In the course of a dragon’s life, there are few things they have an active role in choosing.
They do not choose what they will become.
Each is bioengineered at a facility in a major Martian city, and it is here where it is decided what they will look like and what they will become. Some will stay small, like the color-changing canary dragons often employed in the mines. Other will grow to several feet at the shoulder, like the variety of supply and freighter class dragons that exist to pull supplies and people across the vast Martian desert.
Some will be created with wings. Others with horns. Some with infrared vision, and others with echolocation. None of this does a dragon choose.
Most will spend their early lives in dragon barns, where civilian-class dragons can be adopted to be raised from their new homes and harriers of all walks of life can begin looking for new blood to train onto their teams.
A dragon does not choose which barn they are brought to, or which of the other dragons they are brought with.
And, in the end, they do not choose the one who chooses them, nor do they choose the line of work they end up in.
At least, not actively.
Dragon was just a pup when he first met the Man. He was scruffy like a wire brush, and his hands were calloused, but they were gentle as they picked him up. The Man chose him that day, holding him with both hands as he carried him away. Dragon remembered standing on the Man’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of the other pups before they left.
At the time, he knew nothing of how wide the world was. But from that day, it had only expanded further and further with each step.
The Man had a team of big dragons — the sort of big he’d be one day, the Man said. He was a far-traveler, and so were they. Their scales smelled of dust and distant lives. They had not chosen these things. But the Man was nice to them, and the desert had become Home to them.
The Man put him in the back of his sled, and they left the blue-tinted sky, exchanging it for one that blew with the scents of the unknown.
The Dragon grew quickly, as dragons tend to. By the year’s end, he was big enough to wear a harness, though not strong enough to pull. The Man tied him to the harness line with one of the thick ropes he used to secure cargo. In truth, the Dragon wasn’t sure he understood what it meant to be a dragon until the first day he ran with the others.
It was a warm day in the summer — sun shining down and an easy breeze in their favor. They matched pace with the wind, and the thundering across the Red declared what the others already knew. This was Home.
The Man was not like them. He did not run alongside them, only stayed on the sled. Still, he called out to them where to go, and when there was danger. Back then, Dragon could not run for very long. His feet would get sore, and his lungs would burn, so the Man would let him climb into the sled to rest while the others continued.
In his second year, Dragon grew stronger, could run longer, faster, and his senses were sharper still. He ran first position at the very front of the procession, with one of the older dragons, who trained him to be watchful and alert the Man when he saw something.
The Man often got into arguments with other far-travelers like him. He wasn’t supposed to go by himself. There were supposed to be others. He didn’t seem to mind so much though, and neither did his dragons. They had each other, and he had them.
Their time wasn’t without its scares. In the Dragon’s second year, someone attacked the Man, and he’d been forced to give an order Dragon didn’t understand. The others did, though. They all converged on the stranger, ripping him to pieces before he could hurt the Man any further.
Dragon understood from then on what he must do if he heard the command again.
There were several times too that things broke, but the Man always knew how to fix it. Even when he didn’t, the Man knew the desert well, and so did they. It was rarely an issue getting back to where they needed to be.
Eventually, the other dragon in first position retired. She was a good runner, but she was needed elsewhere, training others the way he had been. They had all been far-travelers for many years by then, including the Man. He was even scruffier by then, and his hair had grayed, but his eyes were still gentle, and he always pat Dragon between his eyes after a job well done.
They were all used to the way they seldom came in from the Red. Seldom stopped in one town or city for very long. They met many others from far-flung places this way, and they enjoyed this just as much as the Man seemed to.
This time, though, the Man did not come to collect them all as he’d done before. Instead, he returned with the Boy. The Boy was like the Man, but smaller in frame and stature, and he was not scruffy. His hands were soft, bearing none of the callouses that marked the Man’s.
They exchanged words, and the next time the crew was readied, the Man, and his retired dragon, did not come. Only the Boy did. None of them wished to leave.
But dragons do not get to make such choices.
The Boy tried to make them run with other crews of dragons, who each had their own sleds and people, but Dragon had little interest in it. The other teams kicked up dust and made it hard to see, and when the humans camped for the night, the new dragons would always bother them.
It got so bad one day that Dragon snapped at them, and the Boy yelled at him for it.
The Boy was no far-traveler. When things broke, he didn’t know how to fix them. Sometimes they would have to sit around for hours before he figured it out. Other times they had to pull a half-working sled at half-pace to keep it from falling apart before they made it back to a human den.
He did not know the desert the way they did. He didn’t understand their alerting calls.
The Boy did not pat Dragon between the eyes after a good job.
Boy was not like the Man, and Dragon did not care for him. He wasn’t sure the others did either.
The Boy did come by with small pieces of food though, and he talked to them all often when no other humans were around.
“I know I’m not your first choice,” he said one night, sitting against the sturdy pole of one of the corral fences. It had taken them all day to get there, after a piece of their sled broke the night before. “And you must miss him.”
His voice shook as he admitted, “but I don’t have anything else. I need to make this work. You’re my last shot.”
Dragon lowered his head to the Boy’s level, and he saw the way the Boy’s eyes beheld their tiny crew. He saw the Boy the way he imagined the others must have seen the Dragon when he was a pup.
The Boy did not know the Red like they did. He did not see it as Home the way they knew it. He did not know how to fix things when they broke, or what they meant when they called at him to get his attention.
But these were fixable-things. Learnable-things.
Like many things, they came with practice — and time.
And so, he made a decision that day.
The Dragon stepped forward, lightly pressing his head against the Boy’s, and he decided that everything was going to be okay.
Hello everyone and thank you for reading the third release in this anthology series based in the universe of The Cardinal Directive! Went with a more story-book style for this one and I’m really happy with how it came out.
The first story can be found [HERE], the second [HERE] and the wider universe can be found [HERE] if you want to know the main storyline!
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