3When Eireath, as she was called among Dragon kind, awakened, Silver and his glowing souls had departed. The spectral plane was cold and grey and still the snow swirled throughout it, in and through the misty cold clouds. She opened copper brown eyes that nevertheless seemed chill and almost fell, their usual warmth being absent in the onslaught of snowflakes. She was covered almost entirely in the frozen crystals, the blue green of her scales only minutely visible, only scarcely. She stood and spread her wings, and the numbness in her body fled, replaced by a glowing warmth that brought color and fire back to her eyes and scales, a luster that sent the snow skittering away to the farther reaches of the spectral plane. She lifted her head and a wash of flame came from between her jaws, turning the blues and greys of her surroundings into brilliant yellows and oranges. The flame slowed and then stopped, ending with a dribble of smoke that curled upwards from her jaws. She lowered her head contentedly, and though she could sense the faint trail of Silver, she made no move to follow it. She had met the great Dragon though she still did not quite understand him, and she had seen his voice, mannerism, what he had done and what he would continue to do.
Perhaps it was time to go home; there was nothing more for her to do now, and her hunger for exploration was sated for the moment. She had finally met her own kind, and had not found them to be anything less or more than what she had expected, or perhaps always known. There wasn't much more to do except perhaps, read. Eireath lowered her head and then observed, between her claws, two shining pebbles, glowing with feeling and knowledge, their tiny words of magical sense on the surfaces, words that could not be seen but were felt with incredible clarity. What would have happened, had this language been forgotten by the beings who created and wrote it? An incredible language of truth and meaning, bearing in its use knowledge and instruction. Would the descendants forget it, and be unable to decipher or understand its message? Eireath knew she herself would not forget, because she held the pebbles of these books here, in her claws. Every book she encountered and owned, if she did not know its language, she learned. Learning a language was no trick to a Dragon who could read meaning and feeling behind the limited vehicles often used to express them. She rolled the pebbles between her claw tips, then picked them up, spread her wings, cocked her head from side to side until she had firmly located the threads of the plane and, grasping onto their location, leapt along them and out of the spectral plane.
Silver said to the soul, his green eyes staring straight into its depths, icy green jewels that caught the mind and the will. The transparent form shivered. Silver repeated, and he withdrew his aura and energy from the soul. Immediately, without the support it had had the entire time it had been with Silver, the soul disappeared into the clouds, moving away, to a place to rest, perhaps, or maybe even to its next incarnation. And Silver turned from its path, the memory of the colors haunting his mind.
The other souls swarmed around him in agitation, and he found himself crooning under his breath, but not to them. It was to the world at large, the universe that stretched itself around and beyond him, in ever deepening shades of blue. Always blue. Just blue, just the cold, cool hue that colored even the edges of solid white light. Silver closed his eyes, the green-glowing eyes that could see anything he wished them to. The feel was blue, the touch of energy was blue, not the sight. There was something in the universe he was missing, something vital, in all likelihood. Some kind or type of color that looked up, turned its face towards the morning sun and the one and all of the universe, melding together into one. To him, it did not always quite fit. He was detached, detached in a pool of blue
Eireath had no other place to explore or go, immediately, but as she drifted along the threads between worlds, always skirting their edges, brushing their tips with her wings and letting her tail trail along their outskirts, she was deep in thought, deep in connection with the universe. She felt inexplicably drawn back to the home she had made on Earth. Though equally strong was the pull to leave everything she had known and take a new place, find a new place to wander and travel and learn about. Still the pebbles were cradled gently in her claws, and her memory of Raga was strong and respectful. He was old, perhaps not quite as old as Silver or maybe he was older. She was unsure but it wasn't important both of them were mature Dragons and well integrated with the universe. Although Silver's situation still perplexed her. There was something vital that he missed; perhaps something that she had not yet fully learned. Maybe he hadn't yet, either. But he had been a very arresting presence, and he had given her a name. Her name among Dragons.
Eireath was startled to find that she had reached Earth in the time as her thoughts had wandered and her wings had led her along the threads of the universe. Inexplicably she found herself back here, but without hesitation she grasped the threads of the physical world and entered it, back on Earth.
