Samson was gone for most of the day and the evening, as was his dragon. When he returned it was nearly dark and he had brought two rabbits for their evening meal and firewood.
They ate by the fire, both retreating into a tentative silence. When they were done with the meal, the dragon rider went back out into the night, disappearing into the darkness beyond the door as he left.
***
Magda’s dream:
The sky overhead was dark, I was in the pasture behind the ruins, the ground was churned to mud by the rain. I was digging my fingers deep into the dirt, hauling out handfuls of it then painting with broad gestures into the space in front of me. The mud seemed to cling to something in the empty air. I painted more onto the unseen form until the dirt started to take a shape but I was only able to see one small piece at a time, its entirety eluded me. The more I tried to maneuver into a position that would allow me to see the whole, the more it slid from view. I had a feeling it was trying to communicate with me and the reason it wasn’t allowing me to see it, was that I wasn’t ready to hear the message. In the distance, I had the sensation of someone standing under the shaded impression of a dark line of trees.
***
The morning was bright and blustery, gulls screeched and wheeled overhead. Magda brought out a pitcher of hot water and leftovers from last night's meal so the rider could wash and eat, she sensed he didn’t wish to return to the confines of the small cottage and wanted to be on their way. Perhaps the presence of all the iron utensils repelled the vestiges of dryad in his blood?
She had the impression of something moving, unseen from the dragon to its rider, hidden worlds passing between them. The silent communication, the well trodden path through those lands, flowing like a current.
Samson caught her eyes flickering over them. He wasn’t sure how much she was really able to see. The dragon had walked her dream that night, Samson had walked there too, he had seen the creature taking form from the dirt. He had also sensed that she had seen him but couldn’t be sure.
He also felt a sense of betrayal, to be whiteness to something as intimate as a dream without permission, yet he had to confirm what he thought he knew.
She set the pitcher down before going back into the cottage to prepare food and fetch her traveling things. As she set it down, the water rippled, breaking its surface into ridges of reflected sky, then as it stilled she caught her reflection, yet it wasn’t her countenance looking back, for a moment it was that of something else. She reeled, stepping back, feigning composure, unbeknownst to her, the rider had witnessed it all.
When it was time to set off, he gave her waxed riding leathers to wear and instructed her to hold onto the straps criss crossing his back. The dragon beat its great wings, there was a rush and a roar of air, their cloaks flapping about them with each sweep as they climbed vertically higher and higher until the cottage looked like a child’s toy far below. Then, as the dragon caught a thermal current, there was sudden stillness as it stretched out its wings to their full span, gliding on the gentle easterly wind. Then banking steeply to the right in the direction of the lands beyond the mountain.
Magda had a sensation of falling, a dreamlike feeling of floating and something blurring the edge of her vision, something pressing gently into her thoughts, not entirely unpleasant.
They approached Silvyn bay at sundown, petals from the sea oak flowers floating on the warm, fragrant dusk. They swept over the edge of the cliffs of living trees, circled back and approached the bay a little to its right. The oaks, rising like the majestic prows of colossal ships, jutting out into the ocean. The branches along the cliff tops laden with blossoms, whirling about them in a blizzard of petals, landing in the bay and covering the sea in a layer of white, parting with the movement of the waves then coalescing again in their wake as they flew, skimming that water.
They alighted next to an area of woodland on the bluffs above the port town of Silvyn: it wouldn’t do to agitate the locals by bringing the dragon too close.
The sea oak flowers emitted a soft glow into the gathering dark, in the town below, one could hear music coming from the taverns along the oceanfront, lanterns and bunting strung from the rooftops, over the cobblestone streets for the sea oak festival. The air also smelled faintly of tar, wood smoke and brine.
Magda stood overlooking the scalloped bay and the harbor, amongst the flowering spurs of branches growing out from the organic mass of the cliff, lacing its edges in white. In the bay, the ships were also strung with lanterns, their reflections catching the water as the layer of petals parted in the gentle waves. One ship stood out from the rest, it’s silhouette was not that of one of the other ships: from its center rose a thick, gnarled trunk, branches bifurcating from a knot in the center, it’s roots seemed to encase or make up its entire hull, one couldn’t quite tell from this distance. It was Tenebris Glendor’s, a ship built from the living sea oak itself, the only vessel to withstand the churning chaos of shattered realities at the world’s edge. She wasn’t only here to gather petals, she was here to speak with the captain of that ship, the captain of the drift pirates. She absently touched the smooth facets of the marcray crystal hidden deep in the pocket of her robe.
She would exchange it for a drifted object: mysterious things that washed up near the world's edge from other times, other places, other realities. They could be powerful talismans, the local townsfolk, in their superstition kept them in their windows to ward off the dark things, though they knew nothing of what they really were, what they meant.
But she would take these things, reading into the timing of their fetching up on the shores of this world, glimpsing sometimes the invisible places they were tethered to: these other realities beholden to the mysterious clockwork of their own tides and currents, converging with the seasons of her own world.
** Cover Image: 3D recreation of Arnold Böcklin‘s painting ‘Island of the Dead’