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“I am sorry…this is not the variety of tidings any healer wants to impart on a waiting audience—”

“Speak it.” Lithian’s mother’s voice is cool and clipped as granite under a winter wind. Beside her, his father’s face shows pain in a way his mother does not, but his body is heat and gentleness when he lays a hand on her shoulder.

“We do not expect the child will live to see his tenth year,” the healer answers quietly at his mother’s request. “He may be lucky to see his fifth.”

His mother speaks again, but Lithian doesn’t hear the words, his attention fading and the scene blurring to—

Lithian twitched awake, eyes flicking open like sharply drawn curtains. Immediately afterwards, he shivered, tucking his knees up closer to his chest and frowning as he grounded himself, piecing together his surroundings. Cold air. Frigid, even. A thin sheet of bedding beneath him and the soft moan of an unfamiliar wind outside his—tent?

Lithian blinked, memories coming back to him in small flood. They’d been heading towards the battle camp Ysette was stationed at, but after the unexpected encounter with two fleets of dragons and the less than entirely peaceable negotiations with the drakein who had helped them fight, they’d stalled their progress early, making camp and tending to their wounds instead. As though taking this memory as incentive, his thigh and shoulder throbbed in sharp objection to movement and Lithian grit his teeth in a quick wince.

The drakein had helped heal the biggest of the offenses wrought on his body, but it still burned with a slow, tight ache. He touched his fingers to the itch at his shoulder and then, after a brief glance around to the other breathing lumps sharing the tent with him — i.e., his brothers and sister — Lithian moved to begin a quiet-as-he-could-manage search for the stoppered flasks of water amongst his daily wear. After much squinting in the darkness and a largely clumsy search based mostly on feel, he located one, unfastened it, and after baring his shoulder, carefully guided a small sphere of liquid up.

It glowed a faint white-blue in the dark as he moved it, shimmering like a fairy lake until he brought it to his skin, at which point the light of his magic seemed almost to sink inwards, as though absorbing itself within the various pinpoints of his pain. It warmed him and eased his tension, waylaying on the worst of his hurt, and after applying the same treatment to his thigh, Lithian felt better, though he knew his technique could still use worlds of refinement. Thankfully the hurts were not particularly great to begin with.

Unfortunately, after finishing up and tucking his water away, Lithian found himself far more awake than before. Beyond sleep, even, and he huffed. He was accustomed enough to the feeling — he’d encountered it often when he was younger, particularly after he’d been sick and was beginning to recover — but in those cases he usually lit a small candle and read until his mind grew tired again. Or simple read into the morning, if weariness never came.

Here, though…

Lithian eyed the dancing shadows outside of their small, makeshift tent and wondered how far he could wander safely — wondered if even stepping outside alone would be considered ‘safe’. Ysette probably wouldn’t approve of it, but curiosity and restlessness nagged at him until he caved, and he dressed himself silently, pulling on leggings and loose trousers over those, his shirt, vest and boots, wrist guards, and then the leather belt and pouch gifted by his sister. After carefully lacing his flasks of water into place and tugging on the thickest of the cloaks he’d brought with him, tucking the hood in as close as he could over his horns, Lithian slipped out of the tent, careful not to disturb any of his sleeping siblings.

The desert at night stretched on like eternity. An endless swath ochres and yellows that in places stretched flat as far as the eye could see and in others was littered with the climbing, shadowy stacks of desert pillars. The pillars reached upwards for the night sky like grasping fingers or long, broken bones: a picture of futility, doomed never to reach their goal of the endless stars above. And, as though resigned to their earthly permanence, they loomed in place like lone guardians, casting long shadows on the lands below and watching, ever vigilant, ever patient. Cloistering those who made their homes in the barren sands under its shadows like a protective parent.

The air was also — as perhaps could be expected — notably more frigid outside the protective walls of their tent than within them, and Lithian pulled his cloak a fraction tighter at the neck. When he breathed out, he blinked, startled, and coughed in his surprise, squinting at the air in front of him as though he’d been seeing things. After drawing a fresh breath and breathing out slowly, however, his eyes only widened, watching with fascination as his breath condensed, forming a small, roiling and misty cloud before his lips.

Was this…normal?

He’d never seen it happen before. But then, there were many things he hadn’t seen happen in the Celestial Plane that seemed to happen here on a regular basis, and he wondered if it had anything to do with the drastic temperature shifts that he was also woefully unaccustomed to. How could a place so blisteringly hot during the day become so drastically different overnight?

Ysette had warned him, but experience alone had hammered home his belief. Perhaps he would ask when she woke. In the meantime, though, he only smiled, breathing out experimentally and watching his breath dance and then, several minutes later, manipulating the miniature water droplets with his magic to shape them into spectral figures: a hastar, prancing through the desert night air, his little sister Iwana impersonating a travelling dancer, and finally, out of curiosity, the rough shape of the drakein they’d encountered earlier that day. He let the last shape linger for some time before a gust dissipated it, and he was brought back to staring up at the open sky and all its stars.

