Melting Heart: Becoming a Dragon

The fish helped. It didn’t last long, but it helped. Safraxi and Tifse were able to get their energy back enough to continue the march south, and Safraxi knew a few simple snares to catch small game. That would hopefully help tide them over until Safraxi was ready to take her draconic form again and make the flight to friendlier territory. She just didn’t feel as if she had the energy yet.

They kept moving as far as they could from the fishing village on their first day. They could already hear search parties out in the brush hunting for them, and with how thin the tree cover was in this dry climate it wouldn’t be hard for them to be spotted. They had to keep moving until long after nightfall, until the shapeshifted dragon could barely stumble along the dry and hilly terrain anymore.

Even with how exhausted Safraxi was she still couldn’t sleep after they made camp in a ditch along the hillside. She had gone to set up a few snares around their camp for small game and then… laid down onto the dirt. The two of them only had one sleeping bag, and it was far too small to fit Safraxi, let alone the both of them.

The dry air really didn’t hold onto any heat at night. Usually it took pretty extreme cold to bother her, and rider armor is made to resist extreme temperatures, whether from fire or chilling high-altitude winds. All of that not even acknowledging the fact she seemed to be a dragon with ice magic, rather than fire.

The cold wasn’t what kept her awake though.

“Idami’s being taken up to the ziggurat tonight, assuming we didn’t just ruin everyone’s plans.” Safraxi sighed to herself. She felt immense shame at even the chance that Idami might have to wait longer because of her. That girl deserved a family, and to be a dragon far more than she did. Maybe she wouldn’t be such a freak like her too. Maybe she’d come out right.

Tifse shifted in her sleeping bag. The fox was facing away from her in the little secluded ditch they’d chosen to hide in. Safraxi couldn’t quite tell if the fox agreed with her or not. Tifse seemed to have a lot of disdain for her own coldmark, and Safraxi’s before, and didn’t seem to think the dragon belonged in Fellrock either. “She’ll be fine. They don’t care about us.” The fox mentally mumbled to her.

“Yeah… you’re probably right.” Safraxi tried to close her eyes and drift off, but it never came. She spent the whole night drifting out of light fitful sleep. Now that she was at rest the anger and regret were seeping back in. “Tifse, did I-” The thoughts faltered as she realized the fox was asleep. It would be best not to wake her. She needed her rest, and might get mad at her anyway.

She tried to relax again and focus on her rider’s dreams instead of the painful thoughts inside of her own head. The strangest thing about a rider bond were the dreams. Dreams were never meant to be remembered or understood while awake. Even on the rare occasion that someone did remember them it was always hazy. However, the two could watch each other’s dreams as easily as they could each other’s actual senses. It was easier to tune out, so often they were just indistinct noise, but Tifse did seem to be having a nice one now at least. It would be a shame to interrupt it. Instead she settled in and tried to vicariously enjoy it with her.

Tifse was out on the desert with her family. Her father, ever the outdoors-man and lover of archaeology, had taken her and some of her sisters out into the desert on an expedition to find some rumored pre-freeze city hidden out in the dunes.

The trip felt like an adventure! She was going to see things that no one else had seen in millennia! Her father couldn’t stop talking about it, he had so many old scrolls and tablets with sketches and maps of the ruin and the area. He was always going out on some expedition or another, and he’d found lots of old artifacts in them, though Tifse wasn’t allowed to see them.

She was getting to leave the city and ride on camel-back though! The dunes felt like an ocean with how they went on forever. She couldn’t see any buildings, any rivers, any trees, only sand and stone. It was thrilling and terrifying all at the same time!

It was the cold and wet season, too, so the desert wasn’t as hot and miserable as usual. Her father always had more time then. There were no harvests that needed to be tracked and taxed, and big political events were always in the beginning and end of the hot season when things weren’t as rainy and they wouldn’t be suffering from the heat. It was the perfect time for him to get out into the desert for his hunt and to bring the girls along.

It was so cold she could see her breath now. The sun had set. The caravan had brought warm clothes for nights like this, though. She was well bundled, but her eyes and nose still stung. They were making camp at a rare oasis now. Her father was talking about how old records claimed the climate was different in the old days before the freeze, and how the desert was once a lush jungle. She was listening so intently to his story that she wasn’t watching the slick stones as she refilled her canteen, and fell into the water.

She got soaked through to the fur. Their caravan was low on wood, they’d been relying on camel dung for days. Her father refused to damage the trees around the oasis for firewood, he wasn’t inside of his own territory, but a neighbor’s. It would be vandalism to chop them for firewood.

Instead she froze.

The expedition had to be cut short the next morning. Her father would never let her forget that she cut his dream expedition short.

Now she was wandering in numerous long dark hallways. She seemed taller than before but still even smaller than normal, maybe an older teen? She seemed to be searching for someone or something. She checked inside one room after another, but they all seemed identical. Each time she looked in she immediately seemed… afraid.

The room, after multiple viewings, appeared to be a bedroom. Safraxi could make out high ceilings, a bed, and a small barred window. After almost two dozen instances of Tifse peeking into the room and ducking back out before she fully entered the room, something changed. There was a presence behind her. Tifse wasn’t facing it, but she just knew it was one of her father’s guards. The guard shoved her into the room and locked the door. She pounded at the wood. She begged. She screamed. No one answered except to tell her to be quiet.

