They were the last to arrive. Caire and Eliza sat side by side on Caire’s desk, leaning towards each other and occasionally speaking. Thanks to the moderately priced inn, she had a full belly and the taste of a strong coffee on her tongue.

A good stretch and she was ready to spend the day on wing.

“Here we are,” Lys announced, not for any practical purpose as everyone in the office was already watching them. First impressions were important, and the two had to make themselves memorable. Complete assholes were difficult to look past.  

Eliza narrowed her eyes and flicked her attention behind them, then sighed and nodded. Can’t say anything when they were standing in front of her with a backdrop of grey haze, stars still visible.

“I hope you had a good rest, this will be a full day of flying,” Eliza extracted herself off the desk and walked two paces forward. In her hand, a couple pieces of paper covered in printed writing. Too small to read from a distance. The second page was a bit more legible but Para only caught collection point before Eliza extracted a couple pages and put the rest back on her desk.

Para huffed and folded her arms, leaning against Lys’ shoulder.

“You’re picking up several crates from an outpost near Lower Arid. You will need maps to reach the location.” Eliza waved the papers.

Maybe the other teams would, but not theirs. She took a map anyway, took one glance and perked up. She tapped Lys, signing to avoid drawing attention by speaking loudly. “I haven’t been there before.”

“A new place?” Lys replied, his brass eye twinkled. “Have we passed it before?”

“No, our usual routes don’t cross that area,” she mused, half listening to Eliza describing the homestead. Fascinating decision, farming in the desert.

“I need you to fly together, you will understand why upon pick up. Remember that you are representing us, fly like a legal trade team,” Eliza poked her finger in each of their directions.

Para shrugged, folded the map and stashed it away to use as tinder later.

“Each team will carry a missive, in case of any incidents along the way,” Eliza added, distributing a missive to each team.

Oh yes, the other teams. Not that she had forgotten that they were working alongside others, rather she had been trying very hard not to think about it. Three days of keeping track of two other dragons in the sky, preplanning routes, organising rendezvous locations, and worst of all, splitting their pay.

Para was really beginning to dread agreeing to this.

“What’s the cargo?”

Para leaned around Lysander to check who spoke. One of the traders with the warm charcoal coloured dragon, smaller than Lysander with fine feathering.

Looked like twins if all one spared was a brief check. Dark grey hair and skin the colour of snow, the monochrome features typical of Rask, like they stepped out of a charcoal drawing. The one who spoke had long hair tied in a low ponytail whereas his twin had it cropped shorter, albeit long enough to fall over his eyes. He blew on the chunk to get it to move, only to have it fall back the moment he spoke.

“Another secret run Caire?” He smirked, his angular features intensifying. “Found a new profitable business venture it seems.”

“Cargo is need to know,” Caire shook his head sharply.

The longer she looked, the faster the resemblance ended. As the first speaker pouted, his expression was entirely different from the pout of the other. Not twins, maybe not even siblings.

She turned back to Eliza and Caire.

“How good is the pay?” Para called out, and whistled at the number Caire supplied. “Each, or total.”

“Each.”

She whistled again. No amount of misery over three days was going to put her off working for that much. That was not just good food and housing, that was plays, theatre, new books, and outings. For weeks.

Lysander switched which leg he was resting and stretched his neck this way and that. “What time is pickup?”

“Tomorrow morning, ideally three hours after –“

“ – sunrise. Yes, I got it,” Lysander turned on heel. “Let’s go,” he said over his shoulder. She could not get moving fast enough. No time like the present to launch into the sky.

“No introductions?”

Lys stopped. Para almost ran into him. She caught herself with her foot raised above his tail feathers.

Eliza’s brows shot up. “You’re adults, aren’t you?”

Lysander snorted and laughed. The dragon standing beside the original speaker lowered their head over the speaker and angled it slightly, eyes wide, and feather crown slowly raising. Attention fixed on Lys.

“Off to a great start,” muttered Para.

The early sun greeted their ascent into the sky and steadily rose to warm the air to a comfortable temperature. Two boxes were strapped to the saddle, full of books supposedly being distributed to the local towns. Patrols only circled heavily utilised flight routes, the town they were heading for was a dot on the map. Their story was satisfactory and the chances of running into the mountain patrol was low enough to risk being out in the open.

As flights went, she sunk into her memories to pass the time.

Crossing the desert on foot, with the sun rolling high and blaring down heat, baking the sand till the kicked up grains burned when they made contact with skin. Slowing, she shaded her eyes and squinted to make out the shimmering buildings in the distance.

Para frowned and skipped to a different memory.

He could see the whole town from his inn room balcony. A singular road wove through the sand dunes, only distinguishable by the standing sticks along the way. An inn greeted travellers coming in, that’s where he stood, with a whole selection of shops to choose from below. A tailor, a glass blower, an armoury, a butcher next door to a fruit and vegetable importer. The tallest other building besides the inn was drawing his attention. Banners hung from the upper balconies, sewn from coloured fabrics. One could question why a theatre dominated the town’s architecture, or ask if it was really a theatre.

The rest wasn’t important, she’d seen enough to know that the town wasn’t dragon friendly. The low and narrow buildings were a giveaway. Her oldest memory dated back six hundred years.

She switched to another. Through the remainder of the flight, she recounted the same flight path they were on, every time they took it.

The sun touched a golden streak across the mountains and Para blinked. White irises were a hinderance when one spent their days with nothing between them and the full force of the sun. She tapped lower on Lys’ neck than usual, to ask the dragon to turn his head and cast her a glance.  

“Landing now. Signal the other dragons,” she signed to Lysander’s grey glance. She never could tell if he was focusing on her or not.

