Chapter Five
Dekani was not well versed in the art of travel. Though she wandered a large area, one could call it her territory. None of her kind settled in any one place. Wandering nomads, they adapted to the harsh life they led. Dark skinned with dark hair, and a subtle grace that enabled them to move more or less silently, they could blend in with their surroundings in any season. All except during the winter.
Those that did settle down ran the risk of a short, violent end by dragon. Thus, their wanderings were enforced. Inhabiting the large, mountain area, they had little trouble staying healthy in the warmer, richer months. But come winter, some of the old and young, the sick and weak, and even the robust and healthy of them died of starvation.
Dekani was true to her kind’s manner as well. The area she traveled spanned the distance between the drier, plain like side of the mountains, and the lush, verdant side. Two types of dragon to contend with, and a lifetime, short as it was, of survival.
But travel, real travel, was beyond her comprehension. Like a wolf with its territory, the thought of leaving would only, could only be caused by being driven out. And as the only inhabitant, with no one to drive her out, the likely-hood of Dekani following the dragon she had seen was slim.
But her encounter with the lynx had made her scared, had, in effect, driven her out of her territory. Uncomfortable in what was once a safe place to her, she wanted, needed to leave.
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Nakomii saw the trees thinning. Scents bursting with life came to him, gliding in the arms of the air, and he grinned. Finally free of the infernal trees! Stretching his wings, the dragon tilted his head to turn, and laughed. If anything, his dark mood was gone, washed away by the river of sky. Though there were some lingering doubts, they were ignored. The sun was shinning, summer was finally caressing the mountains, and he was free of the insults flung at him by Obelisk and similar tormenters.
As the last of the mountains gave way to the foot hills slowly lessening to flat steeps of the ancient world, he felt an urge to fly high.
It wasn’t a strange urge. As a dragon, Nakomii would normally prefer to travel by ground or low to the ground. But, with his deformity and history of flying high to escape his oppressors, he was used to the land seeming to curve beneath him. And the winds were just right for such a flight.
Beating his wings, the dragon lifted higher. His mouth opened to take in the large amounts of air needed for the exertion of flight. Eyes gleaming, he slowed his rise to a gentle, familiar glide, and looked over the steeps.
They were flat. The only thing the dragon could compare them too was water. An ocean of earth, he thought. He wasn’t wrong, though he wasn’t right.
The tectonic plates that made up the cover the planet drifted on an ocean of magma. The molten rock, loosed upon the earth, burned and destroyed everything in its path until it dried and hardened. Sometimes the flow stopped in a matter of hours, sometimes it took days. It would take years before anything would grow on the new rock, usually lichens or moss.
Nakomii only saw part of the story. He saw the land, lush with summer’s bounty, broken now and again by small rivers or streams, lined with stunted trees that were nothing more then thick, twisted bushes. And he could see the animals that lived on the plains, large animals, grown to match the size of their dinner plate. And it was one big dinner plate.
But beneath it all, where Nakomii couldn’t see, the earth was in flux. The hot rock boiled, striving to break free of the restraints placed upon it. Sometimes it did, and sometimes the restraints shattered, causing earthquakes that destroyed whole areas. The plates were continuously moving, several inches a year in some parts, nothing more then half an inch in others.
When the plates came together, they sometimes interlocked, and over time force grew on both sides. They did not travel in the same direction, at times they traveled opposite of each other. Different vortexes in the magma supported different plates. And when the friction on both sides gave in, changes were wrought. A great shaking and shearing of rock happened as the plates gave, their interlocking edges changing. Or one plate would be forced beneath, melting into the magma.
Sometimes mountains grew, either volcanoes that eventually slumbered, or solid rock that jutted into the sky. Either way, the creation was violent.
But Nakomii couldn’t see that, couldn’t see his planet shiver and shake under a force even greater then rock and ice- Science.
And if he couldn’t see it, he couldn’t know about it, and thus, couldn’t worry about it.
His stomach started to growl while he flew above a small herd of large herbivores. Twice the size of later day bison, they would make a meal for any dragon. Not just Nakomii.
Tucking his wings to his sides, he angled his body and dove.