She found herself in whiteness, in a soft cloud of swirling crystals and cold suspended water droplets. She twisted her head around and under, lashing her tail, and her wings angled. She shot downwards; the cold snowflakes swirled against her face and across her scales as she her flight angled again to even out. Her wings caught the cold rushing air and she soared gently for several minutes. Oceans and mountains and plains passed below her through the swirling snow, and she took little notice of them, heading still towards the place where she had settled, in the mountains of Banff.
She passed overhead a pair of figures making their way along the crest of a mountaintop. Humans! How long had it been since she had seen or encountered humans, by her own choice? Well, it wasn't important. They were here now. Still she felt little desire to interact with them. But she circled over them slowly, watching them as their boots tramped imprints in the frozen snow that covered the slopes and continued to swirl down from above.
One was a Professor of Advanced Comparative Anthropology. His name was Jewell Gregory. Eireath got the sense he was incredibly proud of this title and degree, which seemed to mean close to nothing, but despite his education, he was often incredibly lazy. It made one wonder why he was struggling up a snowy mountain. But he was tall, with silky amber hair and a full beard and mustache to match. His forehead was high and his cheeks hollow, his skin nut brown, and his eyes were a deep, curious grey. The other's name was Charity Shauna Bryan and she was a philanthropist, a quiet one, but very hateful at times. She was small but lithe, with precise hair the color of dark chocolate and large brown eyes. Her eyebrows were thin and her feet and hands small, but her demeanor was very earnest and determined. Eireath kept special wary attention on her. Both humans were dressed in warm clothing and thick layered boots, with hoods and caps and gloves, jackets and warm pants. Professor Gregory's outfit was in shades of blue and grey, and Charity's was simple and clean tan.
But the fascination which had drawn the two here today had been something of a glamorized tip off in the form of a small figure with pale hair drawn back into a ponytail and a long brown 18th century coat. Eireath recognized the figure in the images of the humans' memories, so she kept quietly ahead, obscured by her own wish not to be seen and by the falling, swirling, snow.
We don't know what it was, Professor, Charity said impatiently as she pushed her hood back a little. How do you know it won't cause us harm? Or that it won't be leading us straight into a trap?
Jewell Gregory seemed too eager to acknowledge this possibility. His tall frame wobbled and slipped as he tramped his way up the icy slope, his dark grey eyes glinting with fascination. A lost culture, he said, wetting his lips briefly with his tongue only to have them chap immediately in the dry, cold air. A lost culture it wanted to show us, something preserved by someone in these mountains.
Eireath knew what they spoke of, but she herself had not hoarded human things since coming here. There were no books. At least there hadn't been. Perhaps things had changed by now. The pebbles clinked gently between her claws as she turned her head to the side slightly, regarding them. Humans, fastidious, consistent, frightened, weak. But oh so drawn to the knowledge and sound, to their only bridges between the world they perceived and the spirit realms of the universe. But the Dragon continued to soar above them, with a mental nudge here and there until they and she discovered, almost in the same moment, a hidden alcove, safe from the snow, tunneling into the mountainside. It was not a place Eireath remembered being. Why had the faery led them here, and who had accumulated all of these books? There were a fair number nestled into the craggy corners of the alcove.
Professor Gregory whispered in awe as he dropped to his knees and squirmed past the snowy overhang and into the darkened depths of the small cave. Charity reluctantly followed him, pulling a flashlight from her coat pocket and shining it over the dank and murky contents of the little recess. Books of all kinds were pushed up against the far walls.
I don't know, Charity said uncertainly. It could be—
No, no, you don't understand what we've found here! the professor exclaimed as he picked up a book and brushed off the cover. Innovative Alchemy, he read, his lips moving reverently over a whispered voice. Immediately he sat down in a crouch, maneuvering his back against the side of the alcove and began to flip through the book. The information in it was genuine and rich, but badly organized. This presented, of course, no problem to the Dragon who was now curiously observing the proceedings in the form of a small grey cat from a corner of the cave's overhang. She could take feeling and knowledge directly from the text without having to sort and filter her way through the words. But she could tell that Professor Gregory was having quite a struggle with it. And not just because it was in a strange dialect of Latin. Fortunately, the Professor of Advanced Comparative Anthropology knew many languages, including the ones ancient and lost into dust scattered by the wind.
