Along the roads into Gwymr/Frina the scattered lamp- and sign-posts mixed with bright-colored signs warning of trenches and sudden drops. Little glider-scorpions emerged from the deeper crevices, flitting in the night with the short, sporadic glides that named them. Often the whirring of bats rose with the calls and buzzes of the scorpions, but when one appeared, the other would grow silent, hiding or hunting.

We passed a few houses dotting the ravine at its widest, where the posts instead fenced off their yards. Here, netting rose from the fence-posts, and blocked any inward flight. The nets met big poles rising from the roofs, making the houses like spiderly pyramids.

One house was a little cottage with outer walls that gleamed where others faded invisibly; instead of black bamboo fences that blent with the night, the outer walls flaunted proud glassy bricks. It looked gaudy and frilly, and I shook my head, and drifted my eyes beyond the gate. Lit by a crimson lamp, the little garden inside looked dim and sad.

Around the garden sat a few piles of rocks — the strange air wells that gathering water down on the surface. In Tädet/Pimeys we had fog nets and collected water from the clouds⁠ ⁠—⁠ but I guessed this worked for them.

We continued on. My canteen had been refilled at the dew pond, but I’d hesitated at first⁠ ⁠—⁠ if I filled it, it meant no more ghost canteen. As cool as it sounded, I couldn’t really drink ghost water. And maybe a ghost wouldn’t have a problem with alighting twice.

Nearing the town proper, the roads became worse for walking, lined with filth and droppings. Muckrakers would try to clean them, but it wasn’t enough. Holding my tongue, I didn’t smell the worst of the stench, but the clean streets of Tädet/Pimeys stood clear in my mind.

I prodded Hinte, pointing a wing at the lower catwalk. It was about a wing-beat above us. She nodded.

With a powerful jump and three flaps that fought my corpse burden I landed on the catwalk, and glanced behind me. Back on the ground, Hinte’s wings bristled as she stalked toward a stairwall.

“Oops.”

Leaping down I landed beside the wiver with my tail coiled and my frills folded. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Hinte looked at me, lips almost forming words, but she folded her frills and tossed her head. She walked to the base of the stairwall, her gait still dripping fluidity and grace; it clashed with the weight she carried and with the trace of annoyance that bedewed her fangs. It left me idly wondering.

Before us, the stairwall rose, and it was everything that made craggy cliffs and old tree bark easy to climb. Foot-sized knobs protruded out, and toe-sized depression sunk in (bigger on the inside so you could hook your toes in them). We climbed up and stood upon the catwalks, blades of stone that jutted from the ravine walls. Suspension cords flew down from higher up to secure, and pillars stabbed obliquely into the walls to support.

Glassy feet clanked on the stone. While our glass cracked and grinded, shards caught and stuck in the black slime, reducing the sharp edges to mere pressure and dull pokes. Our scutes were thick enough to bear it, in any case.

I tossed agonizing glances at my black-coated and glass-molting legs; the sight pulled a disgusted squeak from my tongue. I wrenched my gaze away, and caught the black obelisk rising in the distance. Rising high and illumed by golden-white lights, you could call it a sort of beacon. As we walked on it grew larger. Standing a building or three away from the town hall, it made the perfect meter for our progress.

Maybe Hinte even aimed for the obelisk itself, to check the water clock. But I wouldn’t⁠ ⁠—⁠ shouldn’t⁠ ⁠—⁠ wear her patience any thinner by asking.

As the obelisk loomed larger, the passersby became more frequent, sometimes even an pair walked together in the night. The concerned or bewildered glances at our backs came more and more often. After one too many, Hinte hissed at me, jerking me into a wide break in the ravine face. She reached into her bag, grabbing two dark, folded cloaks and thrusting one out to me. I tilted my head.

Then my brilles flashed clear. I took one cloak and draped it over the corpse. The cloak’s placket fell and hung like a dress under my torso and the sleeves fell loosely over my limbs. I didn’t fasten them.

