Running with a stomach full of apples turned out not to be one of Aytin's best decisions. He was quickly forced to slow to a panting jog and then a fast walk, but he still made better time than his trip out.

Faelon was exactly where Aytin had left him, still sprawled out on the forest floor. If it weren't for the slow rise and fall of his massive chest, he might as well have been a small, crimson-splotched hill.

Or dead.

Rather than approach the sleeping dragon - a dubious prospect at the best of times - Aytin stood off a reasonable distance and called out, "Faelon!"

The precaution proved to be warranted. Faelon jerked, tail whipping and head snapping up. It took him long seconds for his eyes to focus on Aytin. At the sight of the dragonette, he relaxed, settling back down from the half-crouch he had risen to.

"What?"

The single word didn't come out unkindly, instead conveying a bone deep weariness.

In response, Aytin held out an apple.

Faelon raised one eye ridge. It might as well have been a single berry as far as he was concerned. From his perspective, it was probably more effort to swallow than it was worth.

"I found an old orchard!" Aytin explained, excitedly. "Juniper and Opal said they found some apple trees, and it must be what they were talking about!"

This got more of a reaction. Faelon rose slowly. "I assume there's enough for me?"

Aytin nodded, hurriedly. "The trees are full of them!"

"Then lead on." He started forward slowly, each footstep cautious and accompanied by the occasional shuddering wince. "While meat would have been nice, I haven't eaten in days. Much longer and I might have considered trying grass." He shuddered slightly at the thought.

Normally, a dragon could easily outdistance a dragonette on the ground, but Faelon was taking things slowly. Between exhaustion, malnourishment, and injury, he was on his last legs. But the promise of nearby food kept him moving as Aytin led them at a fast walk.

They left a small furrow behind them, dotted with little blue specks of blood. Faelon's left wing dragged along the ground, broken and torn.

Every time the wing snagged on a tree or rock, Aytin could see his companion flinch. It hurt to watch, and his own wings ached in sympathy.

In an effort to distract Faelon from the pain, Aytin asked, "How did you survive? I saw... what happened." He trailed off, unsure of what else he could say.

"Luck. If you can call it that," Faelon answered.

"I caught the gust front from that storm just as I passed below the clouds. It gave me the lift to keep from smashing into the ground. I was able to smash into a tree, instead." He twitched the remains of his left wing, then snorted in pain. "It did more damage than that cowardly, ocean-spawned blue managed."

Suddenly, his focus narrowed and he speared Aytin with a piercing stare. "Where is it? You said those four I killed were the only ones on the island, so where are the rest? Where is that dragon?"

Faced with a dragon's total attention, Aytin blanched. "Headed to Luffin Keep! With Xantha and the rest of her gang!"

He realized it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth, and Faelon curled his lips back in a razor-fanged snarl.

"They're trying to ransom me!" The words tumbled out in a self-preservation fueled rush.

That prompted a long, searching stare. But Aytin found that after the last week, he could meet the dragon's eyes without backing down.

Eventually, Faelon relented, apparently taking the explanation at face value. "Did any of the other crew survive?"

At Aytin's head shake, he sighed. It was a sigh that spoke volumes. "When I saw you, I had hope. But I did not expect otherwise."

"They only cared about me," Aytin said in apology.

They continued walking, Faelon deep in thought and Aytin letting him digest the news about his crew.

"I don't understand how they knew," Faelon muttered after several minutes. But a mutter from something as big as a dragon was clearly audible from a dozen paces. "This island is nowhere near a trade route. But they were waiting for me, and they knew about you. How?"

The question was only half rhetorical and it was one the young dragonette had an answer to.

"Xantha sold us out," Aytin spat. "She made up the shit about a way around the storm and got me out of the way when the attack started. Then drugged me before I could do anything."

"Does she still live?"

"Last I saw." Aytin didn't need to hear the deep growl in the dragon's chest to know the sort of emotions Faelon was dealing with. He'd already had time to come to terms with similar feelings, himself.

"She's their leader, now. I think Reed killed their old one in the attack. Del, they called him. So Xantha's off with Kalthor - the blue dragon - and maybe fifteen or so others."

"And they'll be back soon?"

"Four more weeks. Maybe five at the outside. That's what I overheard, at least."

"I could fly- could have flown there in a week."

"They talked about having to lay low and skirt the main trade routes, so it's at least double the normal flight time. Then I figure that it will take at least a week of passing messages back and forth with my family before they understand they really won't pay for a fourth-born." Aytin said the last with a bitter grin.

