I once heard someone say that ours is a dog eat dog world. Fact is, in that windy morning by the river, Dusk couldn’t have eaten anybody. Both Orphela and Dariel heaved him out of the wagon, holding him from both girdles to minimize his pain. Orphela talked softly to him while Dariel maintained an impervious façade. Sihea watched by the side, visibly scared.

“What are we going to do with Dusk? Why do we come to the river?” She asked with a trembling voice. Not a few days ago she had turned ten happy years old, and now the one friend that had grown up by her side was old and pained.

“We are going to ease his pain,” Dariel sentenced, carefully lowering the do on the floor so he would walk on his own.

Dariel unbuttoned his shirt, revealing muscles shaped by years of woodwork and toil. He took the clothes out and then glanced at Sihea, seemingly while considering if he should, or not, strip himself down to undergarments.

“Terus, spot some dry branches around and make a fire. The dry reeds should prove useful for that. Sihea, gather the materials in Terus’ stead: be his hands if he becomes unable to carry the things. Darling, help me with Dusk,” he ordered, shivering slightly under the assail of cool air.

“I don’t want to cook the dog!” protested Sihea, which elicited a sudden laugh from Dariel.

“We are not going to cook Dusk, love. We are going to give him a bath. The fire is to dry ourselves afterwards.” Then he laughed once more. “Cook the dog, for the gods’ mercy. Lass, you are funnier than your mother.”

“Hey!” said Orphela.

“It’s true, she is,” I stoked the fire with full understanding of what I was doing.

“Yes, but… I raised her.” Orphela countered with a smug smile.

“The four of you raised me!” Sihea reminded us.

“I don’t think what Dusk did can be counted as raising as much as trying by all means available to accidentally cripple you, dear, but… I’ll give him the benefit of doubt,” Orphela said.

Without further aid from his owners, the dog hobbled down to the stream and began drinking from it.

“He will drink the river dry before we bath him,” Sihea said, concerned. Her parents laughed at her proposition, but I found that sort of magical thinking endearing.

“Well, time to make the leeches happy.” Dariel entered the river, pants still on, and got a handle of Dusk’s chain collar. “Come, Dusk, come here old boy.”

Slowly and with the dog barely cooperating, they waded into the tranquil waters until Dusk had to begin pawing the surface, a sorry attempt to swim like he once could. Dariel heaved him, aided by water.

“You gather the branches for the fire, girls. I am going to help Dariel keep the dog afloat.

Orphela nodded immediately. “Go.”

Within two steps, I arrived in front of Dariel. Murky, cold water up to our floating ribs. With the stare lost inside his personal mist, Dusk panted, and his mats floated in the river surface, like a dark jellyfish in the process of washing ashore.

“Good boy Dusk, good boy.” Dariel said through chattering teeth.

I helped Dariel hold the dog afloat to ease the load on him, and he dedicated a shivering hand to caressing Dusks head. “Let the water wash away the pain, Dusk. Calm, boy, calm and tranquility…” he kept on talking to the dog, that was adamant on swimming on his own and thus struggled to get free.

“I have a dragon’s strength, Dariel, let me do the heavy lifting. “

“I have an owner’s duty, Terus. The dog is my blessed burden.”

I hummed and accepted the situation. Dariel would let me help him slightly, but carrying Dusk through the cold water was his privilege.

“There dusk, there, enjoy the water,” he kept on saying, his face going pale from the cold.

“Dariel, the dog has fur to protect him, and if I die frozen, I will wake up somewhere else and make my way back here in a few hours.”

“No. It’s my load to bear.”

A cloud of birds like dark swallows passed over us. A rainbow of parrots followed. Why was Mardhaka here? How was Mardhaka here?

“Looking for you, I was” she said in the tongue of Zenvo, and she descended upon us like an approaching piece of the night. In the middle of the river, she landed, slightly furrowing the waters where her legs stood.

To avoid the wave from wetting Dusk’s head, I held him aloft against Dariel’s desires.

