Village Companions

 

Third tallest when lined up by height,

roughly tenth in terms of strength.

 

"That fire dragon showed up twenty, thirty years ago… It came to the volcano next to my mountain."

The thunder dragon began to speak, haltingly, gaze fixed on some distant point.

Fire dragons and thunder dragons tend to live near one another. Black dragons inhabit swamps, green dragons dwell in forests, thunder dragons perch atop high mountains, and fire dragons make their homes inside volcanoes. It was common enough for all of these to be strung along the same mountain range.

… That said.

"And then it just… settled in."

That should have been impossible.

Dragons despise having another dragon inside their territory. Even I had sensed the thunder dragon the moment he entered mine, his presence registering as an inexplicable, visceral discomfort. No fire dragon, temperamental as they were, would simply tolerate another dragon nearby. Nor was there any reason to.

… And yet. I knew of one. A fire dragon who had let another dragon live brazenly within her territory, blood relation or not, without batting an eye.

It was only after Mother left and the thunder dragon intruded that I truly understood this on a gut level. The feeling was likely instinctual, not the kind of thing that could be dismissed just because the other dragon was one's offspring.

I'd never been conscious of it before because Mother had been by my side since the day I hatched. And because my human mind hadn't yet fully adapted to a dragon's body.

"I figured it hadn't come to fight because it was weak, even for a fire dragon. Up in my black stormclouds, I'd have the advantage even against a fire dragon. That's why it hadn't attacked, I told myself… and twenty years went by."

This thunder dragon had some nerve himself, continuing to live there after a fire dragon had moved in right next door.

"But then one day… that fire dragon just casually flew right past my mountain! Blasting the clouds apart with its fire breath!"

Ah. Come to think of it, I'd done that myself. When you hit clouds with a fire dragon's full-power breath, the heat transfers instantly and they vanish clean away. Mother probably wouldn't even need full power.

"It didn't even seem to notice I was there… It wasn't afraid of me. It hadn't given me a single thought…"

I was starting to feel apologetic on my own parent's behalf. Knowing Mother, she'd probably just ignored him because he wasn't attacking her… though I supposed that was exactly what "not giving someone a single thought" meant.

"So I went searching for a mountain with less dragon presence, flying all over the place… and when I finally found a spot where I could barely sense any at all, there were three weird dragons."

"Three?"

A peal of thunder escaped the dragon's deep sigh, and I found myself echoing his words.

"A strange, long, thin blue dragon, and two fire dragons in human form. What the hell are you people?"

The thunder dragon swept his gaze across all of us.

"Yuuka is… she's a human. Half-elf, to be precise. A cross between a human and one of those long-eared forest dwellers."

The thunder dragon's jaw dropped with an audible clack.

"A… hu… man…?"

Every pair of eyes turned to Yuuka. For whatever reason, she held up a peace sign next to her face and gave a wink. What kind of reaction was that?

"And, well, this is awkward to explain, but this one isn't a dragon either. She's a mermaid who uses transformation magic to take the shape of an Eastern dragon."

In response, Rin did a little flip, spinning like a somersault. In the blink of an eye, the blue Eastern dragon became a cute girl with a fish's tail, flashing the thunder dragon a bright smile. It had been ages since I'd seen her mermaid form. Two hundred years, maybe?

"You're… joking… right…? Then what about… you…?"

The thunder dragon turned to me.

"Oh, no, I'm a genuine fire dragon. I've just taken human form."

"Why is the weakest-looking one the real fire dragon?!"

The thunder dragon's cry rang out far and wide.

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"… And so you brought it home?"

"Well, I kind of started feeling sorry for it…"

Once the thunder dragon finished telling its story, it insisted we kill it. With nowhere left to go and having been thoroughly thrashed by creatures that weren't even dragons, its pride had apparently snapped clean in two.

That said, it had never attacked humans (too small to be worth eating, in its own words), and with no will left to fight, I simply couldn't bring myself to kill it. So for the time being, I brought it back to Scarlet to get Nina's opinion.

"This isn't the same as picking up a stray rabbit, you know."

Nina looked up at the thunder dragon, many times her own size, and sighed with her arms crossed. In my previous life, the saying would have been about a stray cat, but unfortunately this world had no cats docile enough to keep as pets.

"Hey, maybe it's just me, but…"

The thunder dragon murmured to me in a low voice.

"This… elf, was it? She seems more intimidating than you."

"That's an entirely accurate impression."

When I answered in dragon tongue, Nina grabbed my cheek and pulled as hard as she could.

"Wha ah you haying, Heena?"

"I can tell you're saying something rude! How many years do you think we've been together?!"