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Dekani didn’t like traveling. Having nothing to pack, she started off. But the direction that the dragon had taken was hard for a ground traveler to take. And the dragon had flown. Dekani had cut her hands and knees on sharp rocks, scree that, in steep places, or even just on the ground, became dangerous.
It didn’t occur to her to move over, and continue traveling the same way. To the small, two legged hunter, if she moved aside, away from the scree, she would travel in the wrong direction. Though the thoughts weren’t there, she thought that. The idea of turning corners, or moving in a wide arc, was lost to her. Her knowledge wasn’t in abstract thinking, it was in survival.
It took time to leave the slippery, sharp rocks behind. And exhaustion hit as soon as she was a short distance away. It had been hard work to keep her balance, and already tired from her run and her wound, she could barely keep her eyes open. She didn’t have to, either. There was no one telling her was to do, to be fast or be slow. She really had nowhere to go to, no one waiting at the end of her travels to welcome her.
Dekani was lonely. She had lived her life with an older, more experienced woman. Her mother had kept her safe from dangers, scaring off hunters and keeping Dekani well fed. Or as well fed as possible. Everything Dekani knew, came from experience and the woman.
But, Dekani had never learned some things from the woman, important to her mental development. Dekani didn’t understand many things, was confused easily, and her emotions were faint at best.
But Dekani didn’t even know she had a lack. She knew some things, the way she blended in with the white season, the order of seasons in a way, and she knew that the woman who had once been with her was now gone. She understood that, in her way. She understood life and death, and the rule that governed everything in the wild.
The strong survive.
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Nakomii had settled down for the night.
His attempts at hunting were failures. He had never dived on his prey before. He had some family, and it was normal for him to scavenge from other kills. Besides fishing, he had never really provided for himself. And if he disliked the taste of rotting meat, it was only because he tasted it far too often.
The bison had run faster then he had thought they would. Instead of hitting his prey, he had hit the ground. The failure to catch something to eat hadn’t stopped him, feeling better after diving. Better then when he had simply flown and seen the last of the woods. He had leapt into the air to find a new herd, and to catch something there.
By the first shading of twilight, he was tired, hungry, and didn’t fly up to find a place to sleep. Simply scratching at the dirt a few times, he had lain down and curled up, wings providing a cover for his head should it rain.
His night sight was as good as any hunter, and he could see in the distance some large animals. He could hear the faint trickle of water behind him, a stream that might hold minnows or other small fish. If worst came to worst, he would try to find a carcass and eat the remains there.
But, he thought, why couldn’t he hunt? Other dragons did, and none of them could fly as well as he could. Surely his wings could outweigh any disadvantages caused by his twisted limbs, couldn’t they?
Drifting off to sleep with those questions on his mind, he finally gave in the urges of his body and rested, lidless eyes forever open.
Morning found him hunting in the small stream. Large enough to support fish for most of the year, and frogs, Nakomii was able to snare a small meal. Certainly not enough to keep him alive, he decided to forgo flying for the time being and stay on the ground.
It was a wise choice. Flying took a lot of energy. His muscles needed to work hard to keep his large, heavy body in the air. No dragon was aerodynamic, and unlike birds they carried a lot of heavy muscle. While most were bottom heavy, their legs and sides corded with muscle, Nakomii was top heavy, his back, shoulders, and to some extent, his wings were, not corded, but bulging with the necessary muscle required to lift- and keep- him in the air.
Barely with enough strength to dig a hole for his refuse, he didn’t bother to pull dirt over the evidence, instead preferring to move on. In a way, it didn’t matter. There were no dragons on the open plains, preferring the mountains with their heavy winds and lifting updrafts. But in another way, there were hunters that could tell from the mess in the hole his state of being, weather he would make a meal or not.
Nakomii was in his prime, for all that he was tired, hungry and malformed. No hunter would hunt him yet. But, if he continued to starve, it would only be a matter of time before one of the biggest cats in existence would hunt him.
The cave lions.
Large prey called for larger hunters, and to some extent the dragons filled the niche. But in others, like the steeps, the dragons didn’t go there. In the beginning they wouldn’t have been able to survive, and by the time they could survive there, it was too late. Set in their ways, and the niche filled, the dragons stayed on the mountains, and the lions stayed in the open plains.
Nakomii was an intruder, though he didn’t know it. And he was a bad hunter besides.
