This will probably be more of a set of short stories than one homogonous thing. We'll see where it goes! Posted on RR and nowhere else.
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With a careful movement, he adjusted his position, shifting his bulk to better capture the ever changing currents of air streaming underneath his silver scaled wings.
If he focused on it, then he could feel how the air twisted and wound around his form, and the way the packs strapped to his sides disrupted the flow. If he really concentrated, then he could even feel the heartbeat of the child curled up in the warm hollow in the back of his neck.
With an eye on the ground, he shifted again. The act of flight was never static, no matter how smooth it looked from afar.
This was his second time flying this route recently, and he was getting familiar with the landmarks beneath him. The clearings where giant beasts had stopped to rest, and so many different colours, each tree unique in its own right. The jungle below wasn't a uniform green, but instead an endless rainbow of every colour he knew.
If he flew up higher it would all meld together into one uniform carpet, but a shudder from the child on his back put that idea to rest, and he flew silently on.
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Sometimes his charges would speak until their voices gave out, narrating everything they could see. From admiring the mirror-bright shine of his scales, polishing them with their sleeves, to pointing out each and every small thing that passed by below.
Others sat up and screamed into the wind, blowing themselves hoarse long before the journey was over, delighting in a height and speed they would never get to experience again.
Once, one child had gotten so overjoyed that they'd jumped off, and the aerial manoeuvre he'd had to perform to catch that little disaster was still a proud, if rather anxiety-inducing, memory.
This one hadn’t spoken though, not once in the two weeks they’d been flying together. Sometimes he’d feel them move out of the hollow on his back, snatching food and water furtively from the packs around his neck, but most of the time they stayed curled up, their quiet tears coating his scales with salt.
Another small shift, with an eye towards the horizon now.
There, in the distance, was what he’d been looking for. A single tree taller than all those around it, fully decked out for autumn, a bright spot amongst the other, slower trees. He’d sheltered there before, the huge tree hiding a small lake, and as good a place as any to let his charge stretch their legs and relieve themselves.
With a brief shake of his wings and a shiver through his body, he started to stretch muscles and move limbs that’d been folded away for hours.
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Truth be told, he wasn’t sure what happened to the children after he dropped them off. His main job was letters and parcels, but there was always room on his back, and the children weighed next to nothing. Plus, the company was nice.
From what he’d gathered, most of them were from the upper-end of society, off to school or to visit far-flung relatives. Others maybe orphaned, charitable cases, the victims of disease or wars that he was for the most part unaffected by. He suspected this one was from the latter camp.
As he prepared to land, his charge still didn’t shift or move. Despite his tells being quite obvious, and the fact that this ought to be a familiar routine by now, there was none of the stretching and grumbling that would usually accompany this part of the flight, just the quiet body heat and the occasional shivering of a child long since cried out.
Swooping towards the lake, Dragon considered that he wasn’t too sure about human genders. Oh, he assumed that, much like dragons, they had at least three of them, but where on the spectrum the child fell he had no idea. So just to keep his thoughts straight, he picked at random. It was probably a Boy.
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On solid ground now, Dragon angled himself sideways, leaning his weight on one clawed wing until the boy had no choice but to either jump or fall. For the first week or so “fall” had been the universal choice, but more recently “reluctantly jump” had become more common. Progress!
Child discharged, he took a moment to drink his fill from the lake, replenishing days of lost water. A part of him wished he could wade in and swim, washing off the sand and grit that felt like a second set of scales by this point, a grout holding him together. But the letters in the bags strapped to his sides didn’t tend to cope well with an influx of water, and he would get shouted at once he reached his destination.
Moving back, Dragon settled down, chin resting on his front legs, wings folded as back as far as he could get them, hindered somewhat by the packs against his side. Usually, he would only stop long enough to drink and stretch his legs, a few minutes at most, but the child seemed to have woken up whilst he was drinking, and he was happy to let them be.
The… He’d decided they were a boy, right? The boy was knee deep in the lake, his fuzzy brown hair already soaked flat against his back. He’d stripped off his grimy clothing and was scrubbing his body and face in the water, his expression of exhausted grief slowly being replaced with one of tired determination. This was a good sign, and something worth waiting for!
Once Boy had finished scrubbing himself, he did the same for the discarded clothing, salt and dirt drifting off into clouds as he worked. He’d gotten a block of soap from somewhere, and Dragon idly watched as the white clouds dissipated into the formerly-clear water of the lake.
After the clothes came the blankets, important at a high altitude, and after the blankets came the boy, the determined look still on his face and the wet blankets in his arms, shivering a little in the autumn chill.
What was all this about?
A moment of hesitation from the child, then a wary dab at Dragon's face, small hands tentatively wiping around at the mouth and nostrils, unable to reach further up and unwilling to wedge his feet into the lips of something with quite so many teeth.
Next a scrubbing of the back, where he'd been lying for so many days, clearing away the salt and grime, down to clean, bright scales. Finally, his sides, working around the worn leather bags, each the size of a horse and much too heavy for him to lift, although bless his little heart he did try.
It didn’t really do much overall, the dust and dirt far too ingrained for that, but the idea of it warmed his heart.
Lying there on the grass, the small body pressed against his side and the blankets and clothing arranged on his back to dry, Dragon decided that life was pretty good.