After a moment Charity lifted a book as well, one yellowed with age and scrawled in gold lettering across the cover. Essential Glamours. The very mention of glamour' made Charity rather uncertain, but she opened the book, surprised to see it was in French. She began to read through bits of it, looking searchingly at the slips of paper bearing notes in a language that looked like a very strange dialect of French. She could not make out what they said or were trying to say, but they seemed to be marking relevant passageways in the book. By the time she looked up from her curious find, Jewell had already sifted through and begun to sort several books.
Have you thought to consider where these came from? Charity said as she replaced the Essential Glamours book.
Not yet, Professor Gregory replied. I'm sorting them now some are exceedingly hard to understand. There are books here in English, Latin, French, and German. Even a few in Chinese or Korean, or another of those eastern languages I can't for the life of me comprehend. Ah, Ms. Bryan here we go. Lifting a large book from the side of the as-of-yet untouched stack, he held it out to Charity.
The Element of Immortality, she read from the cover. Really, I had no idea such a thing was an she said, with a touch of ice in her voice, but she opened the large flat book and paged through it slowly and carefully with her gloved fingers. There were many colorful illustrations, looking like they had been painstakingly done by hand with ink and color.
I don't think I quite understand these ideas, Charity said at least, reaching to hand the book back to the Professor.
You don't? he said as he took the book. I believe it's focusing on the point that immortality as it is often thought of is a mere illusion. Immortality is like perfection. It is destroyed by a world of uncertainty and change and indeed never existed in one in the first place. Jewell Gregory chuckled in humor as he set the book aside. I'm sure that must be what it's trying to say, he said consolingly to his partner.
Maybe, but I—oh! Charity's eyes shot open wide and she pointed at a shape that had crept near to Professor Gregory's foot in his distraction. How did he get up here?
Jewell looked downwards to find himself staring into a pair of blazing copper eyes, belonging to the crouched figure of a grey tabby cat. Well, well, hello there, he said, seeming quite surprised himself. It was a wonder the animal seemed alive and well and had not frozen to death. He reached to pat its head, but it shot out one grey paw to let it rest on the book that had been laying near the Professor. It was a plain manuscript, its binding falling apart from age. Printed on the cover were the words, Book of Sayings. Jewell had already flipped through it, and found it very insightful, and intriguing; the sayings in the book were in many different languages, fortunately most of which he knew.
You know, kit-cat, now don't you? Jewell said with a chuckle as he patted the cat's ears. I can see it in those eyes of yours. There is culture in that feline head of yours. I shall call you Mathema though I ought not to name you since I must certainly bring you down from this frozen mountain! He scratched gently, and the cat merely tolerated it, half closing the blazing eyes.
He seems very strange, Charity spoke up after a moment. Are you sure he isn't sick? Rabid, perhaps?
It doesn't seem that way to me, was Professor Gregory's thoughtful response. He's quiet for a cat, I will admit, but he doesn't seem to be sick. The cat meowed. It was a mellow sound, almost sounding lower than a cat's range normally went. The blazing eyes opened completely and stared up again at Professor Gregory, who returned the gaze curiously but without fear. Around and between the cat's silky paws, he noticed, were a couple of pebbles that almost seemed to quiver and glow on their own. Curious at their presence, he reached out a hand to touch them.
The cat batted his hand away, but its claws stayed sheathed, and it lay back, regarding him with a superior look that seemed to tell him he was being tolerated and had no business trifling. The professor was perplexed, but decided not to push his luck with the odd animal, instead turning his attention back to the books. Should we leave them here? he asked.
Charity said without hesitation. We don't know whose they are or how they got here way up in the snow capped Alberta Mountains we can come back. If they're still here, then perhaps we would do better to take them than leave them, so they aren't wasted or destroyed. But the look on her face betrayed the fact that she felt many, or at least some, of the books in the cave were best left where they were. She met the cat's copper eyes and felt her resolve on that point strengthen almost imperceptibly. Let's just leave them, she said as she stood up.
Professor Gregory looked quite reluctant. It's a long trek back up here, he said. We wouldn't have to make two trips if
No, just leave them, Charity said, the ice creeping back into her voice, although she remained calm and composed. And I'd leave that cat, too, if I were you.
