Elsewhere, at a different time...

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I stare down my muzzle, my eyes nearly crossed to track the glowing, twelve-inch form twirling in place near my foreclaws. It has been ten minutes since I awoke to this crisis and it. is. still. talking.

“…and you keep it so warm in here I really can’t thank you enough you see the colder it is the slower I move and sometimes I slow down so much that it looks like I’m not even moving at all though that isn’t true I’m still moving it’s just so very slow that nobody can tell…”

Pressure builds in the spiny ridge that starts between my eyes and runs all the way down the back of my neck. My claws grind holes into the burrow floor. I take a carefully measured breath in through my nostrils.

I am a good digger. An industrious hired helper. A bit on the small side for a dragon, no larger than an ox, but the townsfolk are much less afraid of me than of the others they see passing overhead. I believe it’s because I don’t cause trouble and I’m useful. I have an impeccably respectable hoard, built through scrupulously positive interaction with the local town and not by knocking over the market stalls and plundering the sculptor’s entire collection at once the way I really want to some days.

“…and it’s so frustrating because I still see how everyone is moving normally around me but I can’t even tell them because by the time I get one word out well it’s been a few days and they just think I’m just creaking and settling like an old house or something but…”

I had to save earnings for three whole months, pulling plows and seeding fields and coaxing the seeds to do their very best in the upcoming growing season. I even sold some of the catches from my pit-traps. Three months on half rations! But the twelve-inch statuette in the sculptor’s workshop was the most beautiful thing; a delicate glass figure shaped vaguely like a running girl. A pinpoint of white light was embedded in the center of its chest. It simple, it was elegant, and thanks to the light inside of it, I would not even need to illuminate it once I put it on display! I had to have it.

Lucky for me, no one in town could afford the asking price. No wealthy merchant picked it up as I scraped the coin together. Disaster didn’t strike the sculptor’s home.

Unlucky for me, I never asked the sculptor how he had such a piece. Of course, only now do I think about how I’ve never seen him work glass before. I just took it back into my burrow, deep underground, and curled up around it on my bed of coals like any greedy hatchling and fell asleep…

“…so you see when you brought me in here and went to sleep it was perfect because it’s quite warm in your burrow and you yourself are very hot it’s like you have a stove in your belly so I took some of your heat not to make you cold but just enough so that I could move and speak to you I am curious with all that heat inside do you breathe fire?”

It takes a moment for me to realize there was a question asked and that it marked an end to the stream of words. I blink, refocusing. “No.”

The little thing chimes, vibrating in place. “You have beautiful green eyes how did you do that you blinked and you covered your eyes with more than one kind of eyelid I have never seen that before I have only seen the kind of blinking that happens with one kind of eyelid clearly I do not know very much about you at all please tell me what is your name and did you know that you have very lovely scales you are very brown if you lay down in a field would you be completely hidden I think you would please tell me everything about you!”

The pressure in my fore-ridge spreads tendrils out toward my eyes. If this conversation continues the same way for much longer, everything in my head will hurt for hours.

Three months.

The sculptor lets me stick my head into his workshop in the early evening for five minutes each day. I do this to remind myself why I’m slaving away, and sometimes to select the next piece I want in my hoard. For three months I stared at her frozen form. When light passed through her on the shelf, it shattered into colors on the other side. The pinprick of light inside her never went out. Some days, I thought she was watching me back. Now I know she was. My belly burns at the trick I’ve been played.

“Have I said something wrong I am sorry are you upset I am not very good at understanding the things that make people upset though I am a little better at seeing the upset or the happy in a human face but yours is very different so please help me understand what are you feeling right now?”

I lift my upper lip and expel a short, harsh HSSSST through my teeth. I need two minutes to think!

The vaguely human form collapses into a shapeless puddle. Alarmed, I bring my snout close to the puddle, snorting over it. I didn’t mean to melt it! Wait, did I melt it? Can I actually melt something that has already melted itself back to life?

The puddle ripples. The center gathers into a point, drawing itself up into something like a short, thick pillar. No, it’s something a little more defined than that. The pillar divides down the center as if… Oh. I see. It’s rough. It’s wrong in the proportions and it’s got barely any detail, but I’m looking at an imitation of my head with the mouth open. Sort of. Just the head, every bit as blunt and spade-shaped as mine, looking up at the ceiling from the ground. The eyes roll around to fix on me, and its mouth hangs open.

HSSSST.

My hindquarters thump to the ground and I tilt upright, stunned. The creature’s mouth isn’t in remotely the correct configuration to make that sound! And it’s not attached to a body that takes in and expels air… how does it do that?

The face on the ground stares up and asks, “What does it mean?”

My claws click together into great, sharp scoops and fold over each other on my chest. “I don’t understand,” I whine.

