He was a little behind schedule, but that was fine. The next stage of his journey was only a week's flight, but it passed over a large uninhabited area. Ok, most of what he flew over was uninhabited by humans, but there were no animals here at all for most of his flight.
Below him was a great sea of flowers, all growing and twisting around each other, reaching towards the sky. He had tried to land down there in the past, and had only escaped through magic and panic, as the thorny vines wrapped around his body and pulled him down into the mass. It had been much deeper than he had expected it to be, and the plants much more aggressive. But he had made do over the years, and found the few places where prey did manage to survive.
He had a space in his schedule here where he normally hunted and then slept for a day. There were always some good-sized cow-things living on the edges of the flowers, and one or two of them were more than enough to keep him going for another month.
There was only one place around here where he could stop and let his passengers rest. In the direct centre of the mass grew several giant trees, all twisted together like rope, and it was one of the very few places he thought of as a Home.
The trees grew twisted and gaunt, but were all still alive, reaching high, high up into the sky, much like the one at Treehome. But unlike there, nobody remained living here. There was nobody to maintain the magic to keep the trees going, and without his interventions, the place would have died many, many years ago.
But people had lived there in the past, long before he had first stopped here. They had grown the trees to be strong, to protect, and he always encouraged them to keep going, to take up water and to stand against the rain, feeding them his magic as he did so.
In return, they gave him a place to sleep off his meals. A safe area for the kids to run around in while he hunted, and a place that was solely his, not that he would have minded sharing.
He had first found it when he was very young, and it was where he headed now.
-
She didn't have a name, but the other kids called her Rat. If she had stuck around longer, done more jobs and earned herself a Space, then the Rat King would have granted her a True name, but for now, like all the others of her status in the gang, she was simply Rat.
There was no point in naming a child before it was sure they weren't gonna die, and also gave the kids something to aim for. To die without a name was to be forgotten. Your name would never be carved on the sewer walls, it would never pass anybody's lips. With nobody to speak of you, your soul would rot in the waters and you would be lost forever.
This was how it was. If you wanted to be remembered, you had to earn that right. You had to work for it, and if she didn't want to die nameless, then she would have to earn that name.
It was hard, sometimes. When she hadn't eaten in days. When there was nowhere left for her to sleep and she ended up under the stars. But she persevered. She would earn it, soon.
She touched the rich blue fabric of the coat she was currently snuggled under. If she could sell this then she would be rich. Even one of these was worth more than everything she'd ever stolen in her life! That would have gotten her some cred for sure, certainly not enough for a Name, but it would have been a step on the way there.
Her friend, Rat, was close to earning his name, the King had promised.
She wondered how he was doing, and with a spike of guilt, wondered how the robbery had gone.
They were supposed to be doing a break in that night, the day she had left. Her and Rat were both small, the youngest of the gang, and that meant they could get into places that others couldn't. It had all been planned out, in the big room where the King lived. The older kids would help them get in through the windows, and then all she had to do was unlock the back door and let the others in, while Rat piled things into bags. Then they would all get out, head back to the big room, and Rat would earn his name.
She wouldn't earn hers, she was too young, but it was a step on the road, she was sure of that, as long as she kept it up.
She touched the fabric again, marvelling at its richness.
At least she was clean, so she wasn't mucking it up. The Dragon Handlers had insisted that they were all washed. They'd even given them some new clothes and a meal. It was only soup, but it was more than she'd eaten in the two days previous, and all the kids had been grateful for it.
She wasn't sure why they had been chosen for the job. The Dragon had come to town before and nobody had bothered them about it then, but maybe something had changed?
Some of the others had questioned it, but she hadn't cared, she got food and a wash out of it, and that was enough. The other kids in the gang, the ones who weren't Rat, said that the dragon was a monster that ate children, and that was why the Handlers needed them to do the work, but she thought that was dumb. If it was a monster that ate children, it wouldn't have happened in public, and there was gonna be like, a hundred people watching.
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That sort of thing was always hidden away behind closed doors. They wouldn't feed them to the dragon with mothers and kids watching, so there must have been other motives. Maybe it was to lure them in, and then they could be fed to the dragon later?
Who knew, that was a problem for the future, not for the now, either way.
She had enjoyed the job when it came down to it. The dragon seemed friendly, if a bit distant, and it hadn't been much work. She was only small, so the Handlers had set her to scrubbing his paws.
She felt a little guilty that she hadn't gotten further, but he was the one that had stopped them, so… It wasn't really her fault.
He had stood up and shrugged them all off, and the Handlers had thanked them for their work and led them away, and that had been it. She had expected to hang around on the streets for the rest of the day, to try begging a little, before the robbery that night. The other kids would want to know about the dragon, but they wouldn't ask her, they would ask the older ones.