The poor creature will freeze, admonished the professor, but he took his hand away from the cat and stood up. The animal didn't seem too eager to accompany them, anyway. It lashed its dark tail, the appendage skittering agitatedly across the damp dirt. Charity shook her head. A moment later, the two of them had bundled themselves up, pulled their gloves and mitts back on, and trudged back out into the snow. The cat watched them go, its tail swishing and thrashing, paws tense against the ground where the pebbles lay.
This was not anywhere near the particular range where Eireath had made her lair. But it was still in the mountainous vicinity. And who had brought these books here? When the humans had long departed, descending down the frozen mountainside to whatever vehicle had brought them here; Eireath discarded the cat form and moved closer to the books, gently poking her muzzle against them. Her eyes lit, blazing in the darkness, as she absorbed the energy traces that lay between and among the pages. Some of these books were not written, or not completely written, by humans. Many were written by humans but copied from sources or scrolls that had not originated with humans. Fae or merely odd? Some of the books were in distinctly inhuman tongues—not Eastern characters as the human professor had assumed. She recognized the hand that had brought them in, and looked up to see a radiant smile, a smile on the pale, shrunken, face of a faery she had met once before on this continent.
You've come back to North America! it said, seeming to rejoice as its thin hands clapped together. The name it used was of no consequence of interest to her, but she knew what he meant by it. There was no ocean between her and this fae now. For some reason, it seemed he did not deign to cross large bodies of water full of currents. Not even streams. She wondered how she knew this and felt the fae's mind poke at hers and then withdraw, trying to hide from her omniscient senses. It glowered at her with its dark eyes that sparkled against the reflection from the snow. Its drawn and emaciated skin seemed paler than usual, fading from its usual pink to an icy, bluish tinge. Its red blonde hair streaked with silver was still drawn back in a ponytail, and the long, coarse, brown buttoned coat that it wore seemed insufficient to keep out the chill. Eireath, of course, did not notice the cold, nor pay attention to the faery's obvious discomfort in it.
was all she said. I have returned and here I will stay.
the faery asked, and it was obvious that it was curious. But Eireath only looked at it, her copper eyes burning into its dark ones. It backed up a couple of steps, and she noticed that the period shoes of the late 17th century had been replaced with thick woolen moccasins. Ceylon Ghe, why?
The Dragon wondered at the small being. She could not sense its intentions as easily as a human's could be sensed—it knew how to hide them and how to cloud its nature in a glamour that, if unable to fool her, might keep her from knowing its true mind. But she could tell enough about the small being that whatever its intentions were, they were purely selfish.
These books—are they yours? she said instead. She already knew that the fae had brought them.
It does not matter if they are or not, the faery creature insisted stubbornly. But I brought them for you they are a gift. Won't you accept them?
Unquestioningly she gathered the manuscripts close to her. There was nothing strange about the books, after all. It seemed the fae had merely decided to use them as bait, but that was of no consequence to her. There were no traps it had laid for her, her death did not wait on its hands among her futures. Whatever it wanted from her, it had not yet asked; but was also cleverly hiding these intentions.
I will, she said in reply. What is it you are awaiting your chance to ask in return? Tell me.
The faery hesitated, but only for a moment. It was the nature of Dragons to accept nothing less than the truth and entire honesty in one's demeanor. The truth did not have to be clear—Dragons were immensely fond of riddles—but it had to be truth. And truth Eireath would have if she were going to pay a moment's worth of attention more to the fae. So it hurried to make its request.
Ceylon Ghe, there is a task I must complete, and you are the only one near to help me complete it, it said, its dark eyes flashing expectantly as it folded the long fingers of its cold hands together. This task—requires only that I fly on the back of a Dragon over the peninsulas of the bay. The images and feelings that accompanied his vague request were quite clear; clear enough that Eireath could easily tell just which landforms he meant, in what manner he wanted to fly, and what it would involve. The one thing that was unclear was why, but in its lack of clarity there was no reason. No true reason, nothing that mattered.
You make a silly request, she said, her own voice sounded snowy. The snowflakes whirled under the overhang to lightly coat the fae's feet and the books. Your reason for asking this favor is inane and trivial. Go away.
I knew you would think so! he snapped. That is why I did not ask you outright! I never really wanted to go with you, three centuries ago, but I felt it a necessary travel if only to fulfill my task.
