The Princess's Feathers

Illustrations from storybooks race through my head. Scenes of Dragons floating above city skylines, shooting long columns of fire from their mouths as scorched buildings bellow plumes of smoke. Unimaginable destruction and power.

Could I do that…?

Ohhh-kay! Botany field trip time-out!! We need to explore this, right now!!

I cavort and bounce from side to side before forcing myself to sit still in the grass — I need to calm myself down a little. Yeah, I’m a bit excited right now, but can you blame me? If I’m going to be stuck as a Dragon for a while, then I should at least be able to do some cool stuff like breathe fire!

I mean, I thought Lithans couldn’t breathe fire! You’d think it would be a given they could, what with how often Dragons are portrayed doing it in fiction. But in real life, nobody has ever observed a Lithan breathe fire before, so it’s been assumed they couldn’t. It’s a bit of a mystery why the old tales with Dragons portray them breathing fire in the first place. At least, it used to be!

But it’s more than just something cool. If I can breathe fire on command, I could use it as a weapon for taking down prey. I would’ve easily caught the fleeing doe I saw yesterday with a well-aimed blast of fire. I can just picture it now: dinner cooked and served, all in one attack! The prospect of an easy meal right now is reason enough to make me excited.

I turn my head back and examine the smoldering patch of grass. So, how did I do that?

Something about the act of sneezing triggered the systems in my body that produce fire. It had to have started in my mouth somewhere. I become conscious of the muscles in my mouth and throat, feeling around with my serpentine tongue for anything that seems out of the ordinary.

Well, okay, there’s nothing ordinary about myself in my current situation. You get what I’m saying!

Feeling around the back of my throat, my tongue runs over something I don’t remember being there when I was Lemur. A growth with a strange, spheroid shape I can’t quite describe. I try flexing the muscles around the area back and forth, but nothing happens. I move in a different direction, trying to flap the muscle—

Pof!

Something in the back of my throat winces. A puff of dark smoke leaves my nostrils, and my mouth tastes of soot.

There! I did it again! I tried manipulating the muscles in my throat and felt a small flash of warmth. I’m not sure if I can adequately describe what I did, but I think I can control it now and do perform it at will.

And so I do, finding that if I wince the muscles a certain way it causes a spark to flare that’s great at creating a puff of smoke. I practice the movement until I’m able to cause smoke to bellow from my nostrils on a whim.

So, if I wince the muscles in my throat and apply a bit of force like I did when I sneezed, would that expel fire?

There’s only one way to find out!

…But before I do that, I should probably move somewhere safer. Out here in the middle of the meadow, surrounded by parched autumn grass and trees full of dried leaves ain’t the best place to experiment with fire.

I hike back to the river and enter the channel, letting the warm mountain water flow through my talons once more. I turn downstream so the wind is at my back — it can’t be pleasant to have a blast of fire blowing back into your face — and because the river flows a good distance straight from here before rounding another bend. This should give me plenty of space to perform a safety test.

I ease my neck back and forth, trying to imitate the movements my head might do when sneezing. I do it a few times before snapping my neck forward like I am actually sneezing, but without doing the wincing in my neck. When I felt like I had the snapping movement down, I went back to practicing releasing smoke to make sure I remembered the movement.

…

‘…Moving methodically, and with purpose. To perform each move with distinction and reverence.’

The memory of Calypso’s voice echoes through my head as I recall the advice he gave me during our self-defense lessons. He taught me the importance of repeated, controlled movements when learning a new technique, and to treat each thrust, each movement, as important. He would force me to repeat the same motion seemingly hundreds of times until he was satisfied. Only then could we move on to the next technique.

Every time I stabbed my dagger forward, each time I pivoted to avoid an attack, was essential to my understanding of what I was learning. Every failure was actually movement — a step forward.

It’s funny. Calypso never could’ve come up with a line that poignant. He was clearly just repeating some sentiment taught to him by one of his many instructors. But that summed up Calypso as a person — for as much as I thought he acted like a knuckle dragger outside his duties, he was brilliant as a knight.

Graduated from the academy at the age of 19. Joined the Legion of Dragons, our family’s ordained knight order, at age 20. Knight-Captain at age 25. Bodyguard to the Princess at age 28. To say nothing of the things he achieved in his personal life.

He seemed like so much more than I’ll ever be.

When they write Calypso’s obituary, the list of his accompaniments will speak for itself. They’ll mark mine as the spoiled Princess nobody liked; the one that on her last day alive, screamed at a woman in public for something as petty as disliking her outfit.

What the hell was I thinking?!

And to think, for all the one-on-one lessons me and Calypso had in the gardens on self-defense, when it came time to actually use that knowledge, all I could do was stand and watch as—

…

A grackle trills in the distance. And the river keeps flowing through me.

I shake my head, trying to ward off intrusive thoughts. They won’t help me accomplish what I’m trying to do right now.

Us Lemurs, followers of the Goddess Etain, believe that in the next life, our souls are shown the future events of those that were close to us. Calypso was just as devout as me, and so I do not doubt that somewhere, he’s watching me right now with great interest. He must be thinking to himself, ‘What will Asha, turned into a Lithan against her will, do next?’

I sink my claws deep into the river channel, opening my wings wide to give me as much stability as possible. I squint down the river, focusing on what I came here to do.

I’ll demonstrate what I’ve learned and put on a show just for you, Calypso!

I rear my neck back until my head is floating somewhere over my shoulder blades. Then, snapping it forward, I tickle the muscles in my throat. With purpose, force is applied to the movement. In the reaches of my mouth, two distinct liquids are expelled and interact with one another, causing a runaway chemical reaction.

Their unity begets fire!

My maw flings open involuntarily. Like a blowtorch being lit, a great column of heat and fire escapes my mouth and races across the river, raining down sparks and cinders into the water below. Somehow, despite hellfire surging through it, my mouth only feels slightly warm.

Just like it was in the hollow when I first achieved flight, I can hardly believe it! I’m actually doing it! I’m BREATHING FIRE!

I’m so astonished, so mesmerized that my body can create such a spectacle, that I fail to notice the flames rushing down the river channel unobstructed. They maintain their momentum fully until they reach the sharp bend in the river, colliding with the tree line.

THOOM!!

Like a bomb detonating, the riverbank explodes in a colossal ball of fire, instantly igniting the surrounding area in flames. I extinguish the blowtorch coming from my mouth, but It’s far too late now. All I can do is watch helplessly as the remainder of my fiery breath collides with the trees and adds to the towering inferno.

…It truly is just like I remember it from the storybooks.

Wow! Who could have possibly foreseen a lightning strike causing a wildfire on a day without a storm cloud in sight? The weather sure is strange sometimes, ha-ha!

…

Eh.

My stomach in knots, I turn away from the disaster and lunge into the sky, flying in the opposite direction of the quickly expanding wildfire. When I gain enough altitude I breathe a sigh of relief that there are no airships in the vicinity to witness my blunder and bank north, resuming my course to the northern reaches of Sarlain.

Um, Calypso? If you’re watching, let’s just keep this a secret between us, okay?