle a dragon, her arms were no more wicked for hugging a rider. Besides, such a small sin was worth nullifying the risk of death.   

Sera vowed not to scream. Andu doubtlessly took many maids to the stars, chiefly among them noblewomen. Sisters and daughters of dragon riders, a few of them probably dragon riders themselves. Girls like that were raised as much as part of heaven as they were the earth, and rolled through the clouds as common children did the grass. They wouldn’t cry, so neither would she.

But then Andu spoke in words she didn’t understand, the dragon spoke back, and the three of them were suddenly hurling into the sky. The wind tore at her, grabbed her and slammed her. Her hair twisted and whipped this way and that way, her flesh froze to the bone and her tears turned to snowflakes on her cheeks. She screamed and prayed and begged… for all of it to never end.

She loved the terror, the winds and the danger of it all. She gripped Andu all the more fiercely, and did not loosen her hold until the dragon’s wings spread wide, the membrane going taught between the digits, forcing them to plateau above the clouds and ride a slow, docile wind.

The stars around her were bright, but still so far. In the stories, riders stole stars and gifted them to their loves. She saw now that it was impossible, but the clouds weren’t so distant. Her fingers raked through their silvery forms, and she realized they were nothing but fog, and fog could not be made into armor. The stories lied about that, too.

Riders were said to be noble, brave and handsome. They were virtuous and honorable, and loved their maidens with all their hearts— for who else would they perform the task of stealing still-burning stars? Sera wasn’t so foolish as to believe in all that nonsense. And yet, she’d still hoped the stars could be touched.

She leaned close to Andu, feeling emboldened by the uncovered falsehoods.

“How many maids have you shown the stars, my lord?”

“Seven before you,” he answered. “My family is large, and my sisters love nothing more than flying.”

She set her chin over his shoulder. Perhaps the tales were myths and nothing more, but this rider was sweet and good, and she supposed she should love him before war killed his soul, and his virtue rotted to nothing.

They soared above the world for hours. Andu, Sera, and the dragon beneath them. Then they flew low over the city, sweeping between the spires of towers and temples, and the thick black smoke billowing up from the ever-active factories. At last the dragon circled thrice around the tavern, so unfamiliar to Sera’s eyes from above, and landed gracefully in the alleyway.

Andu guided her down.

"May I write you?"

"Fine." She’d get one letter at most, but his smile earned her agreement. "Address them here."

Andu nodded along with her words and vowed to stay true to her. Seeing no harm in it, she let him kiss her cheek before sending him on his way. It would be later in the night, while she watched him fly off to war, that she had to remind herself that Andu was simply lonely and homesick, that he would fight and suffer in the battles to come, that she was only some small comfort for him. But then, the world was an awfully big place, and she supposed there was room enough for a few outlandish dreams.

It was a slow night when Sera slipped into the tavern’s backroom. She should have waited till closing hours, but the deliverance of a letter from the Southern Front had sparked an unreasonable level of excitement within her. Only a month had passed since Andu’s departure, but to Sera it felt like a year, if not two. Waiting even another hour would be torture, as much as she hated to admit it.

“Idiot,” she scolded herself over and over as she slunk into the shadows. A slim chain dangled overhead, she gave it a tug and a dim light bathed the storage room. A barrel of whiskey served as her chair, and she cursed herself as she sat. Not because she’d have to pluck the splinters from her rear, but because of her excitement for the letter in her hands. “Stupid, stupid idiot.”

A photograph slipped out when she tore the envelope to pieces. It was Andu, discolored and boxed around the edges, but a fine picture regardless. He was encased in exquisitely crafted battle armor, a dark red cloak over his powerful shoulders while a belly-flipping smile cut across his face. Not to be left out, the yellow dragon lurked behind, intruding into the picture with one pink eye and a lanky dagger-tooth. In her heart, she knew Andu wouldn’t have it any other way.

"Morning, Sera," the letter itself greeted. "Well, it's morning here in Traja.”