Nina kneaded my cheeks to her heart's content, then, once she'd had enough, let out another sigh.

"… Your mother's mountain. It's vacant now, isn't it? Why not just let it live there?"

And then she said that.

"Are you sure?"

I hadn't told Nina the details of why the thunder dragon had been driven out. That she'd suggest something like this out of the blue caught me off guard, and the question slipped out before I could stop it. Surely she hadn't gotten so good at reading my face that she could deduce something that complicated.

"One or two more dragons at this point isn't going to make much difference, is it? Besides, it's been inconvenient not having a dragon to look after that mountain."

"That's… true, I suppose."

Since Mother's departure, Scarlet's volcano had grown quite unstable. It had never erupted once while she was there, but since she left, it had erupted several times, albeit on a small scale.

I made a point of checking in roughly once a decade and draining the magma if an eruption seemed imminent, but it would help enormously to have someone keeping a closer eye on things.

… When I thought about it, this was rather like lending out a vacation home you weren't using. Not that I'd ever owned one.

"You'd… let me live there? Are you out of your mind…?"

Rin had been interpreting in real time, so the thunder dragon had followed the conversation. It stared at me, clearly incredulous.

"If you're willing, that is."

"Oh, there it is! A real dragon besides Mentor!"

While we were still talking, the area around us had grown lively. The thunder dragon's massive body wasn't exactly inconspicuous. My house might have been on the outskirts of Scarlet, but word of its arrival had apparently spread through the village in no time. A wall of spectators had formed.

"Mentor! Would you please ask if I could spar with it, just once?"

"What kind of nonsense are you spouting, Captain of the Guard?"

Innis grabbed Ara by his wolf ear and tugged, his eyes still sparkling with excitement.

"Wooow, it's so biiiig. Mentorrr, do you think it's okay to pet it?"

"You're bigger than it is…"

The ones looking down at the thunder dragon while saying this were Lufelle, the giantess, and Tia, the fairy perched on her shoulder. Though her growth had slowed considerably, Lufelle still stood close to ten meters tall.

In sheer body length, the thunder dragon was larger, but on two legs Lufelle's eyes were twice as high as the thunder dragon's on all fours.

"Wh-wh-what is going on here…?!"

Everyone else was the same, approaching the thunder dragon without the slightest hint of fear, gawking at it with open curiosity. Strange… I was fairly certain I'd issued an evacuation order…

"Well, this is the kind of village it is. Things can get a bit noisy, I'll admit… but if you don't mind that, why not try living here?"

I held out my hand to the thunder dragon.

"… Are you really… okay with this?"

The thunder dragon stared at my outstretched hand for a long moment, then asked in a quiet voice.

"Hm? Sure, of course I am."

"Now that's what I'd call insane. You can really stand having another dragon in your territory, just like that?"

"Isn't that the same for you?"

"It's not the same. I… recognize that you're above me. Meaning this area isn't my territory; it's yours. The discomfort of another dragon being in your territory… only you would feel it."

He was right. That intense sense of something foreign, or to put it bluntly, outright discomfort, gnawed at me even now, after I'd already resolved to accept him. This was dragon instinct. No amount of reason or willpower could make it go away.

"Well, I'll manage somehow."

"You won't! That's not the kind of thing you can grit your teeth through forever. Push yourself and you'll actually go mad."

"It'll be fine."

If I had to describe the sensation, it was like an itch you couldn't scratch.

"As you can see, I'm no ordinary dragon. I'm a dragon who lives alongside humans. Humans are fragile, fleeting creatures… but precisely because of that, they possess strengths that dragons do not. Even a problem carved into instinct, I'm sure we can find a way."

Dragons don't solve problems. They don't need to. When you're a dragon, living requires no ingenuity.

But humanity had spent a thousand years honing their wisdom to stand alongside them.

The power of civilization, something only humans possessed.

"… Giltargadawirsemsukinaskiyunam."

Then, without warning, the thunder dragon murmured something.

"Huh?"

"You, stop calling me 'hey, you.' It makes my skin crawl. My name is Giltargadawirsemsukinaskiyunam."

"Right then, Gilta it is."

Rin chimed in the moment the thunder dragon gave its name.

"Huh?! What the hell is that?"

"Nobody's going to say that whole name every time, and honestly, I can't even remember it. Giltar… See? Already forgot. So Gilta's fine."

A crackle of electricity sparked from the base of the thunder dragon's broken horn.

Whether that was exasperation, irritation, or some other emotion entirely, we didn't yet know.

"… Do whatever you want."

The thunder dragon — Gilta — spat the words out as if discarding them.