The next morning I was awake at dawn in spite of the ache in me muscles--or perhaps in part because of it. But once I managed to get out of bed, I felt oddly alive. I hadn’t expected to have energy.
I woke my dragon by stacking my pillows on his head, then quickly fled the room as he growled grumpily, and went down to find breakfast, only to discover that I was the first awake.
But that was no matter. I stoked and fed the fire, then found some eggs in the cellar and got to cooking.
My dragon half-walked, half-slithered down the stairs a few minutes later, slumped into the kitchen, and stuck his nose over the stove to examine the food. Without thinking, I swatted it away like me mom would with me and my siblings when we were sticking our hands too close to her cooking, then froze when I realized what I’d done, but he just snorted and shuffled away to sit on his big wide stool at the table.
“You want some?” I called out, uncertain. I knew that dragons ate more meat than anything, and that usually dragon food and human food were two completely separate affairs--but he could eat eggs, couldn’t he?
“It’s gonna have to be more than that,” he called back, and so I added more to the pan--they’d barely started cooking anyway--and then two more for me, and got to scrambling.
The biggest plate I could find sufficed to hold my dragon’s eggs, and I found a smaller plate for meself, and brought them out. I set his down as well as mine, then went to get a fork--only to find him behind me.
He stuck his nose in the silverware drawer and deftly grabbed a fork of his own, then returned to his seat.
“I--what are you doing?” I said uncertainly.
“I’ve always wanted to try this,” he answered, gripping the fork in his wingclaws and trying to scoop up eggs with it. It made a loud clanking noise against the plate, and I winced. “Gently,” I said quietly.
After a few more tries, he got it well enough, though it still seemed awkward. The fork wasn’t designed for his claws any more than his mouth was for the fork--or the plate. Perhaps there was a good reason why most dragons ate from large, troughlike bowls.
Evie came in while he was still eating, and he froze, instantly dropping the fork on the table and trying to hide it under the edge of the plate--but it was seen.
“What’s this?” she asked, frowning, “Eating off good china--with a fork?” She’d walked over and fished it out from under the edge. “You should know better.”
He was in that hunched position he gets when he’s getting in trouble, a position that looked like he expected to be attacked--but wasn’t at all submissive or guilty. Almost like he was coiled to strike.
“Why?” she asked, and I heard him make a very soft hissing noise under his breath.
“No reason,” he said with a sigh, and got down from his stool, headed for the door. “C’mon Tolla.”
“Aren’t you going to finish?” I asked, standing up nervously.
“No,” he’s not,” Evie said quietly.
I couldn’t look at her. There was something cold in her voice that scared me more than if she’d yelled. I scrambled to follow my dragon, and she let us go.
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I wasn’t sure where he was taking me, and I didn’t quite dare ask. He was on the move, and I had to almost trot to keep up.
It didn’t take long before I found out, though. We were back at the library.
This time, he used a different door going in and crossed a small chamber into a hallway, then down we went until finally we reached a small door that lead into a tiny room. An older woman sat at the desk; the room was full of what looked to be personal objects, but not much else.
“Hello, dears. How can I help you?”
“May we see the Master Translator?”
“Go on in,” she said, gesturing toward a door that I hadn’t noticed until just then.
My dragon lead the way, and I tried to smile at the old lady and then followed.
The room beyond was lined with bookshelves, most of the books massive, heavy, wooden--dragon books.
“Hello.”
The voice was ancient and rumbly, and came from a corner where there was a massive cushion, atop which perched an old, silvery-colored dragon. He was reading from a book propped at his feet. “Who be you?” he asked politely, peering at us.
“I’m--” and he said his name, “And this is Tolla. I’d like you to translate my name.”
“Ah, lovely! Looking to name him?” he asked, looking at me.
“He’s naming himself,” I said quietly, and he smiled. It was a nice smile--no sharp teeth involved--but warm and true.
“As it should be,” he said serenely, and turned back to my dragon. “Say your name again, youngster.”
He repeated it, and then the old dragon said it to himself several times, then got carefully to his feet and went rummaging about the shelves.