“Oh what is it you do not understand because I can explain—”

“I do not understand you,” I hiss. “You are a statue. You were… You were the newest, the best, the most beautiful part of my hoard. Suddenly you are not, and you never were a statue? But… but what are you? And… but three months!”

“What is a hoard?”

“Three! Months!” I will not be distracted. “I won’t have it! Go back to standing still and being silent like the rest of them!”

The face collapses back into a molten puddle. The puddle says, in a voice I have to bend close to hear, “But it was too cold and I couldn’t say anything and I was surrounded by everyone but it was so lonely please don’t freeze me again.”

My tail lashes behind me. “I am owed! I… Look at this, I… look!” I scoop the puddle and all surrounding dirt into my cupped claws. The liquid is sharply warm on my scales, but no worse than nestling on my coals after a long day. I carry it deeper into my burrow and lift it up to the side. I have carefully gouged shelves and nooks into the tunnel to display my wealth. The shelves hold multiple statues that display well together, while individual nooks highlight ones that stand alone better. Countless hours went into positioning glowstones and shining crystals at the optimal angles to cast each statue in the best light.

It is still a pitiful collection. I picture my brother, rolling in great heaps of handmade scarves and my mother, her tunnels shimmering with carefully hung tea spoons from floor to ceiling and all the way back to the very end of her burrow. I have been scrounging for every spare coin to trade for over a decade, and I have only filled six shelves and eleven nooks.

But it is mine! Shame and pride flail at each other in my chest as I lift the puddle to examine the very first piece of my hoard, the one that first defined my craving, my need. Once it was a large piece of driftwood. Now, it is a pair of horses storming through a foaming wave that has nearly spent itself on the shore. Each hoof hangs at the end of its delicately carved joint. The manes and tails very nearly ripple before my eyes, and the wave looks ready to return to the ocean it surely came from.

And that was only the first. I have a waterwoman, her great tail curled around a whole island as she peers into the village that is scaled too small for all but the most rudimentary details. Nearby is a Skyte, unfolding from its egg-pose. There is a mother, carrying a sleeping child in her arms. Over there is a graceful firetongue dragon, twisting itself mid-flight. They are wrought of clay and wood and metal, but each has something within that screams to my need.

“Do you see?” My voice is shaky with frustration. “I don’t steal jewels or keep people locked away or knock over aging humans’ homes for their heirlooms! I’m small and ugly and not threatening to anyone! I work hard to earn enough to buy statues here and sometimes even from other towns! And then… then you!” I jerk my claws over to an empty niche, carefully packed smooth and lined with moss. “You were supposed to go here!” I turn my hand over, dumping the molten mass into the alcove. “So stand back up and stay still and stop talking!”

The moss I tucked so carefully into every crevice instantly turns black and starts smoking. The molten liquid puddles at the center of the alcove and doesn’t move at all. I glare at it, willing it to return to the shape it had before. Three! Months! I am owed my graceful statue!

To my relief, the figure rises out of the puddle. But now it is shaped differently! The head is bowed over the chest and the ill-defined arms hang limp at its sides. Disappointing that I have lost my running girl, but at least it is behaving. It is still a lovely figurine. “Now, freeze.”

Ripples trouble the surface of the figure. “No.”

I snort, stomping toward the exit. I sweep the nearly-spent coals out around the mouth of my burrow. I may be uncomfortable tonight, but heat will drain from here all day and surely by tomorrow my statue will solidify.

I pause. This far underground, the heat drain will likely take a full day and, perhaps, the statue might keep its heat for longer than that. If I don’t stay to watch it, my new statue may run away. I consider the situation, realizing that I will lose at least one day of work over this. I’m hungry as well, and more than ready to eat a full kill next time I check my pit traps. However, it’s clear that I must stay here until my prize is properly frozen again. I’ve waited three months, I can manage another day or two. Growling, I curl up with my snub nose on top of my thick tail, eyes fixed on the alcove.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

And then, it speaks.

“You said you do not keep people locked away and I am not a statue like you thought and you can see that so why are you keeping me locked away?”

My lips peel back from my teeth and the edges of my vision turn red.

Three!

Months!

It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. I ought to rip that sculptor’s limbs off and stuff them in his mouth. I ought to storm over to the fields I just worked and tear the seeds out and harden the ground against the next season. I ought to slaughter every deer and rabbit in the area, gorge myself, and haul whatever’s left over off to other towns that didn’t cheat me like this. I’ve been good! I’ve been good as hard as I can, and this is what I get? I only have a tiny little hoard and now my most precious piece is alive?

My tail thrashes, knocking over a clay skyte perched on a rose, his wings spread to catch the breeze. He shatters on the ground. He cost me two weeks of digging out tree stumps, roots and all. He was dainty and lithe and if he was real, he would leap up and fly like I can only dream of doing. I lurch to my feet, ready to tear my burrow apart. I have never felt this hot inside.