Hinte had put on her own cloak, its black fabric threaded with blue and pink, and pulled a cowl over her head. A moment passed where we adjusted each other’s cloaks, the dark-green wiver still not meeting my eyes.

She touched my headband, and I flinched back. The wiver hissed and backed off and turned away.

We set off again, and this time we didn’t attract many gazes. The few that lingered only looked curious instead of fearful or worried.

Like that, we continued on. Hinte still wouldn’t look at me, and I ran a tongue over my fangs.

We hadn’t reached the faer yet; I still had a chance to find some way to apologize, some way Hinte wouldn’t ignore.

----------------------------------------

The stars still shone high above me. As I gazed up at that sacred vista my vision melted into the chain of remembered nights I had spent under this very sky, stretching back to my hatchhood. The comfort of lying out under the sky on a warm night, with the breeze caressing my scales, with the hoots and shrieks of black owls filling my frills, it called out to me. But would I have preferred an evening lying out on a lonely cliff to this fang-wringing adventure with Hinte?

I let my gaze fall from the sky to the cloaked dragon in front of me. My tongue felt a drop of sweetness dew on my fangs and I let it stay there.

“Hey,” I started without looking up to my companion’s face, not checking if she was listening. “What–what did you mean when you said, hide your fangs, earlier?”

Instants stretched to moments, and moments stretched until they snapped under the strain. I glanced up at the dark-green wiver.

She met eye and at length a reply marched out. “It’s a saying.” Her brow narrowed, and she said, “You speak Drachenzunge. Have you not read of Jammra the squalled?”

I broke eye and looked at the ground, the dark-green wiver shaking her head and looking away too. The wiver didn’t turn, watching the road in front of her and glancing at the growing obelisk in the distance.

“Well,” I started at some point, “I’ve seen allusions, but my tutors never pressed more than the minimum, enough to call it a job finished. I never had the talent of my brother, or even my sister, and they never tried to make up for that.”

My companion clicked her tongued twice, but I couldn’t puzzle out the meaning. Maybe she couldn’t, either.

When I glanced back up, Hinte’s determined line had shifted just a little. “A pity. It’s a famous epic. Jammra was a peerless warrior, but he fought with his fangs instead of his claws. His nemesis was the twisted Wauchu, who desired to be queen, back when the forest still had queens. She was a wiver of evil and ruthlessness, and Jammra was a drake of compassion and courage, so he had sworn himself to stop her.”

The dark-green wiver halted for just a moment, and I caught up enough to walk beside her. She continued, “Their nadir, their final battle, was in the deep of winter, at the crest of a cycle. They met unexpectedly in a valley, each having come there alone, each to fight and kill a terrible Roggenwolf. Instead, they fought each other. Jammra, being a fearsome warrior, easily overpowered Wauchu. But before he could strike the final blow, she tried her final gambit. Seeking to exploit his compassionate nature, she told him of her miserable past.”

Hinte paused there, and flicked her tongue. It was a few breaths before she continued, “It is said that her tragedy was so great that Jammra’s fangs dewed with a magical sourness. Yet he had sworn an oath to defeat Wauchu, and a warrior held sworn oaths above all else. So he inflicted a final bite even as his fangs dewed very sourly. So great was his pity for her that his tears healed the villain of her evilness instead of stilling her.”

The wiver paused again, this time to watch me. She nodded. “When she came to, Jammra remained, and as his oath required so the battle would continue. To protect herself, Wauchu fought back. But Jammra now know his nemesis’s heart, and with it, lost his will to fight. So he let Wauchu defeat him.” Hinte stopped walking there, and looked at me.

“And so Jammra died,” she said, like a cadence. “Wauchu claimed the glory of slaying the Roggenwolf. She had lost her dark ambitions, and instead became famous heroine rivaling Jammra himself. But she fought with her claws and left no oath unfulfilled.”

Hinte lifted a forefoot, and clenched it. “And that’s why warriors must fight with their claws, not their fangs. And even if our duty causes us great sadness, we hide our fangs and carry it out.”

