To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Moniquill Blackgoose
- Language: English
- Genre: Dragons & Mythical Creatures Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
FIRST, THERE WAS THE EVENING BEFORE THE MORNING
I was gathering mussels on Slipstone Island when I saw the dragon.
I’d never seen a proper dragon before, but there was no mistaking it
for anything else. It had come walking out of the scraggy stand of pine
trees at the base of the temple mound and was standing on the rocky
hillside, looking out to sea.
It was red and gold and glorious with the evening sun behind it, like a
hillside in autumn. From nose to tail it was twice as long as my canoe, and
from wing tip to wing tip three times as long. It had a crown of antlers that
must have come to thirty points or more. It stretched its wings, and the sun
came through them, showing the scarlet net of its bloodworks. It had a long,
sinuous body, like an otter or a fisher. Its neck double-curved like a heron’s.
Its mane was bloodred, each spiky feather tipped with black, and it had
black markings on its eyes and muzzle and along the rims of its deerlike
ears.
For a very long time, it did nothing. It sat poised in the sun with its
wings outstretched while I stared, hardly able to breathe. We hadn’t had
dragons on Masquapaug since the great dying. Anglish and Vaskosish
dragons in Catchnet didn’t count; they’d come later. This was a…
Nampeshiwe. That was the word for it. The kind of dragon that belonged
here.
A seagull screamed, and a pair of them wheeled down to land on my
abandoned basket of mussels. I turned to shoo them away, and when I
turned back, the dragon was looking at me.
Its eyes were sorrow. Golden, and keenly intelligent, and holding a
sadness so howlingly deep that I felt my throat tightening. The dragon
looked over its shoulder, back into the trees. Back to where the ruined
temple was. It seemed to sigh heavily as it looked at me again.
The dragon turned and leaped off the hillside, falling effortlessly into
flight with a few flaps of its enormous wings, gliding away over the surface
of the ocean. Eastward, into the darkness of twilight.
In the distance behind me, I heard Sigoskwe call my name.
“Anequs! Anequs, what are you doing?”
A minute later I heard his footsteps thumping on the wet sand.
“What happened?” he asked, panting, as I finally turned to look at him.
“What’d you see?”
“A dragon,” I said faintly. “Up on the hill there.” I gestured with a nod
to where the dragon had been. “It flew away.”
“What kind of a dragon? Anglish or Vaskosish? Who was riding it?”
Sigoskwe asked.
“No. Not an Anglish dragon. A…real one. A Nampeshiwe. Nobody was
riding it.”
Sigoskwe looked up at me and crossed his arms.
“Nampeshiwe aren’t a thing anymore.”
I shook my head and looked back across the water, where the dragon
had gone. Slipstone Island was the easternmost island; there was nothing
past it but bits of wet rock fit for seals and then miles and miles of ocean.
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