Spider hasn’t seen another dragon in years. Then a fledgling dragon arrives with news of terrible events--and she needs his help.

Today’s story is “Sea and Sky” by K.C. Shaw, who writes fantasy and furry fiction and also hosts the nonfiction Strange Animals Podcast. Her latest book, Skyway, is a collection of short stories about a couple of lady airship pirates, available from Mannison Press. You can find more of her stories at kcshaw.net. This story originally appeared in the anthology Black Dragon, White Dragon published by Ricasso Press.

Today’s story will be read for you by Nenekiri Bookwyrm, reminding you to curl up with a good book and be kind to yourself.

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You’re listening to The Voice of Dog,

and Today’s story is

“Sea and Sky” by K.C. Shaw,

who writes fantasy and furry fiction

and also hosts the nonfiction

Strange Animals Podcast.

Her latest book, Skyway,

is a collection of short stories about a couple of lady airship pirates,

available from Mannison Press.

You can find more of her stories at kcshaw.

kcshaw.net. This story

originally appeared in the anthology

Black Dragon, White Dragon

published by Ricasso Press.

Today’s story will be read for you by Nenekiri Bookwyrm,

reminding you to curl up with a good book

and be kind to yourself.

“Sea and Sky”

by K.C. Shaw Spider was fishing when he saw the inland dragon.

He first noticed her as a bright red mote in a sky the color of rain clouds.

He banked and hovered over the sea to watch her,

using the gusting winds as expertly as any gull.

It was a few minutes before he was sure it really was a dragon

and not an ember carried from some far-off fire.

It took the red dragon a long time to approach.

Once she was close enough,

Spider saw why: she was very young, too young to know how to use the buffeting winds to her advantage.

She struggled forward,

wings thrashing. Spider sideslipped and let the wind push him to the cliffs,

where he landed in the grass and folded his wings.

A few minutes later the red dragon landed too,

much more clumsily,

and sat up on her haunches.

She was barely old enough to be flying at all,

certainly too young to be on her own.

Her red coloring,

which had seemed so bright in the distance,

was tempered up close by a faint blush of pale orange,

reflected in the paler red-orange of her wing-feathers.

Her ribs showed more than they should

and she smelled as though she hadn’t washed in some time.

She looked up at him and said,

“Do you have any food?”

Spider had to clear his throat twice before his voice would obey him,

and then it sounded rusty.

He hadn’t spoken to anyone in years,

not even himself.

“I’ll bring you a fish.”

“Thank you. What are you called?”

“Spider.” “Because your legs are so long.”

She nodded. “I’m called Sunrise.”

The name suited her,

but Spider was out of the habit of speaking and didn’t say so.

He spread his wings and let a gust of wind lift him,

then coasted low above the waves.

When he saw the shadowed shape of a fish just below the surface,

he dipped his wings and snagged it out of the water.

The wind gusted harder,

bringing the first stinging raindrops as a storm moved in off the ocean.

Spider only needed to flap his wings twice,

buoyed by the wind,

to rise to the top of the cliff where Sunrise waited.

She shone like the sun on water,

the only bright thing in a view of sea and sky and windswept clifftops.

Spider dropped the fish in front of her as he landed.

She pounced on it with both forepaws.

“How do I kill it?”

she said, staring in consternation as it bucked and jerked.

Spider pointed to the fish’s belly.

“Bite its guts.” She bit the fish open and gulped the offal,

then stripped back its tough skin to get at the flesh.

Spider watched her in amazement.

He’d never seen an inland dragon up close,

certainly not one so young.

Her horns were still scarcely longer than one of his talons.

Sunrise finished eating

just as it began to rain.

She licked her jaws and said,

“Where do you live?”

“Follow me.” Spider coasted off the cliff,

then glanced back to make sure Sunrise was following.

By the time they reached his cave,

halfway down the cliff,

her feathers were spiky with rain and she was

flapping frantically to stay aloft.

