Dragons Awakening
CHAPTER TEN: Flying with a Dragon

Traveling light: a foreign concept for Zi. It nearly killed her to leave her stylish pilot case behind and pack only a few changes of undergarments and clean shirts into the hardy canvas backpack she never used to tote her school essentials. Mental coaching, as painful as a dragon inside her head, finally allowed her to abandon the rolled up accessory bag with all her personal care products. After staring at the creams, potions and serums, Zi pulled mouthwash strips and a comb out of the kit. She dropped these into a small, zippered compartment. Some things were more necessary than food.

Her stomach lurched, reminding her she’d barely picked at her dinner. She shuffled through the cupboard by her desk, wrinkling her nose at the protein bars, energy bars and foil packets of “just add hot water” fried rice. Water would be more essential. She dropped two liter bottles in each of the outside netting pockets. It would never be enough. A grunt escaped when she hoisted the bag and shrugged into the straps.

Already wearing her winter fleece (and sweating profusely), she pulled on her lambskin gloves with heat reflecting lining and a knit hat. She couldn’t forget the fleece-lined blanket. It sported an aluminum heat-insulating shield and a zipper, so she could seal herself off from the outside air. She scowled, picturing herself shivering with teeth chattering like mad.

Zi tapped out a quick message to her assistant Michael, confirming the explanation of her sudden departure- emergency at Amsterdam headquarters. A tap on the keyboard powered down her computer. She tossed her media communicator and an extra solar power cell into the inner pocket of her coat.

Stupid dragon, demanding her presence on his quest to save the world. The angry dragon would emerge thousands of miles away from here. How was this her problem?

Terrified screams pierced her eardrums. A row of houses, a small European village by the architecture, burst forth in a fiery spectacle. The sickening scent of burning flesh, annoyingly sweet and oppressively heavy, gagged her. The stench of sulfur overwhelmed the charcoal fragrance of burning wood. Zi cupped her hand over her mouth and nose.

Below her feet, the earth trembled. A rush of flames engulfed a vineyard. Old vines popped and crackled. Leaves curled in the inferno. Green fruit shriveled like raisins.

In the distance, smoke plumed over a flat-topped hill. Red liquid spilled down the dusty slopes. An enormous hulk clawed its way free of the pooling lava. A bellow of rage rattled Zi’s bones. Bronze eyes blinked as the enormous head swiveled from side to side.

In a blink, Zi’s dorm room replaced the devastating vision.The picture of burning fields and flesh embedded itself in her mind. Zi shivered, recalling the nauseating stench. Even people she’d never met didn’t deserve that fate.

“Lights off,” she said and left her dorm room behind. Nothing like running straight toward danger.

When she approached, Ezerhaydn pushed to his feet. Already her shoulders groaned beneath the weight of the pack.

“How is this supposed to work?” She asked, shuffling the blanket she’d rolled into a neat cylinder to her opposite arm.

“My back radiates heat. You will trap it with the blanket. Wrap it around your upper body.”

Zi struck her irritated pose-hands on hips, head cocked.

“How am I even supposed to get up there? No mounting stairs here.”

Ezer’s eyes narrowed as he dropped his head to her eye level.

“May I ride on your back, Chieftain Ezerhaydn?” Zi hated the stutter in her voice. So what if he was a two-ton dragon with scary claws and wicked fangs.

“No need to ask permission again,” Ezer said. He glanced toward his back leg. “Can you climb up my leg and pull yourself onto my largest back plate?”

Zi tilted her head from side to side, studying the enormous spikes. Three in the center of his back curved like gigantic seashells, wide and smooth. The apex of his back was twelve feet above the ground. His ten-foot neck dwarfed his surroundings.

“Do I have a choice?”

“You can climb up my tail.” The weapon-like appendage snaked toward her.

