Prompt: Songs of the Dead Dragon

Thanks to Darya Kuznetsova for permission to use her beautiful image, “Songs of the dead dragon 2”!

Fyorian rested under the sheltering skull of a dreadnax so old the cyclen’s roots grew through the bones. He shrugged into the warmth of the bearskin against his back, and tuned his lute while he waited. “Always waiting,” he muttered grimly.

He propped his feet against the dradnax’s lower jawteeth and began to play a mournful tune. The dreadnax might have approved of the dirge, broken teeth and ribs signs of its last fatal battle. Fyorian wondered what could have defeated a dreadnax in the twe’en times, then decided with a little shiver across his back that he didn’t want to know.

Wearing the bear had finally succeeded in driving the biting nidges from his dark curly hair and beard, but the heavy smell of the curing fat as it warmed against his back made him sleepy. His fingers slowed over the lute’s neck and strings, until his head dropped back against the cyclen root and leaned the lute neck across his chest. If he snored, it was not loud enough to wake a dreadnax, as his brother often complained.

It was, however, enough to wake the cyclen, which had first stirred at the sound of his lute and now grew restless for more. Little leaves popped up out of the ground on root-runners, closer and closer to Fyorian’s boots. Soon, the leaves wavered up the side of the dreadnax’s jawbone and stretched to the top of the teeth to get a sense of the living thing that rested there.

Fyorian felt a tickle against his skin. The lightest brush, perhaps of a wandering nidge? He reached up to brush it away, and could not move his hand. His eyes snapped open and he tried to sit up. He felt bound by ropes all over his body. Looking down, he saw he was covered in cyclen leaves…and roots?

When he struggled, they tightened. He shouted, and they drew back. Drew back? He shouted again, and they pulled a little farther way. He saw there were none around the lute, and he reached for it. The root-cines on his arms loosened enough for him to grab it, and when he gripped the strings, they all quivered. He lifted his eyebrows in surprise.

Curious, he tapped the strings again. The leaves all quivered in time with the vibrating tones, and the root-vines loosened up around him. He sat up and drew his hand across the lute’s neck, plucking a few notes. He could hardly believe the evidence of his own eyes, his own body, feeling the vines drop away from around him. The cyclen wanted him to play…

Dogs in house	Houdini, Maize
Time writing:	20 minutes
September word count:	18,016