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He was adragon, for God's sakes. Something to be feared, to be approached with dreaded reverence, never gazed on directly, spoken of in whispers. That was the way of things in his fathers’ time, as it had been throughout Moss-fang’s.
Until now.
When the rope swayed and the pulley creaked, Moss-fang relaxed, preparing himself to fill the bucket with water. This was familiar, this was safe, and this was something he could do without leaving the well. When the coins eventually stopped tumbling down, poor travelers and beggars would still occasionally come to his well for its original purpose: a clean drink of water. While the last visitor had been so long ago he could barely recall the man’s tuneless humming, those humans had at least kept their focus on the bucket alone. No prying, no questions, no searching eyes or lowered lanterns, just grateful acceptance that the well still provided.
The rope’s slack suddenly let out, sending the bucket plummeting downwards with a distressed squeaking of the pulley. It was swinging too far wide, and if nothing stopped it it would smash to bits on the edge of the pool below. Without thinking, Moss-fang dove forward as it cleared the lower edge, propelled by a push off his powerful coiled tail, pushing the bucket slightly inward before it dashed to pieces on the ground, sending it splashing roughly into the water instead. Shortly after, a noise he’d never heard the pulley make echoed overhead, the light of the well-mouth dimming just before another sharp, inventive curse floated down. It took him a long moment of glancing at the curious way the rope swung, slow and heavy, side to side, to realize what was going on.
Someone was coming down into his well.
The wet bucket slid from his hands with a soft thunk, and Moss-fang’s muscles heaved as pushed himself back into the wall, heart hammering, breath catching, eyes locked to the swaying rope. The dim of his home faded as anxious magic prickled along his lightly-scaled arms, miniscule golden-glowing droplets that pushed the darkness away. The childhood warnings of magical bounty hunters echoed in his skull, sending his tail fins flaring in distress.
No no no no no.
Fortune evidently favored Tira today.She was pleased, if puzzled, to find a new, sturdy rope woven through the pulley above the disused well. Nothing else in the clearing appeared to have been touched; at least not until her frustrated arm-swipe had caused the tangled greenery to collapse like a sword-slashed drape. Ducking under the crumbling roof-edge, she peered down into the well, optimistically hoping for a glint of gold to greet her. She snorted at her own hope, reasoning that whoever had replaced the rope recently had likely already made off with anything of value. Squinting, Tira attempted to assess the depth of the ancient stone cistern, but the slanting afternoon light obscured the bottom.
Frowning at the puzzle before her, she swallowed against a painfully dry throat as she planned her next move. Inspiration sparked as she contemplated the wooden bucket, perched peacefully on the edge of the well with a slope of rope trailing from the handle. Pushing it in, she listened carefully for the splash of water, hoping to gauge the depth she’d be rappelling down, if she could screw up the courage to descend. In her former trio, Ardin was the one that would be responsible for these daring acrobatics, while she and Brenna would handle things like transport and information-gathering as needed.
It wasn’t that Tira was afraid of heights, moreso that she was afraid of experiencing them at high velocity in the opposite direction.
Stomach dropping with nausea, she carefully slid onto the well's edge, letting her booted feet dangle down into the dark. Knowing that she'd talk herself out of it if she hesitated, Tira lunged forward, grabbed the rope, and reflexively twined her leg around the slack beneath her to slow her descent.
Her mistake had been checking the strength and thickness of the rope itself, rather than considering the ancient pulley holding it aloft. When the rope-threaded wheel moved smoothly, the rotted wood it was attached to did as well. With a deafeningcrackand an answering scream, Tira was sent hurtling down into the darkness, the back of her head colliding with a slick stone wall along the way.
Every muscle in her body tensed on the way down, waiting for the frigid cushion of water to soak her through and hopefully ease the fresh, throbbing pain in her skull. That sick, dizzy feeling was back, radiating from the solid hit she’d taken as she plummeted downwards. Tira hazily realized she’d stopped falling and wasn’t wet at all, and it took far too long to piece together that she’d be dead if the well were somehow dry. Perhaps shewasdead. Death shouldn’t have headaches like this though, that seemed patently unfair in the grand scheme of things. She groaned and clapped a palm to the back of her head, moving one of her feet to find it was hovering midair.
Was she flying? Why hadn’t she hit the ground?
A steadying grip curved around the side of her arm as she was shuffled lightly. As the mental fog cleared, Tira realized she was being carried by someonestrongand there was a strange whispery sort of sound in the darkness.
Was that water? Then why hadn’t…?
The dimming, blurry circle of the well-mouth swayed overhead as whoever was holding Tira moved, sending nausea to interrupt her disjointed thoughts. She groaned again, closing her eyes against the tilting, swirling darkness and drifting into blessedly headache-free unconsciousness.
The bucket had been important.
