// dagaon //

//

"I don't want you to go," she says softly, and he freezes where he stands, no sound but his own breath roaring in his ears.

"Mama, I have to."

"Too young," she whispers, and turns away to face the wall.

She doesn't speak to him again for four days, has barely even eaten, the dishes of fruit and bread he takes to her left untouched.

On the evening of the fifth day, he slips out once her breathing has become slow and regular, her hands tucked beneath her chin. In sleep, she looks as young as she must have done while she carried him. In sleep, she is free, at least for a little while.

He walks quickly through the narrow streets, relying on instinct to carry him to where he has to go. The echo of his own footfalls rings in his head, and in the distance, he can hear the dull thunder that draws ever closer.

The doorway is set in thick stone, one of three, each identical to the other, but he knows it's the right one when he touches the rough wood and feels the sense-memory shimmer through him, holding him tight.

The man inside speaks in the ancient tongue, and Justin listens carefully before answering, the words thick and sluggish in his mouth. For the barest of moments, he fears he has given the wrong answer, the wrong reasons he wants this done, but then he sees the silvery glint of a needle and feels the panic in his belly recede a little.

The pain is a living thing that crawls over him, thousands of tiny claws across his back, digging into flesh over and over again until they bind together to wrap him in a thin red mist. He closes his eyes and imagines clear skies above his head and dark, rich earth beneath his feet, hears the song she sings late at night when she thinks he's asleep.

He doesn't open his eyes again until it's done, and when he slips back into the soft shadows of the house hours later, her hands are spread wide and lying strangely still on top of thin white cotton.

*

He lines up with the other dagaons, wings folded and drawn close to his body. Skin chilled by the wind is cloaked in gently-rippling reflections of gold and green, turquoise and scarlet, cast by the late afternoon sun slowly sinking back into the curve of the earth. It hurts his eyes but he looks anyway, scanning the fiery horizon for the spindly silhouettes of returning shadow-riders, watching the sky for the familiar lazy loop and swirl as they slice through the blood-red clouds.

"There!" he hears someone further down the line shout out, "I see them!"

A bare handful remaining from the thousand-strong who took flight just hours before, and it's strangely quiet as they glide back to ground, bodies battered and faces haunted by what lies beyond the thick columns of ash and smoke.

Justin feels the strange shiver-shift of bone and muscle unfurling as he rolls his shoulders one final time. The flesh between his shoulderblades is still tender, a fierce ache that goes deeper than he could ever have imagined. She's gone, but he still carries her on his back in skin and ink and blood, in a promise she never wanted him to make.

The air around him crackles with fire and fear and the slow, sure beating of wings, and he takes a deep breath and steps forward to await the command that will set him free.

//

in a moment of extreme smrtness, I misspelled 'dragon' as 'dagaon', and in reply, Maggie said: I kind of like "dagaon" -- it's like an au version of a dragon. And thank you! That particular picture of Justin just clicked with the wings. mmmmmm, flyboys. and well, that's when this happened.

[ feedback ] [ main fic index ] [ livejournal  ] [ randomness ]