The tunnel fills with the sound of breaking glass. Startled, I swing my head over to my newest acquisition. It hasn’t broken, and when I bring my face closer, I cannot see any cracks in it. Yet it is bent almost double and pressed against the back of the niche. It is definitely the source of the crackling noise.

“What are you doing?” I demand.

The figure presses farther back against the wall and the cracking sound redoubles. Ripples move across its surface continuously and it hides its face from me.

I falter. I saw this, once. I was hired to delve a well, and there was a human child around who kept getting underclaw, asking all kinds of stupid questions. Why didn’t I have wings? Why were my legs so bulky? What was wrong with my claws? How come my tail was so thick? My face was the wrong shape, did it get squashed? How come I was brown, like dirt?

I didn’t harm the child, I just snapped my jaws near it. It huddled against a nearby boulder like I was some beastly monster and made terrible noises of fear and sadness. The child’s father didn’t dare withhold payment, but I was told I would not be needed to complete the well. I took my coin and left, like a good dragon.

Good dragon. Ugly little brown burrower. My jaw is so tight I must be about to break teeth. Why couldn’t I have been a brilliant, sapphire firetongue, spiraling across the sky? Or an ebony voidflyer, slipping from shadow to shadow in the blink of an eye? Even a Skyte, for all the danger they’re in—at least I could know what flying feels like. Or grace. Beauty. What would it be like to born to a beautiful shape like that?

All the moss is dead and charred. The figure is still making those sounds. Weeping? It must be. The anger drains out through my claws. I sit back on my hindquarters and fold my foreclaws across my chest, heaving a breath out through my nostrils. I am as tired as if I had not slept at all last night. That is no good. I am going to have to fight a mighty battle to fix this and I need to be rested for it.

“Na’lomma,” I say, as softly as I can pitch my voice.

The ripples on the figure lessen a little, and the head turns toward me.

“You asked my name. Earlier. Na’lomma.”

The cracking noises slow down, then stop. The figure pulls itself together a little more and edges toward the alcove opening. “I am Remara.”

Another heavy sigh escapes me. It… the running girl statue… she has a name. She has speech. She has movement. My eyes sting with the unfairness.

“Remara. Listen. Do you understand a hoard?”

Arms with no hands at the end seem to wring each other at the tips. “Hoard is a collection of beautiful things that you like very much and keep for yourself forever underground?”

“Mostly. The important part of that is that the hoard is mine. Nobody takes anything away from me and nothing walks off. Ever.” I turn my face away from her. There are pockmarks from my claws in the floor of the tunnel all the way from the opening to here. I will have to smooth it out again. “Except there was a mistake.”

“What is the mistake?”

“The mistake was believing you were just a statue and could be purchased. Unless…” I swing my head back around to her, eyelids slitting nearly shut. “Did that sculptor freeze you?”

Remara throws her arms up. “Oh no that man who had me in his room with all the other statues he just found me I did not store up enough heat for my travel and so he found me outside near the river already stilled and took me in and put me up to sell he did not know.”

I am disappointed, and then angry with myself for being disappointed. A part of me that I do not like was looking forward to seizing all the sculptor’s handiwork for this. I would have, if he had cheated me. No, I will have to bear the three months myself. The acceptance of it hits me like a falling tree across the back. I screw my eyes shut and curl up very small and tight, my body clenched against the wanting. I am a good dragon. “Then it is nobody’s fault. Remara, you are already part of my hoard. I have never given anything away. Nobody would dare try to steal from me. I am going to try very hard to let you go, but I am going to ask you for something first.”

“What do you want Na’lomma?”

My breath catches. When was the last time I heard my name spoken back to me? When was the last time I told anyone my name? Or bothered to ask theirs? I have worked in this town for over a decade. My earnings are a large part of the local sculptor’s livelihood. What is his name?

“I… I need to rest properly. Eat something. Spend some time so that I’m strong enough to fight the… the having to hoard you. I need… your promise. You won’t run away. You’ll… stay here? With me… just for a few days? Can I…” I fumble for the words that will help me let her go. “I need to look at you. For a few days? Here in my home. Please. Then I will find some way to let you walk out of here. Can you… will you do that?”

She is very quiet. I keep my eyes shut, willing her to say yes. I don’t know if I can let her go right this second if that’s her decision. I’m trying so hard. Please say yes.

Something warm pokes the tip of my snout. My eyes pop open, crossing once again to focus on the little form that has just nudged me. Remara has climbed down the wall and is right there, and… well, she is still all the wrong proportions, but now she looks like me. A tiny burrower, though she glows brilliant hues of orange and yellow instead of sludgy brown. Four squat, thick legs that end in wide claw-hands. A tail thick as a man for knocking things down and sweeping piles of dirt away. Head like a spade with a blunt snout, to assist in digging. No wings.

