Dandelion Seeds in the Gutter
"Let's go."
The moment the words left my mouth, Alduin kicked off the ground.
Kwaang!
The floor of the feeding grounds thundered, and that massive black-scaled body shot upward over the gorge.
Any other day I would already have been clinging to Alduin's neck, screaming.
"Slow down!"
"My standard, not yours!"
"If I fall, no more snacks for you!"
Those words should have burst out on their own.
Even after five hundred years, I still couldn't get used to Alduin taking flight.
I had ridden the back of the Dragon King more times than I could count, and by now I knew exactly which gaps between the scales offered the best grip… yet the feeling of the sky dropping out from under me and the mountains tearing away behind us still made my body seize with fear first.
This time, though, my mouth stayed shut.
Wind slapped my face. My hair streamed backward. My fingers dug into the cracks of Alduin's scales with white-knuckled force, but I did not scream.
I couldn't.
The empty place under the big rock's shade at the edge of the feeding grounds kept rising before my eyes.
Reddish-brown scales that caught the light.
Black markings under the throat.
The one who, the second mealtime arrived, always tried to snatch someone else's meat before finishing their own share.
As a hatchling they had shoved their snout into my stone pot and gotten scolded by Alduin; a little older, they had drooled at the smell of the meat Alduin grilled for me.
Even after reaching adulthood, their greed for meat had not changed one bit from childhood.
That child was gone.
There were plenty of dragons.
The gorge held many adults, many hatchlings, and still-unhatched eggs besides; anyone else might easily have missed one late arrival at the feeding grounds.
But I knew.
I had raised them for five hundred years.
I knew who sat where, who preferred which cut of meat, who always tried to nip someone else's tail before eating, who left a portion for whom if they ran late.
That was why it was more terrifying.
That child was not the type to be late for meals.
Not the type to catch the scent of meat and still fail to appear.
"……."
Alduin beat his wings once, hard.
The fog that had wrapped the gorge shredded away behind us, and the storm-curtain Gargantua had woven split along the tips of those black wings.
Alduin did not ask.
Why we were going, where we were going, whether it was truly urgent—none of it.
He simply felt the tension in my hands, felt that I was not screaming the way I usually did, and immediately poured on more speed.
I bit my lip.
It was not that I felt no fear.
Alduin's speed still threatened to scatter my thoughts, and the wind stole my breath.
Clouds brushed past my cheeks; the mountains, forests, and rivers below blurred as if someone had smeared a long painting with a wet hand.
But a far more frightening thought lived underneath.
If that child had left the gorge.
If they had met humans.
And if someone had struck first.
I tried to shove the thought away, but once it had risen it refused to leave.
Dragons possess, by nature, the instinct to kill other living things.
It was not quite malice.
Calling it cruelty felt slightly off as well.
To a dragon, small creatures break too easily; the screams of the weak fade too quickly. Threatened, they kill. Obstructed, they kill. Even a casual prod for amusement can end in death.
What I had done for five hundred years was not erase that instinct.
I could not erase it.
I had simply said the same things every single day.
No breath weapons.
Gentle with the wings.
Watch the tail.
Little ones are not toys.
Think before you kill.
Those words worked inside the gorge.
At least in front of me, they worked.
But outside the gorge.
In places where I was not.
"Al."
My voice did not tear apart on the wind.
It had sunk strangely low.
Alduin's golden eyes shifted a fraction to the side.
"Faster."
Alduin gave no answer; he simply folded his wings.
His body seemed to drop for an instant, then the black mass shot forward like an arrow.
Wind above the mountains ripped open. Clouds shoved backward. My body nearly fused to the scales.
Even then I did not scream.
A low rumble rose from deep in Alduin's throat.
Krrrr.
A worried sound.
"I'm fine."
A lie.
I was not fine.
But if I shouted that I was afraid, Alduin would slow down.
I could not allow that.
"Just go."
Alduin's eyes faced forward again.
For a long while we flew in silence.
Past the mountains ringing the gorge, over dense forest, across rocky ridges and deep valleys, the scent on the wind gradually changed.
At first it was the smell of the mountains.
Wet earth.
Snowmelt.
Beast blood.
The lingering trace of the game Gargantua had swept in.