She had been in here for days. She needed out. She was being fed once per day. It happened all too often now, and was only getting worse since her mother passed away. She knew it was her fault. She was always rude or speaking out of turn, looking at people coldly. Her father simply had to do something about it. The cold had changed her, made her like a ghost of what she was. She wasn’t worthy of her family anymore. Everyone knew it. In Stefaial nothing was secret.

It was impossible to sleep. Every day she was so tired. Even when she wasn’t in trouble her room terrified her. She resorted to propping the door open at night but that didn’t help her. The fear persisted. What if she got locked in again?

She was back to wandering the hallways. She couldn’t escape the room. Every corner she came around it was the room again. She spent nights out in the garden rather than resorting to sleeping in that room. It wasn’t home anymore. She had to leave. She had no inheritance anymore. Her parents never told her as much, but everyone knew it. She didn’t deserve her family’s love, so she lost it.

Safraxi had to rip her attention away from the dream as the emotions reached a sort of climax. It had started so nice, but as it spiraled into a nightmare it was hypnotic. The images of that room and the locked door were burned into her mind as she exited. Her own heart was pounding.

Alright, that was a dream worth waking Tifse from.

She sat up and dusted herself off, leaned over, and pulled the fox into her lap. “Hey, psst, Tifse.” She gently rubbed her rider’s cheeks until the fox’s eyes cracked open.

“Arx- sorry, Safraxi,” She croaked out, half awake, “Why are you-”

“You were having a bad dream. I thought… well.” She trailed off. Maybe it was invasive to enter her dreams like that and judge when to wake her up?

“No, no. Thanks. That’s a bad recurring one.” The fox slid off of her dragon’s lap and stood up for a stretch. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“No… I just couldn’t sleep. My thoughts feel… too loud.” Safraxi tucked her knees as tightly to her chest as her armor allowed. “Idami’s going to be a dragon in the morning, and I’m missing it.”

“I guess she’d be the one you miss, huh?” Tifse climbed up to the edge of the ditch and checked the perimeter of their little hideaway.

“I don’t know… maybe I miss the others too. I’m… conflicted.” She sighed and hung her head. “Not like I can go back anyway.”

“People like us aren’t meant for lives like that.” With a shake of her head Tifse slid back down to the bottom with her. “We’re better off just sticking with others like us. We just can’t live the way they do, we don’t understand them.”

“Idami and I understood each other, I think.” Safraxi sank back down into the dirt and slid her helmet back off. She hadn’t removed it since dinner, and even then she’d only lifted the visor enough to eat, without revealing her whole face.

Tifse gasped at the sight. The dragon’s coldmark had grown to cover almost the entire left side of her face, down her neck, and up her ear. “It’s getting worse, Safraxi…”

“Well… I don’t know what can be done. It’s not like any of us do, even Tiamat seems stumped.” She pulled the helmet back down to cover it up again. “How bad is it…?”

Tifse shared the image with her companion through the link. Safraxi gasped and curled her legs up to her chest again in response. “M-maybe I’ll just look like a snow fox if it gets big enough. Hah.”

“Right…” Tifse decided it was best to drop it. Neither of them knew what could be causing it or where to even start. Little was understood about coldmarks other than they appear on people who come close to dying from exposure. At least… making bad jokes when she’s nervous seemed more the dragon’s usual self. She just still wasn’t throwing curses and insults how she normally did.

“I am myself.” Safraxi turned to glare at her rider. “Why do you seem so unsure of that? Why do you have to keep prodding at me about it?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.” The desert fox flattened her ears against her head. Somehow this quiet and controlled anger frightened her a lot more than the loud and expletive peppered rage she was used to from the dragon. “The Safraxi I knew before wouldn’t have woken me up so gently. Or maybe at all.” She shrugged. “You still haven’t explained why you look so much like Audierei, I’m just… worried, is all.”

“Sorry…” Safraxi slumped as she felt her rider’s fear. “It’s been- I didn’t mean to scare you like that. I’ve only seen Audirei like three times in my life. It’s probably just a coincidence. Let’s just try to get back to sleep.” She turned over to lay on her side in the dirt, now facing away from Tifse.

“Let’s… get some proper supplies tomorrow, at least.” The rider sighed. “We should be coming up on Cleninlod tomorrow. We can get you an actual sleeping bag there, and restock on food. After that do you think you’ll be good to fly to Stefaial? It’s going to be a bit further than it was from Fellrock-”

Safraxi flinched as the name of the city exited Tifse’s mouth. A spike of dread shot through the dragon and into the rider as fuzzy memories flooded back. Even with her face pointing away it was obvious she was on the verge of tears again. Tifse was beginning to understand how much worse this was affecting Safraxi than she tried to let on.

“It will be further than you had to fly from coast to coast yesterday, but we won’t have to go as far overall if you want to stop on the opposite shore. Do you think you can do that?” Tifse almost whispered the words out. Safraxi had never seemed quite so delicate before. Guilt was beginning to mount for the fox. How could she have treated her fellow coldmarked at the academy like that?