"You seem sure of that."

"For Zara - my oldest sister - they might have scraped up a couple of hundred gold. But the family... we're not as well off as we pretend to be."

It was a revelation that would have gotten him exiled, at best, had he uttered it to an outsider in any other circumstance. But somehow, it didn't feel like secrecy mattered on this forsaken island.

Faelon was appropriately incredulous. "How has that come to be? I have known your mother since not long after she hatched, as well as the lady and lord before her. It is difficult to imagine them mismanaging things to such a degree.

"And the lands surrounding your keep did not look reduced since my last visit. Quite the opposite, in fact. You must have doubled the size of the surrounding fields."

Aytin nodded in assent. "But did you see what was growing in those fields? It wasn't crops to feed the miners. We've planted smoking weed. Spices. Alchemical herbs. Nothing we've ever grown before."

He turned so he could look the dragon in his eyes. "We're not tilling those new fields out of prosperity. It's because only a single copper vein is still producing."

"Ah."

"Yeah. My mother and father are scrambling to find new sources of income. A bunch of the people working the fields were in the mines last year, and they've expanded the huntresses.

"My little sister Lin has been out scouting as much as hunting. Looking for any new resources to exploit. The island is pretty well surveyed, but it's still the frontier and they've found a few surprises. But we have to do it quietly, and have a new source of income before the copper mines dry up."

"Your family is worried that if they show weakness, others will sense your position and put pressure on you."

With how reserved Faelon had always been before, Aytin had pegged Reed as the leader of their merchant endeavor. Which might be true, but it didn't mean the dragon was stupid. He certainly had centuries of experience to draw on.

"We're especially worried about our presence in the capital," Aytin said. "Uncle Cork has spent a couple of decades investing our surplus into various ventures there. I was headed there to become his protegee. Or try, at least.

"Anyway, the keep is safe out on the frontier, but I hear the nobles in the capital are another breed. They don't like provincial types playing in their patch of sky." He rolled his eyes at the moniker. "If they got wind that our financial backing was drying up, they'd come after us like a flock of hungry vargulfs. At best, it would cost us hundreds of gold in investments and opportunities. At worst, we could lose everything the family has built over the centuries."

He looked towards the nearby mesa and the ruined keep on top; at the indisputable proof of how far they might fall.

"We haven't had to start selling the family treasures yet, and gods willing we won't have to," the young noble said, half to reassure himself.

"There's still enough copper stashed in our warehouses that we haven't missed a shipment. When that runs out, we need a replacement ready. Something will pan out, but until then, money's tight. Way too tight to waste on me." He said the last with a soft, humorless bark of a laugh.

"Reed and I had wondered. We rarely get passengers on the outward leg, and we... we were hardly the only ones to visit the Luffin Keep."

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"He offered us a good rate," Aytin said with a shrug.

"We were light on crew and he knew he could get some work out of you," Faelon explained. "The lord and lady agreed. They thought it would be a good experience for you."

Aytin sighed. "Thanks for telling me mom," he said to himself. Louder, he asked, "So I guess that means Reed put Xana up to everything on the first day?"

"She volunteered."

"Oh." Considering it all, that made a lot of sense.

Suddenly, Faelon seemed to come just a bit more alive. His pace picked up and his tail lifted so it was no longer cutting a furrow through the tall grass. He stretched his neck forward, towards the apple trees that were finally in sight.

Aytin had to jog to keep up, but it took less than a minute to cover the distance.

Faced with an oncoming adult dragon, the flock of crows erupted in a screeching cloud. They didn't go far, though, quickly settling into the upper branches of the surrounding trees, where they perched eyeing the intruder and occasionally calling out to one another.

Faelon settled down in the center of the old orchard, and extended his right wing. After a moment of hesitation, Aytin walked up the improvised ramp and onto the dragon's back. Dried mud flaked off with every step, revealing more of the red scales and wing membrane with every step.

It was much easier to reach the apples with the extra height. Aytin plucked a handful of the ripest looking ones, but then paused, looking back and forth between the dragon and comparatively tiny fruits.

Sensing his smaller companion's confusion, Faelon twisted his head around on his sinuous neck so he was facing the dragonette. "Just dump them in," he said, and opened his mouth wide.

With a shrug, Aytin did as he was told, then went back for another armfull. And another. Only when there were over thirty apples in his maw did Faelon snap it shut, just barely missing his assistant's hands in the process. Tipping his head up, he gulped down the mouthful of fruit before returning back to his starting point.

"More?"