Her swung his head to the other side and peeled back his lips, revealing lines of jagged teeth. His tone so was so high that she barely picked it up on the wind.

Theoretically, every single space beneath them was suitable. If one wanted to sleep in sandy dirt. The river split off into a narrow stream, terminating in a small marsh, where the grass was tall and the trees were a spider web of branches.

Lys beat his wings and slowed his descent, touching down with his back legs first, and slowly settling onto the front.

She unclipped herself from the saddle and slipped off his back.

“Why are we landing?” No ‘how was your flight’ or ‘should I collect firewood’, just straight to questioning their decisions. This is why she hated team jobs. The lady with the peeved dragon landed beside them, coming in far faster than Lys and landing with a thunk.

“A drink, a meal, and sleep, in that order,” Lys demonstrated with a mouthful of water from the deepest part of marsh, and lifted his head with a chunk of vegetation hanging off his tooth.

She ran her tongue over her own canines where they jutted out from her lips, uneven in length and one not even in the correct place. Pretty useless. Not that canines were particularly useful, except for Hlin who had a whole mouth of jagged teeth to tear apart aquatic vegetation and fish. Maybe for Sil with a double set, and whatever forest life entailed. Though it had been a long time since the four Gods initially reworked the First Kind into the Four Species.

She was quite sure they did it for no reason other than looks, since the first kind had flat teeth and had survived through their world almost ending. Twice.

Not that she could ask the Gods, she may as well be invisible in their eyes.

“We can fly on and reach the pick-up point, that late start will be beneficial with the heavy loads we were informed about.”

Para shook her head throughout. “That flight will take another four hours at the least, and we will be lucky if the sun holds out another half.”  

The lady scowled at her, whether it was annoyance at being revoked, suddenly noticing Para’s existence, or her general demeanour towards anything living.

“We’re stopping here,” Para doubled down and pulled out her sleeping mat from the saddle packs Lys deposited beside her.

“Why?” Again with the questions, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, the other dragon landed with the not-twins.

“The town predates The Shift, you know, built by the Gods in the days when dragons still lived in the mountains,” she continued explaining as her expression didn’t change. “Therefore the town doesn’t have any dragon accommodation

One of the not-twins screwed up his lips and barked a laugh. “You’ve got an odd manner of speaking.” To the wider group: “Let’s not pretend we can make it to our destination. Better set up before nightfall, neither moon will offer us light tonight.”

The other not-twin dropped to the ground, the sharper of the two. “I’ll look for something to burn.”

“I will collect water to boil for drinks,” the dragon with them began clearing a pit into the sandy dust and put a large pot down in the middle. She raised a brow at it. How much tea did these three drink?

“I will also collect fire materials,” she said to no one and wandered off while Lys was busy offloading the scrunched-up map into the tinder pile.

Wandering the marsh, she pulled a few dried shrubs and picked a clean looking clearing of water to have a drink. She lost her way where the vegetation thickened, swearing under her breath when she didn’t recognise any of surroundings.

“What’s the point of a perfect memory when nothing looks the same,” she muttered under her breath and shoved a branch out of her way. It caught her hair and she dragged herself out of it, sacrificing a few ash coloured strands to the tree.

“Oh, there’s a set here.”

She perked up, sounded like someone else had found them. Though a void opened inside her chest, she fought through the last of the nature’s wall to witness the guy’s foot connecting with Nox’s shrine.

The void shut with the force of a sun. “Hey you!” She marched up and threw herself in the way, so he could not miss her. “Don’t kick that!” The shrine was barely knee high, and even stone could only weather so much abuse.

“My name is Archem, had you bothered to ask.” The guy had the gall to fold his arms, shift his stance, and stare her down like she was the one in the wrong.   

“Grumble at the lack of attention but leave the Gods’ shrines out of it,” Para jutted her chin at the four monoliths, each carved with the name of a God. Beneath each, a small poem. Meaningless but thoughtful. “Those who left offerings wouldn’t be too happy with you destroying them.” Around the base of each was a selection of scales. Primarily browns and greens around Sil’s, a few browns and oranges. Blacks, whites, and greys around Rask’s. Yellows, reds, and oranges around Hlin’s, some scales gleaming with multiple tones. Last were Nox, all various dark colours. A few half buried from where they’d been stepped on.

“Are you one of those?” Archem looked between the scales and Para. The tone was decidedly judgemental.

She shrugged and pulled a dark grey scale, leaving it on the shrine dedicated to Nox. Running her finger over the carved stone brought a shiver of awareness. Deep in her memories, she had the same action repeating several times.

She loved new places to explore, there was no denying that. It was what she lived for, to experience the new. And yet, she was drawn the shrines. Knowing they would be there, every lifetime. It was a small comfort.

She sighed and drew away.

Another she left for Sil, though the only resemblance were claws instead of nails on her feet.

Archem screwed up his face, so his huff came out roughly. “The only ones who matter are Kazic and Mir. They restarted the progression of our society after hundreds of years of nothing changing. When the Gods could not be bothered trying. If they’re even still around, let alone have the power you all claim, they don’t deserve my worship.”

Those two. She peered at their shrine. Kazic and Mir, on one stone. Two halves of the first God’s heart. Kazic killed the first God Kazimierz and his body fell in six pieces. The four greatest pieces were bound to four mortals who became the four Gods. Of the remaining two came the deities, Kazic the God killer, and Mir the Savior.

Six pieces of the God, six beings with stones dedicated to them. The hollow feeling returned. The nothingness that accompanied any thoughts that went too deep into her past.

“They are important too. Every single piece of Kazimierz has a part to play.”