Dragonwitch pt 10

Every fiber of Rena's being screamed out in protest as she began the task she was given. Trinity knew it was important, but not why, and she detested it almost as much as Rena. The wolves were the moon's children; dragons were children of the sun. There was a legend that a dragon once flew up to the moon and scorched her dress, and that was what started the feud. But despite the long memories of both factions, neither could remember.

Rena scowled as birds twittered in the trees. No wonder the bright man hadn't wanted to hand her over to the birds. Her cousins were complete and utterly hopeless. You would never see a dragon become part of a triad…

The thought made Rena stop cold. What if that was what they planned? What if they wanted to see a human wolf and dragon all connect as one. She shuddered. If that was their plan, she would stop right now and flee back to her mother to endure punishment.

"What is it?" Trinity asked, not realizing Rena's thoughts.

"I can't understand how people can do this tracking thing," she covered. "It's so much easier to find prey in the sky…"

/You'll find…/ a voice said from behind. /That when you know what prey you're looking for, it's really no trouble at all./

Rena turned to see a gnarled old wolf standing there. "Really?" Rena asked. "And how would you hunt this particular prey?"

The wolf let out something between a laugh and a wheeze. /That's dragons for you. Never time for any subtlety, always straight to the point./

"Better straight to the point than sneaking around the subject." Trinity shot.

/Very well. If I were to hunt a dragon, it would be of no particular difficulty, considering even a young dragon leaves a trail of broken trees in it's wake; to bring it down I would merely lull it into an interesting conversation about how only fools travel without a pack./

Rena turned too late to see the wolves closing their circle. As the sun sank below the horizon, the old wolf asked, /Any last requests?/