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Dekani woke, and started moving. The scree had, in effect, marked the edge of what she knew. Now that she was in a strange forest, she jumped at everything. Never mind that the same things had happened in the forest she called home, she feared every rustle, every movement, every scent.
Up until the point she smelt a lone wolf.
Lone wolves were easy prey in Dekani’s starved mind. She had taken one down when she was almost dead, and now that she was healed she felt like hunting them.
But Dekani wasn’t healed. Her shoulder was scabbed over, and she was still struggling to recover from blood loss. Thirst and hunger were almost constant companions, but she was used to it. Even though it hadn’t been more then a week since she had last been comfortable, she couldn’t remember a time any different.
And even though it had only been a day since she decided to follow the dragon, she had forgotten the reason she traveled.
So she hunted the lone wolf.
She followed the trail made by the wolf, stopping to sniff and look at the bloody remains of a rabbit, a few drops of blood on the ground, before moving on. And as the scent trail grew stronger, she moved faster. Her caution was there, but shoved under hunger. Stomach cramps and weak joints were only the start. And Dekani didn’t stop when she heard the snarls. She should have. She would have stopped, waited for the fighting wolves to finish, and then end the loser’s life. Had she been in her right mind, she would have done that, watching. But she wasn’t.
The lone wolf she had been following was fighting another wolf, trying to etch out a territory to live in. Both wolves were better after the short spring of hunting, and the now warmer days of summer bringing out all manner of prey.
But the sudden appearance of a small, pale two leg hunter seemed to derail their fight. One yelped, and turned to run. The other turned to snarl at Dekani, to warn her away. Dekani wouldn’t listen. The running one didn’t matter to her, she wasn’t hunting it. The snarling one ready to fight was the one she was hunting. And all sense had been tossed to the wind.
She leapt at the wolf. It had seen her, could smell her. Stalking it for the kill wouldn’t work. She knew to get in close, to bite and rip out the prey’s throat.
But the wolf was ready, keyed up and mad. Before Dekani was close enough at his throat, the wolf ripped open her already injured shoulder. It didn’t bleed much, but it was a distraction. But not enough of one.
For a moment, she was dazed. Then the next, she managed to bite and rip the wolf’s muzzle. Clawing at the wolf’s eyes, she turned and ran. The wolf didn’t follow.
Dekani wasn’t running because of her shoulder. She had watched the older woman, the one who had raised her and protected her, do such things before. Bite and scratch at the prey, and then watch and wait. It was one of the few memories Dekani had left of the woman.
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Nakomii would have blinked, had he eyelids. A herd of deer were traveling over the land. It was the start of their migration pattern, the short summer ending in a few weeks time. Then, missing fall, winter would hit with all her fury, erasing any trace of green left in the land.
It was the start of the glacier, the unending snow piling up and turning the lower levels into ice that moved, ice that breathed.
The reindeer, the only deer with antlers for both males and females, could sense the coming storms, and started traveling. In the beginning of their migration, all the deer went together, slowly edging out with females and their young first, then the young males a few miles behind them, and finally the old males.
Nakomii saw the old males as prey, prey that he could catch. Trailing the deer wouldn’t work, he’d have to catch one before they moved too far away.
Pulling together what seemed the last of his strength and stamina, he started running. No where near as fast as the deer, and hardly moving compared to the short, yet effective, sprint of a normal dragon in its prime, he was still fast enough to scare the deer. Or so it seemed.
Wolves seemed to appear out of nowhere, running at the deer. The healthy young bucks and does ran ahead, leaving behind those does with babies and the old bucks. The wolves, with their stamina, were ready and able to run their prey into the ground. It wasn’t necessary. A young mother, with an even younger baby, had to slow down to keep up with its child. The wolves didn’t go after the baby, it being too small to bother with, only a few days old, instead taking the mother down to the ground and killing her. Nakomii got the baby.
The small, bony baby was welcomed by the hungry dragon, welcomed with open jaws. It only took Nakomii three bites to finish, and then only because he was eating slowly. Then, laying down and folding his paws in front of him, he watched the wolves eat. He would wait for them to finish, then he’d eat the last of the carcass. His stomach would be full.
