i will cut the dragon's feet

You know what you’re going to find as soon as you open up your cart door.

Your mother is absolutely covered in dust. No matter how much you brush her, how many hours you devote to cleaning her fur to a gloss, all it takes is one step outside to ruin it all. There’s orange sand dripping on her whiskers, hanging heavy on the thick lashes of her eyes, blanketing her snout and her spine. It’s speckling her hide like the spots on the litter she’d had once, making her look practically like a kitten again.

Her ears flick, pivoting towards you as the steps creak, and the motion sends sand spiraling out of them. From the prick of her whiskers, you can tell she’s pleased, for all that she’s absolutely filthy with the stuff.

And for all that there’s already orange sand on your shoes, and the lining of your sleeves. In a moment, you’ll be filthy with it, too.

Ancestors, you hate this fucking place.

“What have you got now, Mother?” She’s crouched over something small enough that you can’t see it past the coiled muscles of her haunches, no matter how you crane your neck. Normally, you’d leave her to it - your lusus hauls home dead things like you’re still a wriggler that needs to learn to hunt, and the only way to dissuade her is by ignoring it. She’ll put it out of its misery soon enough.

But whatever it is won’t stop whining, loud enough that you can hear it inside, and Pheres kept trying to sneak out to see.

Maybe a perigee ago, you would’ve let him. But it seems like every time he wanders out of your sight lately, the daft thing’s returning with new damage - a missing tooth, a scuffed knee, a limp that certainly hadn’t been there the day before. And the excuses he gives each time -

(”I jumped in the well,” he’d said, like that’d been a perfectly reasonable explanation for the ugly red scrapes and the mud all over his clothes, and then, when you’d pressed: “- Sipa said there wasn’t any water down there, so I had to.”)

- well. They’re not even worth remembering.

Frankly, you’re tired of it. You’ve spent perigees and perigees here, away from your matesprit, away from your city, to make Loxias’s plan work. It’s so close to finally being done. Pheres talks like you, walks like you - another perigee, and you can finally go home. You’ve been putting in the work. All he’s had to do is learn, and then do his part when the time comes.

Until then, all he has to do is stay alive, but he doesn’t seem apt to do that. If he’s not getting himself injured, he’s squirreling after some curiousity or another, and putting his fool head at risk in the process. Last perigee, you had to mend a crack in his horn, from where he’d hit something in the river - like you haven’t told him not to go near the river.

He’d been the one to hear the noises this time. You’d told him to dismiss it, but he’d gone sneaking for the door as soon as you’d started work. “.. I’m just getting water!” he’d said, wide-eyed and innocent, fronds wrapped tight around the handle and already turning when you’d caught him.

He’d lasted another ten minutes before you’d found him at one of the windows, angling his head out to see.

And since he wouldn’t just ignore it, never mind how many times you told him to just get back to his copy-work, it’s up to you to make it stop. “Don’t play with your food, Mother,” you say, peevish. It’s some sorry daywalker, from the looks of it: as you walk around to your lusus’s head, you can see tattered red cloth, sun-scarred skin, a mop of ratty, overgrown curls. This entire district is lousy with the things, like the residents are too lazy to find the nests and burn them out.

You know your mother eats them. This is the first time she’s brought one to your door, though. “I hope you’re not expecting me to take a bite,” you say, flat. She chuffs at you, her tail lashing. “Or Pheres. I told you, I’m perfectly capable of hunting for both of us –”

The whine abruptly stops. The walkers head tilts back, ignoring your mother’s growl, and you catch a glimpse of bright gray eyes. “Rmeros!”

Oh. It’s not a walker.

Not yet, anyway.

You’re close enough that your mother can rest her big head against your knee, and she does, purring loudly. She’s got her paws on the shoulders of Daedal’s get, and you can see the muddy brown streaks where her claws have been digging in. The girls face is cloud pale, gray as the sidewalks back home, and the sun’s coming up. If you just went back inside for a few hours…

Maybe she sees an inkling of that in your face. She starts kicking and thrashing anew, and your mother’s raspy purr abruptly turns to a growl. “Get her off of me! Rmeros! Come on!”

It’s frankly amazing, how much noise a rotten little thing like her can make. She’s barely up to your chest on your best days, but she’s rattling away like a bee in a jar, the furious thrum of her rattlereeds loud enough that they nearly match your mothers.

She’s a match in plenty of ways. She looks like an animal right now, those absurd ears pinned back, her lips curled to expose fang.

“You stupid, curly-horned bastard, get her off of me!” 

“Charming,” you say, amused, and her face goes orange. “Simply charming. And what were you doing over here?”

It’s a rhetorical question. One step closer puts you near her hands, and to the rock lying on the ground. Not a rock, you correct yourself: a brick, one of the ones always falling out of the side of the cluster. There’s mortar still clinging to the sides, but it’s long faded gray with dirt, sand and the filth of the desert.

(Of all the places you could’ve found a signmate, you just had to find him here, roosting among Temasek’s squalor. There’s traces of gray on your fingers where you touched the mortar. You’re sure there’ll be traces of orange left in your soul, by the time you’re done here.)

She doesn’t answer. She just glares at you, her mouth thin as you toss the brick in the air. It’s not big in your hands. Not heavy, either: in fact, it’s a nice weight. “And what did you have this for, I wonder?”

“Do you want to say something?” you add, and then you laugh: she might be ignoring you, but her eyes are tracking the brick, her face tight with fury.

You let the brick drop. It hits the ground inches from her face, and that stirs a reaction from her: all that happens is that she gets sand in her eyes, sand in her face, but she goes off like you struck her instead, a flurry of insults and threats in the garbled tongue everyone uses out here.

You don’t understand a word of it. But you don’t have to, with the way she’s snarling. If anyone was around, then her noise should’ve brought them out.. but there isn’t. The sun’s nearly up, and everyone sensible is asleep, save you, your signmate, and the little riffraff in front of you.

In the cities, no one would care if you offed a wriggler. There’s enough of them! But the country is different, small enough that everyone knows each other’s faces, and names, and has an investment in their survival. Luckily, you don’t care about culling Nzinga, no matter how much of an impediment she’s proven.

She’ll be out of your hair soon enough. And you can feel the first heat of the sunrise on your back.

“Have fun with your catch,” you inform your mother, and you head back inside.

BIRDS AND LIONS [SIPARA POV] - 20k

You can’t picture it. You might as well picture having fins. But Pheres apparently can. “So he doesn’t need our hivestem. He’s got his own, and it’s lovely,” he says for you, when you don’t answer. He’s been wringing out his hair, but now he pauses. “And.. he said I can come see it soon. If I want to.”

It’s rare for you to be gobstopped! But the words just won’t come. Your pan is like a leaky sieve, ‘except instead of draining out thoughts, it’s not even letting them in. Everytime a word appears, it pours out just as quick, ‘til the only thing that’s left is a sickly kinda unease.

But he’s watching you side-long, waiting for a reply.

“.. but you aren’t,” is what you finally manage to say. It comes out as a squeak. Worse yet, it comes out as a question, and all you want to do is rip out your voicebox and start over. “Right?”