Fragment 15

He fumbled with the door for a while before figuring out how to open it without breaking it. The hands of the mankind, which they used so cleverly, were not terribly different in shape from his own, or from those of other animals like the raccoon. The mechanism which latched this door shut seemed like it would be very interesting to disassemble, but even if he disregarded the mankind, he was fairly certain that there was another of his own kind inside of this building.

He had circled it to verify that the sound came from inside. This close, he could hear the song made of words from the mankind that accompanied the song of his kindred, but there was something raw and untamed about it. Like an infant's humming, wasting energy for the joy of hearing the world vibrate in response.

Once inside there was a short narrow hallway that gave him pause for a moment. He might have felt nervous about the entrance being some kind of trap, if he hadn't felt the weak material it was framed in vibrating in the unfocused hum, and the joy in that sound.

The room he stepped into at the other end of that short space was a place that one would have fit into any of the mankind's cities in the most recent hundred millennia or so. Wooden tables, wooden seats, and cups of the poison that the mankind regarded as one of their greatest accomplishments.

The young dragon who was singing so joyfully on the slightly raised platform at the far end of the larger room had surprising skill with shaping its compressed form. He could only identify its true nature through the sound it was spilling out so carelessly. He blinked and let his vision shift. In every physical aspect, the child mimicked the mankind perfectly, not that it seemed to be very much larger than the shape it wore when he examined it with his true eyes. A bit of the complexity had been reduced by the fabric it wore in the same fashion as the mankind.

It was a mere handful of centuries old at a guess. He was surprised to see such a young dragon, since it meant that others had not slept as long as he had. But in a way, that was not actually too surprising. Something was still strange though, such skill with shaping did not match the unrestrained energy it was pouring into the song it was singing.

The youth's eyes met his, and a tremor shook its frame.

--

The vampire had forgotten the joy of mesmerizing a crowd, and he forgot that he was supposed to be someone else now, as he sang old favorites mixed with new songs from his most recent waking.

Mac's grin was so wide that he could still see it despite the bulb that shone directly into his eyes when he turned toward the bar.

Someone entered the bar and came to a halt as soon as they could see the stage, and he basked in his own power for a moment, until he saw the man's eyes. A tremor of recognition shook him so hard that his song wavered. Only centuries of singing held the tune in place as his mind reeled.

He knew that he did not know that man, he was certain that they had never met, because he would have remembered this visceral reaction that told him that the man was no more human than he was. Another! A being of his own kind! Joy, sorrow, and confusion bubbled through his veins, making his skin feel tight.

He ended the song, and almost fell off the stage in his haste. He turned the misstep into a leap and a dance step that carried him right up to the stranger. "You came," he stated the obvious in a voice somewhere between a pained whisper and an exultant shout.

The man spoke a greeting that he understood, in words that left him frozen in shock. Cold to the very bottom of his soul, despite the cool kindness he sensed in them. His words seemed to make the very air hum, and pull at the world.

--

The youth spoke to him in the words of the mankind, with the hum of its song still spilling the secrets of its heart freely into the world. Pain, joy, question.

This close he could smell the echo of old blood on the child's breath, an echo faint enough that the youth should have been able to overwrite it. "Hello little one," he said gently in their own tongue.

The mankind around them had been mesmerized by the youth's song, but his voice shook them awake. Some of them reacted with fear, but one little wrinkled one reacted with anger, and leapt down from its wooden stool to charge forward as though it intended to defend the small dragon that trembled before him.

The youth held out an arm to block the small creature from reaching him, and spoke quickly to it in the words of the mankind's tribe. He still understood frustratingly few of those words, and the hum of the youth's song faded from his voice as he, he was fairly sure that it was a boy, restrained both the small wrinkled one and his own power.

When it directed a question to him in the same language, he hesitated. After a moment he answered in three languages. "No know," in the language of the mankind's tribe. "Non intellego lingua," in the language of the conquerors tribe. "I do not yet have a good grasp on that language," in their own tongue.

The youth sucked in a breath too deep for its compressed frame to hold, and looked at him with wide frightened eyes.

The small one that it was holding back, snapped at him angrily with a series of sharp and liquid words, several of which were close enough to the curses of its ancestors for him to recognize, and he smiled. Its defensive anger was similar to the dog's earlier, and it was trying very hard to insult him in the same manner, as though it regarded this young dragon who must be at least five or six times its age as a child it was guarding. It was almost endearing.

He focused on the child who seemed to be struggling to speak. "Na tu un gu.." Perhaps despite his apparent skill with shaping his form, he did not know how to release one part of himself back to his own shape so that he could let his throat properly form the words.

With apparent desperation the child suddenly sang its meaning at him. Never spoken, the world hummed with its wordless meaning. He gazed at the youth in shock. It was completely inexplicable! No infant was ever left to roam the world alone before it was old enough to speak, and anyone who found such a child would have taught it, no matter how little it could offer in return.

"I will teach you, and you will teach me the words of the mankind tribe of this place," he stated the bargain without the usual limits on his own offer, or the question that could be refused.