33. The Promise
The three of them were able to pay their way onto a barge headed to Tifse’s home without too much trouble. Finding one with cabins that would fit Idami turned out to be impossible, but there was a boat carrying a shipment of grain down and around the west bend to reach the capital at the east end of Lake Sulis. Tifse’s birthplace, Salifir, was one of their stops along the way, so Safraxi agreed to paying just thirty copper to take up an unused corner of the ship.
It would only take about a day and a half before they could disembark. Until then, they mostly just sat on the deck, under a blanket Tifse had hung up above them to keep out of the sun. It was hardly a perfect solution, but it was leagues better than trekking through the hot desert on foot for a week or more.
“Alright, after this… stupid boat ride, you and I need to work on… dragon stuff.” Safraxi grunted to Idami. “I’m no expert, I’ve only been one a few months, but I can help a bit to just get you up to speed.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re really going to teach me a lot, I’m sure.” Idami chuckled and stretched herself out as much as was possible on the cramped deck. She was starting to get sore. She was almost twice as long as Safraxi was, from snout to tail, but with much shorter legs and a more slender frame. “I remember what Amjazel did with you to get you in shape with your new body. I can copy a lot of that on my own, but yeah, your help is appreciated.”
“Hardly feels like it.” Saraxi rolled her eyes. She was becoming less annoyed at Idami’s arrival as time went on. The orange dragon’s presence had been sorely missed since she went into the academy, and Safraxi left Fellrock. “So… not getting a rider then?”
In response Idami rolled her eyes and rested her chin on the handrail to the barge, gazing out over the water. “No. I probably won’t get one any time soon. Not one from the academy at least. I hear some dragons choose them themselves, but I don’t know the ritual.”
“I can teach you. It’s easy.” Safraxi fiddled with her claws instead of watching the other dragon. “We… could maybe go back, just for a day. I know there was that gecko you mentioned…”
“Him? Oh, no. He’s sweet, but I don’t think he’s the right fit for me.” She adjusted her head some so she could watch her niece, with concern. “I still think you’re being too hard on Tifse, by the way. She did what she did because she cares.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, but it’s my business.” Safraxi turned and laid on her side, facing away.
“I’m still going to nag you about it. You’re being an idiot, the same way you were with Rubis.” Idami craned her head over back into Safraxi’s vision. “You and I both know she didn’t mean ‘cold’ in that way.”
“Doesn’t matter how she meant it!” Safraxi covered her face in her wings and growled. “She said it!”
“You hurt her too! Stop making this all about you!” The orange dragon pushed under the wing with her snout to glare at Safraxi beneath. “You were both idiots!”
“It doesn’t matter. I ain’t goin’ back!” Safraxi shot up and bared her teeth at the other dragon, who seemed unimpressed. “Amjazel said she’s alive, and she’s fine, so I don’t have to feel guilty. There’s no reason for me to go back!”
“That sounds like the kind of thing someone who feels guilty would say.” Idami shook her head with a scowl. “You don’t have to go back, but Tifse… you two are linked now. Won’t it just be more painful for both of you if you dump her in Salifir with her shitty parents? Do you even have a plan for where we’ll go after?”
“I’ve never had a plan before, why would I need one now?” Safraxi spat back. “I lived off scraps, and theft, and diving in trash for years. I can hunt now, I don’t need to even live in a city! I can just go live in a cave or something!”
“You don’t want to live in a cave.” Idami’s eyes rolled again.
“How do you know?” Safraxi hissed back. This conversation was getting old fast.
“Because you’d be alone in a cave. And I know you don’t want to be alone because you didn’t ditch me and fly away the moment I got here.” Idami nudged the other dragon with her nose, careful not to let her new nose-spike catch anywhere. “Talk with Tifse. I’ll mediate if I have to. She didn’t make a great first impression with me, but I’m liking her more now that I’m seeing she cares about you.”
The blue dragon glowered in response, but was out of arguments. Three weeks ago no one liked Tifse, but now suddenly Idami was taking the fox’s side? What was going on? “Whatever, I’m going for a flight.” She pushed out from under the blanket, nearly bowling over Tifse as the fox was squeezing back in between the crates to reach their little hideaway.
“S-Safraxi, I-” The fox’s eyes were still red and puffy. It looked like she’d been crying the entire ride on the boat so far.
“Don’t bother.” Safraxi shoved past the fox and launched off the deck and into the sky beyond.
Tifse and Idami arrived the following evening. Safraxi didn’t return to the boat for the rest of the trip out, and refused any attempts to communicate with Tifse through the link. All the fox knew for sure was that the dragon had gone hunting, and found something. When she and Idami disembarked from the boat she was nowhere to be seen, and hadn’t done anything to indicate to Tifse where she was or how she was doing.
