Digging a hole was not a task for a noble dragon.

  Digging a hole because my Edith asked me to, was a slightly different matter. In spite of my Cassia’s earnest intention to do the task herself, digging individual graves for every person who had died proved too difficult for her. The soil of the Redstone Hills was more stone than dirt. After digging a foot down, you started to hit large rocks that couldn’t be moved with two people.

  Visk was even less help than Cassia. They had done well enough picking through the bandit camp the day prior, but it was clear that they were suffering in the spring sunshine. At every opportunity, they had their cloak’s hood pulled up over their head. By the time the sun was at its highest point, both of them were bushwhacked.

  “We’d be better off burning the bodies,” Edith grumbled next to me. She’d slept poorly the previous night and it showed. “But I worry that setting another fire might set the bloody hills ablaze. It’s not rained a drop since the Thaw. We’re already pushing out luck, between the goblins and the logging camp.”

  “So can ye go help the lass?” Edith asked me. “Ye may not be able to get six feet down, but stacking the stones on top will keep the critters off at least.”

  That’s how a dragon ended up digging rocks out of the ground like a common badger. It wasn’t particularly difficult. Digging the goblin out of its hidey hole had been more strenuous. My hooked claws made for surprisingly good digging implements. Scraping them against the hard stones only seemed to sharpen them further, rather than blunt them.

  Once I’d gotten down to a suitable level, working outwards went more smoothly. My Cassia and Visk went behind me at a small distance. Together they were able to lower each tarp wrapped body into the hole and cover it in soil. The dirt was then tamped back down and covered in piles of stones. It was still hard work for the pair, but neither complained.

  It made me wonder if their conversation last night had formed some kind of bond that was invisible to me.

  Visk acted less shifty than they had the previous day. They didn’t speak much. Something was clearly on their mind, but they repeatedly deflected away from it whenever Cassia tried to start a conversation. By the time the last body went into the ground, the sun was low on the horizon.

  Cassia sat on top of the cairn that the pair had erected. The red stones of the hills glowed in the afternoon light beneath her. Visk had gone to lay down in the shade of a tree with their cloak pulled over their face.

  I watched my Cassia silently. She had always been reserved when I grew up with her in the Cursed Forest. After she’d woken up in Edith’s House, she’d become a lot more affectionate towards me. Being around Edith had helped her open up more. I’d heard her speak more in the last few weeks than the rest of my time with her.

  Now she looked disturbingly empty. When Edith or Visk were around, she tried to put a brave face on it and smiled frequently. With just me and her, the mask slipped off. Maybe she was so used to my presence that she forgot I was there.

  I knew that the events since we’d entered the Redstone Hills had wounded her deeply. She’d faced many challenges before we ever got here. She’d lost her childhood home, almost died, and woke up to find the creature she’d raised was not what she thought it was.

  That same creature was capable of incredible violence. My Cassia wanted to believe that life could be like a fairy tale, that she could be a princess with a kind dragon. It wasn’t a logical desire, but that didn’t mean she was a fool. Her kind heart had been why she’d raised a baby dragon, even after it had scarred her face.

  I didn’t want my Cassia to lose her kindness or her love of fairy tales. They were a part of her.

  She’d asked me to go somewhere with her after the hard work was done, but she didn’t seem prepared for that yet. I needed to find something for her, before she came to ask me about it. What exactly could help heal her heart was beyond me. Edith would know better.

  I padded quietly away from the cairn and went looking for Edith. She wasn’t too far away. A small individual grave had been set at a distance from the mass burial of the bandits. It wasn’t in direct line of sight. Edith had insisted on handling it herself, even after I’d offered to help her.

  Edith knelt on both knees in front of the grave, watching it silently as I approached. She didn’t look at me for a while, even when I sat down on my haunches next to her.

  “She wasn’t dead when you got there, was she Sanguine?” she asked me quietly.

  I ducked my head down, shame coursing through me. My tail curled up around me. I shouldn’t have been surprised that my Edith would figure this out so quickly. She was a Healer, after all.

  “No,” I replied softly. “She wasn’t. She…” I didn’t know what to say. Conveying that moment of suffering was beyond the words I could think of. “... all she said… was ‘Please’.”

  Edith drew her hands up. One palm was placed over her mouth. The other held onto the broach I’d given her. When she took it off, a deep pain that I’d never experienced coursed through me. It felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.

  She pressed the broach against her skin, just below her neckline. The pain faded a little bit as a foreign warmth settled over me. For just a little while it felt like I was back in my egg. I could hear Edith’s heartbeat like it was in my own body.