Faeries are trivial and outlandish creatures, Eireath murmured as she stood up. Their ingredients and their whims match their capricious and silly natures. The things your minds cook up have their basis only in the glamour of magick, nothing in truth, nothing in reality. Why your people still play and enjoy themselves this way is beyond my understanding. It is something I once tried and will never feel the need to try again. Now go! Not waiting for the small fae to leave, Eireath gathered the books and her two pebbles, and leapt out of the overhang, spreading her wings to catch the whitening sky, along with its swirling ice crystals, and she soared upwards, to a higher peak on a longer and more dangerous range.
Faeries were tricksters, and delighted in making others perform silly and useless tasks with no relevance either to the meaning or goal of a succession of such things. Whether for sadistic amusement or some strange property of glamour, it was unclear why such things were so popular. Even humans were exasperated by this trait, which they attributed to demons and devils. Their demons and devils could be as they were imagined, or they could be none other than a group of malicious fae. Humans were so blind, so foolish, they were easy prey for faery tricks and mischief, but such activity was below the Dragon; she had tried it once, found it unfulfilling and distracting; leading her too far from the balanced point between the two sides of things.
She brought the books to one of the caverns; not the largest in this system of mountains, but the largest that was at this elevation, far into a frozen peak where humans would often never come. She did not care if the faery would follow the books, or her, up here. There was nothing he could do to her and though she had begun to feel a mild and very slight stirring of what had caused her, long ago, to attack and destroy the humans that had set fire to her collection of books back in Europe, she did not act on it or nurture it, and it soon passed. Though, when she was a youngling, faery antics had amused her, she had no time for them now. There were other pursuits to occupy her time with. Still she felt little desire to occupy herself with humans; but that did not mean their books and tools were not of interest.
The pebbles and the faery's books she left in a sheltered corner of the cavern she had chosen. She lay near the entrance as the swirling snow whipped past, sometimes spilling into the mouth of the cave, leaving a cold white dusting along the entrance. Her claws traced geometric shapes and spirals in the thin carpet of snow as she lay there, contemplating, her breath steaming in the cold air and being swept away just as quickly by the wind and obscured by the falling snow. The tip of her tail lay in the edge of the onslaught of snow, and soon enough was buried in the crystals that came eddying ever faster downwards.
Almost as if from far, far away, she heard sounds, patterns of sound that twined together and strove against each other, music that called to her soul and resonated with the earth below her and with the snow that continued to cascade down from the sky. Silver strains that floated in harmony with occasional pitches of gold and flew on, over the skies and mountaintops, over the worlds, pursued from below by snatches of black and red, stirring and coiling beneath, until the black pooled in on itself and whispered in its own counterpoint to the silver that sang high in the air. Still the red soared on, aggressive and piercing, lancing sounds that leapt and darted away from and towards the silver and gold, but always missing, always falling short.
Eireath opened her eyes and the music faded. The snow had piled thickly on her tail and fore claws and the edge of one half furled wing. She glanced back towards the books and the pebbles in the reasonably sizable cavern she lay curled in. They seemed distant, a world away from her and from the sounds that spread ever farther and farther outward, whispering and singing, moving and flowing, until they immaculately conjured in the Dragon's mind images, images and pictures, feelings, that flowed onwards and did not stop.
Whether they were memories or actualities was hard to tell, but she filtered through them. She thought she almost saw, or heard, the young human Palmiro, hair singed by fire, playing a violin. A German man named Victor fleeing to Russia. A young woman dressed in patchwork and a ragged coat and hat, playing a fae and golden fiddle as she danced. An aged and sad faced, plump, dark-skinned woman named Babirye; her hands calloused from picking cotton. A dolphin chuckled and flipped its tail through a stream of water. An angry banker stomped after a grey tabby cat. A young Irish milkmaid running after a herd of cows. The crash of waves against a rocky shoreline under gleaming stars. Empty space, so far from all those stars and all the worlds, all the planets, and yet a peace of mind that encompassed them all. An underground city built in breathtaking archways.
