Fy Nghariad

At the base of Juatasapi was lush greenery, plentiful coniferous trees, their bushy branches and thin trunks currently covered in migrating monarch butterflies. Beneath the rich green plant and orange-wing canopy, two dragons met in the thick of the woods.

Arenig and Keshet were drawn to one another. They were a study in contrasts: Arenig’s bulky form and dull colors next to Keshet’s riotous rainbow splashed over a lithe form. Their attitudes were much the same. As she tried to rile him, he remained steadfast and sturdy, though not put off. When he offered her sincerity, it lit up within her like light off the many polished facets of a gem.

Their courtship was both too short and, yet, strangely long. This was a chance meeting, and it would be over before it could truly begin. Yet the days passed in the shelter of Juatasapi, the two dragons engaging in mundane affections that truly boggled Keshet’s mind.

This was not the way she had courted Magpyr, nor was it how Jack felt love. It was too soft, too simple, content to exist as it was. The urge for more itched down her spine, but when she lay tucked up against Arenig’s side, his wing draped over her, clouds wrapped around them both, she felt so momentarily content that it was enough.

It was strange, and it was addicting. She wasn’t ready to give it up.

And yet, as soft as this was, Arenig was strong.

One day, as she nipped and teased at him, he rose on his back legs and brought the full force of his body down on the earth. It splintered and cracked beneath her hooves, and Keshet darted into the air as the crevasse widened, water spilling out of the unearthed spring.

Keshet grinned at him and swept around him in a circle on her wings, feylike and gleeful. She splashed a hoof in the font, and froze the water as it left the spring. Again and again, with the tuft of her tail or the tip of her wing, small structures of ice that caught a moment in time, arched in the air, gleaming like crystals before beginning to melt in the summer heat.

Arenig, amused, swept through the spring with his own mighty tail, and Keshet froze the ensuing wave with a wild laugh before settling down at his side, her head pillowed on the frozen plate just over his shoulder.

“I think you’d be boring, anywhere else,” she confessed, not feeling the least bit guilty.

Arenig huffed, amused. “You’ll miss me.”

“And you’ll miss me,” she insisted, nipping at his jawline.

He nosed her firmly, and Keshet fell as gracefully as she could onto her back into the soft pile of pine needles and grass they’d swept up in the last few days, making a rudimentary nest. He placed his head on top of her, humming. The noise thrummed through her body, down to her bones, and Keshet went nearly boneless in contentment. “I will. Until we meet again.”

And oh, that was a delightful thought. Even if they met again, even if it didn’t feel quite like this… wouldn’t that be something to look forward to.

As the two of them drifted off that last night together, Arenig sighed gently, breath warm where it ran over Keshet’s scales. “Fy nghariad.”

Keshet lifted a sleepy head, blinking her heavy eyes. “What’s that?” she asked, the words barely coherent to her, but she knew they needed to be asked. That she needed an answer.

“It’s a phrase from my rider’s homeland,” Arenig admitted sheepishly. “Used for a… a lover.”

“Mm.” She smiled, half asleep and too far gone to continue chasing the slight note of recognition that rang like a bell in the back of her mind. “I like it.”

Arenig breathed a sigh of relief, and the two of them succumbed to slumber.