I wandered around the hourglass-shaped lake for hours on end. What would she want? What more could she ask from me? What if I weren’t capable, or willing, to do what she wanted for me? Would that break our bond? would that be one more loss added to the long list? And what if the favor itself mirrored the one Solimute asked for, what if Mardhaka planned on joining her birds in somewhere I couldn’t follow?
I finally decided to will myself into the island, end the torture that were my doubts. The amount of birds that judged and mocked me as I travelled through the feathery path was greatly reduced. And, if I stared at them for long enough, they would fly away. Even the birds were broken. Climbing up to the hole and descending into it, I saw no illusions adorned the walls, no living roots to call me a dead man.
“I am here, Mardhaka. State my business.” I announced with a tone of defeat and acceptance.
The only answer were her snores. She was sleeping in front of the tunnel that led to her hoard, guarding it with her immensity.
“Mardhaka, Wake up. I have come to pay the favor I owe you.”
She opened an eye and closed it again. “Always at naptime, you unavoidable pest. Cannot you come, once in my life, while I am not sleeping?”
“And when is that?”
Mardhaka considered it for a few seconds. “That is something not even I can answer. Well, you are here already, are you ready to make me this favor? It’s just telling me your opinions on some of the latest acquisitions for my hoard. You can even keep some of them, if you would like to.”
I raised an eyebrow. I knew that, despite the darkness, Mardhaka could see my expression perfectly. “What is the trick? You are not this kind.”
“What and how I am is my business, not yours, dream of my father.” Stood and began lumbering towards the hoard. “Follow me, Terus, don’t make it harder than it has to be.”
I obliged and entered the tunnel. At the other side, a glimpse of gold and several feathers illuminated by the light that percolated thorough a single crack on the ceiling could be seen. Mardhaka emerged in the hoard room and started digging with both forelegs. “Must be here, by the seabird feathers… There!” She exclaimed, and turned to look at me. “Come.”
I climbed the hoard of gold, silver, and, mainly, feathers and, when I reached the top I could see it: three white papers, face down.
“This is not the best environment to preserve them, I think my father’s lair is drier overall. So, if you like them, you can keep them.”
I descended down to where the papers were, crouched and picked one up. For a few instants, I didn’t understand it: it was just a drawing of a sparrow. A child’s drawing in pencil and colors. Painted outside the lines, disproportionate, and naively done.
I had to look away, turn so the tears wouldn’t stain the paper. “This is Sihea’s…”
“Well, I see you can recognize the artist! I stashed them here out of habit, as I didn’t foster any strong feelings towards the child. You, on the other claw, loved she who made this piece of art. They are yours if you want them, Terus.”
I looked at the dragon with tired eyes. “I have no hands to carry this back to safety. I have no bag to stash it in a dry environment where the humidity of this place wouldn’t destroy them. I have no… no way to preserve a little bit of them with me.”
“Oh, but tell me where you need to take these drawings so they would be safe, and I will help you do so. I have claws to grasp them softly, I have a little helper that can carry one of them to places I cannot enter, too. So, accept them if you want to.”
I turned and hugged Mardhaka’s snout.
“What’s the meaning of this? Is this an attack?”
“Thanks, Mardhaka, thank you forevermore. Now I truly owe you a favor.” I cried and accidentally stained her snout with snot and drool. “Thank you, sister…”
“Well, I think I have a favor I want, after all. I want you to not fall in the same depression my father did, not for a while.”
“I am afraid that will be impossible.” I left her go and descended from the hoard, picking up the drawings and holding them against my chest. “They are gone, Mardhaka. Every single one of those I dared call my friends.”
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Her eyes became thin lines “Every single one?”
“Yes. The ones that aren’t dreams, anyway.”
She exhaled noisily through her nostrils. “Well, screw you too.”
“You consider yourself a friend of mine?”
Mardhaka didn’t answer outright, but rather took her time scratching her neck. “Ask again and the drawings will get stained in ephemeral blood. Do I take them to Cirruin’s cave?”
“No, I have a better idea.”
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We (Mardhaka, Albedo, and I) landed in front of the library of Zenvo. After descending from her neck, I took the drawings she had been so far carrying in little rolls held by her right forepaw and, with Albedo on my shoulder, I stepped inside the building.
“Hurry up, Terus, this place is not one I am fond of. The trees are all wrong.” Mardhaka said.
