What We Are In The Dark (excerpt)

Posted by Stalbon 8 years ago

 

“What do you see when you look at me, old man?” Cain rumbled.
His companion sat a bit straighter and looked up to him. “Mmm?” A gap-toothed smile showed for a second, and the old man seemed about to throw out a witty remark. He paused a moment then, and perhaps sensing the deeper meaning to the question, took a longer look, pensively stroking his snowy white beard. Cain tried to see himself as he might appear through the villager’s eyes: a great dragon, fifty feet in length, with scales the color of deeply-tanned leather and a pair of deep, ruddy-red eyes.
The old man cleared his throat. “I see an old dragon,” he said, “well past his prime.” The man stroked a palm aimlessly over the worn wood of his walking stick and loudly sniffed. “A dragon who stays too long in his cave and gets fat, and who occasionally holds conversations with an old man long past his better years.” That gap-toothed smile appeared once again, and the rheumy eyes twinkled with humor. “Why do you ask, then? Should I have seen someone else?”
The soft rumble in Cain’s chest was not a warning, but it quieted the man nonetheless. The dragon turned to look past his companion, out to the view beyond his cavern and the village that lay down out of sight. “Your town sees me differently, I think.” The old man plucked at his coat and remained quiet, seeing that more was to come.
“To them,” Cain growled, “I am the wolf, long since tamed, who now sits by their dinner table and begs for scraps, or lays himself out in front of their hearth. I am a gnawer of chicken bones and a player of games with their children.” The dragon slid his gaze down to the man again, and continued. “But every so often, I will fix them with my wolf’s glare, and they freeze and gasp for breath. For in that moment, they know I see them as nothing more than prey, and in my eyes they see their worst fears made manifest. I am a memory to them, but even so, they will remember that like the wolf, I was once something more. A ravager, a killer…a monster.”
As the growling rasp of his voice ended, the cave was left in an austere silence. Cain looked to the old man, unsure what to expect, but the phlegmy snort that came was not it. His companion tilted his head back and spat. “Do not speak so of monsters, dragon. They are many in make and form, but are most certainly not limited to your kind.” His elbows now resting on his knees, the old man turned his wrinkled hands over to gaze into his palms. “We are both memories now. How many years has it been since I was once a fisherman, a smith, a soldier, or even a lover?” Gnarled fingers curled in on themselves while he went on. “My wife passed away long ago, and my son and his family merely tolerate me. I sit and watch, now, and am asked to tell a tale or two to pass the time.”
The old man lifted his face, and Cain averted his gaze for a moment at the wetness he saw in those rheumy eyes. “I suppose you are no different in that regard, dragon, but I feel that you at least value me.” Cain snorted at that, the sound abrupt in the half-lit shadows, and looked to his companion again. “I do remember,” the old man said, “a dimly-recalled childhood where we did not sleep too close to the windows, for fear of gremlins and goblins coming in the night to spirit us away.” The man brushed an arm across his eyes and sniffed again, his gaze hardening. “And I remember tales of you and your kind sending us to bed with bad, bad dreams.” They were silent for a time, two old remnants now uncertain of their future. Then the old villager said, “If I still thought you to be that killer of yesteryear, I would not make my trips up to see you, and I fear that the both of us would have died of boredom in the interim.”
A rare smile tugged at Cain’s scaled lips, and he was grateful to see the old man wore the same expression. His companion stood, the walking stick coming down to support rickety knees and a hunched back. “I must head back now,” he said as he started to shuffle away. The dragon did not move to see him out, but merely called out, “Until the next time, old man.”
The bearded face half-turned back for a moment. “Until then, dragon.”