100 Years Ago
Time has a tendency to slow down to nothing when you have no one but a dragon to converse with. So much nothing that it actually stops.
Lilta had no clear idea how long she had been sitting there, trapped and cruelly imprisoned. She knew it was a long time, but as days pass “long” loses all meaning, to the point of being unnecessary. As far as Lilta was concerned, she had been trapped in this dark, humid cave for time, long or short was all one to her now as it had stopped. Conversing with a dragon can do that.
Save for the dragon, she was alone now. She had never been this alone before.
When she first came to this cave and this dragon she came with many, and not her first many. This many was brave and bright and sweet, they spent their days in song and their nights in love with the stars as they travelled far and wide learning secrets and solving riddles. Lilta adored them all, even the ones who did not like her and said she should be left behind. One amongst this many, called Calen, raised her voice and would not let any speak against her. She was a loving sister to Lilta and they were seldom apart in any real or unreal way that Lilta knew of.
Calen was always asking Lilta questions, but not enough, and she tried her best to answer the scholar as clearly as she could, telling her of the past and the future, the could be and never was, the might have beens and the shouldn’t be agains, but it was all so befuddling and Lilta hated frustrating her but did nonetheless. Yet so close were they that it seemed over time that they often finished one another’s dreams and Lilta would have done everything and anything for her. Anything at all, even face a dragon. And so, the destiny of this many led them up the long, cold stairs of the Combe in search of a Wyrm out of myth or a death out of legend.
They found both.
Calen burned for hours and Lilta was helpless to aid her, having fallen down, down, down as the dragon and the foolishness of the many shook the very earth. Lilta felt her last whispers, and would bear her last thoughts and words and sobs, her loves and fears, her regrets and hopes. All Calan was and wouldn’t be she took within the light of her to join the others in silence and solitude.
And then the dragon noticed her there at the bottom of the cave, entombed in fallen gold. Noticed her as she lay helpless, trapped, its great red eyes fixed on her. The dragon smiled and made a sound like a lamb dying…and their conversation began and began and began.
Lilta and Draigoch spoke of many things. Of life and death, their similarities and differences, their allures and inadequacies. They spoke of the minds of the ancients and the ancients of the mind. They spoke of everything and nothing until they had used every word in every language either of them knew or did not know, and still they conversed. They conversed for time and a day, with brief pauses as the dragon slumbered only to be awoken again by a many come to loot its soul and the conversation began again, though each time Lilta ended up enshrouded in more bones. Always more bones. Until one day…
Luck, providence, chance, fancy…this many arrived when the mighty Draigoch was weary and ready to sleep and not in the mood for such games. They battered his feet with steel and pain until in frustration the mighty Wyrm drew back into its warren and left a handful of this many alive to tell tales of the fire of the dragon begrudgingly. The last few of this many grabbed gold and trinkets from beneath the great pile of bones and ran towards the cold daylight of the mountain side and counted themselves mighty indeed.
And so, as they departed Lilta sang, having grown bored with the conversation. She sang of cool night skies and flowing water, of valiant battle and poignant victory. She sang of a day when the world would be reborn, as it had been again and again already. She sang until hands moved aside the ashen bones and looked on her for the first time since the dragon’s gaze had caressed her.
Eyes both young and old, a tilt of her raven head, and this newcomer, this girl, helped Lilta up out of her tomb of gold and bones. The two embraced one another in the deafening silence and Lilta whispered and the girl laughed….and Lilta smiled.
A voice from the mouth of the cave shouted down, echoing through the dragon’s lair, rough with the tones of Gondor as a face peered over the precipice. “Xanderian!!! Archer!!! Come or we all will be dragon’s food yet!!! Come away, we can mourn the fallen and count our treasures later. What have you there, a bow? Leave it, there are riches enough already borne away, and the dragon stirs again.”
The young huntress shook her head as she gripped the rope and climbed up, the bow across her back. “No…I want no gold from a dragon’s horde…all I want is this.” Foolish man, he thought she meant the bow...when she meant so much more indeed.
And so Lilta left the cave of Draigoch…and time began again.