“I’m not quite sure what to make of that name,” he said as he searched, “It sounds like an old form of a word that doesn’t get used much… and a bastardization at that, unless my memory fails me. Your mother either really knew what she was doing or was just throwing things out there.” He plucked a book from the shelf and gestured to my dragon. “Carry this over there please?”
He shuffled up obediently, but then hesitated. It wasn’t a dragon book that was being offered, but a paper one with what looked like a very expensive leather cover. His teeth would surely muss it up.
I stepped forward and took it quickly, but the old dragon didn’t even notice the substitution. I brought it over and set it down, and soon he found another book and handed that to my dragon--it was one that could take the abuse of sharp teeth.
He then carefully limped back over to his cushion and lowered himself onto it. “Odd name… but we’ll get you sorted out, don’t you worry. Come sit by me, lad and lass.”
We did, my dragon only inches from the old dragon’s front leg, and I a couple feet away.
The old dragon seemed to fall into an almost trancelike state, peaceful as he said the name again and again, paging through his books.
“Sanguine,” he said at last, “that’s the obvious part. The first part of your name translates closely to that word. Interesting choice…” he lapsed back into silence as he continued searching.
“What’s sanguine mean?” my dragon asked after a moment.
“Two meanings. It could mean hopeful--or perhaps, bloody. Blood-red. I doubt that’s what she meant--but it’s this second half that has me stumped, not that. We’ll sort out that meaning once I have the other.”
He switched to his book and paged for several minutes before finally saying, “Ah!” and then he proceeded to study the page for another minute. “Yes, here we are. The other part is spelled entirely wrong, thus changing the pronunciation, but it seems to most closely resemble this.” He pointed at the delicate paper page with one long claw, and I leaned in to see--but it was in the same script as dragon books, and I could make no sense out of the letters.
“It indicates a lack of something that comes before. So we could have two meanings--without hope, or without blood.”
“Hopeless or Bloodless,” my dragon said thoughtfully. “That’s…”
“Bleak?” the old dragon offered, and he nodded.
I sat silently. Such a terrible choice! Surely he couldn’t want…
“We can choose something different,” I offered quietly.
But to my surprise, he shook his head. “My mother gave me a legacy. Most people don’t care about that, but a name is a name. I won’t simply throw it away because it isn’t pretty.”
He laid his head on his wing. “I will change it a little, though…”
“My biggest thesaurus is over there,” the Translator said, gesturing at a shelf across the room. “Top row, third from the right.”
I got up to retrieve it, and then sat closer to my dragon so that we could all look as he turned the pages. He soon found blood, and examined the entries--then got to the bottom and snorted in interest.
See also: Dragon Blood.
He turned onward quickly and found the entry, sighed when he saw the small size of it--but then perked up again.
“Ichor?” he said musingly, instantly landing on a word I’d never heard of before.
“It’s an old word for dragons’ blood. It isn’t used much nowadays.”
“Dragon’s blood. I like that.”
“But what about the lack part?” I asked.
“Forgive me,” the old drake said, peering at my dragon, “but I am colorblind. What is your hue?”
A pause. A pin could have been heard dropping.
“White.”
“I didn’t dare to think it was possible… but yes. Your name makes perfect sense to one with a wry sort of humor… You’re named Bloodless, for your lack of color. Unless I am much mistaken.”
My dragon nodded, getting excited. “But Ichorless sounds stupid. How can I make it negative…?”
“In the common tongue, you need a prefix,” the old dragon said, and looked upward as he thought. “I don’t think there’s any that correctly goes with ichor… but you could take a common one.”
“What are those?”
“A, Anti, Dis, Il, Im, In, Ir, Un.”
He pondered for a moment, then looked around. “Do you have paper…?”
The old dragon nudged me with his nose, making me jump. “Table beside the door, if you please, lass.”
I quickly went and got a sheet of paper and a pencil and brought them over. My dragon seized them at once. “How do you spell those?”