After the wave passed by, and Dariel reopened his eyes, I handed him the squirming, trembling dog and signaled him to go back to the shore.

“Allow me to lit their fire and then I will be back with you, Mardhaka.”

Ravens perched on the horns of the Avian Mistress and cawed while glaring at us. It is impossible for a raven to smirk, and yet, those very birds seemed to have a smug grin on their beaks.

“I have heard the medic I take the birds to when they are sick speak about poems concerning birds. I want to hear them. I gathered dark swallows to circle over me, I have convinced parrots to follow me as their sole aim during the day. Yet humans have made art of birds, and I want to be exposed to it.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I blinked to the bank and breathed a bit of fire over the tinder. Soon enough, as the dry matter was consumed by a flame inexistent, heat of dreams gave way to true heat, and a new fire was born. And around the fire the family, including the vigorously-shaking Dusk, gathered, with the droplets the dog cast into the fire making it sputter.

Back into the river, I waded up to Mardhaka, until I was close enough for her to eat me. If she wanted.

“You take your birds to a doctor?”

“Sort of, an animal doctor. She heals cows and chickens for people of the countryside. I learnt a new tongue to speak to her. She sees the benefit on getting on my good side, and tends to my wounded parrots for free. But this is mere idle chat, Terus, you have no need for a bird doctor.”

Sihea shot from the side of her parents and came rushing to my side. “A dog! Can she heal a dog?” She shouted from the shore.

“She is no mage, if that one is the dog you want to heal, midget,” Mardhaka said in her usual derogatory tone.

“That’s Sihea, Mardhaka,” I told her.

She looked at me, and then at the child, and then back at me.

“That’s the so many times name-dropped Sihea? She has grown into a tiny horrible thing since last time I saw her!” she expressed in the tongue of dragons.

“Yes, Orphela will get mad if you disrespect her. Her dog is not long for this world, and she has never experienced loss of a being so dear.”

“I lost family members the day I hatched from the egg. I cannot possibly understand her.”

“You ate them.”

“As mother told me to.”

The circle of swallows overflying Mardhaka got tighter with each second, making the birds seemingly accelerate more and more. A mere optical illusion.

But swallows didn’t fly like that. They didn’t behave like carrion birds, like ravenous vultures waiting to descend over a dead and bloated cow.

“You said birds followed you out of their own volition. Then, please tell me, why. Why does the magnificent Mardhaka lie to the swallows, why does she entrap them with illusions that promise unrealized horizons and lead them thither? Do they not follow if allowed to live in the word of truths? Do they not fly in aesthetically pleasing patterns?”

“This is no concern of you, Terus.”

I raised a hand with the index finger extended. “Ah, but freedom was the concern of a foregone Terus. No other one was more pressing than this, if Cirruin’s memories preserve their candor.”

“The birds are mine. The ones that came willingly I love dearly, the ones that repeatedly refuse, I acquire by deceit. I own them like a dragon ought to own her hoard. No dead man has a say over my flock. The preterit, fake deity you enshrine will not mess with my present.”

Then I vowed before Mardhaka. “Of lies and deceit you are queen, Mardhaka. You can lie about light; you can lie about sound. I believe you when you say you can lie about smell and tact too.”

“Even taste, if I try hard enough. Yet you see, hear and smell through it all. There’s no lie that can be hidden from an untruth like you. They readily recognize their own kind.”

Mardhaka words hurt, but they were true regardless. The lack of a shadow was a constant reminder of it.

“Can you lie about pain? Make a limb numb or ease the hurt of an articulation. “

“A technique to make wounds worse? No… that would be unbecoming of you. Then Mardhaka glanced towards Dusk. “Ah, I get it.”

She turned to the family and trotted to the bank, to the nearest spot to the family’s fire.

“That dog cannot see, but it can feel, children of men. Do you value its peace enough to strike a deal with a dragon, a deal with the Avian Mistress?”

Ravens and crows landed in circle around the family, pushing them together around the fire. Dariel held steadfast to the growling Dusk. “There, boy, there. There’s nothing to fear.”