Lithian’s head jerked up, startled from his thoughts by the unexpected burst of noise. Not particularly loud, but certainly enough to draw his attention. His first instinct — to tense and dart his hand under his cloak towards the stoppered flasks at his waist — was waylaid when he spotted the source of the sound: a small drakein. Nothing to be concerned about. Yet. Letting his arm relax, but keeping himself partially poised, his heart still beating faster than natural in his chest after his recent scare with so many dragons, Lithian tilted his head, eyeing the creature more closely.

Its scales reflected the moon and starlight, a brilliant, golden yellow color, like the ceremonial dresses and elaborate head decorations and jewelry he’d seen on occasion, whether at festive events or worn by trained performers. He could only imagine what such a coat might look like during the day. Bright as a sunrise, he thought, and relaxed his stance further, the corner of his lip curving up curiously.

“Do you speak?” he asked it, taking a slow step forward — not wanting to startle it.

“My soap?” Lithian asked. “I smell like dragons because we…fought dragons…” He tugged at his cloak again, resituating it uncertainly, but his eyes kept gravitating back to the young drakein and the way the blood moon’s light glinted off of its scales.

“You may touch,” the drakein said, and Lithian’s eyes widened a half fraction.

“Touch…?”

“Me,” the drakein clarified with a curt huff, shaking its body and unfurling its small wings briefly as though indignant that Lith hadn’t picked up on the suggestion’s meaning from the get go. “You keep staring. Obviously you are interested, and I am fetching. So you may touch, as long as you let me sniff you more. And explain to me the purpose of these.” As he made the last statement, the young drakein hopped up, nudging the tip of his snout against one of the flasks fastened to Lithian’s hip, and Lith took a startled step back, then flushed.

After several uncertain seconds, he knelt, carefully ushering his cloak out of the way and then reaching out.

“No need to be nervous,” the drakein said, making Lith’s hand freeze, startled, for a moment before his cheeks burned brighter and he reached the rest of the way out, letting the pads of his fingers touch gently to the sleek scales on the top of the young drakein’s head. “I am Jijikko. You may call me Jiji.” The drakein’s eyes shut, and Lithian tensed again in surprise when it pushed up against his hand, but eventually he relaxed, an uncertain smile teasing at his lips.

“And I am Lithian,” he answered. “I…am not used to encountering drakein this close. The last one I saw…” He frowned. “Well, the first one I ever saw was…wary of us, for good reason I’m certain, but…” He nibbled at the inside of his lip, shifting his weight abashedly, “…she was very hesitant to let me touch her. Then again, she was injured…and I am not the most graceful healer—sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I’m babbling.”

“No. Talk more,” Jijikko said. “Tell me everything but first, this.” He nuzzled his snout inside Lith’s cloak — much to Lithian’s embarrassment — nudging his nose again against Lithian’s flasks of water.

“M-my…” Lithian coughed, steadying his voice. “They’re flasks. They carry water for me. My magic…manipulates water. It’s how I fight.” He tilted his head at the drakein, curious. “You also identify with a clan, don’t you?”

“Gaili. I—” Abruptly, the drakein snarled, his entire stance shifting low, snout lowered and teeth bared, claws elongating out from his paws and tail shifting sharply against the sand. At first, Lithian stumbled back a half-foot, thinking the reaction had to do with some wrong move he’d made, but then he noticed the focus of the drakein’s stare and his gut sank, worn muscles tensing.

Three shadows painting the sky. Dragons, they had to be. More kiandri, from the looks of them — the way their bodies rippled and sparked like white-gold energy in the night. Couldn’t they just leave him and his family alone?

Once upon a time — when dragons were just a story told in history books and lore that he’d read about and heard of from his tutors — Lithian had found the beasts beautiful. Majestic. Awe-inspiring, even. Now, however, with his thigh throbbing afresh and his body sore and scraped in more places than he cared to name, they were quickly beginning to lose their appeal.

“Ysette…” Lithian breathed his sister’s name quietly the first time, like a whisper of wind before a great storm. Then, the dragons dove close, bodies crackling with energy and mouths opening to make three piercing shrieks, and Lithian jerked to a full stand. “Ysette!”

The earth shivered. Lithian blinked, eyes darting sidelong in surprise even as his chilled fingers unstoppered the flasks at his hip, but no, sure enough: the source of the pulse of magic was the young drakein. Wasn’t it too young to fight? And what if—?

Before Lithian could follow that thought to completion, the dragons were upon them. At his side, Jijikko gave a squeaked ‘roar’ as he hopped out of range of their initial dive, but his magic rippled through the air with the beat of his wings, already on the offensive. It was a messy ripple. Powerful for one so small, but everywhere at once and unfocused. Pebbles and chunks of earth and clay lifted above the ground — some spinning or shaking — but only a couple actually moved towards the dragons.