Spider landed on the lip of the cave and moved aside to give her room to land too.

She stood with her wings sagging, her hide gleaming with rain.

“Shake your wings,”

Spider said, and demonstrated how.

She imitated him,

spraying him with water,

then followed him deeper into the cave.

Spider had cleared it of rubble long ago

and had brought in armloads of dry grasses to make a nest in the back.

He settled into the nest and was surprised again

when Sunrise crawled up next to him

and snuggled under one of his wings.

“You’re nice,” she said.

“Can I stay with you?”

“Where are your parents?”

he asked. “They’re dead.

They all died. All the dragons died.”

She pressed her snout into the hollow behind his foreleg.

Spider could feel her shivering and he spread his wing over her.

He didn’t ask her any other questions and she didn’t speak.

Before long she fell asleep,

but Spider stayed awake,

listening to the rain and to the sea breaking against the cliffs. ***

Spider woke to find Sunrise still curled up next to him,

but the cave stank of unwashed dragon.

He got up and went to the cave’s mouth for fresh air.

The sun was rising in a rain-washed sky.

Far below Spider’s cave the tide was out,

exposing a narrow half-moon of sand.

He was still considering whether he should wait for high tide to make Sunrise wash when she joined him.

“Can I have another fish?”

she asked. Low tide wasn’t the best time to fish.

It took Spider a while to find one big enough to bother catching.

He brought it to Sunrise

and left again to find his own.

When he returned,

having half-eaten his fish in mid-air,

Sunrise had already finished hers.

She picked at the bones

and watched Spider eat out of the corner of her eye.

He gave her the last few bites.

“Thank you,” she said when she had eaten it.

“I wish I could fly like you.” “Throw the bones into the sea,”

Spider said. He waited until Sunrise pushed the remains of the fish

over the cliff edge,

then said, “See those gulls?”

Gulls wheeled overhead,

and a few tussled over the fish bones Sunrise had left on the clifftop the night before.

“See how they let the wind go under their wings instead of fighting it?”

Sunrise nodded. “Try it.

Hold your wings out and practice.”

Sunrise spread her wings,

leaning forward with her front paws wrapped over the edge of the cave mouth.

Her wings were scruffier and dirtier even than he’d thought.

He wondered when she’d last groomed them.

He waited, remembering his mother giving him the same lesson

long ago. Then Sunrise said,

“Oh! Now I feel how.”

She launched herself from the cave

and Spider followed closely in case he needed to catch her.

But she glided on the gusting sea winds,

not particularly well

but certainly better than she had flown the night before.

They flew along the coast for several miles before Sunrise tired,

and landed at the water’s edge at the mussel bay.

“My feet are sinking,”

Sunrise said. She picked up a forepaw and examined the wet sand clinging to it,

then sprang back with a squeal as a wave frothed around her legs.

“Wash,” Spider said.

“When you’re done I’ll show you how to open mussels.”

“What are mussels?”

“Shellfish. You eat them.

Go on, wash.” Sunrise waded into the surf a short distance and crouched down.

“It’s cold,” she said.

“You’ll warm up once you start scrubbing.”

Spider waded in next to her.

Sunrise scooped up a pawful of sand and began to scrub without enthusiasm.

Spider washed too,

much more quickly,

then swam out into the bay

and dived for fish.

When he returned

Sunrise was playing with a shell,

using it to make grooves in the sand

and laughing when water filled the grooves.

“Did you wash your wings?” Spider said.

The feathers were still dry.

Sunrise dropped the shell guiltily

and ducked into the waves.

She bounded out of the water again after only a few moments, though,

and shook her wings out.

Drops flew, catching the morning light and flashing rainbows.

Spider took her to the mussel rocks

and showed her how to pry the mussels loose.

He expected her to have trouble opening them,

but her blunt claws seemed made for the task.

Within minutes she was quicker at it than he was.