“We’re back in Salifir, Safraxi. Are you going to show or not?” Tifse couldn’t decide whether she should just be sad or angry at this point. She hadn’t gone this long without seeing the dragon since they’d ‘reunited’ at the mingle, and Safraxi had exposed her cold mark to everyone. She felt… oddly empty with the dragon so far away. She wasn’t even sure if Safraxi felt the same. Would she have to live like this for years until the bond broke? Was it only like this for a while after? Would physical distance help or would she just keep feeling empty?
She didn’t want to be without the dragon. Everything had started to feel so right until Idami showed up. She couldn’t really clearly remember what had happened when she and Safraxi had gone out to get drunk, but she knew that the two had so much fun that night, and that she had felt at peace as the dragon had groomed her in their room afterwards.
“I’m at the temple.” Was Safraxi’s simple response. The Salifir temple was right across the street from Tifse’s home, the Bontifur Palace. The palace was supposedly over a thousand years old, from a time when the king resided in Salifir, instead of further to the west in As’qufir today. Once upon a time a line of kings reigned from the palace, until deciding they preferred being closer to the Bay of Stefaial and built a newer, grander palace, and Tifse’s great great great great great great grandparents had been permitted to move in.
The temple was, similarly to the palace, an ancient and massive building. Idami and Tifse trekked through the crowded, bustling streets out to the colossal paired buildings at the center of the city. Idami seemed to be enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells at least. “Ooh, Tifse, I could go for something to eat. Dig a few of my coins out of my purse, those skewers look perfect right now! Grab one for yourself too!”
The fox nodded obediently and pulled the coins from the orange dragon’s pouch slung around her neck. “Thanks. The coin I took with me for the journey to Fellrock is almost dried up.”
“Not expecting your parents to help you out again?” Idami licked her chops as the fox began the bartering process for a dozen skewers for the dragon, and one for herself.
“You’re joking, fifteen copper. It should be an honor for you to feed a dragon!” Tifse snapped at the lizard woman in front of her. She had already brought the number down from thirty. “No. Best case scenario if Safraxi does leave me here is that my parents arrange a marriage for me, but my coldmark will lower my value a lot.” The saleswoman seemed to finally relent at sixteen copper and handed over the kebabs and the two were able to move on.
Tifse began holding them up one by one for Idami to pull the meat off of as they walked. The dragon was starving after having nothing but bread and jerky for the last two days. She was desperate for something truly filling. Not even the skewers would probably be enough. “I know what it’s like to not be able to fall back on your parents. But that’s a shitty way to have to think of yourself.”
“What?” The fox nibbled on her own skewer, eyes locked on the palace as it slowly grew larger on her horizon.
“About your value. You’re not a purebred horse or a piece of jewelry. You’re a person. Why do you care about your value like that?” Idami yelped slightly as she misjudged the new size and shape of her muzzle and ended up getting a wooden skewer jammed into her nose. “Fucking- ugh. This is still taking getting used to.”
“I can’t just… cut off my parents. I owe them. They raised me.” Tifse was more careful as she offered up the next skewer to the orange dragon.
“They cut you off, why can’t you cut them off?” Idami stripped the meat off the stick with one quick pull of her jaws. “Just think about it, okay? We’re not in any rush, I’m going to keep seeing what I can do to help you and Safraxi.”
“Right. Thanks, for however much that’s worth.” Tifse finished off a few bites from her skewer but let the dragon have the rest. Her stomach was back to feeling painfully tight as they reached the temple. She didn’t really feel like eating right now.
Salifir’s temple was far larger than Saris Fal’s. It had four landing pads, all raised up to the sky so the city could watch the dragons come and go. The city had struggled to keep a resident dragon and rider since before she was born, though. The last resident dragon to have any lasting power, Ulovis, had died fending off a monster of some kind from the desert. He was supposed to be even older and larger than Amjazel when he died. She’d read the story many times on the worn brass placard below the statue in her family’s garden. She had spent many of her nights sleeping out in the garden staring at it.
Since then the city had seen a rotating crew of younger dragons taking up the position, but for one reason or another they never stayed more than a year or two. She wasn’t even sure who the current resident might be. Sometimes there were even two. Part of her liked the idea of being the city’s guardian along with Safraxi, but, realistically, that wasn’t an option. She didn’t want to stay here forever, and she’d never convince her dragon to either. “But is she really my dragon anymore?” She sighed as she was reminded again of their fight. Maybe asking for Idami really was a mistake. She wished she could go back and undo it. But this was her reality now.
A priest came out from the inside of the temple as they approached, and held the doors open for the pair as they slipped inside. “Welcome, welcome! Are there any services I can provide for you, sacred beast?” The city may be lacking in a long term resident dragon, but it was still a large and nice enough temple that it attracted plenty of dragons as a rest stop along their flights around the continent. It wasn’t surprising to hear there were up to a half dozen staying there at once. Even the Stefaian capital’s temple wasn’t as luxurious.