Those were the memories. But there were images, too, images she knew came not from her memories but were formed of the sounds that had leaked in from those other worlds
She saw Raga's mirror like scales as they glittered and sparkled in the faint light from within the cavernous domes of his underground city. She felt his loss and his sorrow but neither remorse nor regret. She felt his mind tentatively, ever so lightly and briefly, following the silver trail that wound past and around the worlds. As he followed it, she felt his mind growing its awareness around the trail, smoldering at its edges, twining and coiling along its length. And suddenly, like a crystal clear drop of rain, she saw the reason why—a soul, a lost and free soul, had fled from the silver trail, fled past the underground city. It had come so close for just one reason—it had lived there before. It had lived there and then it had died, only to reincarnate elsewhere and when its new incarnation died, Silver caught the soul. And then he had let it go. Why? Eireath could not tell. Maybe Raga couldn't, either. But he had let it go, and as it had passed him, Raga had brushed it with his awareness and recognized it—recognized its memories of this place. Raga's promise that the souls would remember him and turn away from Silver had been broken. This, Eireath realized, was why. This was why a pair of eyes blazed from under the darkness of the city's archways, refracting thousands of times as they flickered, reflecting onto his mirror like scales.
And Silver had let the soul go. He never let souls go! Eireath knew this, at least, from what she had sensed of him. They were his only companions in the world. But why he needed these companions was still rather baffling to her. What use were they after one had already learned everything from them? This had been her sole purpose in interacting with the humans on Earth; learning about them, finding out how they acted and thought. Their movements and feelings twined all together in a gigantic, intricate tapestry of many different colored threads, each bound to the others, affecting each other, and together forming an incredible and breath taking pattern the pattern of the universe. The pattern that encompassed all things.
And yet, the Dragon still remembered, vaguely, what it had felt like to care for the strange humans, to protect their welfare, to interfere with their paths, even to take them under her metaphorical wing. That care was something she had never felt tugged around by, she was no puppet on strings like so many humans were; tied and fastened to their emotions where they could not see the knots, or did not want to see them. It was a bizarre state they lived in, and not one she ever wished to duplicate. But at the same time she had moved into that state just enough, just barely, just at the edges, to care, and to interfere.
So what was Raga, there, in his city; what was he thinking, what was he doing? Had his promise meant that much to him? It couldn't be that. It must be something else perhaps he wondered; if Silver had one of the souls that had been under his care, would he have others? Maybe it was that care, that desire to let them go on to their lives, follow their own destinies, that made this uncertainty flash in Raga, made his attention center on that silver trail. Caring. A very silly thing, very silly indeed. Eireath cared, but only for the harmony of the universe as a whole. She could sense and feel the imbalances caused by individuals in many places, not any more by Silver than by a single human who built a nuclear power plant on the wrong ley line, or who killed other humans, or who disrupted others' paths, or who introduced staggering new things that would further separate the human populace from its spiritual self. Silver was no different! But perhaps the fate of the souls in his claws made a difference to Raga.
The images were clear as glass. The feelings that accompanied them were colorful and orchestrated themselves along the threads of the universe. A red Dragon blotted out the sun with his wings; the light turning blood-red itself as it shone through the membranes of his wings. Mirrors glittered and flashed, torches exploded in a shower of stone and luminosity. A ghostly pale moon peeked from behind shrouds of mist, and long silver wings stirred and swept the mist until nothing remained but clear, cold, sky, the swollen moon hanging there in the sky. The sky was dark blue, the edges and shadows of the moon tinted blue.
Even the shrouded mist was blue.
The entire world was blue, as if watercolor paint had been slopped over it, or it had been encased in smoky glass blue glass. It was a cool and calming color, but that was all the color of it. Even the gouts of flame from between a Dragon's jaws were cool and blue. Was there nothing in the world that was not blue? Yes, one thing the glow of a soul. A soft, golden glow, warm as it tinged and flavored the edges of the blue, blue, world in a fair sincerity that sighed and spread itself like warm melted butter across the field of eternal blue. Was this what Silver saw? Even as she looked at it, she wondered at colors. But this was clearly Silver's feeling, Silver's perception. He saw the world in blue. Why? Was he closed off so much from the energy and all encompassing harmony of the universe that only the immediate drift off, the immediate twigs and flowers from the stem, the souls of the beings that made up that universe; that he could see, that reflected in his world as that warm gold? But they were not gold, as Eireath was quite sure. They were not gold at all, they were every color, every color of the rainbow, all blended together into white where every color was present; barely evident, but all there, conjoined as one. Why, then, could he only see the gold? Even against solely blue?