“I will be but enough time to take these drawings to the places where they can be safe.”
As soon as he spotted something in the distance, Albedo took flight and went to explore the counter. It was not of my interest. The vitrines, on the other hand, were made to show the public important books without exposing them to humidity or anyone’s touch. I had once read that glass lasted for a long time, so the ones with stubby legs, the ones that stood close to the floor, probably had good chances of surviving the test of ages. One could open them with a single movement of a handle found on the side of the glass boxes.
I cared for the books stashed inside, but not enough, never enough to compete with this precious load I carried. So I took them all out and placed them in the sections of the library they would have belonged to if they weren’t showcase material.
I left the drawings spread out, to maximize the chances at least one survived, not forever, but long enough for other people to see it. The sparrow with a beak too small next to the main door. The swan with the neck too long on the northern wing, and the Eagle with wings too squared next to Luberto’s statue.
“Watch over her drawing, friend. Will you?” In told the statue, and then walked out of that small room, into the main one. I decided not to turn to look for new books: as I had already said, they were not mine to read. That was when Albedo, holding a metal quill in his beak, landed in front of me.
It reminded me of all the times I had seen Luberto using that instrument to write about the books loaned and the books returned. I snatched it from Albedo’s beak and he made a fuss about it.
“Mine, mine!” angrily repeated the bird, but I strode over him, going straight for the counter. I had an idea. A way to keep myself from forgetting, a way to keep myself from losing every reason for being.
Under the counter, inside the old drawers, Luberto kept his supplies for recordkeeping. With this quill that Luberto had no use for anymore, with a bottle of ink stolen from the supplies of this library nobody would manage again, and with one of the notebooks destined to become log books for the library visitors and patrons, I would write a book about Zenvo.
So opening the book over the counter, wetting the quill with ink, and trying to move in the most human way possible, I wrote the first sentence:
“My esteemed friend and very first reader, I hope you move like a peddle rolling down the hillside: bouncing on each surface you may touch, with every little tumble being the consequence of your position in the previous instant and following logically from it, with no sudden turn backs, no looping actions born out of the caprices of a dragon’s mind.”
It took me half an hour to complete it, and Mardhaka began calling, so I dried the quill on my clothes (not like the stains would matter tomorrow), put the cork on the bottle, grabbed everything and rushed out, Albedo still following me like I had stolen from him.
“I am sorry Mardhaka, but I found a way to not fall into the deepest depression yet. I need you to take these items to Cirruin’s cave, where I will write about my story with Zenvo.”
“Write… for who, exactly, Terus?”
“For whoever finds the book in a library elsewhere after I finish it and you deliver it there.”
“Demanding today, aren’t we? But worry not, kind Mardhaka will help you with this, as long as you don’t misrepresent me in the narration,” she said with the haughtiness so characteristic of Cirruin’s most beloved daughter.
Worry not, Mardhaka: I think I captured your essence near perfectly.
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So, friend, you who move like a pebble rolling down the hillside will sleep through this night or the next, and wake up with the following dawn, or soon after. I bid you farewell, and I wish you have a good life, because this is not what will happen to me.
Worry not, I will not kill Cirruin to end my existence. I am, in Mardhaka’s opinion, too much of a coward to do it. In my opinion, such act would go against the good memory of Terus. And speaking of Mardhaka, by the time she has delivered this manuscript to the place you found it into, I will be curling besides he who dreamed me, doing the only thing I can to restitute a bit of what I took from the city I cherished. Once again, and for the rest of my days, I will try to sleep, and dream. Because I owe it to the man whose face I don, to turn the dusk of my personhood, to turn this gift of a shadow, into something kind and beautiful. Because Zenvo has become a giant cemetery where everyone is their own tombstone, I thought I could dream again of spectacles of petals, of stamens, of pistils. To dream them so perfectly, so lasting they resemble the real thing as much as a dream of a dragon’s dream can resemble reality. To make whoever visits Zenvo amazed, thrilled to the bone, shuddering from the sight. And to make them (but not you, friend, reader) wonder why, in this city of calcareous rock sculpted by unknown divine powers, jasmines fall never-endingly from the sky. To make them wonder what those people did to become worthy of such a heavenly gift and ask themselves in vain:
“When will the flowers stop raining upon them?”
END