She had settled in a cave just south of the Wall for a few days and she told herself every single minute that she spent making the damned place hospitable that as soon as the storm passed they were going south and staying there forever. If she never saw snow again she would be no worse for ware. After a long, miserable hunt that resulted in two skinny deer and nearly three hours gathering wood, she finally sat down to fix her supper.
A screech like nothing she’d ever heard in her life brought her train of thought to an abrupt halt. And a sudden wind was howling through the valley around them like thunder. It whipped the thick leather covering that she’d put over the cave mouth so hard that it snapped off the line and flew back into the cave. But the sky was clear. Grey, but not stormy.
Again it screeched. So much fury and power in that one, shrill sound. Then another gust of wind and then an impossibly large shadow blocked out the mouth of the cave and in a flash it was gone again. Something hit the mountain. The impact made the rock tremble and pebbles cascaded down from the ceiling into her golden braids. Vaskyra was on her feet now, screaming and hissing back protectively, but Beck ducked under an enormous flapping wing and sprung out towards the mouth of the cave.
“Fuck!” Her feet skidded on the ground and she howled in pain as it bloomed along the skin of her scalp where the braids were tied. Instinctively she buried her fingers into her hair, turning as best she could to look at her companion who had the bottom section of her hair clasped firmly in her black beak.
“Let go!” Beck reached back, grabbed the gryphon by the reins, and jerked firmly. Not that the beast even felt it. It opened the jaws just enough for the woman to yank herself free and dart out the mouth of the cave. Vaskr followed, glaring and hissing the entire way but no longer assaulting her companion to prove a point.
She couldn’t have described what she saw if she’d have tried. There had to have been words for it. A poet could have written twenty verses after a single glimpse alone, a scholar could have written a book, but she had no words to describe the creature perched on the side of that mountain. Its skin looked so hard that if it’s head hadn’t been lashing from side to side, she’d have mistaken it for a gargantuan pile of strangely stacked boulders. Its back had blood red spines extended upwards like a war banner. There were two leathery wings at its sides that glistened with the watery remnants of melted snow. But stranger than any of that was the speck of white nestled between its shoulders. It was---It was a person.
The dragon turned to look at her and Beck had to grab Vaskr’s reins in one hand to restrain her. True she couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever been more frightened in her life, but the way the creature looked at her. They stared at one another in a trace like state. Then, without warning, the person on its back (who was apparently unconscious, fell onto the rocky slope beneath it.
Beck whispered to the gryphon and released her, then dove for cover behind a rock. Vaskyra screeched, leaped into the air at an impossible speed, and rushed past the dragon. She dove and squawked and spun until the dragon was baited into leaving the cliff to fly after her. It was graceful in the sky, impossibly so, but it was much too slow to catch the red-gold blur of feathers and fur zipping between the clouds.
She seized her chance, dashing from behind the boulder and looping her arms beneath that of the unconscious woman. The cold air was burning her lungs now and the extra weight made her heave for every breath. Eventually, they made it back to the cave.
She was no healer, but she patched up a sizable cut in the woman’s side, changed her soaked clothes so that she wouldn’t freeze, then laid her down in the pallet of furs. With a spell she managed to rekindle a spark of the fire and just as she began the arduous task of rehanging the wind break, Vaskyra landed gracefully at the mouth of the cave. Down in the valley below them, the dragon was laying on a freshly burnt bed of earth and snow.
“Your guess is as good as mine if she’ll actually wake up. Best I could do was patch her.” She told the gryphon. Beck couldn’t remember when she’d stopped wondering just how Vaskr knew every damn thing she was talking about. She just did. And when her amber eyes had glared from the unconscious woman and then back to Beck, the message had been pretty clear. Was it worth all that effort I just put in?
Beck shrugged. She sat by the fire, crossed her legs, and held her breath. She had no idea what the dragon would do if its rider died... She prayed she would never have to find out.