Then, at some point, another smell wove itself underneath.
The reek of burning.
I narrowed my eyes.
I had smelled burning wood many times.
There had been the time Alduin, still young, lost control of his breath and obliterated a forest, and the countless times hatchlings practicing their exhalations had scorched the training ground floor.
This was different.
A little more stifling, a little more vicious, a smell that scraped the inside of the throat.
Straw and cloth, oil and dry timber, and all the belongings of people who lived in houses—burning.
I lifted my head.
Far beyond a ridgeline, black smoke was rising.
Not a single column.
Many columns.
They tangled and mixed as they spread into the sky, rising not from the heart of a forest but from low flatland near a river, where small roads converged.
"……A village."
The word slipped from my mouth.
Alduin's body dropped lower.
Before I had even finished speaking, he was already banking toward it.
Black wings tore the air; we fell toward the smoke.
The closer we came, the thicker the smell grew.
Hot air struck my face. Red light flickered between the black plumes. Beneath that light, collapsed roofs, stone walls, fields, and wells revealed themselves one after another.
It was a village.
An entire village was burning.
Alduin settled on a low hill at the village edge.
Kung.
The earth shook.
I slid down from his back almost as if tumbling, and for a moment my legs gave out; I caught myself on one knee.
Whether it was the speed or the sight before me, I could not tell.
The village could barely be called a village any longer.
Houses had slumped blackened into themselves. Wooden pillars had burned through to their cores and still cradled red embers. What had been thatched roofs was ash scattering on the wind.
The stones of the well were cracked from heat. The fields had withered black. On the road, melted metal lay hardened.
A door handle, perhaps.
A pot.
A farming tool.
I could not tell.
Things that had burned too hot lost their original shapes.
I took a step.
Ash crumbled underfoot.
Sagak.
For a moment I thought of the sound of Masor's scales.
"……."
Alduin rumbled low behind me.
Krrrrr.
I raised a hand.
"Stay."
Alduin halted.
Heat was circulating very quietly deep in his throat.
Anger or vigilance—I could not say—but he too was smelling it.
The scent of dragon fire.
And among it, the scent of one of our own children.
I walked into the village.
A broken spear lay by the roadside.
The tip had melted, but handprints still marked the shaft.
Beside it lay an iron chain.
A chain that had glowed white-hot and then cooled.
Far too thick for ordinary beasts, far too heavy for binding a human.
A little farther in, the remnants of a magic circle drawn on the ground remained.
White powder and red stone dust had been scorched into place; the circular lines were broken in places.
For capture.
Probably.
I stopped in front of it.
"They started it."
My voice would not come out cleanly.
I opened my mouth again.
"The humans struck first."
The words brought no comfort.
A broken spear did not raise the burned houses again, and the presence of chains did not un-burn the village.
But at least I knew.
That child had not simply descended and set the village ablaze for no reason.
Someone had attacked first.
Tried to bind them.
Tried to catch them.
Whether they meant to hunt, to sell, or to drive the dragon away, I could not know.
But the humans had laid hands on a dragon.
And the dragon had answered like a dragon.
"Kii……."
A keening cry reached me.
I lifted my head.
At the village center.
Beside the collapsed bell tower.
There, a dragon crouched.
Black markings ran beneath the throat.
The owner of the empty place at the feeding grounds.
The child who always sat in the rock's shade, drinking in the smell of meat.
That child was curled up in the middle of the burning village.
The adult body was larger than several houses; the tip of the tail stretched across one side of the charred square. Yet somehow the figure did not feel large.
They looked like a frightened child.
"Kii…… kiii……."
The child saw me.
And immediately lowered their head.
The massive jaw dropped until it nearly touched the ash-covered ground.
Spear marks showed between the scales.
Wounds where spearheads had pierced and withdrawn remained in several places near the neck and forelegs; long scrapes from iron chains marked the wing membranes, and one horn was cracked.
Embers still clung to the corners of the mouth.
I looked at the child.
Then at the village.
Then back at the child.
Anger rose.
Anger with nowhere certain to land.
At the humans who had attacked my child.
At my child who had burned everything.
At myself, who had known such a thing could happen and still leaned on the belief that the gorge was safe.
