the telling

come sit. the kettle's on. i want to tell it back to you before the wind takes the details — the whole flight, start to finish. you've earned the long version.

Cindervane came first. you remember. the crack went through the rookery like a bell-note, and i stood there like a fool with my claw on the warm rocks, counting a clutch of one.

then Pyrric, Lullaby, Oathfeather. i said a name over every one of them at the moment they cracked. longhearth's rule. it holds.

we lost Pyrric — fell holding the line at the last gate. i was watching the sky when the wing came back and i counted wrong twice before i let myself count right.

Lullaby still watches her empty seat at the table. i don't correct it. grief knows where to sit.

the ledger calls it reckless. what i saw was this: dives before thinking. the reach remembers.

pileworm in the wing means we don't lose the same way twice. we lose differently. that's its own kind of win. — i used to say that about her kind. she's the reason i still do.

you paid the toll-men their cut. some captains would've made a war of it. you made it arithmetic and kept everyone breathing. marblewick would've argued. he'd have been wrong.

the egg from the ashes — you warmed it. it wasn't yours and it wasn't asked for and you warmed it anyway. that's the whole job, if anyone ever asks you what the job is.

and the holds. bone reach, the pale steps, greyfeather spire, hush hollow — 5 of them, each one pushing the quiet back a little. not a lot. a little. that's how marblewick used to do it too.

the arithmetic, because i keep it: 14 hunts flown. 5 holds taken. the hoard came to 631g. numbers are the smallest part of a telling but they're the part that fits in a ledger.

Cindervane flew 14 hunts of this and is still folding her wings the slow way tonight. dives before thinking. the reach remembers. i've watched her do it after every one. some dragons carry a run. she carried this one.

and the ones still warm: Lullaby, Oathfeather. when the wind comes down off the ridge tonight they'll be in the rocks, breathing slow, like the world was never anything but this.

that's all of it. i'll write it in the book under the wax, next to the other tellings nobody reads. the names don't need reading to hold. they just need saying — and i've said them now, every one.

— peggs