Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology (15 page)

I knelt and scooped up the egg with my good hand. I might not be much help in a fight, but at least I could keep the precious baby from being trampled.

A jet of fire, white-hot, erupted into our clearing. It singed the jaguar's fur and the cat leapt off Rain's back. Water coalesced around it, and a shock of electricity jolted through the forming puddles and made it yowl again.

Help had arrived.

I glanced around. Several dragons lined the clearing, rage and reluctance wafting from them. Avatars of nature they might be, but no amount of peacefulness or synergy could allow them to let a dragon egg be destroyed. They might not like it, but they'd come to protect their kin.

Cats weren't inherently brave creatures, and this one had been burned, shocked, and surrounded by a half-dozen creatures larger than it. The jaguar leapt above our heads and into the canopy, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.

I shook so badly I had to sit before I fell down. I pulled some gauze from the first aid kit and wrapped my wrist in it, stars appearing before my eyes. Rain had several new cuts on her hide, but none looked as deep or dangerous as the first. Surrounded by the other dragons—green and brown and beautifully varied, dragons of all different kinds—she lay beside me again. I put the egg between us and she cradled it with her tail.

I watched Rain and the other dragons for a long time. They had put everything aside to protect and care for their own.

It was time I did the same.

* * *

When I woke the next morning, I was drenched. Water had soaked all the way through my clothes and left me shivering. I tried to stretch, but something hard and unyielding—dragon skin—prevented me from moving too far.

I opened my eyes to see the half-dozen dragons curled around me and each other. Rain had stretched beside me, a lightning dragon atop her, a brownish-green moss dragon beside that one. Dragons were creatures of community. They slept piled atop each other like a mountain of kittens. This wasn't the first time I'd fallen asleep to find myself covered in scales and bathed in dragon breath.

True to his word, Mateo and the first of Ruwa Imran's supply scooters arrived less than an hour after sunrise. Several men and women began setting up tents, while two approached Rain with suitcase-sized medical kits. She didn't fight them, and the other dragons stayed close enough to offer support and keep an eye on the egg.

The dragons struck up a complex exchange in dragon-speak even I couldn't follow. I could sense Rain communicating with the others, and their excitement skyrocketed. I felt like I'd just told a bus full of children we were ditching school to get ice cream.

I looked to Rain. “You told them about the nurture, didn't you?”

Elation raced through the pod as a dozen or more dragons took to the air, heading south. Shad Riaz was in for a surprise. With that many dragons, we could accelerate the nurture by weeks.

Once I knew Rain and her egg would be well taken care of, I hitched a ride back to Ruwa Imran and collected the solar buggy. I pushed it as fast as it would go across the salt flats.

The moment I arrived back in Shad Riaz, Israa tackled me. She squeezed me so tightly my ribs ached, but I didn't care. I held her, breathing in the scent of her hair and perfume and feeling this beautiful woman who allowed me to call her mine.

“Hey treasure,” I said, reaching behind me and grabbing a burlap bag from Ruwa Imran with my good hand. “How about we go home and make some coffee?”

“That sounds wonderful,” she said.

I pulled her in close, holding this priceless treasure to me, and kissed her until she broke away, breathless. “And then,” I said, “let's make a baby.”

About Brenda J. Pierson

Brenda J. Pierson is just a nerd living her dream. She's the author of epic fantasy novels
Soul of the Blade
and
No Hill Without Treasure
, as well as the senior editor for Incandescent Phoenix Books. Writer, bookworm, avid gamer, lover of tacos, and crazy cat lady, she's living the good life with her husband in kitties in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona.

