Dragonforge

'Why?' Graxen asked. 'Why obstruct Shandrazel's reforms?'

'The matriarchy has an interest in maintaining the status quo. Zorasta will not permit radical changes to the world order.'

'How strange,' said Graxen. 'All my life, I've craved change. I honestly don't care what the consequences will be if Shandrazel succeeds in creating a new form of government. I simply welcome a tomorrow that I know will be different than today. I welcome a world where nothing can be truly thought of as permanent.'

Nadala flapped her wings and hopped to the same wall Graxen stood on, though still keeping her distance. 'Would you truly embrace that?' she asked. 'A world where nothing is permanent?'

'Some things must be permanent, I suppose,' he said. 'The sun will continue to rise and fall for all eternity; the moon will forever wax and wane among the stars. Ten thousand years from now, the ocean waves will still beat against the sand, and crickets will still chirp through summer nights. But I won't be here to see these things, and all the books of the biologians will have long since crumbled to dust. We already live in a world in which we're not permanent; to believe otherwise seems to require the willing embrace of an obvious untruth.'

'Ah,' said Nadala. 'You have a flair for poetry after all. These are the sorts of words you should put in your letters.'

'Wouldn't reflections on our impermanence be a depressing topic for a love letter?' asked Graxen.

'Oh,' she said, with a coy tilt of her head. 'Are they love letters now?'

Graxen was too tired to be flustered. The word had slipped out; there was no point in pretending otherwise.

'From the moment I saw you, it's been love,' he said, looking at her directly.

'You're lying,' she said, hopping closer. 'The first moment you saw me you wondered if I was going to kill you.'

'True,' he said, still meeting her gaze. His exhaustion and her presence had left him feeling slightly drunk. Words that he couldn't have imagined uttering earlier now spilled out of him. 'But I felt love from the moment you chased after me to return my satchel. Your kindness was more than I expected or deserved. The grace of your act made the world a more hopeful place.'

'It's a lucky thing I missed when I tried to skewer you, then.'

'If you had killed me, you would only have been doing your duty.'

'If my sisters discovered me here with you, they would kill us both. Would you still be so forgiving in the name of duty?'

'I know you're taking a risk in coming here,' he said. 'Yet, you did come. Why?'

'Because I too crave change,' she said, looking down into the tangled darkness in the tower's interior. 'What you said about impermanence, about how we won't be here in ten thousand years… these words resonate with me. What does a valkyrie's pledge to duty matter when the years will eventually wash away even her memory? The only slim thread of immortality in this world is to produce offspring, and hope that they will produce offspring. Perhaps some small echo of the self will endure through the ages.'

'I'll never produce offspring,' said Graxen. 'Perhaps this is why I've come to my views on impermanence.'

Nadala flapped her wings once more, hopping directly beside him. She was close enough he could smell her, a soapy scent, sandlewood and rosewater. She'd apparently had the opportunity to bathe after her return to the Nest. Graxen suddenly felt unclean, his skin sticky and musky.

She leaned her head close to his, her nostrils wide as she breathed in his scent.

'I like the way you smell,' she said, closing her eyes, her voice sounding dreamy. 'There's something primitive about it. Bestial. Beneath the veneer of culture, we are, in truth, only animals.'

'There's nothing bestial about the way you smell,' Graxen said, his nostrils hovering over her scales. 'It's the scent of a civilized being, a smell like architecture and music.'

'Oh, that must definitely go in your letter.'

She opened her eyes and their gazes locked. Their nostrils were so close together they were breathing each other's breath. They stood facing for a long silent moment, he inhaling as she exhaled, she reciprocating an instant later. The air passing between them was hot and humid. They were sharing the very essence of life itself.

She leaned her snout against his and pushed. Their cheeks rubbed against each other with a slow, firm pressure. Her smooth scales were the perfect surface for his own scales to rub against, the most satisfying thing that had ever touched his hide. She continued to slide along him, her cheek slipping along his neck, until their shoulders met and each had their head nestled against the other's spine. Her aroma left him dizzy; the warmth of her skin and the firm yet yielding texture of her muscles beneath caused a thousand tiny storms to erupt within him. He felt full of lightning-energized, but also on the verge of being torn apart.

At the thought of being torn apart, he pictured Nadala's fate if they were discovered by other valkyries.

'We can't do this,' he whispered. 'I don't care if your sisters rip me to shreds; if they harmed even a scale on you I couldn't live with myself.'

'We can't do this,' she whispered back. 'But not because I fear death. I don't. I've always been willing to die for a cause. Now I'm willing to die for you.'

'Oh,' he said, feeling the storms within him raging even stronger. 'Then I guess we can do this.'

'No,' she said, pulling back, stepping away from him. The sudden absence of her warmth left him shivering. 'We can't do this because I don't know how.'

Graxen was confused. 'You don't know how to love?'

'No,' she said. 'I mean, yes, I believe I know how to love. Perhaps. I don't know what love is; it's more the domain of poets than warriors. I only know that I want you more than I've ever wanted anything.'

Graxen was now even more confused. 'Then, what, exactly, is it that you don't know how to do?'

Nadala looked away demurely. She said, in a low voice. 'I mean, I haven't had training. In reproduction.'

'Oh,' he said.

'Those initiated in the process are under strict vows of secrecy,' she explained. 'But perhaps the biologians…?'

'No,' Graxen sighed. 'I've heard… whispers. But I've never received an education in these matters either.'

'Then we're shackled by our ignorance,' she said, sounding bitter. 'That veneer of culture I mentioned has separated us from our animal natures.

Graxen nodded. 'Perhaps we could simply proceed and let our instincts guide us?'

Nadala shook her head. 'It may be just stories meant to frighten us, but I've been told that mating without the proper training can lead to injury. I want you, Graxen. I just don't know what to do with you.'

'I, um, am very good at research,' Graxen said, thinking of the Grand Library back at the palace. Certainly some biologian had recorded the technical details of reproduction among those countless tomes. 'I'll return once I learn the details.'

'How long will this take?' she said.

'A few days, perhaps?' he said. 'That should be time enough…'

'I don't know if I can wait that long,' she said. 'I feel as if I'm going to be torn apart by the desires within me.'

'I understand better than you think,' he said, though the storms within him were fading now that he had put his mind to the thought of research. 'I promise to read as quickly as I can.'

She wrapped her wings around him, still facing him. It wasn't a correct fitting somehow; their bodies felt pleasant pressed against one another, but somehow mismatched. Whatever the actual reproductive act entailed, Graxen suspected they wouldn't be facing one another.

Wordlessly, she pulled away. Her eyes glistened as she studied him for a long moment, then leapt, straight up, climbing toward the sky.

He thought of the beaded belt in his satchel; the gift could wait for another time. A moment later, a small leather pouch fell from the stars. He caught it in his fore-talon. The satchel smelled like she smelled. He opened it to find a neatly folded square of translucent paper, the black outlines of letters visible through the surface. He didn't open it. He felt so full of Nadala's presence that he wasn't yet prepared to replace the words she'd spoken with the words she'd written. The melody of her voice was still fresh; he would hold onto it as long as he could.

Soon, her dark form vanished into the night. He watched the stars for a long time before spreading his wings and drifting off into the sky, light as hope.