“How long ago did your parents die?”

he asked her after a while.

“It was winter.” A quarter of a year, then.

No wonder she was thin.

She was gobbling mussels as fast as she could open them.

“What happened?” She sat back and looked at him,

her eyes wide and dark.

“Everyone got sick.

Everyone in the whole valley.

My sister got sick first,

then my mama. I helped take care of them

—I brought water from the river,

in a skin, so they could drink.

Daddy hunted. Then he got sick too,

and I tried to hunt instead

but I didn’t do very well.

My aunt gave me some of their food,

but then she died.

And my sister died.”

She rubbed her snout with a sandy paw.

“My daddy took her body to put it in the woods,

but he never came back.

And then my mama died.

And when I went to find someone to help me,

no one was left. I went looking for my daddy

but he was dead. There were flies on him.”

Spider’s wing feathers prickled with horror.

Sunrise poked at the empty mussel shells scattered around her

and said, “I went into the woods so I would die there.

But I never got sick.

Why didn’t I get sick?”

“It’s the plague. Some dragons don’t get it.

It came through our colony when I was a little older than you

and I never got sick either.”

“Did you have a brother or a sister?”

Dragons always laid two eggs.

“A brother.” “Did he die?”

“No. Not then.” Spider stood up.

“Let’s go sit in the sun and groom our wings.”

He flew to the top of the nearest cliff.

Sunrise followed

and settled next to him.

“Are you a real dragon?”

she asked. “Yes. Of course.”

“I’ve never seen a dragon who’s green.”

“I’m not green.”

Sunrise waved a paw at the ocean.

“You are. You’re the color of the water.”

Spider was pleased,

but he didn’t know how to say so.

“Groom your wings,”

he said, and started to preen his own feathers.

A few moments later he glanced up.

Sunrise was sitting on her haunches,

watching him mournfully.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“I don’t know how to groom my wings.

Mama always did it for me.”

Spider sighed, but moved closer to her and began to smooth and straighten her feathers.

She still had fluffy nestling down between the flight feathers. ***

Over the next week

their days fell into a rhythm: baths

at dawn, fish and doze until low tide,

and another trip to the mussel bay so

Sunrise could play in the sand and eat mussels.

Her appetite for any kind of food

was endless. Spider ate less than she did.

But the food and care were already making a difference.

She was starting to look properly baby-plump.

She still claimed she couldn’t groom her own wings,

but Spider didn’t mind doing it for her now

that she no longer stank.

Her flying skills improved daily.

She slept snuggled close to him in the nest and he welcomed her warmth on the chilly spring nights.

One night, more than a week after her arrival,

she wriggled around and put her mouth close to Spider’s ear membrane.

“My name’s Falatha,”

she whispered breathily.

It had been a very long time

since Spider was trusted with a dragon’s secret name.

He nuzzled Sunrise’s jaw and said,

“Falatha, my name is Tsakil.

Tsakil.” “Tsakil,” she said solemnly,

and snuggled under his wing again.

He heard her muttering his name to herself until she fell asleep,

so she wouldn’t forget it.

The knowledge of Sunrise’s name,

and her dependence on him,

made Spider uneasy.

For the first time he realized she was here to stay.

No one would come to take her home.

He wondered frequently,

over the next few days,

what he should do about her.

He remembered his activities at her age

—learning to swim with the other young dragons,

fishing with his brother,

playing rough-and-tumble games in the wet sand at low tide.

Always there had been dragons around,

young ones to play with and old ones to watch over them.

Sunrise had only him,

and he had long ago forgotten how to play.

It was another week before he decided reluctantly that he needed to find her a home among other dragons.

For a moment he considered taking her to his old colony,

but rejected the idea almost immediately.

Too many dragons in his old colony had promised to kill him if he ever returned.

He watched as Sunrise chased a retreating wave into the sea

and fled in mock-terror from the next one.

