He knew that anger.
He understood it, though the words were only sounds. Like a squabbling jay. They had meaning, but he could only catch the intent. He paid them as much mind as he would have any angry bird’s fussing. Muscles twitched across his scalp, a flat ear barely moved in attempted dismissal. He only continued to stare as she glared at him. He did not care if she was annoyed. She held the other end of the chain.
With the thunder drowning them both, he only just caught her second attempt to pry obedience from him. Hoping to win what she wanted with tricks. Like the dragons that croaked and whistled, squealing whatever sound they could imitate to draw in hopeful mates, never other dragons though. Birds and lizards, frogs, good food. He knew better than to trust only one of his senses. She was human, not walking tree. So, his only answer was idly licking his lips, reaching as far up towards his nose as his human tongue would allow.
She turned around and started walking, and when the chain grew taut, he let his arms lift and felt his shoulders stiffen instinctively when his weight settled against her struggles. Soon, however, he was moving, tired enough that even the strange motion and his unwilling circumstances seemed less exciting the longer they went on in similar fashion. Sometimes, when his shoulders grew sore or his side began to itch, he would help a little by pushing with his feet until he found a sure enough anchor to push off of and flip over. He had resolved, however, that if he was wanted somewhere other than where he was, he did not care to get himself there. His only consolation was that they were going with the flow of power away from that fort.
Away from its mocking bars and high walls, from its staring inhabitants. From the itch that made him wonder if scratching the wet earth of his cell would draw blood from the furrows.
He sneezed as she turned off the road and he tumbled into the ditch, getting a damp weed up his nose and reaching for his eyes. He pulled up short for a moment, forced by surprise to stand and stumble a few steps away from that sudden intrusion into his space, shaking his head and sneezing again before the tug at his wrists came again. He flumped back onto his side to stare at the woman’s back. And suddenly it was not mud but scratching plants he slid through. A less forgiving substance. Roots bruised. Thorns dragged. Stones scraped. Still, he refused to stand under his own power until they stopped. Any longer being dragged and he might have been convinced of the wiser, less painful option. She had gone only far enough that the rain on the leaves above them drowned out everything else.
He rolled stiffly onto his elbows, shaking his head to clear an ear of the wet mud clogging it. Watching her closely as she gave his keeping over to a tree, he understood that it would hold him just as well, if not better, than she could. He did not try to run again.
Truthfully, he didn’t have the strength. His sulking had stretched every joint of his arms from shoulder to wrist and his back, sides and legs felt scoured by a bristle brush. The clothes they’d made him wear had taken the full brunt of misuse and were nowhere untouched by mud or sharp object. Stained and torn, they’d become rags over the course of the evening. But even with their protection, parts of his skin had been abraded. Shoulders and hips would be sore in the morning.
Legs stretched to the side, shivering through numbing cold, Matiir kneaded the ground in front of him as she made hungry sparks grow hungrier. The faster flames fed, the larger they grew, the more they ate. They enticed with warmth and then grew angry of all that ran and cursed them with smoke. He’d learned enough about fire to be wary, and kept his head low, eyes flashing witchlight reflections as he and the human stared at each other over anchored and writhing light.
She looked fully prepared to stay on her side of it. And the invitation, though strange from a human’s mouth, made him curious. He’d never understood a human before. Without teaching.
For a moment, he turned his head to lick at an itching cut on his shoulder through gritty fabric, not sure he wanted what she offered. But the mud and the rain were well past making him cold, and he couldn’t press it all out with his tongue. So, when he finished administering to that slight injury, he looked at her again and heaved himself up onto hands and knees. The motion was fluid, if a little ungainly near the end when he started forward and winced at his arms protesting movement. He crawled forward through the hurt, head swinging beneath his shoulders, eyes always on Samaire, and stopped before he hit the limit of the chain, just within the fire’s reach.
There, he slumped down again with a huff and pulled his wrists close to clean the sores beneath the shackles. Too much moving in them. All the pacing had worn at his skin. All his racing about had cut through it, the padding long since worked clear. He could understand hard metal digging towards blood, he could not understand why, but that did not matter more than the fact that it hurt, and he did not want to make it hurt again. Running to the end of the chain was no longer an option. He would have to find another way to win free.
The process, for all it was a simple one, took time. It took even longer as he paused and raised his head to eye her every time she moved. He wanted the fire’s heat, though it came with the price of regained feeling. He wanted nothing else to do with her, and he didn’t want her close. So, he watched, wary, but not quite afraid. She was, after all, taking him away. That was good.
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