With a grimace, she sidled away from the tail and approached the back leg, a boulder of scales. Her right hand tested the surface near the knee. Smooth-sided scales faced outward, with overlapping, shale-thin edges. Blunt and movable, the scales allowed for manipulation to finger-wide creases. It made gripping the hide like climbing a rock face. More secure actually, since the scales retracted, locking her fingers in place until she jimmied them free with side-to-side wobbling.

“A third choice?”

“I could lift you with my tail.”

Zi squinted at the spiny appendage. Still easier than climbing aboard, right? “Okay.”

The mace-like ball at the end of Ezer’s tail hovered in front of her face. Gloves protected her palm as she wrapped her hands around two spikes protruding from opposite sides. “Get this over with.”

The ground fell away as the tail lifted, curving so her feet dangled above the large central spine. With a grunt she dropped onto the dragon’s back and swung her pack around, a single strap dangled free. Securing the flapping strap to the spike in front of her, she unrolled her blanket, wrapped it around herself and wiggled into a seated position.

Warmth seeped from Ezer. She could have been sitting on a sun-warmed rock. Warm,sure, but it lacked padding and was nothing like the plush seats in her jet. She scowled, draping the rest of the blanket over her shoulders, tucking the ends around her pack, which she clutched tightly to her chest.

“I’m not really hanging on,” she said.

“You should,” Ezer said. “Especially for takeoff.”

Zi wrapped the blanket around either arm, securing it in her pits. She leaned forward and hugged the concave spine in front of her, surprised to replace it warm beneath her cheek.

“Ready?”

“Probably not,” Zi grumbled.

“Hold on.” The dragon sprang off his massive back legs like a cat leaping for a fence.

The leathery bat-wings unfolded and swept toward the ground. Behind her, the tail slapped the air in a seesawing motion. Wind whipped her face, sending silky strands of black hair across her cheek. The dusk-shrouded plateau fell away with every flap of wings. An enormous beast defied gravity with puny-looking wings, annulling every law of physics she thought she knew.

From the midnight sky, the earth below morphed into vast darkness. Cold nipped at her nose and ears. Frost-laced air burned her lungs with each inhale. She pressed her nose into the blanket, hoping to warm the thinning air before breathing it. Wisps of mist clung to her eyelashes. Every shiver loosened her grip on the slick spike in front of her.

Conversation might make her forget her misery for a moment. If she yelled, would the dragon hear her over the rush of air pressing on their ears?

“I hear you,” Ezer’s voice rang in her mind, and she gasped at the unexpected intrusion.

“Whether I mutter or just think apparently.”

“Dragon communication is a meeting of the minds. I have linked our minds in order to speak with you.”

“How do I break it?” Zi couldn’t help grumbling the question even though the dragon heard her thoughts not her voice.

“I am unsure. A dragon severs the link with the same sort of thought that establishes it. I doubt a human mind could accomplish this.”

Puny human, and yet here I am because you say you need me. “Convenient for you.”

Her seat between the large back spikes felt precarious. Mentally sifting through her pack, she decided she hadn’t brought anything to use to tie her onto the dragon. In truth, she’d been too irritated at the prospect of forfeiting her first class ride to give the actual process of traveling with Ezer much consideration. She rubbed her cheek against the smooth surface of the spike, noting it had cooled considerably since they’d taken to the air.

“My scales retain heat,” the dragon said. “That heat is lost when the surrounding temperature drops too low. My back is directly above my metabolizing center and should remain warm.”

She wouldn’t freeze to death. One worry banished. The largest problem - a dragon who wanted to burn up the world - loomed to the forefront. How could they stop him from his goal?

“Don’t fret, seer. Two dragons will defeat one.”

Making it imperative that they convince this whisperer to help them. Zi stared into the black sky, forcing her eyes wider. The buffeting wind should keep her awake. Or it would be the last slumber of this lifetime.

“Humans betrayed you, Ezer. Why do you care about saving our planet?”

“I care about returning home.”

The black sky pressed in while the voice inside her head relayed information about a place she would have considered superstitious nonsense only days earlier. Meeting a dragon face-to-face changed things.