Camp was good that night. Fire crackling low. Warm air, no bugs, no angry villagers with pitchforks for once. I had my ankles tucked under the Dragon's wing for heat, and he was stretched out like a lounging monument, belly full of some half-charred goat. Sky was stars and nothing else. One of those rare, suspiciously perfect evenings.
He hummed, slow and smug, eyes half-lidded. "You sound like you miss it sometimes."
I snorted. "Miss what?"
"The docks. Seebulba. Your quaint little cesspit."
"Please, bitch," I said, sitting up and brushing ash off my knee. "I got whipped there. I got sold there. I got fished out of the canal once with an eel in my hair. One time a guard tried to make me lick his boots for 'public disrespect' and I bit his shin so hard he limped for a week. I spent three winters sleeping in a wine crate behind a fishmonger's stall. You think I miss that?"
He blinked, slow. "Mm. Just saying. You bring it up a lot."
"That's called processing, you scaled bastard. That's trauma. You wouldn't understand. You were born in a hoard."
He yawned. "I was born in an egg. Then thrown into a hoard. Different."
I crossed my arms. "Look. That place was loud. It stank. My feet were always dirty. Everyone lied. Everyone stole. Everyone had something to sell or something to hide. You couldn't take a piss without someone asking if you wanted to make it a show."
He raised an eyebrow ridge. "You're not making the case against it."
"I'm saying—" I paused. "—I survived it."
He just looked at me. Quiet. That annoying, knowing silence of his.
I stared at the fire. The logs hissed.
"...The sound of the gulls," I muttered, "used to wake me. Even through the hangovers. And that awful baker woman's voice screaming about sweet rolls. And old Man Dreg playing the flute like he was torturing a duck."
A pause.
"And the wharf fights," I added. "Those were good. You never knew if someone was gonna throw a punch or a fish. Or both. I once saw a man get knocked out by a mackerel."
The Dragon didn't say a thing. Just rested his chin on his claws and watched the flames flicker in my eyes.
"I don't miss it," I said again. Quiet now.
Because I did. Just a little. Enough to ache.
It was the first place I ever learned to lie properly. To steal, to smirk, to smile through blood. To run.
My cradle and my cage.
I curled back under his wing.
"Shut up," I mumbled.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking it."
He huffed, smoky and amused.
I let the crackling fire speak for both of us after that.
The fire was dying down, just a faint orange pulse between us now, shadows licking at the rocks like lazy ghosts. The Dragon had curled himself tighter, tail coiled like a smug old cat, snout tucked just near the coals for warmth. I was chewing on the last bit of dried pear. Mostly for something to do with my mouth.
"So," I said, poking a stick into the embers, "do you ever miss your birthplace?"
He shrugged. It was a very slow shrug. A geological shrug. "Not really."
"Where was it?" I asked. "Some distant icy peak? A volcano? Crater of forgotten gods?"
He snorted. "Three valleys east of here. Top of a hill with good wind. Hatched in the sun. Ate my siblings."
I blinked. "Oh."
He stretched, joints cracking. "We're a local brood. This entire region—these hills, these plains, even that ridiculous waterfall you bathed in two days ago—it's been ours for the last three eras. My uncle incinerated the last elven capital just south of here. Great-Grandmother nested in the cliff caves before humans even learned to write."
I poked harder at the coals.
"So that's it?" I said. "This whole little patch of nowhere? Aren't you at least curious? Don't you ever want to see the world? Cross the Inner Sea? Visit the Spice Islands? Even Seebulba's got character, if you ignore the piss canals."
He winced. Actually winced.
"Heavens, no," he muttered. "Heathens. Chaos. Tourists. And every half-assed prince on that coast thinks dragon-slaying is the fastest way into a bard song."
I grinned. "Because it is."
"Not to mention the aerial defenses," he added with a sour face. "Ballistas. Lightning towers. One city—Delvinar or some such—has gryphons in formal military service. Gryphons, Saya. Do you know what those things do to my allergies?"
"Fluff your nostrils?"
"Rupture them."
I laughed, flopping back onto the blanket. "So that's it then. We're stuck in hill-country forever."
"I prefer ensconced."
I stared up at the stars. "Still. Just once, I'd like to see the spice ships come in. Or dance naked on a rooftop in Toemacha. Or rob a merchant prince and escape through the opera district wearing nothing but perfume."
He grumbled.
I turned my head to look at him. "You ever think you're the boring one in this duo?"
"No," he said flatly.
And that was the end of that.