"You."
My voice cracked.
"Why did you come here."
"Kiii!"
The child cried out.
Five hundred years of raising them.
I knew the sound they made when afraid, the way their throat trembled when wronged, the angle at which they folded their wings when hurt.
Attacked first.
Hurt.
Bound.
Terrified.
That was what I heard.
The child tried to hide the injured wing.
I clenched my teeth.
"Don't hide it."
The child flinched.
"Show me where you're hurt."
"Kiiing……."
"They hit you first?"
The child lowered their head.
Yes.
"They tried to bind you?"
A pale keening leaked from deep in the throat.
"Kii……."
Yes.
I closed my eyes.
A human's breath could never have been the same as a dragon's, of course.
"Even if they struck first."
I spoke slowly.
My throat felt as though it were burning.
"You still can't burn everything."
The child looked at me with a face that did not understand.
To a dragon it was simple.
There was a threat.
They killed it.
It would never threaten again.
That was the end.
What I had clung to every day for five hundred years was precisely that part.
I had thought I was teaching them not to do bad things, but in truth I had been gripping something more fundamental.
The killing instinct.
The inability to feel weaker lives as lives.
The habit of solving everything with a single breath.
I had blocked it every day with words, with gestures, with endless nagging.
Inside the gorge it had worked.
In front of my eyes it had worked.
But I had not been here.
"Kii……."
The child carefully stretched their head toward me.
Like a child who knows they will be scolded yet still wants to say it hurts.
I reached out my hand.
Then stopped.
If I laid my hand on those scales, I would embrace this child first.
I could have.
My child was hurt.
But before me lay a burned village.
Collapsed houses.
A melted door handle.
A withered well.
I closed my hand and lowered it.
"Al."
Alduin rumbled low behind me.
Krrrrr.
"Don't come closer."
Alduin stopped.
Anger lived in those eyes.
Probably from seeing the spears and the chains.
As king.
As the firstborn.
As a child who had watched me suffer.
But if Alduin took even one more step now, this village would catch fire again.
"Stay still."
Krr…….
"Please."
Alduin's rumble dropped lower.
He stayed.
Flames continued to rise among the ruined houses.
Black smoke climbed into the sky.
The child crouched before me, still crying.
I stood between them.
As a mother.
And as something that had once been human.
That was when it came.
A small sound.
At first I thought it was a burning timber collapsing.
Tak.
Tak.
It was not.
It was the sound of a stone rolling.
I turned my head slowly.
Beneath a collapsed house.
The half-burned entrance to a root cellar.
Someone was crawling out of it.
A person.
A person covered head to toe in ash.
I could not guess their age.
Hair was singed; blood and ash clung together across the face; one arm hung limp, unable to move properly.
The person coughed their way outside.
"Cough…… kuh……."
I took an automatic step forward.
The person lifted their head first.
Our eyes met.
Terror.
Then hatred.
Their gaze went past me to Alduin.
The enormous black dragon.
Then to the reddish-brown dragon crouched before me.
The dragon that had burned the village.
And finally to me.
A small woman.
Yet two dragons stood motionless, waiting on a single word from me.
The person's pupils shook.
Lips trembled.
I did not know what to say.
Are you all right?
I'm sorry?
Is anyone else alive?
Every possible sentence tangled inside my mouth.
The person shouted first.
"Witch……."
The voice was shredded.
It sounded as if blood were mixing with the words from a throat scorched by fire.
"Witch!"
I froze.
The person scrambled backward, pointing at me.
"A witch who… who commands dragons!"
Flames roared behind them.
The reddish-brown dragon shrank in on itself as if afraid.
A low rumble rose from Alduin's throat.
I raised a hand to hold him back.
The survivor kept staring at me.
Not with the eyes of someone looking at a person.
Not with the eyes of someone looking at a savior.
The master of the monsters that burned the village.
The witch who commands dragons.
That was how they looked at me.
Perhaps it was only natural.
Before me stood the dragon that had burned the village.
Behind me stood the king of dragons.
And both of them were waiting for a single word from me.
"Witch!"
The survivor cried out again in that ruined voice.
"The witch who commands dragons did this to our village…!"
…This.
Is a problem.