He didn’t think about the deer baby he had eaten. He was smart, yes, smart enough to understand that if he hadn’t killed and eaten the deer it would have died during the winter. Smart enough to think in abstract terms, to wonder about life and death, Nakomii’s species were still hunters. Anything that could be eaten was prey. Even if a dragon were to take on a pet, that pet would be eaten at the first sign of hunger on the dragon’s part. That was the way they were, and Nakomii was no exception.
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The wolf that Dekani had attacked and bit wandered in the same way the dragon went. Dekani was glad, as much as she could be. Something bad was in the other direction, though she wasn’t sure what. If the wolf had gone back that way, she would have followed, but would have been uneasy and unable to sleep. But the wolf didn’t, so she didn’t worry about it.
The wolf left her sight, which was okay. Dekani wouldn’t be able to track it by sight anyway, the wolf wary for jumping, fighting two legged hunters. But it left a scent trail that Dekani could and did follow.
Nose to the ground, the she followed the scent trail. Her shoulder hurt again, but she was hunting so ignored it. Paying it any attention wouldn’t work, she’d already cleaned it with her tongue. It would have to heal again, though she didn’t think of that.
The trail was growing old, and Dekani was starting to hurry. Not because she feared loosing the trail, no, she never lost a trail when she paid attention to what she was doing, but because she didn’t want to get too far behind. When she had to sleep, she would nap, never fully resting.
And the wolf was getting sick. Dekani could smell it. Could smell, although she didn’t know it, the bacteria that dwelled in her saliva attack the wolf. Immune to the bacteria herself, the wolf was not, instead getting sicker and sicker as the bite festered and the scratches swelled. Not even Dekani was immune to the diseases stored beneath her claws, however unwittingly she carried them.
The bacteria that dwelt on the two legger’s body and inside her mouth was, in effect, her secret weapon. Completely immune from exposure, she was like a walking toxic spill. The lynx that had attacked her had slowly sickened, although it was healthy and young, and threw the disease off. The cubs, the cause of Dekani and the lynx fighting, had all died from the disease transmitted through their mother’s milk. And the wolf that Dekani trailed was dieing.
The woman didn’t hunt while she followed the wolf. Her focus wasn’t on eating, though hunger was preying on her, drawing her stomach in towards her spine, her ribs sticking out enough so that even the smallest could be counted. Thirst, too, preyed on her, though not as much. The wolf found an increasing need to drink, and so stayed near the water. Dekani, when she remembered, drank little.
The third day that she trailed the wolf, she smelt a change. It was nearly dead, and she was behind by a day. She hurried, though not standing on her hind legs. The trail was strong enough, but not strong enough for her to smell it from two legs. She slunk towards the dead wolf.
Not even sleeping, she found it during the height of the day. Barely breathing, the bite and scratches bleed a clear liquid, and its breathing was shallow. It barely moved when Dekani placed her mouth on its throat. Working to find the jugular, Dekani bit down and drank the wolf’s blood. When it was dead, she ate the meat, leaving the fur and a few bones behind.
No longer hungry, she became aware of her thirst. Lifting her nose, she stood up and listened for water.
She heard it, or smelt it, and walked in that direction. Away from the path she had been taking.
Quenching her thirst at the small streamlet that trickled over rocks, Dekani sought out a place to sleep. Exhaustion colored her mind, her responses. Taking a few steps, she collapsed by a tree, not even curling up to sleep.
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Nakomii was hungry again. The deer meat he had eaten, and the marrow was filling and tasted good, but it just wasn’t enough to keep a creature as big as him healthy for long. In fact, halfway through the day, his stomach started to growl again, and he had nothing to eat.
Unlike the reindeer, he didn’t travel away from the mountains that forced snow down. He had lived his entire life in the mountains. He couldn’t leave them entirely, though he could live off them. If he couldn’t see them, he feared he would soon grow insane. Sadly, his actions might cause him to die of starvation. While many animals lived near the mountains, or on the fringes, none stayed when winter was just beginning. Near the end, they returned to the bounty, but not when storms could kill.
In the distance, Nakomii saw a carcass. Only a few tattered scraps of skin remained, but the ribs jutted into the sky like a beacon. The dragon hurried, but he was hungry, tired, and his front limbs were just too weak. He made it half the distance before resting, and had to go slowly.
