Just as the dragon’s head started crashing down toward me, I threw up my arms to cover my face, screaming, “Midnight!”
The pain of being crushed in a dragon’s jaws never came, and after a tense, silent pause, I found the courage to lower my arms. Night Phoenix’s head was hovering only inches above me, so large that it blotted out the sun. It inhaled deeply to get my scent, and then let out a warm puff of air as it backed off, turning its head to get a better look at me with one of its huge eyes.
In the corner of my vision, I could see Denig, Ava, Nira, and Rhien struggling to their feet. Night Phoenix caught the movement too, and though it didn’t turn on any of them, one of its gleaming eyes locked onto them, a warning rumble sounding from its chest.
“It’s alright,” I whispered, not daring to raise my voice any louder as I slowly sat up. “Midnight,” I repeated. The dragon’s gaze fixed on me again, and I could see the confusion in its focus. “You don’t know me,” I said, steadily working to my feet. “But I know you.”
I stood, holding my breath as Night Phoenix turned its head to the side, getting so close to me that I could see my own reflection in the golden eye it was studying me with. It had been so long since my ancestor’s memory, surely hundreds of years longer than a dragon’s lifespan, and I doubted this was the exact Night Phoenix I’d met in the memory. Whether it had been reborn once or twice, or more times than that, this wasn’t Midnight, not truly. I couldn’t even be sure it remembered exactly where it had heard that name, or if its memories were reborn with it. But the mind masters had told me that memories lived on in blood, and in some way, in some instinct, Night Phoenix remembered that name.
“Gods, you’ve grown.” I stretched out a cautious hand, gradually bringing it closer and closer, until the dragon let me touch the side of its long snout. The moment my palm set on its smooth scales, it turned to face me straight on, the spikes along its neck and back rested flat against its body, and its eyes drifted shut as it pressed up against my hand. “There you go,” I said with a laugh, stroking between the tip of its pointed nose and the middle of its eyes. “We’re here as friends.” Night Phoenix made a soft chittering noise, a familiar rapid clicking sound that left its nose, and one I knew to be friendly.
I glanced over at my companions, taking in the shock on each of their faces. Nira and Rhien were staring in awe, Denig was grinning triumphantly, and Skif’s mouth had fallen open. Ava, however, appeared uncertain of how to feel. She was in awe, clearly, but behind that fascination was a deep sense of concern. I smiled at her, motioning her to me with my free hand. It took a while for her to work up the courage, but eventually she tiptoed over, standing behind me to peer around my shoulder at Night Phoenix.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, quiet enough not to disturb the dragon, even though it had opened one eye to watch Ava—something she was so nervous about that she barely shook her head. “Would you like to touch it?” She hesitated for a long span of seconds before nodding, but she still wasn’t confident enough to do it on her own. “Give me your hand,” I encouraged.
She held out her hand, and I took it in my own while I moved behind her, guiding it out and onto the same place I’d been petting only moments before. She took in an amazed breath the second her palm touched down, and it was all she needed to begin stroking the dragon’s snout of her own accord. “Night Phoenix,” she whispered. The dragon’s eyes shifted upward, and even from behind her, I could tell that they were looking right at each other. “You’re extraordinary.” The dragon’s head dropped with a thud, so that its chin was set flat on the ground, and its eyes narrowed to slits as it let out a heavy, content sigh.
“I think it likes you,” Denig chuckled.
“Look!” Nira exclaimed, and we all looked at her only to see that she was pointing toward the entrance of the caves.
There was another dragon there, with only its head sticking out and the rest of it hidden in darkness, but I recognized it from its description. Rich brown eyes, scales the deep green of the forest. It was Pine Shadow, and when he saw it, Denig took a few joyful steps forward.
“Hello, old friend,” he said, and the dragon recognized him.
It slithered out of the cave in a fashion vastly different from the way Night Phoenix had, and it was far more beautiful than I could have imagined. Its emerald flesh wasn’t as glossy as Night Phoenix’s, but it looked just as smooth, and in the light of the sun, its large brown eyes appeared immensely deep. It was winged, but rather than having two powerful wings between its front shoulders, Pine Shadow’s extended down the sides of its body. They stretched out in width at the middle of its back, but swooped inward and hugged close along its ribs, and then fanned out again halfway down its tail, like a swallow. At the end of its tail was another sort of fan, spreading out horizontally. The bone structure and vein systems in each of these wings were the same brown as its eyes and belly, while the translucent flesh was as green as the rest of it.
Where Night Phoenix’s chest was broad and deep, and its long neck ended at its boxy head, the shape of Pine Shadow’s body was far more lizard-like. Its entire belly hovered only a foot off the ground, and it moved forward on its four short limbs, reaching Denig and wrapping its great body around where he was standing. Its wings tucked into its sides, and the bark-colored horns on the back of each side of its head were laid flat as it stretched up toward Denig’s hand. It had another horn above the tip of its tail, a sort of barb, which must have been the spike Denig said the dragon had defended him with.
“I remember you too,” Denig laughed, and passed that grin to me. “We knew they were docile.”
“At my initial greeting,” I said with a smile, “I’m inclined to call it luck.”
He laughed again, glancing behind him at our companions. “Skif, would you like a feel?”
“I’m quite alright,” Skif called, having yet to move from where he’d retreated. “I’m satisfied with a look…”
“Nira?” Denig prompted. “Rhien?”
They both jumped at the chance, hurrying over to admire Pine Shadow. While they did, I felt a steady breeze pick up. It was cold enough this high on the mountain that it chilled me to the core, and the wind was so swift that it sang in the air. Night Phoenix seemed particularly interested. It left the gentleness of Ava’s hand to raise its head high. Its eyes closed, and for a long minute, it simply listened. The dragon’s focus and the breeze itself felt oddly familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place why.
Not much time passed before the breeze died down, and Night Phoenix looked back down at us. Then it dropped. It fell as flat to the earth as it could, extending one wing while its tail reached around, all the way to the back of Ava and me, pulling us toward it. It was almost as though it wanted us to climb onto its back, and I realized that Pine Shadow had done the same when I glanced over at the others.
“Do you know why we’ve come?” I asked Night Phoenix. “Does this mean you’ll help?”
It made that chittering noise through its nose, giving us another nudge with its tail. I saw nothing else to do but what it wanted, and I couldn’t deny that the idea of riding a dragon was thrilling in its own right. I used its outstretched wing to climb onto its back, sitting at the base of its neck, and then helped Ava climb up too. Nira came over to get on behind Ava, while Rhien stayed with Pine Shadow and Denig. It took some pleading and lots of encouragement for them to convince Skif to get on as well, but before long every one of us was seated. Night Phoenix gave one beat of its wings, but it was so powerful that it lifted us off the ground.
“Oh, no,” Ava muttered as another beat took us higher from the earth. “No, no, no.” Her arms wrapped tight around my waist, and I felt her face bury into the back of my shoulder.