I tiled my head. “But… it ends just like that? Jammra just lost?”

“Yes.”

“So Wauchu won? But she’s the villain! She killed Jammra…” I looked down at the road below us.

Hinte tossed her head, but with my head turned I only caught her shadow twisting in the light of a passing lamp. “She wasn’t a villain at the end of the story.”

I drew my wings to my body. “You can’t just stop being a villain.”

“It’s how the story goes,” Hinte said, glancing at the obelisk. “Jammra’s magic venom healed Wauchu of all her wretchedness, and she became a great heroine.”

I slowed down a bit, licking my eyes and watching a ragged white figure walking in the ravine below. When my gaze returned to the catwalk, I caught up with the dark-green wiver. “Why couldn’t she just do that in the first place?”

Hinte tossed her head, then drummed her alula in the air as she said, “She wanted to become queen at all costs, get revenge on the ones who ended her clan.” She drummed her alula a few more times as if to say, and so on.

“Hey, that sounds interesting! Why’d you leave that part of the story out?”

“I left many things out.” She whisked her wing. “I told you what mattered.”

I waved my tongue. “I guess that makes sense. But if she only wanted justice, why was she so evil?”

“She broke promises and betrayed dragons to get her way.”

“Well…” I trailed off, tasting my words. My gaze trailed off with it.

A mother glider scorpion dodged from the catwalk and hid behind a rock, dozens of pink children wriggling in a pile on her back, nestled under her wings. Her pincers clicked, and her venomous tail glistened in the moonslight. But she held her children tight, and when one fell she stopped to pick it up.

Hinte looked at me, while I still watched the scorpion. She glanced at it, and forgot it just as quickly⁠ ⁠—⁠ as if she saw things like it everyday.

I settled for saying, “Nothing.”

Glancing back at Hinte, I rubbed my foreleg as I wondered how to explain just what annoyed me about her story. That phrase, hide your fangs, reminded me of similar phrases in Käärmkieli, the sort of maxims that had defined my childhood. I folded my frills back and my tail dropped limp between my legs.

Hide your fangs. But I had left the sky to do just the opposite, to feel and express whatever I wanted. Could I confess that to Hinte? How would I even start explaining? ‘Oh, one of your famous legends is completely wrong?’ ‘I think we shouldn’t hide our fangs even if it kills us?’ I had already frustrated her with one bit of carelessness.

I stopped watching the scorpion and sighed. “Why is it that Jammra, who was so good, had to fail and die, but Wauchu gets to fly free?”

“The world never forgot about Wauchu’s past. But she didn’t let that stop her.” Hinte glanced behind her. “My mother would say that stories are questions, not answers.”

Did I taste a tinge of sourness in the air?

Hinte continued, “She said Jammra stood for dragons who act with their emotions instead of their minds. It stilled him. But because Jammra created another great hero, because he had redeemed Wauchu, she thought his compassion wasn’t a failure. So she would say the story asks if compassion is worth sacrifice.” She glanced at me again, and this time I met her amber gaze.

I smiled. She frowned, but the swell of her frills wasn’t in annoyance. A beat passed with that, marked by an anurognath’s croon emerging from the night. Hinte broke with my gaze first, glancing at the obelisk. I looked up at the stars. The anurognath swooped down, nothing but slender shadow, flying from the highest catwalk and pouncing on something behind us. I didn’t turn, but my frills caught the screeches of a glider-scorpion. My gaze lifted higher.

Jammra couldn’t be a failure. But I didn’t really agree with redeeming Wauchu. If she was evil, some magic venom wouldn’t change that.

“I think that makes more sense,” I said, licking my eyes. “But you don’t agree?”

Hinte looked back again. “Ja, I said Jammra died, and Wauchu lived, so we should be more like Wauchu.”

“Wretched and miserable?”

“No, just winning. Living. Fulfilling our oaths,” she growled. “What I’m saying is, fight with your claws, hide your fangs.”

* * *