The wind changed abruptly and it blew the smoke and flames out over Kill Lake. Let the long-necked flippered monster that always tried to tip over my raft, and the daggermouth fish that made swimming problematic, deal with the tarry grey clouds. I accounted for the change in wind direction as that the forest spirits had found it in themselves to stop feuding long enough work together, for once, lest fire consume their leafy homes. The relatively clean air allowed me to stop blinking with tears long enough to see and pad past embers, to close in on the source of the forest fire. Everything smelled like a campfire.
I heard hissing.
Burnt but not consumed birch hisses. It's moisture escaping the green wood through the enveloping bark.
Unexpectedly, I heard the arsonist before I saw her. She hissed, too. Canvas-like wings snapped closed, which made me look right, moonlight and fire combining to resolve shadow into deadly substance. Charcoal crunched under heavy weight. Branches hosting tiny flames, cracked and snapped.
Red pebbly skin glowed with a metallic sheen. The wyvern, the size of a small cottage, lumbered into view through the trees, walking on the knuckles of her wing claws and back legs. Her massive tail swished through burnt brambles, brushing them aside and throwing burning sparks in a spray skyward. The hiss sounded each time she exhaled. Her breath caught fire an arm length from her mouth.
I smelled kerosene.
One amber eye looked my direction, then both as she turned her lizard head my way. Her eyes were bright amber because spirit fire flickered inside those orbs. A snake's tongue briefly flicked out.
I did not know at that time the red dragon was a she. I did not yet know that the hiss and the fire were her trying to speak to me.
The wolves I lived amongst understood how I'd befriended them, why I lived amongst them, and how my gift made their cubs lives better. I'd shared my humanity with them in exchange for what made them wolves. Now, for the sake of the pack, and Fell Forest, they begged me to share my gift again.
I was part wolf, now. Part other beasts, too. It scared me to think how becoming part dragon would change me. Dragons weren't beasts; they were monsters. She would be my first monster. Wyvern eyes, set in her head like a predator, centered on me. She blinked. Like a bird, causing my breath to catch. Flames bluely flickered in the air between us—a deadly earnest warning not to do what I must.
I was part of the pack. I had to save them.
I understood one thing, however. The best way to handle misunderstandings, like incidentally burning down a neighbor's "home," was to talk matters out.
Only after that failed did you bite off part of the alpha's ear. The red dragon had no ears.
I walked into the open, elbow over my nose, coughing, stepping over smoking charcoal. I tightened the wet fabric over my mouth, hoping I could get close enough to use my gift before being incinerated.