It wouldn’t be wise to leave just yet, anyway

—not until Sunrise regained the weight and strength she had lost.

Spider relaxed and put his decision to leave in the back of his mind.

Spring progressed and the water warmed.

The fishing was good.

Sunrise became almost adept at snagging fish from the water,

although her claws weren’t made for it the way Spider’s hooked talons were.

From time to time he remembered his decision, though,

and it troubled him.

By mid-summer, he knew Sunrise was at the peak of health now.

Gleaming new feathers were replacing the fluff on her wings.

It was time to go…but

there was always tomorrow.

Today they would explore a new bay,

or fly out to sea to look for whales,

or simply lie in the sun and drowse. They were lying in the cave mouth one afternoon,

waiting for low tide,

when Sunrise rolled over and looked at Spider.

“How’d you get that scar on your neck?”

she asked. He had almost forgotten about the scar.

“I was in a fight once.

A long time ago.” Sunrise was silent long enough that Spider nearly drifted back to sleep.

But she said, “Did your colony all die?”

Spider opened his eyes,

thoroughly awake now.

“No. I left them.” “Why?”

“The fight,” Spider said.

“I fought with my brother and accidentally killed him.

His friends told me to leave.”

He remembered the argument with his brother,

words that couldn’t be taken back—words followed by a vicious, slashing fight above the sea.

And then his brother falling silently amid blood drops,

feathers spiraling after him,

and the waves closing over his body.

Sunrise stared at him with wide eyes.

“You never went back?”

“No. I had to leave.

I can’t live among dragons anymore.”

“Except for me,” Sunrise said.

She shifted around to lean against him.

The conversation made him remember how much Sunrise needed other dragons.

He considered, seriously this time,

taking her to his colony.

Perhaps the old anger had faded

and he would be welcome again.

He thought of his parents, his cousins and aunts and uncles,

his friends. Had they forgotten him?

Would they be glad to see him?

Finally, late one evening when the surf murmured against the cliffs

and stars glittered in the sky and the sea,

Spider said, “We’ll leave tomorrow.

We have to find you a home.”

Sunrise had been lying near him in the cave mouth,

half asleep. Now she looked up at him in alarm.

“Why can’t we stay here?”

“You need friends your own age.

You need someone who can be a mother to you.”

“But there aren’t any other dragons,”

she said. “They all died.”

“You didn’t die, and I’m still alive.”

She watched him the rest of the evening with worried eyes.

He pretended to fall asleep

so she would stop staring.

But in the morning, when dawn lifted over the cliffs and the breeze began to move off the sea,

Sunrise only seemed excited.

She chattered as they fished,

her voice mostly lost on the wind,

and washed quickly in the mussel bay.

“When are we leaving?” she asked him,

spreading her damp wings out for him to groom.

“Soon,” he said, and spent more time than usual preening her feathers and then his.

He felt heavy and reluctant as they flew to the freshwater spring.

Once they had drunk,

Spider stretched thoroughly.

Sunrise mimicked him.

There was no more putting it off

—no more tomorrows to retreat ahead of them like chased waves.

It was still early.

The sky was white with clouds that had blown in overnight.

The two dragons flew along the coast,

above cliffs half crumbled into the sea.

Spider remembered his long-ago despair

that he would never find a comfortable home again,

a safe cave to shelter him from storms and cold.

When they stopped for the night

he was pleased that Sunrise seemed nearly as fresh as she had that morning.

They slept in the grass at the top of the cliffs.

The night was hot and still with

scarcely a breath of wind.

By midmorning the next day

Spider began to recognize the coast below them:

its bays and inlets,

the angle of its cliffs against the sea.

The cliffs were once again pocked with caves and topped with windbent trees.

They arrived at his old home at noon.

There were no dragons in sight.

“We’re here,” he called to Sunrise.

His stomach felt as though he’d swallowed a live fish.