The Stained Glass Dragon

by Jeanne LG

“
Dammit!
”

A small dragon head hit the nearest wall and shattered, falling to the ground in a heap of metal pieces. A tiny silver screw rolled away from the mess until its course was stopped by a curious snout. As a paw gently poked the piece, it rolled farther away before stopping again, this time against the leg of a table. A few seconds of baited silence later, there was a flurry of movement as a small, baby-blue mechanical dragon rushed to pursue the screw. The game took it from one end of the workroom to the other, bumping into the door to the greenhouse on its way. The creature playing with the metal piece was largely ignored by the human in the room: his head down on the only empty spot on the table, arms hanging limply, he was muttering angrily under his breath. Undisturbed by its human's behaviour, the small dragon finally abandoned the screw to turn to a more daunting task: climbing to the highest of the few plants in the room. With its human providing a soundtrack of constant muttering peppered with swears, the creature made its first jump. It was surprisingly graceful for a mechanical animal, and it easily reached the lowest of the hanging plants. Said plant was not done swaying at the end of the string connecting it to the ceiling before the dragon had jumped to another one. Tiny claws delicately gripped the string-tied pots to avoid damaging the structure as the automaton went from plant to plant. Once in a while, the creature stopped to observe a plant or smooth a leaf or two between its paws before moving on. When it reached the highest plant, the dragon trilled proudly, before chirping with an undeniably irked tone at the lack of praise its achievement gathered. When it chirped again, this time loudly to signify its discontentment, its human jumped from his slump.

 
“What, what is it?”

Quite happy with the reaction, the dragon went on caring for the plant with satisfied chirping. Its human, on the contrary, slumped down again. With a long, drawn out sigh, the man leaned his elbows on the table and let his chin rest in his left palm. He would probably have gone on staring at the wall for quite a while longer, had the door of the workroom not flown open. As it was, the sound of it hitting the wall startled him so much he pushed himself from the table on reflex and froze, half-bent over his worktable, his chair toppling to the ground behind him.

“Hey Zaaaack!”

As he unfolded his tall frame and turned around, said Zack glared at the intruder.

“
What
, Alice? What was so important you had to barge in like that? Don't you know you have to knock, in polite society, before entering?”

The petite blonde he now faced tossed her hair behind her shoulder with a disdainful hand. “What, like you would have answered my knocks? Here,” she dumped a basket in his arms, “repair him.”

“Again?”

Despite his unimpressed tone, Zachariah picked up his chair, sat down, and folded back the cloth covering the basket. A pitiful trill came out, and the man frowned.

“Come on, Alice, can't you tell your girlfriend to take better care of her dragonling? I already have enough work to last the week, and now I have to repair Gabe's pet?”

As he carefully pulled the mechanical dragon out of the basket, Alice guffawed next to him.

“Come on, don't tell me you're still working on that crazy project of yours?”

The dragon looked up at Zack, who shrugged before tapping it on the nose. The automaton tried to bat his finger away, but his paw stopped mid-swipe with a grating sound.

“Ah,” said the man. “There you are. She stepped on your paw again, didn't she? You have to be more careful. Maybe I can upgrade your sensors somehow …”

“Zack? You are, aren't you?”

Alice's voice was suddenly much quieter, and Zack's shoulders tensed as he took a screwdriver and started removing the tiny screw on the dragon's shoulder. Not a word passed the mechanic's lips. The woman sighed.

“You'll never finish in time for the festival. I mean, glide, sure, you can do that. But
flying
? And you want to make it
pretty
to boot? No chance. Maybe aim for next year's festival instead. And what's to say you won't win anyway without it? You always do.”

Alice was being quite responsible, which was very unlike her. Zack's eyebrow knitted together with disbelief.

“Did Gabe tell you to say that? Is she worrying about my health again?”

The petite blonde shifted on her feet. “You did scare us—her. You scared
her
pretty bad last time.”

There was a slight dusting of red on Alice's cheeks as she avoided Zack's gaze. The mechanic set down his tools and twisted on his chair to face her.

“Alice. I know I'm somewhat obsessive over my projects, and I take failures … a bit extremely sometimes, but I will
not
go all green monster again. Once was bad enough.”

“Tell her that when you're not throwing dragonling body parts at the wall.” At that, she gestured to the broken dragon head lying on the floor. There was a small scratch a few feet up the wall behind the mess.

Zachariah sighed. “Yes, of course.”

Thankfully, Alice dropped the subject without prompting and he was able to finish repairing Gabrielle's dragonling while making small talk, instead of while having his choices critiqued. As he gave the basket—complete with repaired automaton—to Alice and shooed her out, she put a hand on his forearm.

“You know we think your idea's great, right? We just think the deadline you picked is terrible.”

