Pt. XI
The slabs were cold beneath her, their surfaces worn smooth by centuries of claw and time. She had etched her name among the others, those who had come before, who had borne witness, who had remembered. But memory was a fickle thing. It could be carved into stone yet still slip through the cracks like wind through wings.
She traced the grooves of an ancient tale; one she had read a hundred times. The words were familiar, but today, they felt hollow. The tribe thrived under her watch. Conflicts had quieted. The young learned from the slabs, their eyes wide with the weight of history. She had done what was asked of her.
Yet… the galaxies still called.
She lifted her head, nostrils flaring as she drank in the scent of the night. Damp earth, pine, the faint metallic tang of old blood lingering in the cracks of the stone. The moons hung low, their light pooling silver across the clearing. One red as it has been for a long time. Ever taunting. Or mourning. She no longer knew which.
A rustle in the undergrowth.
She did not turn. The tribe knew better than to visit her unannounced at the slabs. But the sound came again, deliberate, slow. A presence, not a threat. The air shifted. The scent was wrong. Too sharp. Too new.
“You do not belong here.” The voice was deep, resonant, but not one of her kin. She bared her teeth, talons flexing against the stone. “This is sacred ground.”
“Sacred to dragons,” the stranger corrected. His form stepped into the moonlight. A male, his scales the color of the bright moon, his horns spiraled like the heart of a tempest. He carried no scent of blood, no reek of challenge. Only… curiosity. “You are the Chronicler.”
She did not answer. The title was as much a part of her as her scars.
He tilted his head, studying the slabs. “You write of the past. But what of the future?”
“The future is not mine to carve.”
“Isn’t it?” His tail flicked, stirring stardust. “The slabs remember. But do you?”
Something in his voice -something that was not pity, not mockery, but recognition– made her still. The wind carried the scent of distant rain, of ozone and damp fur. Not dragon. Not prey.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“A traveler.” He stepped closer without a sound, unhurried. Unafraid. “One who has seen what comes after the ending.”
She laughed. “There is no after. Only the stone and the sky.”
“And the stars,” he murmured. His gaze lifted to the heavens, where the galaxies burned like embers. “You look at them as if they owe you answers.”
“They owe me nothing.”
“No.” His voice was soft. “But you owe them a question.”
She turned fully toward him then, her wings half-furled in warning. “What question?”
He did not flinch. “Ask why you were brought back.”
The words struck like fangs. She had not thought of that night in centuries: the eight kin, the voices, the command to return. She had assumed it was a dream. Fate. A test even. But what if it was something else?
The stranger watched her, his eyes reflecting the galaxies. “The slabs hold the past. The stars hold the future. You stand between them.” A pause. “But you are not bound to either.”
Her claws dug into the stone. “I have a duty.”
“Duty is a cage of your own making.”
She wanted to snarl. To drive him, whatever he was, off. But the night was too quiet, the weight of his words too heavy. “What do you want?”
“To remind you,” he said, “that a Chronicler does not only record history. She shapes it.”
The wind howled between them. She thought of her hatchlings. Her mate. The valley she had fled. The blood on her claws. The carvings in the stone.
And for the first time in centuries, she wondered if she had been wrong.
The stranger bowed his head in parting. “When you are ready, ask the stars your question. They will answer.”
Then he was gone, dissolved into the dark like mist.
She remained, unsure if she was awake, staring at the slabs. At the galaxies. At the space between.And for the first time, she let herself wonder.