He banked and slid down the breeze to land in a cave mouth.

Sunrise landed next to him and crowded close to his side.

“Who lives here?” she whispered.

“My parents,” he said,

“or they used to.”

The stone was smooth from generations of passing feet,

but there was windswept debris underfoot

—gull feathers, sand, leaves.

He sniffed around briefly.

No scent of dragon clung to the entrance.

“Did you grow up here?”

Sunrise peered into the cave.

Spider was suddenly, acutely homesick.

“Yes. There used to be a big nest in the very back,

made up of brush and old feathers.

Thousands of feathers, from my parents and their parents and their parents.” “May I go in?” “I’ll come with you.”

Spider felt he was Sunrise’s age again,

returning home to sleep through the afternoon’s heat with his brother beside him.

It wasn’t until they came to the nest that he realized why there was no scent of dragon.

He flung a wing in front of Sunrise.

The nest was still there.

So were his parents.

At first glance in the dim light they seemed to be asleep.

The sea had long ago swept the smell of death from the cave.

“Go back,” he said to Sunrise.

“It’s not nice.”

He hoped she had not seen,

but knew from her stunned expression that she had.

When they were in the cave’s mouth again,

Sunrise crouched down with her wings huddled around her.

“We’re the only dragons left,”

she whispered. Spider looked up and down the coast.

They were alone. He put his wings around Sunrise.

“They must have gone away,

the dragons who survived the plague.

We’ll find them.” “I don’t want to.”

Sunrise pressed her muzzle under his jaw.

“I want to go home.”

Spider hugged her tight for a moment.

“We’ll go home, then.”

They flew far into the night,

both of them eager to put distance between them and the dead.

Only very sick or very injured dragons wouldn’t fly far out to sea to die;

only a colony devastated by plague would leave bodies where they fell.

Spider wished he had stayed long enough to give his parents to the sea. They stopped finally,

long after they were both exhausted.

It was another still night,

but Spider sensed a change coming in the weather.

He groomed Sunrise’s wings and felt her relax.

“I did want to meet some dragons my age,”

she murmured sleepily. ***

Spider woke before dawn,

troubled. The waves were slow and heavy.

A storm was coming.

He nudged Sunrise awake.

“We need to beat the storm home.”

The wind gusted off the sea all morning.

Around noon a hard, heavy rain fell,

lashing down without stopping.

Spider hoped to find a cave

—any cave at all—but the cliffs here were sheer and featureless.

The sea frothed and roared against them.

The wind buffeted them away from the sea.

Before long they were far inland.

It frightened Spider,

because he no longer knew where they were.

But Sunrise shouted,

“I saw those trees the day I met you!

I think we’re almost home.”

They turned to fly directly into the wind.

It was hard enough for Spider;

Sunrise could scarcely make any headway.

They stalled over the band of trees.

“Land here,” Spider called.

The trees weren’t thick enough to give much shelter.

One had already fallen and the others thrashed as though in agony.

The wind keened and whistled through the branches.

“We’ll have to run,”

Spider said. “Keep your wings folded tight.”

They started through the trees,

but a moment later Sunrise stopped and squealed,

“It’s another dragon!

Look! It’s another dragon!”

The strange dragon was dark red,

his wings nearly black.

He was male and his bone-colored horns curved back from his head

like the spines of a bladefish.

He was much bigger and heavier than Spider expected, too,

built like a bull shark.

At the moment, though, he looked as wretched as Sunrise.

“Is there shelter anywhere?”

he asked. “Come with us.”

They ran, blinded by rain.

The wind grabbed at Spider’s folded wings.

He led the way, glancing back often,

and was reassured to see the strange dragon help Sunrise when she stumbled.

At last Spider heard the roar of the sea against the cliffs.

Moments later they came to the cliffs’ edge.

He stopped and waited for the others to catch up.

“Help her fly,” he told the strange dragon.

“We’re almost there.”

