The Urge to Collect
I carried her back into the cave and lowered her with care, half afraid she might simply keel over and die.
By that god's account, she had the talent to take into her body, within a month, a deity fit to stand against me.
A strange woman. She feared me, and yet she had come to me first — frail as she was, arrogant enough to say she would protect me. And that only sharpened my curiosity.
An immense stretch of time had passed since I was human, but even then I had never been like this. When I was afraid, I think I simply left.
Perhaps that was why. Ever since I became a dragon, humans who stood their ground even with death upon them seemed to draw me in before I noticed. That was why I had spared the hunters who had the gall to charge me through their own poison gas, and why I was watching this woman now.
The hunters just now had thrown themselves at me bravely enough, but by my measure they fell short. They had stirred not the slightest interest.
This one, though — the woman who had lunged at me at the very end, already at death's door — she had pleased me well enough.
I set the frozen statue of a woman, still cradled in my grasp, beside the place where I slept, careful not to let it crack. The heat I gave off even without thinking would slowly thaw a cold that had frozen her to the marrow.
Was this a kind of collector's urge? In novels and anime, a dragon always gathered the things it loved into its lair. The hoard was never fixed to a single kind, but for me one such urge might well be for humans who caught my fancy.
I looked forward to the face she would show when she woke. Would she resent me, curse me, and come at me again? Would she simply sit still, like a broken doll? Or would she feign submission, bide her time, and try to escape?
Whichever it was, I thought it would be worth the watching. Still, if I could choose, I wanted to see her come at me again.
I took my eyes from the ice and turned them on the woman who had not yet woken.
It had lasted only a moment, but she had unmistakably endured my Breath. Well — she had survived by opening a Gate in sheer desperation and letting the blast pour through, so to call it endurance was a little generous. Even so, I had liked the sight of her taking it, her arm burning away and blood running down her face.
"An arrogant woman. But this time, I rather liked her."
She lay as if dead, and when I looked her over her body was burning with a severe fever. Most likely the price of forcing power past her limits. That part, however, was nothing I was obliged to mend.
"I ought to pay her for the show."
She had endured my Breath, if only for an instant. Repaying that was only proper.
I drew the faintest thread of cold from a claw and let it curl, carefully, about her body. Her temperature sank by degrees toward normal, and her breathing and her heartbeat returned with it.
Come to think of it, she had told me her name the first day I saw her... Well. There would be another chance to hear it.
Hoping that by then she would be stronger, and linger longer in my memory, I curled up on the floor of the cave and lay down.
When I came to, I opened my eyes in the golden space where I had met Lady Amaterasu before.
I was certain of it. In the instant the Dragon's attack convinced me I was about to die, a warmth had closed around me, and at a single word — that she would see to it now — I had lost consciousness.
Did Lady Amaterasu block the attack in my place?
I was still working to make sense of it when a presence like warm sunlight wrapped my body.
"My child. You have suffered greatly."
She must have come without my noticing. Lady Amaterasu drew me into her arms and patted my back, and I went rigid beneath her hand.
"How the dragon's flames must have pained you. We asked too much of you, and so you have borne this hardship."
She soothed me with a touch full of affection, the way one might stroke a precious daughter, and I very nearly called her Mother.
"I... Lady Amaterasu, was it resolved?"
"Of course. We have won a month's reprieve."
To hear that we had at least bought time lifted a little of the weight from my heart.
"Lady Amaterasu... what manner of being is he, that even the gods are so wary of him?"
It was a question I had carried ever since the oracle. But if Lady Amaterasu herself had just called this a reprieve, then the gods feared the red dragon.
She did not answer at once. Only the arm around me tightened, and my head — already close — sank deep against her bosom. Soft warmth pressed over my face and the whole of my head, and I was at a loss for what to do when she spoke.
"To speak truly, even we do not know."
"Only this has been foretold: that red dragon may swallow the world — or swallow whatever threatens it."
