Anthology - Love and War

"That doesn't seem like an appropriate answer to the question, 'Do you have a red blanket?' Would you like to try again?"

Seron's curiosity was greater than his fear. He stepped closer and touched the dragon's wing. "You are real," he mumbled, astonished. He quickly stepped back again.

"I seem to have this effect on everybody," the dragon said, shaking his head sadly. "Have you never seen or heard of my kind before?"

"Only — only in legends," replied Seron as he carefully examined the tall, majestic dragon standing before him. He didn't want to forget any detail for the picture that he knew he must paint. Finally, he thought, I'll be able to succeed for Kyra. This painting will be worth a fortune!

"It's terrible," complained the dragon. "Wherever I go, people stop and gawk at me. And really," he continued, "I don't understand it. It's not as if I'm wearing flashy colors. Which, by the way, brings me back to the question of the red blanket. Do you have one or not?"

Seron didn't want the dragon to leave. Not yet. He needed more time to study this wonderful creature. "I'll get you a red blanket," he promised. "Just wait right here."

The painter raced to the hut.

"Kyra, where are you?" he cried when he found their home empty.

"I'm in the back… in the vegetable garden."

Not wanting to waste any time, he quickly looked through their trunk and closet. He was sure they had some sort of red blanket — a strange request, come to think of it — but he couldn't find it.

"Any luck?" called out the dragon, who was now standing at the front door.

"You were supposed to stay where you were," said Seron nervously, stepping out to meet the creature. He was afraid the dragon might harm his wife.

"Is someone there?" Kyra called out gaily, walking around the side of the hut. "I thought I heard another voice and —»

She stopped in her tracks with a look of wonder on her face.

"A red blanket!" cried the animal happily, gesturing toward the red shawl Kyra wore around her shoulders.

Seron blinked. That's what he had been looking for.

Kyra smiled at the dragon. She had grown up on tales of these magical beasts. To Seron's surprise, she wasn't afraid of the creature. "Do you like this?" she asked, sweeping the shawl off her shoulders and holding it before her.

"Very much," replied the dragon.

"Then it's yours," she said. "I think you'll look wonderful in it. Much better than I."

"Now, you're a human I could grow to like," the dragon said. "What's your name?"

"Kyra," she replied with a warm smile. "What's yours?"

"Tosch. And may I say," said the dragon with a bow, "I am very pleased to meet YOU. Him," he added, pointing at Seron, "I must ponder."

"You must not offend me," Kyra reproached gently. "Seron is my husband, and if you like me, you must also like him."

The dragon made a frown. "Is this a rule of the humans?"

"It's my rule," said Kyra.

The dragon nodded.

"Good. Now come, let me give you your new cape."

Tosch lowered his head, and Kyra tied the red cloth around the dragon's neck. It was a pitifully small splash of red against the creature's massive body, but Tosch didn't seem to care. He was thrilled with his new appearance and he revelled in it — posturing every which way and asking how he looked in every pose.

To Seron, it was all rather silly, but Kyra took the dragon seriously, giving him her best advice on how to wear the cape to his best advantage.

Finally, Tosch stood still and turned to Seron. "Your wife gave me a wonderful gift," stated the dragon. "What are YOU going to give me?"

"I'm going to paint your picture," he calmly replied. "Once humans have seen your portrait, they won't be so surprised when they see you in the flesh. Isn't that what you want?"

Tosch looked at Kyra. "Can he draw?" he asked.

"Raise your right wing just a little higher," said Seron, as he painted Tosch's picture in the forest clearing where they had first met. "Just a bit higher. Yes. Good. Don't move."

"I think I look better with my wings lower and my head higher," complained Tosch. "And I've got a great profile from the left side. You said so, yourself."

"My purpose is to create a dramatic effect," the painter reminded him, "not necessarily to make you look your best."

"I don't understand the difference," sniffed the dragon. "If I look good, the picture looks good, right?"

"It's the other way around, my friend," laughed Seron. "If the picture looks good, you'll look good."

"Hmmph."

No one else was offering to paint pictures of Tosch, so he remained a willing model despite differences with Seron. The peacemaker was Kyra. She often joined them in the forest clearing, stroking the dragon's head when her husband released him from a long, torturous pose.

Tosch, however, was not the easiest model to paint. The brass dragon would often arrive late for sittings;

sometimes he wouldn't come at all. Often, he would quietly mutter a magical incantation, slap his tail against the ground three times, and make Seron's brushes disappear. The dragon seemed bent on driving the artist to distraction.

But Kyra always soothed Seron's anger by explaining yet again that the dragon tales of her youth told of the creatures' freewheeling nature. "A brass dragon," she said, "comes and goes as he pleases and likes to play tricks. It's his nature; don't blame him."

And so the painting continued. At least for a short while…

Tosch might have stayed for years instead of a few short months, but when the Highlord and her forces invaded Flotsam, the young dragon fled to the mountains.

Seron and Kyra might have done the same, but Flot sam was all they had ever known; they had both been born there, and neither of them had ever been anywhere else.

The truth was they were afraid to leave. Times were hard after the dragonarmy took over. But even so, Seron eked out a living. He managed to sell his pictures of Tosch, despite the fact that dragons were now far more commonplace. One of Seron's portraits went to the owner of the inn where he worked as a cook. He sold another to a fierce female ship captain who said she would hang it in her cabin. Yet another was bought by a traveling peddler. All of the buyers admired how skillfully the artist had, at once, captured both the youthful innocence and the natural arrogance of the dragon.

With each sale, Kyra became ever more proud of her husband. His reputation as a painter was growing, yet nothing really changed. They still lived in the same small hut, their clothes were still second-hand rags skillfully repaired by Kyra, and Seron still had to work at the inn to supplement their income.

"You won't believe it!" exclaimed Seron in a rush of words as he burst into their one-room home. "I was up on Cold Rock Point," he explained, "and I saw the Highlord atop her blue dragon. She was leading a whole phalanx of soldiers riding their own dragons. The entire sky was filled with them. Everywhere you looked there were dragons! Their wings were flapping with a power that nearly blew me off the cliff, and their great mouths were screaming in cries that nearly deafened me. But the sight of it, Kyra! I've got to paint it!"

For days, then weeks, he worked on the image he had seen. It consumed him. He had to finish it before he forgot how it looked, how it felt, what it meant.

Kyra watched him work. At first she saw only dark outlines, then the dragons appeared, one at a time. And each of the dragons was more malevolent than the last. There was danger in the picture. The Highlord and her dragonarmy soldiers took shape with menacing faces, and the sky was dark and forbidding. Kyra could feel the cold wind from the wings of the huge beasts, sense the hot breath from their snarling jaws, and she knew — all at once — that the painting had captured the ineffable horror of their conquerors.