I can still see that little pinprick of light pulsing at the center of her.

“I do not have to go anywhere very quickly I just do not want to be kept here forever and I would be very happy to spend some time with you and maybe talk could we talk I have so many questions and I would like to learn how to look like you better because if I learn how to look like you then maybe I can learn what your angry and happy and sad look like and I am sure you have a lot of stories you can tell me and there is so much I can learn from you is that okay?”

I take in another slow breath and send it out. Muscles release their screaming hold on my bones. “Yes.”

“And when I leave maybe it will help if you know that it will not be the last time you see me and that I can come back and see you sometimes.”

I lift my head just a little. “Really?”

She tilts her head far back to keep eye contact. “Really.”

I stare at her. There’s a word that applies to someone like that, and it isn’t hoard. I’ve heard of the word. I’ve never had one myself, though. But maybe it starts with telling someone your name and learning what theirs is.

“Maybe that will be enough.” I rise to my feet, shaking dirt off my hide. “I need to retrieve food. Is there anything that you need?”

The little burrower-Remara’s tail sweeps slowly back and forth across the ground. “Would you bring me some sand please it will help me and if you could leave me some sort of heat so that I do not get too still please I do not like the cold.”

The coals. I scattered them outside to let the heat drain. I lumber back up the tunnel, hurrying to scoop up great clawfuls of coal. Many have gone out, but a few are still live. I can bring more this evening, but there aren’t enough live ones left so I will need to ask someone in town for a torch to rekindle my nest. Rueful, I shuttle my bedding back into the burrow.

Burrower-Remara gives a little shimmering sound as she dives onto the first few mounds of coal I drop. They immediately light as she nestles among them. It seems I will not need a torch after all. I bring in all the live coals I can find.

She looks so content.

“I will go,” I say. “Please… be here when I come back.”

“I promise!” she says, cheerfully waving her tail as if it were a human arm.

I snort. That is not how you move a tail. But there is time enough to discuss all that. And, perhaps, to ask her why she is imitating me instead of something lovely.

I take a moment to collect the fragments of the skyte sculpture that I shattered. I drop the pieces into a leather pouch with a huge loop that I slip over my head, then I leave. As I exit, I sit back on my haunches and turn my head toward the town for a moment. One of my pit traps is on the other side of it. The sun is new in the sky, so the market street is open by now. It will not take me out of my way to visit the sculptor. Perhaps he can repair the skyte figurine.

By the time I lumber up to the little market and poke my nose in through the window in the sculptor’s workshop, the sculptor is already deeply focused. Wet clay covers him from fingers to elbows and is splattered all over his clothing. I snort softly, a blast that blows his graying hair sideways. He lifts his face.

“Ah! My favorite customer,” he says, as he always does. He takes a filthy rag and wipes his hands on it, doing little but swirling clay around on his skin. “It’s earlier than usual. I’d prefer if you could come later in the day, having your head in my shop is a distraction.”

I pull my head out and carefully remove the leather pouch from my neck. The window is only large enough for one part of me, so I hold the pouch in my hand and slide my arm inside.

“What’s this?” I hear. “Let me see.”

The pouch is removed from my hand. I wait for a moment, until I hear a sigh and a little, “Oh. I see.”

I am ashamed. I retract my arm and poke the very tip of my nose in through the window. He is examining the pieces.

“Well. This is a first. I assume you want a repair job?”

I nod.

“I’m not sure. I’ll try. Might not look as good, but I think I can do something with it. I’ve never done anything like this, so let me think about price, alright?”

I nod again.

“Alright. I’ll tell you this evening when you come by.” He sits back down at his table.

I hesitate.

He turns back to me with a little frown. “Was there something else?”

I feel so very small. Smaller than usual. I can’t look at his eyes as I mumble, “What is your name?”

There is a lot of silence after my question. It goes on long enough that I begin to slide my nose out of the window.

“No, wait! I just… you surprised me. Come back.”

I push my face back in, glancing up at his face and then away flicker-fast. He doesn’t appear angry. He just looks at me a while longer, and asks, “Why now?”

I slide halfway out of the window again, embarrassed that I’m not even sure I know the answer.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says quickly. “I’ll do what I can for your statue and throw in my name, too, if you tell me yours.”

He has asked before. Several times, in fact, when I first started coming to his workshop. I did not bother to tell him. Not him, or anyone else in town. It’s not like there was another burrower to confuse me with, why would they need my name? But, maybe, it would be good to collect some names.

“Na’lomma,” I say, quietly. In this small room, it blows his hair sideways again.

“Na’lomma,” he repeats, a smile sending extra wrinkles around his eyes. “A good name. I’m Jarr.”

I blink, putting the name in a little shelf in my head, right next to Remara. “Jarr.”