“Thank you, but we’re just looking for my niece, Safraxi.” Idami stepped through and admired the temple. She’d grown up frequenting the many temples and ziggurats of Fellrock with her mother, but had never seen more far-south styles of them. These instead preferred high arched ceilings, murals, and sculpture inside. They chased elegance and artistry over the sheer scale that most middle-southern lake nations preferred.
“Ah! Yes, miss Safraxi is in our bathhouse at the moment. She desired a full scrub and scale waxing after her long flight. Would you like to join her?” The priest bowed his head as he asked Idami.
“I think I’m fine, thank you.” Idami let the priest lead the way. “We just need to get her so we can attend to some business in the palace.” She turned to Tifse and asked more privately, “Do you want me to come along to the palace?”
“I… I don’t know. Let’s see how things go with Safraxi first, okay?” The pair were lead down a flight of wide dragon sized stairs into the cellar. Part of the reason Salifir’s palace and temple were built in this here was for the hot springs that could be found around the base of the mountain the city rested in the shadow of. She’d enjoyed the perks of the hot springs for all of her childhood, and had somewhat missed them since leaving home for the academy. They had a way of relaxing someone that was difficult to describe. Safraxi must be finally letting herself indulge some in the perks of being a dragon. It was hard to blame her.
The base of the stairs led out into a hall beyond with two rows of baths on each side. Walls between each bath granted some modicum of privacy between each bath, even if people walking past could look in easily.
Tifse and Idami walked past the first bath to their left, where a white dragon was soaking with their eyes closed, only their head poking out of the steamy sudsy water as a pair of priests scrubbed them with brushes from the sides. The pair made it all the way to the back before realizing there weren’t any other dragons down here.
“Um, my apologies, you walked right by miss Safraxi?” The priest leading them seemed confused. “She was in the first bath on your left as you came down.”
The dragon in the bath rose from the water and poked her head out to check on the pair in the hall outside. “Yeah, what gives, guys?” Her coldmark had grown again. It now covered her entire head, and a third of the way down her long draconic neck. Only her horns and eyes had maintained their original colors.
“SAFRAXI! YOUR-” Idami was stunned at the rate of growth it had displayed in just a day. It had seemed like a slow creep along, scale by scale, until now. The coldmark had tripled in size in only a day and a half.
“Don’t start with me. Let me finish my bath and we can get going to drop Tifse off and get out of here.” She backed up into the water again and let herself sink up to her cheeks again.
“But- why even bother bringing me here, then? I just- I only wanted to show my parents I was…” She couldn’t finish the sentence as Safraxi’s glare settled on her.
“I don’t know. Why even bother cozying up to me if you’re going to plant a knife in my back?” The dragon lifted her wing so the priests could scrub the underneath. The relaxation she’d built up in her past day here was evaporating quickly at this conversation.
“Hey, ease up on her.” Idami’s tail whipped dangerously. “You two worked out a bunch of your differences since you left Fellrock, it sounds like. Why throw that away because of one act?”
“It was a hell of an act.” Safraxi turned her head away and climbed out of the bath as the priests finished the scrub and began pulling out the scale waxes and the towels.
“It was for your own good!” Idami roared in the confined space. All of the priests and Tifse covered their ears at the volume of it.
“Why are you taking her side on this?” Safraxi was starting to consider just leaving again. Finishing her scale waxing wasn’t worth this bullshit.
“It’s not about her side or your side! You make each other happy when you’re not being a petty asshole!” Idami was really letting her draconic side out more. Her wings shot out and her frills were standing on end. She looked absolutely massive with the length of her body maximized and flared out. Maybe she really was already bigger than Safraxi over all. “Look at her! She regrets it! Are you just going to push away everyone who makes a mistake until you’re old and gray? Oh wait! You’re not gonna be old and gray! You’ll just be miserable FOREVER!”
Safraxi backed down slightly at the display. She knew Idami wouldn’t hurt her, but it was hard to ignore the message like this. “Just- let’s just get this over with. I’ll have my scales waxed later.” She stepped around the priests and for the stairs.
Idami began to follow after, but faltered when she saw Tifse wasn’t following. “Hey, come on. If she won’t be your dragon for your parents… I can pretend for a few days.”
“… I appreciate that.” Tifse smiled weakly at the orange dragon.
“But it’s not necessary. I’ll play along for you, Pipsqueak. But just for today. Now get out here. It’s time I met your family.” Safraxi was already at the front doors of the temple above.
A small spark of hope lit back up in the fox’s chest at the first kindish gesture she’d received from the dragon since their bender together. Maybe she could still salvage this, if she fought for it. She knew one thing, though. She wasn’t letting Safraxi dump her in this kingdom. She’d follow them on foot after Idami learned to fly if she had to. That was a promise.