He wrote at length of the strange land he’d been dispensed to. A world without snow, without rain even. It was a miserable place, yet Andu had never seen a sunrise so lovely as those in Traja. “Dawn here is bright as dragon fire.”

Andu signed off with a friendly farewell and the promise that there’d be no offense taken should she decide not to write back. To Sera, it sounded like a challenge. And she was never one to back away from a challenge.

“Evening,” she scribbled on a page of her own. “Well, it’s evening here…”

The tavern was gone.

Sera couldn’t quite recall which army was at fault. The city had been invaded, sacked, and bathed in dragon fire more times than she could count over the past fifteen years. First this army, then that one. Sometimes it was only men that ransacked the streets, but usually there were riders, pledged to one king or another, or sworn to no one but themselves. It made no difference though. All armies were cruel, all were hungry. All took what they wanted, and destroyed what they didn’t.

The dragons were always pretty though. Their fires were brighter than sunrise, and their scales always sparkled in reflection. Red dragons, blue dragons, green and brown and white. But never yellow.

Before the tavern burned, Andu’s letters came monthly, and hers went just as often. He wrote to her of worlds away, of deserts of snow and seas of sand. In turn, Sera wrote of the tavern and the city, of winter snows and summer flowers, and of which wines sold the best.

The letters slowed as Andu suffered wounds, and slowed more when the tavern was converted to a makeshift hospital, and Sera and her comrades were drafted as nurses. Andu lost his troops, Sera lost her patients. And when they wrote, they wrote of their woes. Of their fears, of their shame. Andu hated himself for taking lives, while Sera mourned every life she was unable to save.

There came one letter from Andu, a note really, with only one written line stating a sister of his, a wild thing who’d become a rider in her own right, had been shot down. Sera had been penning her condolences when a voice over the radio announced a great victory in the East. In a week’s time, three cities were captured, torched, and annexed by a single division led by Andu and his yellow dragon.

He never wrote again.

Or perhaps he had, and Serra simply never received his letters. It wasn’t long after Andu’s string of victories that the city fell for the first time. The postal system was in shambles, and by the time it was in order again, Sera didn’t know where to address her own letters. She too stopped writing.

All these years later, Serra still came to the tavern. The little building was nothing but a ruin now, blackened and crumbling like the rest of the street. But it was peaceful here, silent and deserted, and hauntingly beautiful in the oddest of ways.

She found a sizable clump of stone to sit down on, her aching joints thankful for the rest. She was hardly old, but the war had aged her. Her hair was streaked with silver, her bones ached more often than not, and the face in the mirror was a stranger to her. Though not yet forty, she felt as if she’d lived a hundred years.

A shadow passed over her, large and menacing, but Sera could not make herself care. She was ready to die. But then there came a roar that shook her to the bone, and she decided to live a while longer.

The dragon that landed atop the rubble was twisted and hobbled, its wings bent in unnatural directions. But it was yellow and black like a bumblebee, and looked at her with large pink eyes as its rider climbed down.

He was larger than before, tall and bulky. The boyishness was gone from his face, any speck of softness long since carved away, scars and ashen tracts left in its place. The battle wounds stretched from scalp to cheeks, then disappeared into the thick golden beard that hid away his lips and any smiles he may wish to gift. But in his eyes, warm and glowing, she found her Andu.

Sera smiled, standing tall and proud. She’d been pretty once, and she’d not let him forget.

“They’ll be no dancing.” She spread her arms wide, attempting to direct his attention to the rubble. His eyes never left her. “We haven’t got a floor.” 

“It’s alright.” His voice was detached, yet his mustache bent at the edges, and she knew from the rising warmth in his eyes he was smiling. “Fly with me?”

As they climbed into the saddle, Sera wove her arms around Andu, pressing herself into his back so tightly she felt as if they could fade together into one form. Warmth spread through her, the comforting fire leaking into her blood. Below her, the yellow dragon laughed, coarse and gravely, yet it was like wind chimes to her ears.