Stomp clutched the sides of the flying carpet, leaning against the blanket roll in her lap as if it was the comforting bulk of a herdmate. She’d been in the night sky for hours, and still found it terrifying. Human eyes made it worse: the darkness was extra dark, and she couldn’t see behind herself. The knowledge that there was only more darkness and a long drop didn’t help.
Twig, on the other hand, was full of bubbly cheer from his seat in front of her, doing enough talking for two. Stomp gritted her teeth and didn’t complain. They were making good time, and that was what mattered.
Two human shapes flanked them in the moonlight, glittering with pixie dust, and the small silver dragon flew in front. Down on the ground, running with magical speed along the deserted coastal road, was the elder dragon in human form. He glowed with blue lines that lit up the scenery as he passed. They made a strange procession. Stomp would have appreciated it more from ground level. Minotaurs weren’t meant to fly.
Twig was clearly loving this. “It’s a pity we can’t all go at proper pixie speed,” he said over his shoulder, causing a shudder from Stomp that he ignored. “I’m sure this carpet could keep up, and that speed magic is impressive, but I’m surprised that dragons don’t fly as fast as I thought they did. Maybe big ones are faster. I don’t want to rush Silver here, of course…”
“Silver?” Stomp asked. “I thought they didn’t have a name yet.”
Twig rotated to look at her, which made her more than a little uneasy, but the carpet kept flying straight. “They don’t! It’s really interesting. I talked to them at the orc party. Before baby dragons earn a name, they still need some way to show who they’re talking about, so they usually describe each other by what they look like. That gets shortened to their color most often, since they have such a range of options in any given generation. So we would call this dragon ‘the younger one,’ or ‘the silver one,’ and they said it was fine if I just said ‘Silver.’” Twig beamed like he’d answered all of life’s questions.
“That does make it easier for conversation,” Stomp said.
“And did you know why there’s so many different colors?” Twig chattered on. “Silver told me about this too! It’s partly genetics, but dragons do a lot of adopting as a regular thing — some parents will have a huge clutch of eggs and give up a few, then another couple that can’t lay their own will take them in. Everything gets mixed and matched.”
“How do they keep from marrying a sibling later?” Stomp asked. “Please watch where you’re steering.”
Twig turned back. “No idea! Maybe they keep detailed records. I’ll ask Silver later. They were happy to explain the other stuff to me before. Hey, did you know dragons choose a gender at the same time they choose a name?”
Stomp gave enough polite answers to keep him talking, and Twig happily went on to explain his new understanding of why there were so many dragon couples incapable of laying their own eggs. It was interesting enough to pass the time. Stomp wondered if Silver had been embarrassed to discuss all this. It seemed like the kind of subtle social cue that would breeze right by the pixie.
They kept on at this pace for a long, uncomfortable while. Stomp was grateful for the blanket roll and Twig blocking the worst of the wind. She tried not to look down much, just checking every so often that the glowing figure still ran below them. At one point she was startled to realize that the ground was closer than before.
“Are you flying lower on purpose?” she asked Twig.
“Yes, to match the girls,” he replied, pointing to the sides. “Their pixie dust is running low. We’ll probably have to land soon.”
Stomp welcomed the idea, and she was relieved when she finally saw Razorscale wave a glowing arm, ushering them down to join him. The carpet came to rest on a grassy hillside near the road, with a view of the nighttime sea and a harsh rocky beach. The remains of an enormous tree lay like a beached whale. Stomp marveled at it while she stretched out her human legs, and the others gathered around her.
“Now is the time to prepare,” Razorscale announced. He pointed across the water. “Out there is the island. We will all fly across by pixie dust — yes, even you — for speed, silence, and a maximum number of options once we arrive. Now, which bundle holds the drinking water?”
Stomp hurried to unroll the blankets, and see that everyone got a share of the flasks and snacks. She was personally wary of the food. Harpies had provided it, knowing that it needed to survive travel, so there were no fresh plants. Just bread, nuts, and dried fish. Stomp’s stomach heaved at the smell of that last. She happily left it for the dragons and Beak.
Oh, I hope that hasn’t made everything else smell like fish, Stomp thought as she picked out a chunk of bread. Wait, what’s that? Carrots, yes! She hastily claimed them, with a speed that no one argued with.
No one except for Windmane. “Can I have some too?” the centaur asked plaintively. “I don’t like fish either.”
Stomp relented and shared. It was only fair. The two of them were used to a diet of plants, while the others didn’t see anything wrong with a bit of horrible smelly meat. At least the carrots didn’t stink much.
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The hasty meal was done quickly. Twig dashed off to find somewhere to pee, which made Stomp glad that she’d used the strange harpy toilet before leaving the second village. As awkward and low as it was, a dark hillside would be worse. When he got back, Stomp made sure that Silver was indeed okay with the nickname, and that everyone knew what to call each other.
By the time the group was ready to go, Razorscale was visibly impatient. He urged everyone to hide the blankets and remaining supplies under a bush. Then he administered the pixie dust himself, giving a much-depleted bag back to Beak. She grumbled, and he hissed that they could talk reimbursement after restoring their proper forms. She accepted that. Windmane piped up that she had more left in the other bag too.
