Chapter 4-3

They reached the edge of the forest the next day. As the trees started to thin, Almonihah looked up, sniffed a little bit, then said, “I smell smoke.”

Zrathanzon paused for a moment, considering, and then replied, “Sure enough. And I hear a bit of something. Wonder if someone's moved out this way.”

It wasn't long before they could see a small cabin through the few remaining trees. It looked to be the home of a small family. The pair of half-dragons could see the father working at pulling stumps out of the ground with a couple of oxen, while a young child played out front of the cabin under the watchful eye of his mother.

Just as the half-dragons saw the family, the mother glanced up and saw the half-dragons. She screamed “Monsters!” and ran to pick up her child and run back into the house. The father looked up, saw them, and shouted, “Stay back, beasts!” as he dropped the tools he had been working with and fumbled for a battered sword at his side.

Let's go, Zrathanzon murmured to Almonihah, and then slid back into the woods. Almonihah took a moment to overcome his shock, and then did likewise.

They were silent for a little while as they started to circle back around. This time they made sure to give the homestead a wide berth.

After a while Almonihah broke the silence. “Zrathanzon, why did she call us monsters?”

Zrathanzon sighed. “Some people think anything with scales is a monster.”

Almonihah was silent for a little while, then asked, “What exactly is a monster?”

The older half-dragon chuckled a bit at the simple question... then stopped, a puzzled expression on his face. “You know,” he said, a touch of amusement in his voice, “I think people have a lot of different definitions of that word.”

“Like what?” Almonihah refused to be so easily turned from his course of inquiry.

“Well...” Zrathanzon thought for a moment before saying, “Some people call any creature they're afraid of a monster.”

“So why would people be afraid of us? We don't want to hurt them.”

The ranger sighed. “They don't know that. They just see the scales and the claws and jump to conclusions.”

“Oh...” Almonihah replied. He opened his mouth as if to ask another question, paused, thought for a moment, and then asked, “Are dragons monsters?”

“Most people think they are,” Zrathanzon replied.

“Do you think they are?”

Zrathanzon sighed. “Some of them certainly are. The Chromatic dragons usually are. Even some Metallic ones are. But not all of them are.”

“Chromatic... that's the Red, Blue, Green, and White, right? And then Metallic is Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Copper,” Almonihah responded, half to himself.

Zrathanzon nodded. Almonihah seemed to have run to the end of his line of questioning, and they walked the remainder of the way to the village in silence.

The gate guard hailed them long before they reached the palisade around the small village, then came jogging out to meet them.

“Ranger!” He shouted as soon as he could be understood. “Stay there!”

Zrathanzon obediently halted and waited while the guard approached.

The guard stopped as soon as he was within comfortable speaking distance. “Ranger,” he said in wary greeting.

Zrathanzon nodded in acknowledgement, then asked “Is there a problem?”

The guard shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably. “I'm... afraid I can't let you come into town, Ranger. Captain's orders.”

The half-gold dragon nodded and said, “I was afraid that might be it. Any reason why?”

“A dragon attacked the next village up the Gold Road, and... well, it's got everybody on edge. People were already nervous whenever you showed up and... well, I remember what you did for my pa, but lots of folk here are too new for that, and, well...” he shrugged, “Probably for the best if you jus' stayed out of town.”

Zrathanzon sighed. “It probably is. By the way, you wouldn't happen to know what color that dragon was?”

The guard seemed a bit caught off guard by the question, but after a moment he shook his head.

“Did it breathe fire?”

The guard nodded. “That's what the survivors said.”

“Red, then,” Zrathanzon murmured to himself. “Very well, then.” He turned his head to Almonihah. “Let's head out, kid.”

Almonihah followed him in silence while the guard went back to his post. Once they were back in the woods, though, he asked, “Why did you want to know what color it was?”

“In case I need to go hunting,” Zrathanzon growled, startling his pupil with the intensity of his tone.

Almonihah was silent for a time, as if his mentor's fierce response had made him a bit uneasy about further questions. After a few minutes, however, Almonihah asked another question. “So what is it you did for them?”

Zrathanzon took a moment to come out of his thoughts. “I fought off some monsters twenty or thirty years ago,” he said with a bit of a shrug. “Most of the people there don't even remember it happened, if they ever knew.” Zrathanzon paused for a moment, then continued in Draconic, with a little bit of sadness in his voice, “There's a saying among dragons. Human memories are the only things shorter than their lives.”

Almonihah thought it over for a bit, then asked, “How long do dragons live?”

Zrathanzon laughed. “Always another question with you, isn't it?” Then he shook his head in amusement and answered, “No one's really sure. I know there're dragons out there who've lived for more than five thousand years. Beyond that?” He shrugged. “I haven't ever heard of a dragon dieing of old age.”

Almonihah processed this for a bit, then asked, “How long do you think you'll live?”

Zrathanzon was silent for long enough that Almonihah started to wonder if he shouldn't have asked that question, but just as he was about to say something else, Zrathanzon responded, his voice a bit distant, “I can't say that I know. Each half-dragon is different, and it's not like there're enough of us for there to be any kind of 'normal'. That being said, elves live for about a thousand years, so I figure I'm good for at least two thousand.”

There was silence after that. Zrathanzon looked down at his little pupil. The half-bronze dragon seemed deep in thought. The older half-dragon just grinned a bit and kept walking.

*********************

Well, it's the end of chapter 4! One thing that I struggle with a bit here is that I want to give an idea of what shaped Almonihah in his past without just letting you see what he's thinking all of the time (for one thing, he wasn't telling Elque about what he was thinking, usually). He may have been young at this time, but he's always been very perceptive and intelligent. Something to do with that dragon blood, I guess. So there's a lot going on in his head here, and his constant questions only reveal part of it.

It's interesting to see how different Almonihah was during this part of his childhood compared to how I first came to know him as an adult. Of course, there are reasons for that, and we've only seen the first few here. So don't worry, there's a lot more character development to come!