A prophecy, given to the gods?
It was not as though the gods had never received prophecy. The gods of Greece, for one, could not even escape oracles themselves. But they did not fear a prophecy to this degree.
"And so, my child, you must keep that dragon from turning his back upon the world."
"Why me...?"
If I was honest, I had no confidence. I had thought we had grown rather close, and yet, knowing I had come, he had loosed his flames without a moment's hesitation.
It was not that the flames frightened me. In the service of the gods, a trial of this order hardly ranked as hardship. Still, the question remained. Could I truly do it? And why, of all people, me?
Lady Amaterasu stroked my head once more, patted my back, and went on.
"It is a thing only you can do."
"The other children are not so pure as you. They cannot even hear our voices directly."
"They are not upright, as you are."
At praise from her own lips, I felt my face grow hot.
"Now then. I believe our time is nearly spent."
She released me from her embrace, and when I looked up I realized only then that I could see her properly. The last time we met she had been blurred, as if through static, and I had not been able to make out her face. Now her face and her body were perfectly clear.
"Proof that you have grown. The more you grow, the longer we may remain at your side."
"Whenever you are in danger, we will aid you. Do not be too afraid."
She encouraged me as a mother might encourage her own child.
"Yes! I will make certain he does not turn his back on the world!"
"Hehe. You will do well. Above all, you are the child I chose."
"And that dragon, it seems to me, does not dislike you so very much."
Her last words left me puzzled, and as my mind grew distant I felt myself returning to the waking world.
"Nnh..."
I sat up, one hand pressed to a spinning head.
I had drawn on the gods' power past what was permitted, been reduced to rags, and taken the Dragon's flames until my arm was charred black — and yet that arm had been restored. The gods must have helped me once again.
"Hm...? What is this?"
From the faint cold lingering about my body, I strangely could not feel the gods' distinctive presence.
The sensation was not old, but it was familiar. I followed it, and found the Dragon curled up in sleep. From the claws that looked fit to cleave anything in two, I felt the same cold that still clung, faintly, to me.
Did he cool me?
If the Dragon truly had done it, then — just as the goddess had said — he did not dislike me as much as I had thought.
He was still asleep. I pressed my forehead to one great claw and offered my thanks. The chill against my brow kept me from staying long, but even so, I was satisfied in my own way.
I meant to kindle a fire and warm the body his claw had chilled, but something better than fire occurred to me. My eyes found the scales beneath his jaw — unexpectedly yielding, and exactly the right warmth to be held against.
Careful not to wake him, I drew close, opened my arms wide, and embraced his jaw. Just as I remembered: a contradictory softness and firmness, and a lower jaw at precisely the right temperature. My whole body seemed to melt into it.
I was hurt quite badly myself. I consider this fair compensation.
I pressed myself as close to his jaw as I could and drank in the warmth.
What was wrong with this woman? Fresh from an ordeal like that, only just on her feet, and already rubbing her whole body against my jaw as if nothing were amiss.
I had been awake from the moment she woke. I only pretended to sleep because I was curious what she would do — and she pressed her head to my claw for a moment, then immediately locked both arms around my jaw.
I had hurt her that badly, and there was not a shred of fear in her. What was this? Was she simply lacking the feeling called fear?
No. When we first met, she had unmistakably been afraid of me. What in the world could have happened in so short a time, that she would entrust herself to the dragon who had tormented her?
Any living thing, even if it does not fear what harmed it, ought at least to grow angry, or wary. She did neither. She came to me first.
For the first time since I became a dragon, I was at a loss.
What, exactly, did that woman truly feel?
When her hold grew tight past the point of reason, I opened my eyes.
"Eh...? Ah...! A-ahhh..."
She had been grinning with her mouth hanging open, and the instant her eyes met mine her face flushed at a furious speed. So she did know what embarrassment felt like.
She opened a Gate with the speed of lightning, dropped away from my side, and buried her face against her drawn-up knees.