In any other circumstance, Aytin might have laughed at the dragon's pleading look. Instead, he just got back to shoveling fruit into his mouth.

They continued like that for almost half an hour, rarely speaking and then only when necessary. As Aytin finished stripping the apples from one tree, he would direct Faelon to shift over to a new one. By the time he was finally satisfied, they had stripped a large chunk of the orchard bare.

"When was the last time you ate?" Aytin asked in wonder. The dragon had managed to consume the weight of a large deer in apples.

Faelon had settled down in the late afternoon sun, by all appearance dead to the world. But he had one eye open and focused on the nearby dragonette.

"Five days? A week? I gorged on what food I was carrying before setting off for this keep." He made an incremental motion towards the ruins across the meadow. "I saw it on my way down. It would either provide a safe refuge or an opportunity to sink my talons into the ones who did this. When I spotted the searchers, I knew it would be the latter."

Thoughts of food, clean clothes, equipment, and weapons flashed through Aytin's mind. "What about the rest of the cargo?"

"What's left is hidden a few days' hike from here." Faelon raised his head slightly to look west, and then up at the sky, longingly. "I couldn't risk being bogged down."

"Oh."

Neither said anything for long minutes. A few of the braver crows tentatively returned to the far edge of the orchard, hunger overriding the fear of the massive predator. They let out raucous caws at the pair, as if proving to themselves that they were unafraid of the intruders.

For the first time since the attack, Aytin felt himself relax. He stared across the field, not looking at anything in particular, just enjoying the lack of the specter of imminent death hanging above his head.

It was Faelon who broke the silence. "I... I will need more than this."

Hesitance was something odd to hear in a dragon. The young dragonette turned, a questioning look on his face.

"More food," the dragon elaborated. "This will not last."

After a moment, Aytin realized what he meant. They had stripped about a quarter of the orchard bare.

"We'll figure something out." He thought back to his earlier ideas for traps. "Say, think you could dig a real deep hole? Something big enough for a deer to fall into?"

"Easily," Faelon said, brightening. Then he sagged once more. "But most animals fear a dragon's scent. It would take days or weeks to fade."

"We'll figure something out," Aytin repeated.

"If you think of anything, let me know." To himself, the dragon muttered, "I'd swim through hell for a mouthful of venison."

Aytin tried. For the rest of the afternoon, they talked about the problem. But it was easier said than done.

Neither of them had any practical experience with hunting from the ground. Faelon had actually seen a few snares, but couldn't give much insight into how they worked. Nor would his breath weapon be all that useful, being too short ranged and liable to char whatever it hit. Driving a herd of animals into pits or past an ambush was one of their best ideas, but it assumed that they could find a herd and keep it bolting in the right direction.

"If we can just get some deer to come near me, I know I could hit one. Maybe two. You could run down a wounded deer, right?"

"Of course," was the dragon's reply. When Aytin looked pointedly at the wounded wing that drug behind him with every step, he returned the look stoically. "It won't be a problem."

The dragonette shrugged. Hopefully, he could get a kill shot. He was confident in that, assuming he could get the deer within fifty paces or so.

He looked up towards the sun, beginning its descent towards the horizon. "It's getting late," he observed. "We should head for the keep."

"I don't suppose they have a hot shower or a sand pit there?" At the shake of Aytin's head, Faelon sighed. "A pity. This mud is quite itchy." But he rose, slowly shaking his bulk.

"There's a spring nearby that feeds into a small pond at the bottom of the mesa. I can help you scrub off tomorrow."

"Very well then. I will hold you to that."

Grabbing a few apples for later and the ax he had left earlier, Aytin started back towards the keep, only to be stopped by Faelon blocking his way. The dragon extended his good wing as a ramp once more.

"It will be faster this way," he explained. "And I am feeling much better."

Shrugging, Aytin climbed on and together they set off for the keep.

Even with his lamed wing dragging, Faelon was true to his word. His purposeful strides moved them along at the speed of a jogging dragonette.

When they arrived at the keep's ruins, it felt strange. The place had been Aytin's prison, but now it belonged to him.

'Well, it belongs to me and Faelon,' he reflected.

It still didn't seem quite real. Aytin kept expecting to hear Nyx yelling at him or one of the sisters to shove him out of the way. But it was quiet inside of the stone walls.

The cookfire had died down to a pile of ashes. Above it sat a pot of lukewarm rabbit stew. A sip confirmed that it was well and truly overcooked. The meat was dry and the dried vegetables weren't much more than mush.