  “I understand, Sanguine,” she said to me. “Truly. There have been many times in my life, when I was faced with immeasurable suffering in other people… I recognized when I saw her, the same kind of magic ye did with Magnus.”

  Edith stood up slowly and walked towards me. She held onto the broach in one hand and wrapped her other arm around my neck. I unfurled my wings and wrapped them around her, raising one leg to pull her close. She simply held me for a little bit.

  “I’d like to think that if I’d been there, I could’a done something,” Edith whispered to me. “But I wasn’t. Ye didn’t have any of the time, or the equipment, or rare ingredients that I’d collected for Magnus.”

  “It just breaks my heart, that you had to make that kind of choice my Beasty. Ye and Cassia are so young. I know ye are… I wish I knew how old ye are, in human terms. Sometimes ye are so wise and strong, but then I turn around and ye remind me of a wee lad. Cassia too. She’s an adult and a fine young lady at that.”

  “But neither of ye… This world is so dark, Sanguine. I’ve seen just as bad as what happened to the bandits. More than once. Sometimes to people I loved. I wanted better than that for ye, for Cassia. I wanted ye two, to come up into these hills and have another little cabin to live peacefully.”

  “And then ye two took me on as your own and I… I wanted that for myself too.”

  Edith pressed herself against me for a long while after that. I didn’t speak, nor did she. I simply stared out across the deepening sunset in the sky. Eventually she pulled herself back. I loosened my embrace, but kept her slightly wrapped up in my wings.

  “That girl-” Edith said, indicating the grave. “-had something awful happen to her. Ye took away her suffering. Sometimes that’s all ye can do. Ye shouldn’t have had to do that, my Sanguine, but I know ye will do anything in ye’r power to prevent it from happening again, aye?”

  Her faith in me was a balm that I’d needed to soothe the dull ache in my chest. Edith fixed the broach back into her hair, stroking it with one finger.

  “Edith… how do I… take suffering away?” I asked her. “From Cassia.”

  Edith seemed a bit nonplussed by that question.

  “... Ye mean helping her… heartache?” Edith asked, placing her hands on her hips. “I can’t imagine ye mean doing some manner of magic on her.” I quickly shook my head.

  “She… hurts, deeply,” I explained as best as I could. “She wants to… believe in good things. Happy stories. I am…” I looked down at my wickedly hooked claws. “-not a dragon from a story. I kill easily. Each time, it hurts her heart.” One of my claws tapped on Edith’s broach. “I wonder… if a gift will help? But she already… has my gemstone.”

  Edith reached up and touched the broach, humming to herself. Her brows were knitted together in thought.

  “Well, ye ain’t wrong about… most of that beasty,” Edith said contemplatively. “She might’ve grown up tough, but she is a young lady at heart.” Her arms crossed under her chest and she pressed her head against my scales as she kept talking.

  “Seeing the world’s darkness has hurt her, aye. But don’t forget beasty, she knew a fair bit about the world being dark before she ever left the Forest. Ye were a ray of light in the dark forest for her. Now she’s got to face the fact that she can’t change ye’r nature, no matter how much she… cares for ye.”

  “Edith, why do you… get quiet, when it is ‘young lady things’,” I asked. “You and Cassia. When it is a ‘young lady thing’... I can hear the silence. Words that are not said. There are… many lectures, but I understand little.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  My Edith looked at me strangely. There was an abnormal amount of color in her cheeks.

  “That’s…,” she sighed deeply. “That’s why ye are so bloody difficult, ye beasty. Ye are sharp as a tack, but ye know so little. It’s…” She patted her cheeks. “This is my bloody fault. Cassia is… Ho’ Gods. This day has just got my head all over the place.”

  Edith stepped further away from me and paced back and forth for a few moments.

  “Humans are…” Edith waved her hands in front of her vaguely. “Complicated. Ye know that, beasty. I see how ye look at us when we get worked up about certain things. Women, that is, human females…” She cleared her throat. “When a human female is… young, from the time she’s a baby ‘til… she’s about yea high-” Edith gestured a distance above the ground that was roughly fourteen hands high.

  “We call her a ‘girl’. That means a female child. A girl lives at home with her parents. Usually, her mother will teach her all the things she’ll need to know to help around the house, farm, or wherever she lives.”

  It seemed I was in for a long lecture on ‘young lady things’, so I laid down on my belly. Edith kept walking back and forth in front of me while I listened attentively.

  “When a girl reaches the right age, she goes through… changes. Like…” Edith looked at me. “Ye didn’t have your horns and such when we first met. All those… hard plates just popped out all of a sudden, aye?” I nodded.

  “Those changes mean her body is… getting ready to be an adult,” Edith said carefully. “But she’s not ready yet!” She wagged her finger at me. I blinked. What had I done?

