Toro and Genest

The spinner, the weaver, and the seamstress. The three always so chic. And aloof. But it was Genest’s lace that crowned their garments. Genest could sew too. She had to. Even now, she sat down at the treadle machine and began the chore of alteration. Her mother had the habit of trading lace, or the oils her mother manufactured, for clothes. Genest had asked more than once why not just trade with the weaver rather than with the whole threesome for their end product. Genest never had fully mastered social nuances.

Alterations were easier than lace. Her tired eyes didn’t have to stay open long or focus too hard. The coughs had come again that night. Racking her body and stealing her sleep. When she had been a much younger girl, her father used to hold her through the coughing fits. Now she had only her covers to wrap around her. At the start of a fit, she could pretend the covers were warm and comforting. By the end, she was too spent to pretend much of anything.

Soon she’d finish her new garment and crawl into her favorite corner where she’d prop herself up with pillows and blankets. If she got comfortable enough, she could sleep. If she stayed upright, maybe the coughs wouldn’t come. And later she’d make lace. Later still, she’d call Avion. He’d take her to the gem fields where she harvested the sparkles she used in her hair, on her skin, and on clothes. The lace was her livelihood, the sparkles where her signature.

And Avion was her dragon.

Toro perched in a cleft in the cliff. He deftly unstrapped the leather portfolio from his back, unfolded it, a fresh piece of papyrus was already in place. He sketched hurriedly before the wind came up. He’d fill in details later. He held the pen up against the scenery, eyeing the notches. Accuracy. Accuracy first, artistry second. The relief of the cliff, the fiord, the trail.

The dragon’s lair.

Genest rested in Avion’s cave. It wasn’t pretty but it was clean. Sterile. It was Avion’s way to torch every surface several times a day. So often that there was never even a layer of soot. There was nothing to burn to leave residue. Avion kept nothing in his lair. It was good for Genest’s cough. In here she’d never had a fit.

Toro rappelled down the cliff. He anchored such that he could peer in without being detected. He couldn’t sketch it live so he’d have to memorize the scene. And he viewed it upside down. He’d measured and sketched the canyon from three points. He was just about ready to triangulate the data. He’d heard Grandfather tell stories of men taming dragons but none had done it in Toro’s time. But this was not a man, it was a little girl who slept on the floor. She stirred. Toro’s jaw dropped. Not a girl, a young woman. He used his thumb and finger to approximate the notches on his pen. A young woman, albeit a small one. Tiny gems were adhered to her eyebrows and cheeks; they were worked into her braids, and even into her lacey skirts. They glistened in the setting sun.

Toro pulled himself up to ascend the wall back to the rim. Soon the breeze would change direction and the dragon would sense his presence. Such a pretty young woman, but sleeping on bare rock. It was the coughing, the ferocious coughing, he’d heard echoing from the cliffs. The sound that heretofore he’d thought had come from a man. It had alerted Toro to their return.

He knew the cure. He knew where the herbs grew. But the dragon would vaporize them. And Toro wouldn’t be welcome in her village. She was Ebon. Even though the Raid Wars had relieved the Ebons of some of their strongest warriors, there remained enough fighters to provide ample protection – enough so that their women, some of them, were still afforded the luxury of dedicating their lives to frivolousness.

Toro almost lifted his lip in disgust but there was the young Ebon woman, so weak, but who had tamed a dragon. And who needed herbs.

It was in the middle of darkness when the arms slipped around her. Strong and warm and not, she was sure, of her imagination. They held her as the coughs racked her body. Lately the arms came every time the fits came. And the gentle deep whisper, “I am Toro. Come away with me.” Night after night when the coughs came he was there. And when the scourge saw fit to give her relief for several nights only to return, he was there. “Come away with me, I can heal you.”

But that was Avion’s job. Avion and his sanitizing fire that left rocks warm – hard rocks that quickly turned cold, and left her sore. But she had trained a dragon. The other girls hadn’t even thought to try. She’d always been too weak and small to be their friend. Having Avion didn’t change that. However, he gave her respite now and then.

“Come away with me.” Toro’s attention reminded her of her father.

And hadn’t he left never to return?