Veldorex walked among the nomadic shepherds on the Plains,
dressed as a queen, and for her, coin was easy enough to come by. The sheep
bells gently clanged as the animals bedded down for the night, calling to each
other in bleating voices. Veldorex grimaced. The bells upset her stomach.
She had a pile that she spit out near the front of her cave. They were useful
for warning of intruders however. It was hard to tiptoe through a carpet
of bells, unless you could fly. Humans were easily fools.
"My greetings," she said, her voice
smoky and dark as her gown. "I wonder if I might share your fire."
The nomads eyed her narrowly. She knew what they wanted, and smiled easily.
"For a price, of course," she continued, pulling royals out of her
drawstring pouch. A woman reached forward and snatched them out of her hand.
Veldorex smiled wanly. She would take it all back when they were dead, anyway,
but it would get her what she wanted, for now.
Their eyes glittered and they moved to clear a space for her
to sit in their circle, one even offering a lambskin stool - quite an
honor. They were roasting a carcass on a spit. Lamb, she concluded, and
chuckled, as if there were any doubt. The nomads eyed her warily, her laugh
seemed somehow ominous to them, and intuitively they responded with that visceral tingle that warns one of danger.
Veldorex was not hungry, though the meat smelled enticing,
roasted and not raw, as she was accustomed to in draconic form. She
surveyed the assembled nomads, dark and musty, smelling of the animals they
lived and died by. An old woman with a cragged face, the matriarch,
indubitably, with a baby curled in each arm, their eyes bright and dark as the
stones in the circlet on Veldorex's brow.
A woman with milk-heavy breasts, the mother of at least one
of the babes, Veldorex concluded, crouched by the fire, the light
flickering across her dusky skin, her shadow dancing out across the grass
behind her. One of the babies began to fuss and cry, and milk spotted the
front of the woman's lambskin tunic. She stood wearily, and took the baby from
the old woman, admonishing a boy of no more than five or six winters to tend
the spit. A tall silent man sat quietly, unobtrusively staring at her.
Veldorex realized that she looked strange to these people, elegant in her gown
and glittering stones, and her teeth bared in the semblance of a smile. No
competition with either of those two.
A pair of fat women muttering between themselves across the
fire and chewing gristle did not concern her. Their enormous bellies were
enough company. She wondered how they could even walk with their clan as they
traveled, they scarcely even moved their many chins as they whispered. A bald
man with white eyes sat near them, unblinking, not talking, only sniffing at
the air like some old, blind cur. Weakness was seldom tolerated in these
people, so he must have been in a high position of social esteem prior to his decline. A clan-leader or medicine man, no doubt. The fat women were
probably gifted to him, usually sisters. She frowned. Not what she was
looking for. A small girl sat beside him, braiding her jet black hair
while watching the newcomer with the pale skin. It was this one that
finally spoke. "Do you see the sun, lady?"
Velda, as she called herself in human form - for no one was
to know a dragon's true name, permitted herself a true smile. "As
infrequently as I can, dearling." That apparently satisfied the youngster
and she turned her eyes back to her braiding.
Where were all the men?
She grimaced and turned her eyes deeper into the shadows
among the domed tents. Children scampered through them, playing some kind of
game of chase, owls and mice, or some such variant. A woman sat sewing inside a
tent, her shadow long against the curved wall, a child beside her whittling at
a stick. A pair of lovers off beyond the furthest reaches of firelight tittered
softly and made wet sounds as they kissed quietly. Only Velda's dragon senses
alerted her to their presence - doubtless none of the humans knew they were
even there. Behind a scrubby bit of brush, a boy was watering the earth,
the soft splash of his urine soaking into the dry ground.
Nothing. She directed her eyes and voice toward the
matriarch and the mother, "Praytell, where are your menfolk?"
The little boy at the spit answered first, "Ol' Siga says there's a dragon
about!" The mother, nursing a babe on her dark brown breast, cast him a
ferocious look. "Is there?" Velda purred. The boy turned the spit faster,
and kept his eyes on the flames. Tubers wrapped in leaves sat in the glowing
embers and fat from the carcass sizzled in the fire.
The mother looked at Velda. "We expect them
anytime," she said, an undercurrent of threat coloring her tone. Nomads held
to their own, and did not care for outsiders, suspicious and wary. Velda
did not care for them either, but used them to fulfill her needs alone, knowing
that the unsociable lot were unlikely to talk to strangers about a pale woman who walked into
camp alone. Meat, men, occasionally news, otherwise she would not have suffered
them to live in her territory. They were good at raising those tasty
sheep, she had to admit.
"A dragon, you say, how terribly exciting. What color
dragon?" Velda's voice was smooth as poison.
The boy bit his lip and kept his eyes on his task. The girl
with braids replied instead, "Siga says it must be be a black 'cause we
never saw it. Siga said it took twelve sheep! I can count to twelve! Wanna
hear?" She jutted out her chest proudly. Velda shook her head and
eyed the mother, who pulled the sated babe off her breast and handed it back to
the old woman. Her nipple on her bare breast was wet and dark as she pulled her
lambskin wrap up over it.
"How do you know it was a dragon and not some wolf or lion?"
Velda asked. The little girl scrunched her face and looked at Velda as though
she had asked the silliest question the girl had ever heard. Because the sheep
would be scared at the smell of first blooding and go to running, their bells would be
clanging, and we would hear them! Even if a wolf kills one, there's always
something left, even if just bones and bells, but a dragon, no, they just get
so scared they don't run, just frozen, and Ai!" The little girl yelped and
smacked her hands together. The two fat old women jumped and muttered, shaking
their heads and chins disapprovingly. "The whole sheep is gone, no blood,
no bones, no bells, just - gone!"
Velda thought, "Oh, not all gone. I've got bells, littling, I have
bells aplenty."
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