“Thanks,” he deadpanned. “That's real encouraging.” He then shifted to a softer tone. “'Gabe' doesn't have to worry, all right? I'm perfectly fine. The stakes are nowhere as high as last time. It's just a dragonling. I'm not going to crash if it doesn't work.”

Alice briefly looked away before giving him a bashful smile. “Course. I … um, Gabe will be happy to know that.”

Just as she turned to leave, her gaze went up and her lips twitched.

“You may want to check on Cam.” And she closed the door of the workroom behind her.

Through the door, Zack could hear her giggle. He looked up. His mouth opened in surprise and it took a few seconds before he found his voice.

“Cam! Cambellotti! Get down from that! You'll break it!”

Perched on a stained glass swallow tied to the ceiling, the mechanical dragon trilled triumphantly as its human
finally
paid attention to it.

* * *

The dragonling was a stained glass vision. It almost looked too delicate to move, with its multi-paneled wings and slim body. But it was demonstrably not, as the dragonling slowly rolled onto its belly and stood up. It seemed a little unbalanced at first, wings throwing shards of coloured light onto the table as they moved to help it stay standing. Zack held his breath. After a moment of hesitant wobbling, the dragonling finally seemed to get its bearings and folded its wings as much as it could—which wasn't much, but Zack was a mechanic, not a magician. The dragonling sat back on its haunches and trilled questioningly at Zack. The man smiled.

“Hey, Gwyn. Look at you.
You
are gonna be the star of the show! Oh, you'll love the garden! Now, what d'you say we try flying?”

* * *

Zack was standing in the middle of his workshop. The absence of emotion on his face was eerily reminiscent of the expression on the face of dead fishes at the market. Light streamed from the glass ceiling and plant pots swayed lightly in the breeze coming from the open windows. Still, the mechanic went on being irresponsive. On the ground, Cam nosed at a blue glass piece. At the resulting
clink
, Zack's fingers twitched. His hands made an aborted movement towards forming a fist, but soon went on hanging limply.

This time, the door slamming open didn't even get a reaction out of the mechanic. He simply went on staring stonily at nothing. Even Alice's joyous expression of greeting didn't faze him. Lost in her babble, it took a few seconds before the woman even realised something was wrong, but when she did, she stopped short in the middle of inviting him to dinner and rushed towards him.

“Oh no, no no no … You promised, Zack, you promised! Snap out of it, please! Zack! Zachariah! Oh please, please, please …”

Alice's voice trailed off in a litany of 'please' as she stood before the mechanic, her hand flitting around him, hovering next to his shoulders, arms, hands, yet never touching him, never daring. Her fingers came to rest on her own jaw for a second, feeling the phantom pain of a long-healed bruise. He had promised not to rage out again, right? It wouldn't happen again, right? Crouched on a hanging pot at eye level with the woman, Cam trilled questioningly. Alice barely spared him a glance.

“Not now, Cam.” Her eyes flitted about and her voice trailed off. “Not now.”

She swallowed visibly and shifted on her feet before extending a hesitant hand towards the man's shoulder. Alice's fingers paused a few centimeters from their goal. She swallowed again, started to step back … But shook her head and put her hand on Zack's shoulder.

“Zack …?”

Her voice was tentative, soft, quiet. Almost but not quite the tone one would use with a beloved pet gone feral. One that might, maybe, remember you, but who might lash out at you if you got too close. Alice had hoped she'd never have to use that tone again.

“Zack, please snap out of it. You said you'd be all right. Please, you're scaring me … Don't make me call Gabe.”

Zack finally had a reaction, small as it was. He blinked and turned his gaze, still unfocused, on Alice. She tried an encouraging smile that more closely resembled a grimace.

“Hey, there you are. Think you can come back completely for me?”

It took a few exhausting minutes of quiet encouragements and prodding from Alice before Zack's eyes seemed to focus again. By then, she had managed to guide him to his chair and Cam was peeking at them from between the piles of scrap on Zack's worktable. The mechanic's gaze latched on the broken metal and glass pieces on the ground for barely a second before Alice stepped in front of the mess with a forbidding look. She was, however, completely ignored as Zack looked frantically around.