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“They tell legends about you.”
He says it with a sort of distant awe, his tail swiping back and forth slowly. She can’t help but smile, putting down her basket and tilting back her sun hat to wipe the sweat from her brow.
“Oh?” she says. “I hadn’t realized.”
“Really?”
His big red eyes widen, and she laughs.
“I’m teasing. Of course I know.”
The boy folds his wings tightly to his shoulder blades and rolls over onto his back. His long, scaly red tail hangs off the end of the tree branch like a cat’s, while his head lolls off on the other side, staring at her upside down, his horns curling back from his fluffy hair.
“How much of them are true? The stories, I mean? I love hearing about them. And what are you doing out here, anyway? Don’t you live in a palace in the sky?”
His eyes glitter with excitement and interest. She smiles again, as she puts her hat back on and ties it securely beneath her chin. The sun beats down over them, against the long, open wheat field that stretches as far as the eye can see, before it ends, right here, at the base of the forest. He remains in the shadow of the leaves, the sun making dapples against his skin and the scales that frame it.
“Sometimes,” she says. “But it gets boring up there.”
She smiles at him.
“I’ll tell you a few of mine if you tell me a few of yours,” she says. “As a trade?”
He gapes for a moment, eyes wide. Then he scrambles up to perch on his hands and feet atop the branch.
“I don’t have any interesting stories to tell,” he says.
“You’re a dragon,” she points out. “That’s interesting of itself.”
He bites his lip with tiny fangs, uncertain. She smiles. She glances at the field, at all the workers too far away to see her clearly, and definitely not him. She doesn’t want to keep him long — if they see him, they’ll be afraid. But it’s been ever so long since she’s met a dragon. She longs to hear their stories once again.
“Tell me what stories you’ve heard of me,” she whispers.
He perks up, eyes alight, wings unfurling.
“I’ve heard that you dragged the sun into place, and built the rails for it to go about the world, so that it would make the seasons so that humans could farm,” he says. “And that when the soil wouldn’t yield, you cried into it, and the first flowers began to grow. They helped the soil renourish itself so that the crops would grow again.”
“They’re partially true,” she admits. “The sun doesn’t move, but once the world didn’t, either. It was the world that I wove a path for, to pull it around the sun. And my tears didn’t make flowers — I only taught them how to grow something else every season, so that it wouldn’t deprive the soil of nutrients.”
He practically vibrates with excitement.
“It really is true,” he says with awe. “You’re really the harvest goddess, aren’t you?”
“And a few other things besides,” she says.
“Why are you down here, instead of...out in the world?” he asks.
Ray looks at her basket full of wheat. Then she looks up, towards the rippling golden field, to the endless blue sky. One of her fellow workers stands up and wipes at her brow. She sees Ray from afar, and waves. Ray smiles when she waves back. Soon, the sun will set, and they’ll head back for home, for their village. They’ll crowd into the communal dining hall, and there will be laughter and singing and gossip and voices all twined about her.
“Because I love them,” she says. “And I want to stay with them all a while.”
She turns to him again, and he watches her with a childlike awe — and an understanding.
“And what about you?” she asks. “Dragons don’t normally come so close to humans.”
His eyes flicker towards the wheat, towards the sun and the workers. A deep ache rises up in his eyes, and she can hear the faint hum of his vocal cords vocalizing something in the dragon tongue, something that even she can’t quite understand. It’s untranslatable — it’s hopeful, and longing, and despairing all at once.
“I love them too,” he says. “I’ve watched them for so long. I like their songs, and their plays, and their stories . They have so many stories . More than us, and we’ve been here longer! I want...to hear more of them.”
His tail lashes as the keen in his throat grows more sad. Ray smiles, but hers is sad now, too.
“But you’re scared,” she says.
He slumps, ducking his head.
“I tried to visit once, a long time ago,” he says. His hands twitch toward his side, and beneath the scales that cover most of his body, she can see a faint white crack running through them, evidence of a healed over break. “They didn’t like it.”
Ray looks to the fields again, to the people. Then she looks to him.
“My real name is Ray,” she says, holding out a hand to him. “And many of the people here...well. They know what I am, and they’ve come to accept it.”
He stares at her hand, eyes wide with wondering.
“If you would trust me,” she says, “I think I can help you come a little closer to the stories.”
He stares at her hand, and then at her eyes. Back and forth. The keen in his throat vibrates through the air and through her bones with the uncertainty, the desire, the longing. His hand twitches towards hers. Away. And then, with one final snap of confidence, he takes it. He hops lightly down from the tree and lands beside her.
His hand digs into hers, hesitating at the edge of the shadows.
“Will they be scared?” he asks.
“They might,” she says. “But don’t worry. I’ll be there with you.”
He looks up at her, eyes wide with nerves and hope. His tail lashes, and his wings curl and uncurl.
“Don’t forget, though,” she says, tugging him gently into the light. “You still owe me a few stories. I think they’d all like to hear them, too.”
The dragon hesitates one more moment. Then he swallows.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll trust you to introduce me. But I think you’ll need my name for that, right?”
She smiles big and squeezes his hand.
“If you’d like to give it.”
He clings to her, as he takes his first nervous step from the shadow of the forest, and into the light. It makes his scales glow and sparkle like rubys, his horns like obsidian, and he is dazzling.
“Yuya,” he says. “My name is Yuya.”