Even neglected as Moss-fang’s well had become, it was a reminder of atime before, a physical token of the outside world. He had no wish to leave - well, that wasn’t strictly true, it was more that the idea made him sick to his stomach - but he liked imagining hecouldif he really wanted to. The bucket was a reminder the option was available to him, should he ever care to take it. Losing it would have been crushing
While some of his actions after had been reflexive - unthinking, as pushing the bucket had been - not all of them were. Thefeelingfrom before seemed to fill his entire living space, growing and expanding as the woman fell towards certain death at the well bottom. The deep hole that held the well’s water was smaller than her petite form, and the way she fell virtually guaranteed she’d meet rocky ground at all the wrong angles.
And so Moss-fang had caught her. He’d pushed beyond his deafening dread, the sickening twist in his stomach at the thought ofoutside, and caught her easily. Once she’d settled heavily into his arms, the pulley crashing and clattering after her, he’d stood frozen, waiting for her to move, to scream.
The smell of copper - that same metallic tang that clung to some of his coins - infused the air around him. He had not held another living thing in an incredibly long time, but this one - this little human that seemed to be the source of thefeeling- was far too still. Something was wrong.
He moved slowly towards his sleeping pallet and she stirred, sluggishly, her hand clumsily patting at her head. Her foot twitched and then she hung across his arms even heavier than before, as if she’d fallen fast asleep. Her head lolled against his chest as he sank down, carefully sliding her onto the pile of fine silks and draperies he’d fashioned into a nest-like bed.
Panic choked his throat at the change ofherin his place of sanctuary, his solitude scattered like so many cawing birds in the forest above. His hands shook - some mighty dragon he was. So long secluded that his hoard had seen more of the world, of the sun, than he had in many years prior. Even the most well-traveled of his coins was aged now, a relic like himself, a spot of unnatural beauty in the ruins of what-once-was.
Straightening after setting the woman down, Moss-fang startled at the streak of crimson painting his chest and bicep, sparkling in the light of his own anxious magic. It was so prolific, he worried he’d been injured until he spotted a snarled, dampened patch of the woman’s hair below him. No,shewas wounded. The smell of coins was the long-forgotten scent of human blood, he realized belatedly - too much, too fast. The fear of change and the unknown ebbed in favor of grief for the injured human in his nest. He’d seen a fair share of creatures fade - birds and squirrels that had fallen into the well as he slumbered - but never a human. In fact, there had been a few that he’d likely spared by ensuring water filled the bucket, currently tipped on its side and trailing frayed rope beside him.
He bit his full lower lip until it stung, indecision racing through him as he paced before his nest, his eyes locked on the placid face of the unconscious human. He could save her, but not with anything in here, and that meant -out there. He hesitantly bargained with himself, mentally counting the steps that would be required to reach the daggerleaf at the far edge of the clearing. It wasn’t so far, was it? He wouldn’t besoexposed, would he? He swallowed a painful lump in his throat, setting a shaking hand to the bottom edge of the well-wall, flexing talons against the stone.
WIth a sharp intake of breath and a push from his powerful tail, Moss-fang lifted his body up the well, gripping the damp edges of the rough-hewn blocks. Squinting against what remained of the sun as he hoisted himself up on the well edge, easily picking out the path through the clearing. Strange how open it seemed now that he’d emerged - as if some vines and trees had fallen away when he wasn’t watching. He hustled to his destination and wasn’t exceptionally careful with the palmful of daggerleaf he grabbed, eager to return to the safety of his home. No sooner had a sharp cut sliced across his palm then it was ironically soothed by the clear, sticky sap of the torn branches. The healing herb was a contradiction, like him: a gentle heart wrapped in the skin of a fearsome warrior.
Diving back headfirst into the well, he let his tail anchor him, draping it over the edge until he could brace his hands on the walls on the descent. The relief of familiar surroundings washed over him like donning a cloak, and the tightness in his chest eased to manageable levels. The daggerleaf became even more smashed in the process of climbing down, but that was necessary for potency anyway.
Grabbing and frowning at the dirty cloth he used for coins, he dropped it in favor of tearing a strip from the softest fabric in the nest, dipping it into the clean well water. Crouching by the woman’s body, he gingerly parted her sleek black hair with a talon, pressing the damp cloth against the wound. He was startled by her rough beauty - no princess, surely, but her delicate features radiated strength and determination even while relaxed in sleep. He wondered at the color of her eyes, and what her smile might look like. The wear of her boot soles and suntanned skin hinted at many days spent outdoors, potentially not for leisure’s sake - perhaps she fit into the world no better than he did.
Shaking off his reverie, he smashed the daggerleaf with a thumb and pressed it to the wound, ensuring it left plenty of sap behind. She’d need time to recover, but the daggerleaf would prevent the wasting sickness as she did, and help the skin to knit. The last Moss-fang had overheard, the humans in the world above had become enamored of leeches, and had entirely forgotten the virtues of herbs like daggerleaf. No wonder humans were such fragile creatures - arrogance was a fatal disease.
