To Soar

When I was a younger, I never realized how reckless I was. Looking back, the seemingly overprotective tendencies of my parents and the adults around me made a lot more sense. I was old enough now to see that children were more fragile than they realized, but when I was that age, I had considered myself invincible. No wonder my parents always said that I gave them heart attacks.

What goes around, comes around, I thought, wry. Aloud, I asked, “Are you sure this is safe?”

My companion laughed, a sharp, rough sound akin wood cracking in a fire. Her scales gleamed red and gold in the sunlight, like the lanterns that lit up the streets on festivals. Lying coiled up with her limbs tucked neatly beneath her body, she appeared as regal as all the stories said.

At the edge of the mountain, her son curled his claws over the cliff’s edge and peered down. He was balanced on the knife’s edge between solid ground and empty air, the tip of his tail flicking with anticipation. I resisted the urge to rush over, scoop him up into my arms, and carry him back to safer territory where there was no risk of him falling to his death, knowing he wouldn’t take it well. Dragons learned by doing, and his mother had told me that this was how her mother had taught her how to fly—as had her mother’s mother, and her mother before that, so on and so forth.

“He will be fine,” Chieko assured me, whiskers twitching in amusement. “Besides, if he doesn’t fly, I will catch him. As will you, I suspect.”

I ducked my head, a bit embarrassed. “Well, he’s just a cub. With humans, our cubs are a lot more fragile, so we tend to raise them for longer. To me, he seems too young, but…” I shrugged. “You’d know better than I would.”

“Mm.” She still seemed amused. “Trust in his abilities. And in ours. He’s safe.”

We both looked back at Shou, who had crouched in a way that suggested he was about to leap. Sure enough, he narrowed his eyes—muscles tensing—and propelled himself off the mountainside.

Before I realized what I was doing, I had bolted to the cliff’s edge and was leaning over, heart in my throat. Below, I saw Shou flailing as he tried to figure out how to fly with no success. Chieko followed me at a more sedate pace, though when I glanced over at her, I could see that her shoulders were tight and ready to jump out and save him if the need arose.

Shou plummeted worryingly fast. “He’s not flying.”

“Wait for it,” Chieko said. “It took me a while, too.”

I gritted my teeth. If he didn’t pull out soon, he would hit the trees and be seriously hurt. “Chieko–!”

“Wait for it.”

The only thing that stopped me from ignoring her was our long years of friendship. I had trusted her time and time again; this had to be no different. She had to know what she was doing.

Chieko’s long neck curved over the edge of the cliff, the fur that ran along her spine rippling in the breeze. “Watch,” she told me as Shou fell.

Shou was almost past the point of no return. I knew that Chieko could still catch him, as she was the fastest flier I had ever seen, but fear clawed my heart out as it defied all logic and rational thought. I was so tense that I thought I might vibrate myself to pieces, wound tightly enough to shatter with the force of it.

Half a second passed, and then—

Shou flew.

The tension in me eased. The fear ebbed away as I watched Shou pull himself out of his dive and soar, twisting across the sky in the characteristic way that all dragons of his species shared. A distant snatch of his exhilarated cry was carried to us on the wind, even as he arced back around and skidded to a clumsy stop before us.

“Did you see that?!” he yelled, bouncing on his toes. “I flew!”

Chieko curled herself around him with a pleased hum. “Yes, I saw. That was a very good first flight.” Shooting me a mischievous look, she added, “wouldn’t you agree, Moriko?”

I let myself fall back in relief. “Sure,” I replied, and thought, That was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

Chieko looked at me and laughed.