It was food, though. Aytin ladled out a large bowl for himself, then hauled the rest outside. The remaining contents of the pot weren't much more than a mouthful for Faelon, but he accepted them without complaint before settling himself against the sun-warmed west wall.

Returning inside the keep, Aytin stoked the fire up once more, and then took the time to take inventory. The contents of the brigands' packs were an eclectic mix of the useful gear, odd nick-nacks, and uncomfortably personal possessions.

Like the ornately carved box in Juniper's gear full of various woodworking tools, stains, and polishes. A closer look at her bow revealed intricate stippling on the grip, framed by the twisting figures of flying dragons.

Her sister's interests seemed more conventional. Aytin dug a wooden box with cards and some dice out of Opal's pack. Thinking back, he had seen her pestering the others into games of chance over the last week.

They seemed normal enough, but the box that held them felt odd. A bit of jiggling revealed a hidden compartment containing another six sided die.

Playing a hunch, he tossed it a few times. Three times out of five it came up six. 'So that's how she managed to always come out ahead.'

Zan's pack held all of the expected ingredients and implements of an apothecary, but also writing supplies and a small book. A quick glance through the roughly bound volume revealed it to be a mixture of recipes and notes about daily happenings. It only took skimming a few of the passages to see that the brigand had a low opinion of most everyone in the group, save Xana and the previous leader Del.

Aytin resolved to look through it more when he had a chance; both for any insights in the group's plans and any useful recipes it might contain. A slight shiver in one wing reminded him of the slashes in the membrane and how Zan had said he would probably need more treatment in the coming days.

The biggest surprise was hidden beneath Nxy's sleeping mat. A lump turned out to be a small, well thumbed book.

He nearly burst out laughing as he opened it to a random page, expecting a history or drama or maybe some sort of adventure, only to find the description of a rather steamy encounter between four dragonettes. Using a tail that way had never occurred to Aytin, and he knew anyone doing that in a hay loft would come out itchy and picking straw out from between their scales for hours. But like watching a stricken dragon falling out of the sky, he found he couldn't stop reading until the scene was finished in every sense of the word.

After going through the former belongings of the brigands, Aytin was left with a respectable pile of supplies and a vague sense of unease about stealing from the dead. Considering the circumstances, that discomfort was easily pushed aside.

The good news was that between the preserved food, spare weapons, and gear Aytin was fairly sure he could feed himself for weeks, and maybe months. Long enough to maybe find another settlement on this island. If one keep had been built here, there were probably more.

On the other wing, there was nothing to keep him safe from Xantha and Kalthor and the rest of the brigands when they returned. And all the food they had wouldn't feed Faelon for a single day.

By the time the inventory was complete, the sun had reached the horizon.

Aytin stretched, wincing at the twinges from aching muscles his mutilated wings. Outside, he found Faelon still laying against the keep's walls.

The dragon opened one eye as Aytin approached.

"It's getting dark," the dragonette pointed out.

Faelon didn't move.

"There's room inside the keep. It's a little cramped, but the walls keep the wind down." He didn't add that he was looking forward to a night of actual sleep instead of a forced stupor.

The narrow entrance that Aytin used wouldn't fit a dragon, but Faelon would have no trouble climbing through the gap midway up the walls.

But instead of rising, Faelon just said, "I'm fine out here."

"Oh. You're sure?" Aytin asked, surprise clear in his voice.

"Yes." He didn't elaborate.

"Okay," Aytin said, then stood there awkwardly. "I'll, uh, see you in the morning, then."

The red dragon bobbed his head slightly, then settled back down while Aytin made his way back inside.

Out of all of the bed rolls, Zan's was the cleanest. Aytin appropriated it, and stuffed a pack with blankets to make a pillow.

It had been an absolutely exhausting day. His early awakening, the slave labor, and the terror before his escape. Not to mention all the work finding and picking apples, then cataloging his supplies.

But somehow, he couldn't drift off. It should have been easy, just lay on his stomach, curl his wings around him, and close his eyes. But he kept jerking himself awake.

The sun had long since set and the fire burned to embers when Aytin rose. It was chilly out, and he wrapped himself in a blanket as he dragged his bedroll and makeshift pillow through the keep's exit more by feel than by sight.

He had a brief moment of panic when he couldn't see Faelon. But in the starlight, the dragon's mud-flecked flanks almost disappeared into the walls of the keep. Aytin pulled his bedroll into the gap formed by his neck and those walls.

Faelon stirred slightly, but never said a word as Aytin drifted off to sleep, one side resting against the dragon's warm, comforting bulk.