“Yeah… let’s- let’s just get out of Mercani tomorrow. I’ll manage.” She still wasn’t turning over to face her rider.

“Alright…” Tifse started to climb back into her sleeping bag. “I’ll see you in the morning. Try to get some sleep, okay?”

When Tifse woke again Safraxi was standing over the fire with a couple of rabbits and a partridge on a spit. The sun still wasn’t up. She wasn’t sure if the dragon had slept at all. “Morning, sleepyhead. The snares got a few things for us, it should hold us over until we make it to the city.”

“Safraxi-” Tifse was interrupted by a yawn, “-did you sleep at all?” The rider stretched and climbed out of her sleeping bag to investigate the meal.

“No. Couldn’t. But the snares worked!” She offered the meat to the fox to sniff before returning it to the fire.

Tifse could hear the exhaustion in the dragon’s voice. They weren’t making the flight to Stefaial today. They would both probably miss Audirei getting off the boat back home. “Well, that’s something at least.” She pushed a rock over to sit on by the fire. There was nothing that could be done now. She felt the hurricane of emotions brewing in her dragon. Sleep was never an option in the first place.

“We can always track her down afterwards, right?” Safraxi took her dagger and began slicing off pieces of bird meat onto a flat rock between them.

Truly, this was the lowest Tifse had ever gone. Eating wild game off of a rock while hiding like a fugitive in The Mercani Empire. But her stomach didn’t particularly care. She snatched up pieces one by one as Safraxi cut, and they disappeared down her gullet all the same. “It’s pretty good, considering. Thanks. I don’t know a thing about hunting.”

“Learned how to make a snare from some of the boys back in Arghold, in Utsnari. Some of us would go outside of the city and catch whatever we could, cut up the meat, and pretend it was chicken and beef.” She let out a chuckle as she reminisced. “You get one of the older kids like Alguis-” She trailed off for a moment, staring blankly into space before continuing again with a bit less cheer. “An older kid would clean themselves up, steal a fancy apron from a butcher, and some people will pay for it as if it’s the real thing. Ah… those were the days…”

“Why are you so proud of scamming and stealing from people?” Tifse was aghast at the story. She hadn’t missed the reaction to mentioning the name, but her concern and curiosity were overpowered by her disgust at the open admittance to taking advantage of people.

“Nobody really got hurt. They had money to spare, we were starving.” Safraxi crunched her way through one of the partridge’s leg bones. She was in the guise of a fox, sure, but her draconic instincts still told her it was best to eat it bone and all.

“Of course people got hurt. You stole an apron from a butcher, and sold people meat that they thought was safe!” Tifse was mad enough she had stopped eating. “You even already had meat! Why sell it for food?”

“Would you rather I died?” Safraxi was too tired to be anything other than blunt. “That’s how it is for us. We used that money to buy other food, like bread and vegetables. Sometimes clothes too. You can’t just survive on meat forever.”

Tifse sputtered to come up with a proper response. “There must have been another way…”

“We never found it.” She started on the rabbit next, tearing and slicing it to pieces for them to share.

Tifse sputtered for a moment, preparing another retort, before the dragon’s words truly set in for her. “Are there hungry kids like that everywhere...?” She thought back to how painfully hungry the dragon had been the previous day. Was that just the norm for some people?

“There’s been a few kids like that in every big city I’ve ever been to, and some smaller towns too, sometimes dozens. And the hunger can and does get worse, actually.” Safraxi finished with the easily accessible meat and started to gnaw her way through the rabbit’s skeleton. Mental communication really helped with conversations over a meal. “I haven't been as bad off as I was yesterday in years, but when I was about eleven or twelve I was hungrier than that at least three nights a week.”

Tifse could feel an anger building in Safraxi at the words, a sense of furious helplessness at the injustices in the world. “My parents underfed me many nights, but I never imagined how much worse it could get…” There was a painful pressure in Tifse’s throat. She felt as if she’d swallowed a rock. Talking with her mind felt so much easier.

Safraxi sighed and set down the remains of the bird and locked eyes with Tifse. Without warning, she was a rat again, but with several subtle differences in the shape of her face from before, she was more feminine now. As she opened her mouth to speak Tifse could see she still had her razor sharp draconic teeth inside, rather than the pronounced buck teeth of a rat. “Just because other people had it worse doesn’t mean you didn’t have it rough, pipsqueak. I got that much from your dreams last night. I’ve already got revenge plans brewing for my birth family. You say the word and we fuck yours over too.”

Tifse’s heart skipped a beat at the sudden shift in Safraxi’s tone and appearance. It was like she blinked and Safraxi was someone else, her old self, again. She shot up from her rock and grabbed her dragon to pull her into a hug. “Oh thank Tiamat, you’re back to normal.”

Safraxi promptly shoved her off. “Hey! What the- don’t get all-” She was sputtering and embarrassed. “What was-”

“We- Yesterday- I- alright.” Tifse breathed a sigh of relief. Even if she had gotten shoved off from the hug it was nice to have the Safraxi she knew back, even under a new name.