Dragonlove by Marc Secchia

beasts peering out of the Cloudlands.
    Her flight path would take her skimming around the rim to Gi’ishior, by a rajal’s whisker the most northerly Island of the Cluster.
    Softly, Hualiama sang several lines from an elegy she had written for her friend Flicker:
    Gliding, soaring, dipping over the brow of the Island-World,
    Suns in our faces, wind buoying our wings,
    Freedom to roam as widely as our hearts desire.
    Moon-riding, windroc-hiding, tickling the clouds with our toes …
    Her song spoke of her three best Dragon friends in the Island-World. Two had already died. What hope could she realistically entertain that Grandion had not long since been added to that tally? ‘Will my Rider watch the skies for a Tourmaline Dragon?’ he had asked. Surely, an implicit promise to return, and an agreement no Dragon would break? For the first time, she realised that if Grandion lived, he might be as much an oath-breaker as she. Might he pine for a Human girl? Or had he forgotten her?
    She must guard the portals of her heart, and not allow false hope a toehold.
    Warrior-monk exercises, dance in the cramped quarters and meditating upon the new Nuyallith forms occupied the hours. She sipped fresh prekki-fruit juice from a gourd and nibbled at a sweet honey-and-nut roll Yualiana had slipped into her hand just before departure.
    All the while, Gi’ishior’s slender volcanic peak expanded in her vision, perched upon the northern rim wall like a bird upon a precious perch, while her home Island of Fra’anior on the eastern rim was hidden behind a localised thunderstorm. At eighteen leagues from her position, that was a perfectly common phenomenon–sunshine on one Isle, hail on the next.
    But her fingers turned white on the guardrail of her basket. The sky above Gi’ishior crawled with Dragons. Mercy. “One little snack incoming,” she chuckled, sounding rather squeakier than she appreciated. “Courage, Dragon Rider!”
    It still felt like a dream.
    Returning to her controls, Hualiama adjusted the ailerons to take her around the western periphery of the volcano at a height and heading specified by Ga’athar. She deployed the sails to take best advantage of the wind, scudding forward with renewed impetus where she had been forced to tack before.
    Now, how long would it take the Dragons to launch a few friendly fireballs across her path?
    All of a minute.
    A Dragonwing of three juvenile Orange Dragons came screaming down from on high at a velocity that trumpeted their desire to intimidate. One whooshed by not twenty feet from the nose of her Dragonship, causing it to slew in the air at the wash of his passage. Young male Dragons–Lia gritted her teeth. Cue a surfeit of draconic posturing, silliness and the need to have egos stroked by a few well-turned compliments.
    “Turn back!” thundered one of the Oranges, discharging a courtesy fireball across her bow.
    Lia called out, “The most sulphurous greetings of the Great Dragon Fra’anior, to you, o mighty Orange Dragon!”
    A second fireball crackled past, passing dangerously close to the top of her balloon. These Dragons were easily seventy feet from muzzle to tail-spike, and high on adrenaline and whatever other Dragon hormones might be raging around in their golden Dragon blood.
    Mind your claws, Zaxxion! called the Dragon to her starboard side. This one greets humbly. Of course, he accompanied this with a hundred-fang, monstrously toothy leer–the only welcome in his smile being an invitation to personally investigate the sharpness of his fangs, followed by an intimate examination of his gullet. The Dragon sneered, “I’m Emburion. Where do you think you’re going, little Human?”
    Lia firmed her voice. “If it pleases you, noble Dragons, I am Hualiama Dragonfriend, daughter of King Chalcion of Fra’anior, and I wish to speak with Sapphurion, the Dragon Elder.”
    This stinks of windroc droppings, brethren, Zaxxion complained from somewhere above the balloon.
    The