Slowly. He hated to move slowly. Long limbed and gliding, other dragons would have reached it in an hour. Nakomii had to keep moving into the night.
Eventually, he reached the dead creature. Although it wasn’t big, not compared to mountain trees or cliffs, over ten feet tall at the highest point, it still towered over the stunted Nakomii.
An old mammoth had died, and its body had been enough to feed many hunters and scavengers. None had been able to crack open the bigger bones to get at the marrow, but Nakomii was different then they. Reaching up, he couldn’t reach the lowest rib with his teeth, it was only natural to brace himself against a few other bones and stand on his hind legs. Grabbing onto the smallest rib, he let his weight pull it down with a sharp crack. Then he dragged it over to the skull, which was big enough for him to lie in. There was even room. But first, food.
Putting his powerful jaws and teeth to work, he worked away at the bone until it started to crack. Then, using his paws to hold it down, he bit and chewed and worried until the rib split in half. The marrow was untouched, but time had reduced it. Still, it was more then enough of a meal for Nakomii.
Then, tired, he crept to the skull. No other creature dwelt there, and he squeezed through the back to curl up where the brain had once rested. It was a tight fit, but he was small and, curled up as tight as he was, he wasn’t cold, though the bone pressed against him everywhere.
Like an egg, he thought, before he slept.
When he woke, he couldn’t find the way out. Nakomii panicked, clawing at the sides until he found the exit. Only his shoulders and wings gave him trouble. Long, lean and starving, he fit through easily.
The cracked bones lay on the ground, and he sniffed them in case he had missed any marrow. He hadn’t. He moved to get another rib.
Unlike the other mountain dwellers, the pests that annoyed the dragons into hunting and killing them, Nakomii and his kind settled down in one spot. Able to range further a field due to their wings and stamina, a large group could stay in one place and never deplete the area. And unlike the two legged pests, dragons found caves or made them, clawing them out from the rock.
Nakomii had found a place where he would be able to live, with a few modifications. The mammoth that had died, and was providing the marrow for the dragon, had been huge, a giant of it’s kind. Twelve feet at the shoulder, it’s skull was big enough to house Nakomii so long as he didn’t get any bigger. There was space in the jaw and the eye holes could provide an exit if one was needed and he didn’t mind tearing his wings off.
A rib from the ground was cracked open and the marrow eaten, and then the dragon set off to find water. There was no river near by, but Nakomii felt good enough to fly. Spreading his wings, he leapt into the air and labored to get high enough to look around.
A glint of water to his left, and Nakomii landed. It was far away, but not so far as to take him away from his mammoth cave, or to require him to sleep before reaching it. Feeling good enough to walk, he set out for the near dry pond he had seen.
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Dekani had woken up as soon as possible, when her body and mind were rested enough for her to find a better place to sleep. Then, between two rocks, she slept again. And woke up long enough to move away to relive herself, before returning to the rocks to sleep.
When she woke up, she felt thirsty. Returning to the streamlet, she quenched her thirst and then set out to find a rabbit to eat. She found a bird instead, big enough to provide a meal, and she caught it sleeping, killed it, and ate it. The sense of something wrong behind her drove her forward, into strange territory and down a slope with less and less trees.
In short, she was leaving the mountain.
As the last of the trees gave way to the sea of grass, Dekani stood up. She had tumbled down a steep stretch, and scratches covered her. But she had never seen anything so strange, so big in her life. She had never seen the sky, with no trees to block its view, and grass tended to be short when it existed at all. The prairie before her was strange, aw inspiring.
Then, the sound of something moving through the grass caught the woman’s attention, and she returned to all fours. Her nose lifted, seeking out the scents. Her ears twisted to find the creature, and her tongue inched out of her mouth to taste the air.
It smelt and tasted strange, but she didn’t think about it. In all of two steps and a bound, she came upon a small thing. It looked large too her, used to the stunted animals of the mountains. It had a long nose, claws on its paws, and brown fur. It also had a long tail.
And it screamed. The sudden noise startled Dekani, who leaned back, before swatting at the tiny thing. It bit her hand, so she bit it and snapped its spine.
Proudly holding the young weasel in her mouth, she settled down to eat.
