Dearest Nadala? Dear? Was "dear" a presumptuous greeting for a soldier who was still in so many ways a stranger? Perhaps just start with her name. Nadala? Was Nadala spelled n-a-d-a-l-a? It sounded like it should be spelled that way. But Graxen sounded like it should be spelled g-r-a-k-s-i-n, and it wasn't.
Part of him wanted to toss aside all caution and fear. Beloved Nadala? No, that bordered on insanity. Love was an emotion of sun-dragons and humans; as a verb it was normally employed by sky-dragons only when discussing books. What was he doing here? This was an exercise in futility. A sane dragon would go to sleep and reconsider this whole matter in the morning. Of course a sane dragon wouldn't have flown so far in the darkness, beyond all exhaustion and hope. He'd already established his lack of sanity. My darling Nadala? Perhaps he should let her see the madness that consumed him. If she became frightened, so be it. Better she should know the truth.
He noticed, as the night grew ever colder, that he was shivering.
He remembered the first words he'd said to her.
He wrote, in shaky, uneven letters, "It's chilly tonight."
A moment later, he ripped the page from the book and crumpled it, before tossing it away. He watched the white ball of paper fall. In the first second of its flight, he realized how much the wad of paper served as an adequate representation of himself-a thing filled with meaningless words, falling through the air toward the litter of the forest floor. If words were written and never read did the words ever exist?
The paper fell in a slight arc away from the wall for a few more seconds. Inches from the ground, a large dark shape swooped in and snatched the paper from its fall. The leaves on the forest floor swirled as the winged creature pulled up from its dive. Graxen's heart skipped as the dark shape took on recognizable form, a beat of long blue wings pushing it higher, up above the roof of the building. The stars were suddenly blotted by the distinctive profile of a sky-dragon passing overhead.
The dragon swerved and spun, dropping down to a landing crouch on the opposite corner of the building. Even in the darkness, he recognized her scale patterns, her sleek and symmetrical musculature. She had shed all her armor and carried only a small leather pouch hanging from a cord around her neck.
"Nadala?" he asked, feeling as if he might have slipped into a dream.
Nadala didn't answer. She unfolded the crumpled ball of paper and studied it. Her brow wrinkled.
"It's chilly tonight?" she said. "Perhaps, in your future letters, you can write of more significant topics than the weather?"
"I… in all fairness, I had discarded that," he said. "I've yet to write your true letter."
"You've flown all this way without bothering to write the letter first?" she asked.
"I didn't know you would be here," he said.
"I didn't know you would be here," she said, "but I wrote you a proper letter before I arrived." She patted the leather pouch with her fore-talon.
"I was hoping to catch your party before you made it to the Nest," he explained. "I gave chase, wanting to convince Zorasta to return."
"She'll go back eventually," said Nadala. "Our leaving will throw the talks into chaos. Shandrazel will expend much of his diplomatic capital convincing Zorasta to take part. Then, just as he gives up and proceeds without her, Zorasta will return to the talks and once more obstruct the process. She can delay progress for months, even years with this tactic."
"Why?" Graxen asked. "Why obstruct Shandrazel's reforms?"
"The matriarchy has an interest in maintaining the status quo. Zorasta will not permit radical changes to the world order."
"How strange," said Graxen. "All my life, I've craved change. I honestly don't care what the consequences will be if Shandrazel succeeds in creating a new form of government. I simply welcome a tomorrow that I know will be different than today. I welcome a world where nothing can be truly thought of as permanent."
Nadala flapped her wings and hopped to the same wall Graxen stood on, though still keeping her distance. "Would you truly embrace that?" she asked. "A world where nothing is permanent?"
"Some things must be permanent, I suppose," he said. "The sun will continue to rise and fall for all eternity; the moon will forever wax and wane among the stars. Ten thousand years from now, the ocean waves will still beat against the sand, and crickets will still chirp through summer nights. But I won't be here to see these things, and all the books of the biologians will have long since crumbled to dust. We already live in a world in which we're not permanent; to believe otherwise seems to require the willing embrace of an obvious untruth."
"Ah," said Nadala. "You have a flair for poetry after all. These are the sorts of words you should put in your letters."
"Wouldn't reflections on our impermanence be a depressing topic for a love letter?" asked Graxen.
"Oh," she said, with a coy tilt of her head. "Are they love letters now?"
Graxen was too tired to be flustered. The word had slipped out; there was no point in pretending otherwise.
"From the moment I saw you, it's been love," he said, looking at her directly.
"You're lying," she said, hopping closer. "The first moment you saw me you wondered if I was going to kill you."
"True," he said, still meeting her gaze. His exhaustion and her presence had left him feeling slightly drunk. Words that he couldn't have imagined uttering earlier now spilled out of him. "But I felt love from the moment you chased after me to return my satchel. Your kindness was more than I expected or deserved. The grace of your act made the world a more hopeful place."
"It's a lucky thing I missed when I tried to skewer you, then."
"If you had killed me, you would only have been doing your duty."
"If my sisters discovered me here with you, they would kill us both. Would you still be so forgiving in the name of duty?"
"I know you're taking a risk in coming here," he said. "Yet, you did come. Why?"
"Because I too crave change," she said, looking down into the tangled darkness in the tower's interior. "What you said about impermanence, about how we won't be here in ten thousand years… these words resonate with me. What does a valkyrie's pledge to duty matter when the years will eventually wash away even her memory? The only slim thread of immortality in this world is to produce offspring, and hope that they will produce offspring. Perhaps some small echo of the self will endure through the ages."
"I'll never produce offspring," said Graxen. "Perhaps this is why I've come to my views on impermanence."
Nadala flapped her wings once more, hopping directly beside him. She was close enough he could smell her, a soapy scent, sandlewood and rosewater. She'd apparently had the opportunity to bathe after her return to the Nest. Graxen suddenly felt unclean, his skin sticky and musky.
She leaned her head close to his, her nostrils wide as she breathed in his scent.
"I like the way you smell," she said, closing her eyes, her voice sounding dreamy. "There's something primitive about it. Bestial. Beneath the veneer of culture, we are, in truth, only animals."
"There's nothing bestial about the way you smell," Graxen said, his nostrils hovering over her scales. "It's the scent of a civilized being, a smell like architecture and music."
"Oh, that must definitely go in your letter."
She opened her eyes and their gazes locked. Their nostrils were so close together they were breathing each other's breath. They stood facing for a long silent moment, he inhaling as she exhaled, she reciprocating an instant later. The air passing between them was hot and humid. They were sharing the very essence of life itself.
She leaned her snout against his and pushed. Their cheeks rubbed against each other with a slow, firm pressure. Her smooth scales were the perfect surface for his own scales to rub against, the most satisfying thing that had ever touched his hide. She continued to slide along him, her cheek slipping along his neck, until their shoulders met and each had their head nestled against the other's spine. Her aroma left him dizzy; the warmth of her skin and the firm yet yielding texture of her muscles beneath caused a thousand tiny storms to erupt within him. He felt full of lightning-energized, but also on the verge of being torn apart.