Raga could see the colors, but not at the moment. At the moment he saw only the gold, the copper, the red. Shades of maroon that darkened the edges of his vision as his mind narrowed, intensifying on Silver and on the potentialities of Silver keeping possession of souls who he had promised would not come under Silver's rule. There was no way to tell if indeed he did have possession of such souls, not without going and finding out. Not from this distance. Though Eireath watched in amazement, her own copper eyes burning from behind her scaled eyelids as she perceived everything she could not tell either. Nor had she any real idea what Raga was going to do. His spiked tail flipped and lashed, and his great wings spread, holding the light from the torches underneath their great expanses, as he leapt into the yawning vastness of the cavern and flew quickly towards one side of it, moving out of that world and into the space between worlds.
After all, as any Dragon knew, it was the space between the worlds that made the universe, made the harmony, and the pattern. Just as it was the space between the notes that created music. Just as it was the space between lines and shapes that created words to go on the pages of a book. It was space that went between things and formed them, fleshed them out, put them where they were. It was the negative of the positive, the down of the up and the up of the down, the in of the out and the out of the in. And it was this space that Dragons realized, followed, and utilized. Many other beings did, as well, and just as many lived in blindness of the importance that space played in the world, that space and dual opposites of all the properties that had been created from the original illusion of duality were the key to moving along between the colorful and ever changing threads, the key to moving through and past them, the key to becoming one again with the universe even as the dual poles became one.
Silver was there, in that space, between the worlds, and all around him the souls gathered. All around him these things which were the only snatches of color, the only part of eternity that, apparently, he could see. And yet, he could know it, could use its properties. He had somehow become blind to it, but how? Blue was not white; it was only one color of the multi-hued spectrum, just one color, not like white, which was all of the colors. Blue was a limited view. Why did Silver have it, then? Eireath did not know. Neither did Raga. But Raga seemed determined to find out, now, to confront his rival over the matter of the souls and face Silver's choices and his power with Raga's own knowledge and power.
Eireath felt the urge to leap up, come away from this world and from the snowstorm that raged on the peaks of the mountains, and follow the silver trail, follow the Dragons she had finally met, the people of her own kind, her own race, holding within their hearts and spirits the familiar quality that made them what she was; made them Dragon. But there were others out there, many others. Older than her, younger than her, clouded to the universe, involved with lesser species, dancing, singing, traveling, destroying, creating. They were everywhere! Not just on or near this world, but in and around thousands of different worlds, each playing a different role, each individual uniquely evolved and beautiful, coming in all colors and shapes, and each of them embodying the universe in themselves.
But even as Silver and Raga were quite aware of each other and raised each of their heads, sounded each of their own voices, and spread their own pairs of wings, Eireath kept herself content to watch from afar, to lie in the ever deepening snow as she listened to their songs, watched and felt as they strove against each other, and as they spoke and whispered, called and rumbled, fought and befriended. She watched all of this, but it was not her confrontation, and she felt no desire to join in on either side. Raga was the first of her own kind she had met, but Silver had given to her her name among Dragons. She held no desire to take the side of either. She loved both. Just as she loved the universe, loved the Earth, loved all the worlds, loved all the humans. The kind of unconditional love granted to those who held an understanding of the eternal harmony of all things, all things which spread out in ever growing patterns and cycles. It was beautiful, and she was a part of it, and also an embodiment of it, of its message and its growth. She was so young, only 500 years old, and yet here before her was a universe she was a crucial part of. Here before her was a race that she belonged to and yet had no need to interact with. She had been Dragon before she had ever met other Dragons. It was who she was, just as it was who Silver and Raga were. And every other Dragon she had never met. They were all here, she was all of them.
And when she opened her eyes and saw the whiteness of the snowflakes covering her scales, her wings, her face, she was content. There were Dragons for every place and world. This one was hers.
The end! ^.^ At least for now. That completes my novel of November 2003. It's just a history of a character I've had for years now... but she never really had a history or a name... well now she does! Yay! And I introduced some fun NEW characters, too, like Silver... I like him for some reason... but, a funny story! I have a Ruth Thompson calendar... I finished my novel yesterday, and, today, I turned the calendar to December... and saw this picture:
Gosh darn it if it doesn't look almost exactly like my mental image of Silver XD That's all I have ta say. u.u At some point I'll have some pictures drawn of Eireath.. but I just wanted to share the funny Silver coincidence on my calendar.