The old dragon spoke letters slowly as he wrote them in a vertical column, and then the translator peered over my dragon’s shoulder curiously. “A dragon who can write human letters. Marvelous!”
I smiled.
My dragon, however, was too busy writing ichor at the end of each line to pay attention. Having completed his list, he said each one aloud.
“A-ichor--how do you even pronounce that? Nevermind. No.
“Antiichor.” He pondered for a moment, then shook his head. “Too much."
“Disichor… no.”
He simply scanned to the bottom of the list, then sighed and shoved it away. “None of these sound any good…”
“Anichor?” I asked, having come to the same conclusion as he was writing. “It’s like Anti, only shorter…”
“Anichor. Anichor? Anichor. Yes!” he bonked his forehead into me enthusiastically. “It’s perfect.”
He scrambled to his feet. “Thank you, elder. I have a name.”
The old dragon smiled. “Go enjoy it, little one. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to see you write again some time.”
“No problem,” he said, almost bouncing over to the door. He’d be skipping if he could. “Come on, Tolla! Let’s go make it official!”
“Goodbye,” I said hastily, following at a run.
I had to jog all the way after my dragon, but when he finally stopped at a small building near the edge of the second cliff, I almost ran into him.
“Go in first,” he said, “you’ll have to do the talking in here.”
I squeaked involuntarily. “But--”
“Just tell them you want to name your dragon and he’ll guide you through the rest.”
Heart pounding, I opened the door. My dragon nudged me with his nose, shoving me inside.
The man slouching in his chair just inside greeted me. “Hello miss.” He glanced behind me. “Here to name your dragon?”
I nodded mutely.
He grabbed a paper and handed it to me, along with a feather quill and an inkwell, and gestured at a chair for me to sit. “Got a good one all picked out?”
I nodded again and quickly read the form. It was simple--just my name, age, gender, gender and age of my dragon, and at the bottom in a big blank, the name I chose for him.
I could feel him buzzing with excitement as I wrote slowly and deliberately. I didn’t want to misspell anything.
The form finished, I passed it over, and the man read through it. “An-ee-cur?”
“An-ih-core,” I corrected.
“Very well. Nonsense names are becoming quite popular with you youngsters. I will admit they’re interesting…” he stood up and headed for the back room. I was about to say something, but my dragon shook his head sharply.
“The name is for me to know,” he said in an undertone once we were alone, “Nobody else will know or care, and that suits me just fine.”
I nodded assent.
“Here we are.” The man returned with a chain and heavy pendant of the kind I saw a lot of dragons wear. He set it on the desk before me.
“I only need the pendent,” my dragon--no, Anichor--said quickly. “I’ve got a chain.”
The man frowned at him faintly, but a moment and a pair of pliers later, the pendant was off, and he gestured for the chain. I took it off Anichor--I’d seen him struggle to remove it himself before--and handed it over.
He had the second pendant on the chain in another moment, and handed it back to me. “There, you two are all set,” he said, smiled at me, and sat back down, immediately reclining in the chair again.
My dragon waited for me to leave first, then practically burst out behind me and did a little hop-jump. “I have a name! Anichor! I have a name!”
He paused, and stared at me intensely. “I never thought I’d live this long!”
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We returned home in high excitement--I couldn’t help but find it contagious--only to find all four of our hosts clustered in the main room around the table, a paper sitting between them, looking grave.
“I have a name! I’m Anichor!” he yelled the moment he was in the door, and immediately there they were, congratulating him, all smiles--but I’d seen the mood shift. Something else was going on.595Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxEGOgdIETe
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Naturally, the document was gone by the time I had a moment to wonder what it had been. Anichor, excitable as he was, wasn’t in a mood to stay inside, and so once things settled down, off we went again. He didn’t take long before he had to stop and think, though.
“You wanna go on a hike? You’re not used to hiking. Maybe we should borrow you a horse,” he babbled, ran in a small circle around me, and took off like a shot. “Come on!”
I got him to slow down enough that I didn’t have to run to the nearest stables, but I was still about worn out for the day by the time we got there.