She stuck her head out of the pile of coats as she felt them come in for a landing, squinting in the light. They had been flying for two days and a bit, but he was very consistent about toilet breaks and making sure she ate, maybe a bit much so. He had bought her a large dead animal on the first day, but she hadn't known what to do with it, only having a little knife, and he had taken it away again.
It had been half an apple tree the next day, that had been better! She had loaded up the hiking pack with them and then snacked for the rest of the day.
This morning it had been an extremely large fish, bigger than anything she had ever seen before, which she had shaken her head at and he had taken away again. She didn't trust fish, she knew what they'd swum in.
Her eyes were blurry in the light, but she could see that they were still very high up. Where before he had bought them down generally near lakes or rivers, so she could drink and wash, now he was closing in on a giant tree, bigger than the tallest building in the city, bigger than the tallest building she had ever even heard of! She couldn't even see the ground, only a sort of pink and green blur, somewhere far, far below.
They touched down a minute later in a hollow within the tree. It looked like it had once been a much smaller entrance, but it had been broken open over the years, and she ducked to avoid any jagged edges. The tree was still alive, somehow, so it was only starting to rot near the edges, and he landed as if practised.
She slipped down from the side of the dragon, pulling the coats and satchel with her, but being careful with the floor as she stepped away. It was supporting his weight, but you never knew with this sort of place. Rat, another rat, not her friend Rat, had once put his foot through a rotten floor and the scrape had gotten infected. Within a week he had joined the river, it was that quick.
She hadn't been sad, he had been a bully anyway, but some of the older kids had liked him and they had said solemn words as they let him away.
The floor here all seemed sturdy though, and she slowly worked her way across to the centre of the room, the dragon watching on curiously.
She glanced back at him, and then explained what she was doing.
"I dunno if you speak what I speak," she started, "but I'm checking for rotten boards."
He tilted his head at her but didn't otherwise respond.
"You're like a big dog, eh?" she nodded, "my mate, Rat, she had a dog once. We named him Meatpie and he lived for like, two years."
It stared at her, and she shrugged, pointing at her chest, "Rat," then she pointed at the dragon, and hesitated. She knew its name, a whole long garble of words which the Handlers had seemed to take great delight in saying over and over, but it was a bit much.
"Dragon," she decided finally, "you can have a better name later. You gotta choose your own shortname, so," she bit her lip, thinking, "you can be Dragon, and I'll be Rat, and one day somebody will give me a long name and you can tell me your shortname and we'll be good."
She nodded firmly, and then strode across the room, choosing to trust the floor. "I'm gonna go look about. No fish!"
He watched her go, and then she heard the noise of wings behind her as he took off to find himself some dinner.
He was a big boy, so he probably ate a lot, more than she saw. She ate enough, and she was only small!
The room she was left in was a large, empty hall. High above her, if she squinted, she could see a domed ceiling, and there were deep scratches on the floor that meant he had probably been here a lot. Was this where he lived? No, probably not, just a place to sleep.
There were bits of smashed-up furniture at the sides of the room, and after some investigation, she imagined that this had once been a big eating place, filled with chairs and tables. Maybe there had been a big window in the back wall, and he had smashed it open to get in, that would make sense.
She rummaged through the wreckage for a while, but apart from a good amount of firewood, she didn't find much of interest. There was nothing but smashed furniture and a few scraps of cloth, which may once have been wall hangings or tablecloths, now gone to rot.
She glanced back at the hole in the wall as she reached the back of the hall. Now that he'd left, the incoming wind was fierce. It ruffled her hair even back here, and she shuddered at the thought of going over the edge. Best keep away from that.
She gave one last look, the dragon would come back, she hoped, and then exited the hall. It emptied into a wide landing with stairs leading up and down. There were windows carved high up, but the light here was reassuringly dim, and she was careful, testing each step as she ascended.
She had grown up in the city, she didn't remember her parents, just the other rats. She had some vague idea that the King had found her lying on the streets when she was very young, but it was a hazy memory and who knew what was true.
This was the wildest place she had ever been. She had been in a lot of abandoned buildings over the course of her life, but never one like this. Room after empty room, dingy and dim, lit only by the occasional window carved into the bark of the tree, the sills an arm's length thick at the minimum.
She was glad she hadn't found any bodies, that always made her a bit sad, but she hadn't found anything else of interest either. The few bits of furniture she found left behind were empty or broken, the rooms up here all seeming to be sleeping places, bare of possessions. Maybe that was what the big hall downstairs was for. You could sleep up here, then go down there for breakfast and work. It made sense, if you squinted at it.
She heard the noise of wings outside, and skittered down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, heedless of the dark. In all her exploring, she hadn't found a single rotten board, and she was growing more confident with the floors.
The dragon was very cool, maybe he had bought back something that she could actually eat this time!