SUBJECT // thuli // stoxan healer //

THEORY POTENTIAL // smothered //

The little dragon reminds me of my brother. It looks at me the same way. Head turned to the side, mouth flat, eye shining. To find one alone is uncommon.

"Hello," I say, and it hisses. "Is it me you're hunting?"

The little dragon cannot make the sounds that I make, and I cannot make the vibrations that it makes. Even so. The little dragon flicks its snout towards the man I am kneeling beside.

"Ah?" I say. "But what about what he wants?"

The little dragon bares its teeth and walks forward. So heavy, its footsteps. I am no longer reminded of my brother.

"What do you want?" I murmur, to the dying man before me. His heart has been torn in two, a clumsy piercing by fine steel. His guts were spilled clean from his belly. His back has been feasted upon by carrion beetles, their sharp little teeth gouging curves from his flesh. Now the steel is part of him, melted against his chest and his back, filling the spaces left by the beetles' feeding. Now his guts are gone, empty weight in their place. Now his blood runs thick, forced through his veins by a heart made of black stone and blue light.

Now he stands, to face his predator. No words, though speech has not been taken from him. No weapon, unless purpose can be counted as such.

Perhaps the little dragon recognises the will to live. Perhaps it sees the light oozing from scars. Perhaps it heeds a vibration I am incapable of sensing.

Whatever the reason, it stops.

I think it would run.

But the man does not give it the choice.

I have little appetite for destruction. I leave the man to his mauling and trace a sigil in the earth. Protection and guidance struck through by hardship, entwined by determination, encircled by, let's see ... perhaps we'll leave it free. That seems appropriate.

"Stop now," I say. The man hears me.

"Why?" he asks.

I brush away the sigil and raise my head. I can't see the colour of his eyes. Only the brightness. He doesn't have long, this one.

Still. Longer than the little dragon.

"Why?" he repeats.

The little dragon wants to live, as dearly as the man does.

But it is not a man. It is a beast.

"Why?" once more, but already he understands. I step closer, reach out to take his hand in both of mine. Lean in and run my tongue over the blood there. It is his, and it is the little dragon's.

"You want to live," I say, and I release his hand. "What else?"

He kneels so that our faces are level, close enough that I can see the colour of his eyes; as grey as a storm.

"Revenge and such," he says. "The likes of vengeance."