He launched himself off the cliff,

flapping frantically to keep the wind from driving him back again.

Behind him the strange dragon did the same,

clasping a terrified-looking Sunrise around the middle with his forepaws.

Spider was certain she wouldn’t have been able to make it to the cave otherwise.

They landed in the cave mouth and scurried inside.

The wind had blown rain all the way back,

but the nest was dry.

“Is it safe here?” the strange dragon asked.

“Yes. I’m Spider; this is Sunrise.”

Sunrise huddled beneath his wings,

shivering hard. “Thistle,”

the strange dragon said.

He looked toward the cave entrance,

where rain slashed sideways in the wind.

The wind howled, the sea roared,

and thunder shook the sky,

but inside the cave they were sheltered and safe.

Thistle said, “I came looking for other dragons.

I’m glad I found you.”

Sunrise peeked out from under Spider’s wing.

“We’ve been looking for other dragons too.

We thought everyone else had died.”

“Not everyone,” Thistle said.

“The survivors from my colony have moved to a valley about four days’ flight away.

I’ve been searching for other survivors ever since.”

The sound of the wind deepened and increased,

drowning Thistle’s voice.

Sunrise ducked back under Spider’s wing.

Gradually the pitch of the wind eased.

The rain slackened.

Sunrise fell asleep against Spider’s side.

After a little while longer

Thistle said, “Were there any other survivors from your colony?”

“I don’t know,” Spider said.

He hesitated, too ashamed to tell Thistle about his exile and half-afraid the dragon would guess anyway.

“We couldn’t find anyone else alive.

alive.” Thistle sighed. “I’ve never heard of plague hitting us this badly.

Only seven of our colony survived out of almost two hundred.”

He stared out the cave entrance,

where gray rain fell into a gray sea.

“I’ve only found about forty more dragons to join us,

out of months of searching.”

Spider knew he should fill the listening silence Thistle left for him.

But he didn’t know what to say.

He held Sunrise tightly against his side.

Thistle said, “Do you suppose it’s safe to leave now?

I need to get back to my colony

—with you both, of course.” Spider thought of leaving the sea forever and living inland,

among the shadowed trees.

He felt a surge of unaccustomed fear at the thought, mixed with shame again at his disgrace.

He didn’t belong among dragons,

but Sunrise did. “It’s still raining.”

Spider got up carefully so he wouldn’t disturb Sunrise,

and went to the cave entrance to look out.

The sea was choppy and lathered,

still roaring against the cliffs.

Thistle joined him.

“You will come with me, won’t you?”

Spider didn’t belong in a colony.

He had been sent away.

Except that the dragons who had sent him away were most likely all dead.

No one cared now if he lived alone or among dragons again.

Spider felt that he was waking for the first time in years,

breathing in the cold rainy wind like his first breath out of the egg.

He was too full of newness to speak.

Thistle sounded irritable.

“If you won’t leave,

at least let me take Sunrise.

She needs a family.”

She did need a family, Spider knew.

But so did he. He nodded.

“All right, then. Once the rain stops we’ll go.

I wish you’d come with us.

You wouldn’t be the only sea dragon there, you know.

We’ve got five or six others.”

Spider turned to look at him.

He still wasn’t sure he could speak.

He thought he must be shining from within.

He heard Sunrise scramble out of the nest behind them.

A moment later she flung herself at Spider.

“I want to stay here with you!”

Spider wrapped his wings around her.

“I’m going too. We’re both going.” ***

The rain ended. Sun gleamed on foam-webbed waves,

on the wet grass at the top of the cliffs.

Thistle sailed from the cave mouth, followed closely by Sunrise and Spider.

With the wind under their wings,

they turned inland.

This was “Sea and Sky” by K.C. Shaw,

read for you by Nenekiri Bookwyrm,

reminding you to curl up with a good book

and be kind to yourself..

You can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,

or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for listening to The Voice of Dog.