Passports Stamped

In the far eastern wing of the Castlekeep, tucked away among the high rafters is a small, crowded room like any other on the floor.  Crates and boxes are stacked in untidy rows, left for centuries and holding treasures known only to the servant ghosts.  Dust lies over surfaces like a thin powder, pristine in its evenness and coverage… except for the two sets of paw prints leading from the iron-bound door to the far wall.  One is distinctly dragon in its placement of pads and talons, but the other is slightly larger and bearing resemblance to an enormous dog.

Across the chipped and peeling plaster of one wall, cracked in a section from floor to ceiling, a thin line appears, etching slowly from right to left.  It’s followed by a second moving line, turning ninety degrees to beeline straight for the floor.  Others appear one after another, each glowing brighter than the last and the gaps are slowly filled until a large gate is sketched across the once empty wall.  Between the arches, the dingy neutral shade of the plaster begins to blur and dark shapes flicker just on the other side.  A dense wall of thick, white moisture spills inward and in its wake walk two small shapes, one with the horns, tail, and snow blue skin of a Frostchill dragon, and the other bearing the oversized paws and dark red hair of an Ashkarin firedog.

“You tried to sell me!”  Ikiri turns almost immediately on his companion once his paws touch solid land again.  Dust covers his partially damp clothing and streaks flame-tinted hair, the remnants of a flight down a congested city street in a city perched high in the clouds.

Mitten shakes his head.  “Did not.”  Sometimes, explaining things to Ikiri is boring.  “I was going to trade you.”  Selling is bad, but trading is good.  Everyone knows that.

Not to be deterred, the Ashkarin persists.  “You were going to sell me for a winged polar bear!”  That fat slave trader was going to agree to it, too, before he’d dragged the Frostchill dragon out of the tent and down the street.  “Mitten, bears don’t fly!”  

“That one did.”  He’d seen it himself!  A huge white bear just like the ones he sees in the forests outside the Castlekeep, but with giant wings like a bird.  There was even a bridle!  He could sail right out into those clouds and soar through the sky.  “Don’t worry,” he promises Ikiri when the firedog keeps staring at him.  “I would have come back and stole you again later.  I would have gotten a sword and sliced anyone to ribbons if they got in my way!”  

Exasperation shifts to incredulity and back again with the speed of a plummeting anvil.  “A sword fight?!”  Mitten nods and grins.  “On a flying bear?!”  Another nod, and Ikiri is further convinced that the dragon is immune to the complete insanity of the entire situation.  “In a city in the clouds?!”  

“Like Icarus!”  The chalk disappears from Mitten’s hand as he brandishes an imaginary sword, slashing and hacking at the nearest dust-covered crate.  

The Ashkarin can only stand and watch as tiny eddies swirl in the dragon’s wake.  “I think you mean Bellerophon and he rides a Pegasus.  Icarus had fake wings—oh, never mind.”  He might as well be explaining it to himself for all that Mitten is listening while he whirls around the room.  “But it would not be the same.”

The orange and white-haired dragon comes to a stop, dust settling around him and he shoots a frown in Ikiri’s direction.  “Actually, I didn’t have to worry about you at all, because you could have just flown away yourself.”  Ikiri looks like he’s hearing a foreign language or he’s saying something really difficult like the Professor during lessons.  Mitten helpfully adds, “You’re not a very good owl.”  

The older boy just keeps on staring before he slowly shakes his head.  Without a word, he turns, and walks through the open door of the storage room and out into the hall, leaving Mitten with the crates and the dust.