Chapter 49: Exposure Therapy

Sylph looked down at the notes she took by scratching in the sand. “River, hide, lock, maze.” It sounded more like an odd association game than a plan. After an hour of brainstorming, it was very little.

She slumped down against the wall in what some would call a seated position and played with the rose gold hornband. If it was a mere piece of jewelry, she would have thrown it right back at Nahana last night. But she believed its history, and that it would increase her odds of finding her father one day. He had the correct idea, run away from Nahana as quick as possible. “Next time we will look for one of your relatives. Maybe they are nicer.”

It took Brandon a second to answer. “I always wanted to meet my mother too.” Sylph swallowed her former question when she realized that she never met her, and Brandon had never talked about her either.

“She died after my birth, so I can not. It was only me and my father for as long as I can remember.” He stopped for a breath. “He must be worried sick about me right now, just like your mothers.” His voice bounced into her cell and left it emptier than before.

“I’m sure she would’ve been a wonderful person. Much better than Nahana.” Sylph imagined a human woman with wild hair. Hair was a bit like horns and his father had no wild hair, he barely had any hair, so it had to have been from his mother.

“The thing is,” Brandon continued and his voice picked up. “From my father I know she was not a great person either. None of us are-” he swallowed.

“Either?” It was an odd word to use. “Can you really talk about your own mother that way? Without ever knowing her?”

She heard Brandon draw a deep breath. “There are things that I never wanted to tell you. People that Nahana was not wrong about.” His voice remained firm but abnormally serious. Brandon of all people having awful secrets was hard to imagine. “I have been reminded of it all day long in Prina and here. There are places where humans and dragons have a terrible relationship. You don’t actually have to travel this far south to find that mindset. North of Halfhill is far enough.”

Sylph re-affixed the hornband. “In Sawaila? Where?” Sure, some people did not get along in Halfhill or Carthia, but not on this scale and it was not hatred, more “You stepped on my tail you bastard. Well, you have an awfully long tail you know.”

“Do you remember the first time you entered our shop?”

Sylph turned to stare at the wall ahead and tried to recall the memory. “Well, I think I asked for–”

“So you don’t,” Brandon laughed, but his voice grew serious a second later. “You stormed into the store and demanded paint the color of your scales.”

“Right. I remember now.” She reached up and touched the knobbly scar, reigniting the image of that day. Furious about a group of dragons making fun of her scar, she decided to do away with it. Paint seemed like the most logical option. “That was quite a while ago, wasn’t it?” It felt distant today and recalling herself and how she acted, it was almost embarrassing. That Sylph had no other problems, and yet she could hardly blame her since she used the paint for an awful long time. Showing her scar like she did now, it felt right. She was no longer scared of hiding parts of herself and no longer afraid of people calling it out. “And that day, there were people who hated dragons in the shop?”

Brandon answered quietly. “Yes, there were.”

“Too bad I didn’t notice. I would’ve had something to say.”

“Probably a good thing that you did not.”

A long, uncomfortable silence filled the cells as Sylph recalled the day in more detail. The aisles had been tighter than they are now, the stocked shelves strewn around like weeds in a field. “I was your only customer.” The realization struck, but passed her mind, the only other person was-.

“Yes, I’m talking about me.” Sylph’s world ground to a halt when the realization rebounded. Her mind slowly digested what Brandon said, and it made little sense.

“I was terrified of you,” he admitted.

“I don’t understand.” Brandon was one of the very few people she would trust with her life without a second of doubt and here he was, admitting that he was terrified of her? Hated her?

He continued. “Do you remember what I told Dust? Viening? That was history from my old home town. It left a skewed image in my head. They taught me to fear and loathe your kind for what happened, that you saw us as beneath you and would crush us once we became useless. And I truly believed what they said as there was nothing to show or tell me otherwise.” He sniffed his nose. “Hatred blossoms on the fields of fear,” he quoted.

“The path of Sia,” Sylph recognized the quote from the first page of the book about her path. It was frankly all she had read. His words left a sour taste in her mouth and a sickening hot and cold pulsing in her stomach. She had not forced him to come due to fear, did she? “What happened?”

“We moved to Halfhill, after money got tight. I never saw a dragon before and adults are pretty imposing. My father always told me to stay in the mostly human part of town, got mad when I strayed too far. So I made friends in circles that felt the same way. When you are afraid of something, you dodge it, grouping up with others that also avoid it. Its like a circle. You wouldn’t believe how much some praised themselves on wanting to slay a dragon over some ale in a tavern. Not an ancient evil, or Void, but the baker next door.” He drew another deep breath as the words kept on pouring. “One day, somebody shattered that image. She returned several times because I got the color wrong.”

She knew Brandon, or she thought she did. “You aren’t lying are you? It is all true.” She felt her words were silent, barely loud enough for him to even hear.

“I was afraid, every time you came back. But the more you visited and cracked jokes and had strange ideas about alchemy, the more I thought that my father and old town might’ve been wrong. You did not fit the image in my head. And soon I was looking forward to your visits as they were the one thing different in my life.”

“That is quite unbelievable,” Sylph said, her mind still not wrapped around what he was telling her. “I never recognized it.” She had unknowingly terrified him and never even considered that she could have that effect on people. Who in their right mind would be afraid of somebody like her?

Brandon’s voice got lighter as if all the heavy words were now gone. “Now I see my best friend run around, trying to change an image some storytellers gave her and it is hard to not be reminded about myself. You are already a hero, you have forced me to reconsider who I am and what I believe in.”

Sylph watched the sand drizzle from her claws. “A hero?” Brandon had hated her. Heavy emphasis on had. And she changed his mind, without even doing anything.

“Everybody who thought like me needs a Sylph,” Brandon ended.

Her mind remained torn. They traveled so far together. He saved her life. She trusted him on the end of a leash. “Does this change anything?” she mumbled.

“I hope it does. You helped me become a better person and I will help you do the same. Hopefully, we drag some others into it as we go. Now you know the entire truth, it felt only fair.”

He was still the same Brandon, not different from ten minutes ago. All that changed was what she knew about him and what mattered to him; the time they spent in the present. What good did comparing yourself to an old and helpless version of yourself do. She was not the hatchling from Linz anymore so why should Brandon be the scared boy from Viening. “So the Brandon I became friends with is not the same you are describing.”

“He is not. As much as the Sylph I became friends with is not a slave from Linz, or Nahana’s daughter.”

“Sorry if I terrified you.”

“Don’t be, it helped. You are not terrifying, not unless you want to. And knowing you, you are probably thinking about how to joke about the fact that the expression ‘slaying a dragon’ has some pretty different implications in Halfhill.”

A smirked played over her face and she snorted. “It does! That phrase coming from a human would certainly get you quite a lot of strange looks in a normal tavern.” She heard a quiet chuckle. “I have come to slay you, foul beast!”

“You are human, keep your fantasies to yourself you weirdo and leave me alone.”

“Our past selves be damned,” Brandon said, “I wish we had something to toast with.”

Sylph flicked her claw against the metal bars to produce a clink. “First round back home is on me.”