“Why do you want to go on a hike, anyway?” I said, panting.
“Hikes are fun!” he reared up and flared his wings in my face, then nudged me towards the stable. “Go on.”
“Why,” I whined, “I don’t like talking to people…”
“I don’t have the authority to speak for you, else I would. Go on, get in there!”
Grumbling, but trying to avoid his hard nose getting jabbed into my back any more, I entered the building.
Ten minutes and one horse later, we were on the road again. Anichor lead the way towards the forest on the steeper end of the cliff, and I steered my borrowed horse onto his path.
“What did you mean about not having authority? Aren’t we equals?”
He stopped and looked at me funny. “Equals? As if. Haven’t you noticed the way dragons are always having to ask their Anchors for things? Or the way humans make all the decisions? Or the way that all the most important places only have human-sized doors and human sized rooms? Your kind works with us because we’re useful, but most humans don’t believe that dragons are equal. And they sure don’t want to hear a dragon speaking for a human.”
“But the eyries are all about equality…”
“They teach all of us that crap in schools, but it’s not the same as it being real. You’ll see.”
He turned and carried on, and my dutiful horse stepped forward without me needing to nudge her. I petted her neck and stared off into space for a while.
Almost an hour later, my dragon stopped. We’d reached a place where a very thin tail of cliff stretched around the side of the mountain, and I didn’t even want to look to my right. Even the thought of such a drop made me dizzy…
I turned away and stared at the sparse trees on the other side.
"You'll have to leave the horse," Anichor said, inspecting one of his feet carefully, "it might be able to walk on this path, but... well, we're not going that much farther." He set his foot back down and ambled around the corner in an I'm-waiting-for-you-but-hurry-up sort of way, so I hopped off the horse, tied her to tree by some brush she could graze on if she chose, and hastened after him.
As he said, we didn’t walk much more. I was tired and a bit sore, but the walk loosened me up a bit.
Only a short distance further down the trail, Anichor took a turn into the trees, the trail beneath our feet partially overgrown and little more than a deer track, besides. He, with his tough hide, hardly noticed the bushes, and he pushed them out of the way enough that I could pass without getting me clothes all torn up.
A few more minutes brought us to a pair of boulders, and my dragon scrambled over the lower one--and then vanished.
I climbed up more slowly, then gasped. The boulders hid a sizable hole in the ground. Fearful of the darkness inside, I stopped, trying to see in. Was that a white tail-tip I could make out?
Suddenly, light bright enough to see by flooded the tunnel ahead. “Come on, slowpoke,” Anichor growled, and I meekly clambered down, then stopped short when I saw him--the light was emanating from the gemlike horn on his forehead!
“Just a light illusion,” he growled, “Don’t fuss about it. And don’t tell. I’m not supposed to use magic outside of sorcery classes.” He turned around and, luminous forehead lighting the way, proceeded down the tunnel. I followed behind, able to see just well enough to avoid stumbling and falling flat on me face.
We emerged from the cave just as I started feeling really closed in, and I stood up straight and breathed a sigh of relief--then gasped when I saw where we were.
We had emerged into a small flat place on the side of a sloped cliff, the valley floor not especially far below us, but off a sharp drop--there could be no climbing down from here, even for someone more adventurous than me. I followed the slope down, down to the pool at the base, then back up the other side--
“A hidden valley?” I asked softly, realizing that we were in a giant bowl.
“I think they know it’s here,” he said with a shrug, “But not about the cave. I never see anyone here. I’ve only been able to come a handful of times, though.”
He shuffled to the edge. “It’s a perfect place,” he said simply, and launched himself off.
I watched him fly for a moment, then went and found a nice rock to sit on, sighing for my aches and pains. I knew that the only way to stop aching was to ache worse for a while, until my body got used to it. The physical activity sure wasn’t going to let up any.
My dragon alternately flew and skulked around in the trees below for a couple hours, and only returned once the sun had left the bottom of the valley. “We’re gonna miss dinner,” he said, panting, having just landed next to me, “C’mon.”
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