  “Around that time we stop calling her a girl and start calling her a ‘young lady’. That’s what it means, that a female human is becoming an adult, but isn’t there yet.”

  “But… you said… Cassia is an adult?” I asked, my head tilted to one side. I distinctly remembered Edith saying that earlier in the conversation. Edith threw up her hands over her face and sighed.

  “That’s- Yes I did say that. Bloody damnit,” she hissed to herself. Slowly her hands slid down her face. The color in her cheeks was deeper now. “Physically… yes. Our Cassia is an adult. We’d call that… a woman.” She breathed in and out deeply and cleared her throat. “But she… did not grow up around other humans, Sanguine. Not for most of her life. There’s been no one around to teach her… about things a woman needs to know.”

  “... I did not grow up, around dragons,” I said, partly to myself. “What things… do I not know… that I need to?” Edith immediately pointed both her index fingers at me.

  “Yes! Neither of ye… were taught a lot of things!” She said excitedly. “When she was, ah, the right age… Cassia’s mother would have… well if she lived around other humans…” She paused and flapped her hands.

  “Well most women send their young ladies to live with other people for a bit. Close family. Another older woman who can teach her about… how being a woman works. It’s also to learn a useful trade. I’ve uhm…” Edith rubbed her hands together. “I’ve been trying to have… certain talks with our Cassia but…” She huffed. “Ye two are bloody inseparable!”

  “Normally that’s not a bad thing but… we’ve not had any chance to slow down and talk. I need to… teach her certain things that are not…” She slumped a bit. “Even if ye were a human, Sanguine, there are plenty of things women don’t tell our men. It’s private and… embarrassing. I know ye wouldn’t care, but this sort of thing matters a lot to us. Especially Cassia, since she’s… got a lot of notions in her head from her books.”

  “So what… do I do, if I cannot know… about these things?” I asked in frustration.

  “Most human men go work until it blows over,” Edith commented blandly. “But… that’s not fair to ye, Sanguine. If something is confusing, I’ll try to explain it to you.”

  “... What if you are… the one having ‘young lady’ things?” I prodded her. Edith raised her hands to her face again.

  “Gods give me peace, Sanguine, I swear ye will give me nightmares,” she said in exasperation. “I will try to explain, if it’s me. But if I tell ye to wait, ye better listen. Neither ye nor Cassia are adults yet to me. Ye’r bodies may look like it-” She squinted at my scaled hide. “-probably. But these things need time. Time we’ve not had.”

  “So do I… get Cassia a gift?” I asked, circling back around to what started this lecture. Edith rubbed at her temples. “She wants… to go alone with me… for a bit.”

  Edith raised both fingers by her head, pointing them in the air. Her eyes closed and I could hear her counting backwards from a number larger than I had yet learned. It took her several deep breaths and rounds of counting before she opened her eyes.

  “Nightmares, bloody nightmares,” she muttered before looking at me. “Did Cassia ask ye to do that?”

  “Yes, after… the work was completed,” I said carefully. I didn’t know exactly why Edith was upset, but I suspected it was because of the ‘time we’d not had yet’.

  “Sanguine, I’m going to ask ye to wait,” Edith said slowly and precisely. “Not, that ye shouldn’t spend time with our Cassia. But I keep putting off a talk with her and neither of ye know how to… to just…” She took another deep breath. “I am going to talk to Cassia, now. Like her mother should’ve been around to do. I’d like ye to go somewhere else while we do. Within calling distance, mind ye.”

  “Alright,” I said simply. That seemed to give Edith some relief.

  “Good… How about this,” she said calmly. “There’s… that tree in the cave. I think it’s a pomegranate. You don’t see those around these parts, but their fruit is delicious. Go fetch it careful-like. When I’m done having this talk with our Cassia, I want ye to bring it over and share it with her.” She held up a finger.

  “Don’t just drop it in her hand. I want ye to use your big sharp claws… clean ye’r claws first in water, by the way. -use your claws to slice it up carefully. Then give her the slices, one at a time.” She tapped her foot on the ground. “Ye need to remind her that ye are hers, beasty. That’d ye’d never hurt her. I’ll be honest, lately ye have scared the shite out of me and her both. It’s… mostly not ye’r fault.”

  “So do this and show her that ye will take care of her, even with how big and dangerous ye have gotten, aye?”

  I considered Edith’s words for a while before nodding. She patted me affectionately on my head.

  “Good boy,” she said sweetly. My tail wagged behind me, but I didn’t try to stop it. “Now off ye get. I need to go have… another long talk with a young lady.”

