He drank from the heart, feeling the power seem to seep directly into his veins as he filled his empty stomach. He drank without stopping to breathe. He drank until the heart was empty, and then he stopped.

Rude, barbaric, and uncivilized, to completely empty a heart. Even one as small and poorly tended as this. He was embarrassed by his lack of control, and the worst part was, he was still unbearably hungry, even though his thirst had subsided a little.

He straightened and replaced the small capstone, before he dared a glance toward the tiny eyes that seemed to be watching him with reproach. He cleared his throat, and the creature, the mankind, flinched.

Even if he would gladly wipe every last one of their kind from the face of the Earth, he didn't feel any less shame over having emptied the heart that one of the wise was tending. He could even pity it for being born among such a race. The heart would take longer to refill than it was likely to live, with such a stunted garden.

He measured his strength again, and decided that he could at least spare enough to straighten the lines of this little garden. It probably wouldn't be enough to affect the life of the small being who was still gazing at him reproachfully, but it would be the civilized thing to do. It would also be the practical thing to do.

Who knew how many hearts still lived near the surface, if he had slept for as long as he began to suspect that he might have. What if all of the gardens that remained had withered to this degree, with no one to tend them properly, with only the few wise of the lesser still roaming the Earth.

--

Sara had thought that she was going to die of fright when the dragon pulled its head out of the hole, dropped the enormous stone back into place, and then looked directly at her. The additional jolt of fear, when it gave a short coughing roar, seemed to shake her from the base of her spine like the memory of a tail stiffening to give more spring to the first leap away from danger.

The dragon patted the stone and then turned and ripped a tree right out of the ground, as easily as she pulled a weed out of her flowerbeds. Actually, it wasn't putting nearly as much effort into it as she had to use on a weed, she decided as it tossed that tree aside as if it were no good, and ripped another out of the ground.

Her mind seemed to have retreated to some distant sanctuary, and left behind only a fragment of dry curiosity, as she watched the dragon continue to tear up the remains of her little garden, and take its frustrations out on the surrounding forest. A whisper of illogical logic suggested that she should take a picture, if she wanted anyone to believe her later.

Sara barely believed what was in front of her own eyes and told the fragment of self that thought she was going to be telling anyone else what had happened to her garden to shut up. If she ever had to explain, she was going to claim that it was the second shockwave of the quake earlier. If it had left one fallen tree behind, what were a dozen more?

--

He straightened the paths of the strings that led to the heart as well as he could. And then he gathered his strength and sank his claws into the earth at the base of each plant that sat in a position that would keep the strings anchored, and strengthened each one from the root. It was tedious and tiring work, but this garden would be much stronger after a single turn of the seasons.

Life pulled and tugged at the strings much more strongly than the bones of the Earth did. Some had even speculated that it was life's pull that held the world in a solid form. Others went further and said that nothing would exist if the one of the wise did not think of it, since the strongest of them had the power to actually call forth a new string.

He had once considered himself strong enough to pull a new string into existence on a whim, but he thought that if he tried it now, he might pull out his own life instead. Strengthening the roots of a few plants made his bones ache and his stomach turn. The tiny mankind stood witness, showing far more patience than he recalled from its ancestors.

Perhaps mankind had grown. He gingerly reached out to the string beside him, and let the song run up his claw and into his aching bones and listened. Both ice and fire, birth and death, the heart of the string screamed with a million conflicts. He snatched his hand back.

He looked toward the other strings and moved toward one with a reluctance that was almost fear. Normally a single string would carry a single strong tone in its heart, and the songs were complex because they carried the sound of many strings. Perhaps this string just ran along some particularly knotted path, but he should listen to the others.

A little while later, he shuddered, and moved to scoop up the discarded foliage. He shredded the trees and plants with his claws into a mulch that would protect the ones that would hold the strings that fed the heart straight. As he gathered up the last discarded tree, he was puzzled. Had he tossed this one so far from the garden? He shrugged and carried it back to shred it like the rest.

He compressed himself again, and glanced back only once before leaving the stunted garden with its empty heart. His wings fluttered with his shiver. Admittedly, it was only a handful of strings, out of the millions that perhaps held the Earth in place, but none of them held a pure strong tone. Either none of those strings were running a smooth unknotted course, or the Earth was broken into a confusion of conflicting fragments.

--

Sara's feet hurt, but she couldn't make herself move until the dragon had long since disappeared into the forest.

The dragon had stopped for a while, as though it had exhausted itself, and then staggered in a rough circle. The strangest thing was that it had cleaned up after its earlier raging tantrum before it left. It had even cleared away the tree that had blocked her driveway.

Or perhaps that hadn't been the strangest thing. Maybe that had been the way the dragon had seemed to get smaller as it left. When it had arrived it had shoved its way between the trees, but when it left it seemed to slink away beneath them.