On the next pass, when one in particular shot a spear of lightning directly for him, Lithian spun his water again into a whip, meeting the streak of electricity and redirecting its path, giving it a cord to conduct through and bury itself in the earth instead.

“Fiendish, violent, brutes — face my wrath!”

Lithian’s attention whipped to the source — the young drakein — as he snarled at their opponents, attempting to taunt one. “Jijikko—”

The drakein leapt up, latching himself as best he could onto the tail of one and sinking his teeth in before raking at it with his hind paws. But he was so small in comparison, as the dragon roared its irritation and swung its tail wildly to dislodge him, Lithian felt near as much panicked concern for the small golden drakein as he did for his own life. Thus, when a third dragon dove for the other’s tail, claws extended as though ready to tear into Jijikko, Lithian groaned, breath shaking on his exhale.

Fear beat hard against the cage of his chest as Lithian rolled his stance, but he fought his body’s need to shake, curving his hands into a circular cradle instead — one above and one below — and gathering all the water of both his flasks into one undulating orb. Then, with a twitch and push, he whipped it out, slamming it with as much magical force as his small body and limited practice could muster against the face of the oncoming dragon.

“Pick on someone your own…s-size?” Lithian snapped at it, faltering at the end as it occurred to him that he wasn’t precisely much — if any — bigger than the young drakein himself.

The attack generated the desired effect, however, and drew the attention of the diving beast off of Jijikko and to himself. What to do now on the other hand…

Lithian swallowed, knees shaking, and reminded himself that now would be a very poor time to faint. Thankfully, his sister — and brothers — chose that time to come to his aid. With their help, the dragons were broken to dust in minutes, leaving nothing but their orbs behind. Unfortunately, the fierce commotion seemed to have managed to disrupt a nearby dispute between two lone hastar stallions, previously fighting each other, but who moved in on them, as well as not one, but four sleeping kugels.

Lithian was nearly crushed but one of the last group of four but the rest of the creatures, however, were successfully fought off by himself and his siblings, and in the immediate aftermath, Lithian’s eyes instinctively searched for the young drakein. He found him quickly enough, nursing his wounds on the sidelines and — after almost darting forward at first — Lithian reminded himself of the older drakein’s wariness from his last encounter with them and approached carefully instead, lowering his body a bit as he moved in.

“Jijikko…?”

The small drakein lifted his head eyes wide and tongue pausing in its efforts to clean his wounds. On recognizing him, though, instead of anything Lithian might have expected, Jiji made a soft, rumbling purred noise. “Did you see me? I fought like a desert storm! It was like whoosh and then KYAAAHHHH and then RRRROOOAAARRR — those dragons never stood a chance.” His tail swished with his excitement, and then his snout crinkled up — a cringe of pain? — and he returned his attention to one of his small wounds. “I must have missed a few defense maneuvers…but no matter! I’ll be a legend one day. You’ll see.”

The corner of Lithian’s lips edged upwards, relieved that the battle seemed to have done nothing to wound the young drakein’s spirit, if nothing else. “I’m sure you will. You did fight marvelously,” he said. “I could help you with your wounds, though, if you don’t mind. It’s what my magic is best at.”

Jiji blinked and then nodded, extending a wing. “You fought well too, I think.” He shook his head, making a muffled grunt of a noise when Lithian drew on his magic, working over the various scrapes and cuts. “I wasn’t paying too much attention. Distractions, you understand.”

Lithian snickered. “Mhm. I understand. There,” he said as he finished, sitting back onto his haunches and gathering his water back into his flasks. “All done. Does it hurt less?”

Jiji stretched his wings and shuffled his paws experimentally, then nodded, snout bobbing happily. “Mother may not even notice. Hopefully.” He tilted his head, then glanced off into the desert — probably in the direction of said mother and his nest — and shifted his weight again uncertainly. “I should get back before she gets worried. Mother worries easily.”

“Of course.”

“I hope to see you again, two-legger who smells like…‘soap’.”

“Lithian,” Lithian supplied helpfully.

“Lithian,” the drakein repeated, rolling over the sounds carefully as though judging the name by the way it tasted when he spoke it. “Farewell, Lithian of the Soap.”

Lith laughed, and with that, the drakein was toddling off. He breathed out as he watched him go, and glanced up only when a hand touched his shoulder. Ysette’s expression was weary.

“We’ll speak tomorrow of what in our god’s name you were doing outside alone at this hour.”

Lith’s heart sank. “Ysette—”

“Tomorrow.” She nudged her head curtly towards their tent. “Tonight, you will sleep. And stay there, is that understood?”

“Yes, sister,” Lithian blurted, dipping his eyes, and he retreated to their tent with no further comment.