  Edith turned and headed over towards the cairn and Cassia. As she left, I considered that I really needed to find a way to show Edith my appreciation as well. It was a shame there was only one pomegranate.

  ‘At least you aren’t a young lady’, I thought as I settled down next to Bronston.

  The horse had been acting even more nervous since we’d arrived at the bandit camp. While a horse’s nose wasn’t as sensitive as a dragon’s, the smell of blood and death lingered in the air. I wondered if it might be kinder to set the poor creature free.

  Then again, the wilderness was not exactly a kind place for a large prey animal living on its own. Prey creatures lived by hiding or being faster than their predators. Horses were herd animals. They relied on a combination of their speed and numbers to keep any one individual from being picked off. Bronston would probably not last long all on his own in unfamiliar territory.

  Bronston gave a short nicker of concern, straining at his lead as he shuffled away from me. In spite of our familiarity, the horse was better at recognizing that I was a predator than the humans were. The only thing keeping him from trying to break his lead at the moment was the fruit I carried. I could see his equine eyes glancing down at it whenever he thought I wasn’t looking.

  “Not for you, Bronston,” I rumbled softly. The horse flicked his ears when he heard his name and nickered again. “If I find another… actually, a third fruit. Then… you may try it, Bronston.” Whether the horse understood me or not, it shifted back and forth on its hooves.

  It was fully night time again by the time that I saw Edith and Cassia coming back towards the gorge. Visk wandered back not long after them and went to find somewhere to lay down. As the pair of my companions came towards me, I could see that Edith was leading Cassia by her hand on her shoulder.

  My Cassia and my Edith stopped in front of me. When neither of them spoke, I tilted my head in curiosity. Had the conversation between them been so terrible that both were lost for words. Edith broke the stalemate by pushing Cassia towards me and letting go of her hold on Cassia’s shoulder.

  “Ah… uhm…,” Cassia murmured to me. She was looking at the ground rather than at me. The toe of her boot twisted back and forth on the stony soil. “Sanguine I…” She looked plaintively back at Edith.

  “Nope,” the older woman said, crossing her arms. “Ye need to handle this one lass. If ye want the beasty to understand ye, ye need to say it ye’rself.”

  Cassia grimaced and looked back towards me. Her hands clenched and unclenched by her sides. She tried to say something, but failed twice before she managed to speak properly.

  “Sanguine!” She said, more loudly than she probably intended. I tilted my head to the other side. Even at a small distance away, I could hear my Cassia’s heart pounding. Her scent was the same as if she was engaged in a chase. Excited, but nervous. “I… we…”

  She fidgeted with my gemstone around her neck.

  “I raised you! Right…?” She asked me, changing her tack. When I nodded, she plowed on. We’d never spoken about how much of what I’d learned had come from my own instincts, so it probably wasn’t a good time to bring it up. “From a… from a little hatchling and… I wanted to know… what I am, to you?”

  Behind Cassia, I could see Edith pressing her thumb and index finger into her eyes near her nose. She didn’t move to intervene. It seemed that she’d been serious, about Cassia being on her own for this conversation.

  “You are my Cassia-Róisín O’Coille,” I said slowly. “My Hunter Princess.” When that did not seem to satisfy her, I continued. “My… teacher, for hunting. My companion. My…” What else was Cassia to me?

  “Not… your mother?” my Cassia asked me carefully.

  This confused me greatly. I didn’t really know what a ‘mother’ was supposed to be. My instinct suggested that the one who had made my egg was as close to a ‘mother’ as I’d ever had. The only thing I could remember about them was the warmth of their heart beating next to mine. I’d never even seen them, though I supposed they were probably a dragon like myself. There were also the vague hints of Cassia’s mother that I’d seen in her dreams, but she wasn’t anything like that to me.

  I could see Cassia fidgeting nervously as I took longer and longer to answer.

  “No, not my mother,” I said firmly. By Cassia’s expression, this both made her happy and troubled her. I felt responsible for it, so I continued. “Cassia is… important. Very important, to me.” I kneaded my claws into the dirt. “There is only one Cassia. When you hurt… I hurt. I…”

  Admitting weakness was against my nature as a dragon. My pride simply could not accept being seen as weak by anyone or anything. Cassia was the only person in the world that might get under my defenses and make me say something like this. I was a little surprised that I was beginning to think of Edith in the same way, but there were still many barriers between us. Maybe one day they would come down.

  “Losing you…,” I continued. “Would… be like dying. I remember… the cold. The winter. Being alone. If you were gone… I would exist, but… I would be empty. Hollow. Not myself anymore.” I clawed at the ground more intensely. “I have been losing you… slowly. Each time I do… as my instinct says. When I hurt… kill… You are a little further away.”

  “It hurts.”