I willed myself besides Dariel and whispered into his ear. “Mardhaka can be seen with eyes closed, or even plucked out. There is no escape to her torment, if she wills it so. Dusk is seeing, for the first time since a long while ago, and the sight is not pleasant.”

Dariel stared at me with trembling lips that could not be attribute only to his incursion into the cold waters.

“The dog can see me, indeed, and as it can see me, I can mask his pain. There is no undoing the wound of age. Despite that, I can gift your dog calm, peace of mind, a couple days where he will not feel the hurt, even if the cause doesn’t go away. I ask not for much in exchange.”

The birds marched around us viciously, cawing and screeching and squawking.

Sihea, who had run to the arms of her mother when Mardhaka began walking towards her, shyly poked out from the group and raised a hand.

“Yes?”

“What do you ask for, child?”

“The dog is mine and I won’t let my daughter make a deal with—” interrupted Dariel.

“Silence! or I am going to eat her.” Mardhaka opened her mouth wide, tendrils of saliva bridging the teeth of the upper and lower jaws.

Sihea trembled like a frail leaf. “You… you can help Dusk, yes? What do you want, Avian Mistress?”

“Your mother and Terus have brought me innumerable facts and supposed facts about birds. I want more, always more: it’s part of my nature. But today I ask for something different. And one more thing:” Mardhaka caressed Sihea’s cheek with a claw as big as the girl’s face. “I could crush you like the last miserable grape of a bunch. Mind that little fact while talking to me.”

“My daughter!” Orphela exclaimed, and she tried to shoot to go and snatch Sihea away, but I quickly restrained her with a firm grasp on her upper arm.

“Terus, you better know what you are doing. If anything happens to Sihea I swear…” began Dariel, and I gestured him to shut up.

“When Mardhaka wants something dead, she kills it. And never without a good reason, unless that something is me. By this point, killing me is a hobby of hers.”

“And a very edifying one at that.” She granted. “Let’s skip right to the part that matters: I want the lies people tell themselves about all things feathery. By this I mean mostly birds: I want art of them. But I have lived long, and seen the monsters your minds come up with, those amuse me too. So, bring me poems, drawings, paintings, or stories of birds. One such thing will suffice for a couple days of paradise for Dusk.”

Sihea’s expression lightened up. “So this means I can draw birds for you and pay for Dusk’s wellbeing by doing that?”

Mardhaka regarded me with a confused stare.

“Is she good at art, Terus?” she asked in the tongue of dragons.

“She draws like you would expect a ten years old without formal instruction in arts would. But it costs you nothing to bewitch the dog for a while, right? It was her birthday not long ago. Can you gift this little favor to her?”

Mardhaka licked her teeth in the theatrical way she was used to. “Bring me information about art, written art that is the one you can convey better, and I will accept whatever drivel the child offers me. And never say I am not benevolent, Terus.”

I willed myself to her side and bit my tongue. “You are not benevolent.”

That earned me a bloody trip back to my house in Ludlun, with the last thing I saw being the terrified face of Orphela as my head got crushed. This was not a senseless provocation: As Mardhaka had once said, she felt relief after killing me. By dying before her frustration reached a boiling point, I maximized the chances of my friends going unscathed.

When I arrived back to where my decapitated body still lay, the family were still gathered around the fire. Sihea was next to Dusk, that slept tranquil by her side while she poked my cadaver with a stick.

“She killed you horribly and then left, telling me Dusk will be ridden of pain for three days.” The girl informed me. “Is it true that dragons don’t have nightmares, Terus? How can they be so monstrous if they cannot learn from nightmares?” she asked, eyes fixated on the partially submerged, dead me.

“No, Sihea, dragons can be nightmares sometimes, but we don’t have them. Only dreams, sometimes dreams that, for others, would be nightmares, but dreams nonetheless.”

She didn’t answer, just kept on poking the body whilst her best friend snore in peace for the first time in the last year.

And that, esteemed reader, was the last time I lied to Sihea.