The Dragon in the Jar (Novellae Draconum) by Carmine Bruzi

Author:Carmine Bruzi [Bruzi, Carmine]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2022-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

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The mountains were not a merciful environment. The map Duin had used to keep track of human settlements was useless now. He and Glenys were now where only dragon hunters dared put their feet, and even they paid a visit once in a blue moon.

The cold temperature, the high uphills, the increasing lack of trees, and the higher presence of dangerous animals were putting a strain on Duin’s body, already tired from the pilgrimage from Alechar. His knees begged for mercy, constantly pulsating with pain as he tortured them more upon tall rocks. He stopped playing the flute and teaching Glenys how to fly: at night, it became so cold he couldn’t take his hands far from the fire, when he managed to make one. And in any case, he was always too tired.

On the contrary, Glenys was full of energy. She climbed the rocks with the grace of a fawn; she even effortlessly killed her first prey, a mouse, while Duin was lying on a rock. Not even the cold air of the night seemed to have any effect on her: instead, the dragonlet was more lively than ever, running in a circle around the fire and pushing Duin’s head on the grass, begging him to come and play. It had to be expected, Duin told himself: the mountains were her true home.

He had brought Glenys back to the mountains she belonged to, but now they needed to find dragons. Inexplicably, the dragons were nowhere to be spotted. Duin hadn’t been sure what to expect, once he’d get among the peaks: whether whole colonies or some vague, distant figure flying on the horizon. Their apparent absence implanted within him anxiety that melted together with his exhaustion. Were they maybe watching him, in secret? When (if) he found them, how would they react to a human, a member of a species that actively hunted them? Would they smell his scent and recognize it as a scent similar to his brother’s?

Whatever the answer was, he had to keep going. It used to mean walking to the north; now it meant wandering nowhere in particular, hoping to find the right mountain among the dozens around them. The energies were abandoning him more by the day, but he had promised Glenys he’d bring her back to her kind.

In his heart, however, he began feeling he wouldn’t be able to see the winter among those mountains. The path he could walk daily got smaller every day. His skin, deprived of heat and nutrition, was losing color, making Duin similar to a ghost. The atrocious hunger became a background noise within his body before disappearing. Yet Duin continued, using his last forces to try to fulfill his promise.

Glenys seemed to take responsibility for him, just like Duin had done with her. Now it was the dragonlet, most of the time, who provided Duin with food, hunting small animals by herself and making him continue his mission for a little while. Despite the mice

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