Stomp was busy coming to grips with the fact that her feet weren’t touching the ground anymore, and she seemed to drift in any direction she thought about. It made her more than a little uneasy.
Windmane was full of advice, thankfully, and Stomp picked up the basics quickly enough for Razorscale’s patience. Barely.
Twig looped about. “The wind feels different at this size!” he said. “And I can feel the gravity more!”
“Play with it later,” Razorscale snapped, floating in the air himself. “Test flight, everyone. From here to the driftwood at a reasonable speed. Go.”
Twig was gone in a flash, followed by the two new experts in pixie dust flight, then Silver, who was visibly unsure what to do with their wings. Razorscale waited, staring at Stomp. She took a deep breath and went for it.
Moving was okay. The worst part was moving off the cliff. It was horrifying. Stomp clenched every muscle and fixed her gaze on the distant tree roots, focusing on the twisted shapes in the moonlight instead of the empty void beneath her.
Razorscale appeared silently at her side, also looking forward. His calm helped her settle a bit. They came in to hover over the log, where Stomp caught her breath and Razorscale pointed out the direction that the group would need to fly.
Stomp’s heartbeat was still speeding when Razorscale ordered them out across the sea. She tried to breathe deeply, and remember that the water was something she could swim in if need be. Not the same as falling from the carpet, or even flying over the cliff.
It was still scary. Stomp made fists and went anyway.
The water was black in the night, merging in the distance with the sky despite the moon’s weak reflection. The stars were tiny and faint. Stomp missed her own eyes. She missed her nose as well, though the salt-and-fish aroma that she was picking up now wasn’t any great loss. She thought about this as she flew, keeping her impaired vision on those flying in front of her instead of on the sea. Or the sky. Or the lack of an island in front of them yet.
Is someone going to notice that we’re flying the wrong way? she wondered, glancing at Razorscale. Do I have to be the one to point it out? He seems awfully confident, but a minotaur’s never wrong about directions.
To prove it to herself, she twisted to look back at the shoreline, certain that she would see at at an increasingly sharp angle.
But it wasn’t. The shore lay straight behind her, perfectly aligned.
I was wrong. Stomp faltered, nearly dropping into the waves. Razorscale reached for her, a questioning expression on his face. Stomp shook her head numbly. She wouldn’t fall. But she was wrong. If she’d been in the lead, she would have gotten them all lost, and that knowledge shook her to her core.
She was shivering from more than the night air when Silver pointed out the island that none of the humans could see yet. Razorscale reminded them all to be quiet. Stomp felt she couldn’t be anything else.
True enough, an island materialized out of the darkness ahead of them. Moonlight showed pale sandy beaches and dark forests, and nothing else. A regrettable glance down let Stomp catch sight of several sandbars passing underneath her like giant fish, silent and waiting to strike. She twitched, nearly biting her tongue with the effort of keeping in a startled shriek. Razorscale didn’t comment. Stomp couldn’t look him in the eye.
When he was apparently sure that she wasn’t about to be a problem, the dragon sped up to glide next to his apprentice. The two whispered as the island neared. Undoubtedly plans and observations and all manner of useful things. Stomp felt entirely useless. And scared, and tired. She wanted to be on the ground again, even if it was in enemy territory.
Finally she got her wish. The dragons led the way silently to the beach, hovering over the pale sand and continuing their whispered conversation. No one was telling her not to, so Stomp landed heavily, and felt unspeakable relief. Sand got into her human boots immediately, but it was a small price to pay. She was on the ground again.
None of the others bothered to land. Stomp quietly shook her head at them. Windmane she understood, but the others appeared to simply be children of the air, too good for solid ground.
When Razorscale directed them to move forward, Stomp was forced to fly again just to keep up. But when the dragons called a halt, she immediately stood again. They repeated this pattern across the beach toward the forest, searching for who knew what. Stomp didn’t care. She just wanted to walk instead.
The next time she landed, her feet slid on something. Alarmed, she kicked at it and unearthed a rock the same white as the sand. Stomp looked around, ashamed, but no one had noticed. She glared at the rock and turned it over with her boot.
It was a sculpture of a turtle. Part of one, anyway, the back half.
What? That’s a weird thing to find.
Stomp was wondering what reason a human wizard could have for discarding it on the beach when she stepped aside and something crunched under the sand.
She dug a toe in to unearth more stonework: a seagull this time. The wing had shattered under her weight. Stomp bent to pick it up, marveling at the detail that had gone into carving it. Even with human sight, she could see the lines of every feather. The beak was open and the eyes wide. Who would carve such an expression of alarm into a sculpture?
Stomp looked around while the dragons debated something and the others waited. White sand was everywhere, studded with uneven shapes that she hadn’t noticed on first glance.
And the rest of the group, floating on pixie dust, didn’t see them at all.
Stomp reached for the nearest one. She turned it over and dropped it immediately, with a yelp she couldn’t keep in.
It was most of a face, wearing an expression of abject terror.
While Razorscale shushed her and Windmane asked what was wrong, Stomp looked about the vast beach in a panic. Where had all this white sand come from? All the sandbars? All the broken pieces of animals, frozen in fear?
Stomp whispered, “Have you ever met a medusa?”
Suddenly the others all looked as frightened as she felt.