First Riders
The first human riders are not children.
They can’t be. Three times at war and three losses and moving across the sea and, and, and-
They just can’t be.
So Palancar brings together all the expendable humans. He gathers them around a sleeping dragon and an elf.
The elf doesn’t sneer at them. He doesn’t have a facial expression they can see. He just lays two eggs on the ground before the dragon. He dares them to approach.
They do.
This is not the first dragon they have seen. This is not the first death they faced.
One by one, each presses a hand to an egg. In the end, two were chosen.
The daughter of a second son and a boy who could not father children.
It was the best outcome.
 The city is large, and still being built. They are taught by an elf with sunlight in their hair. They know other riders. They are not friends.
The boy is quiet and listens. He learns of the elves and learns to see what they think is beautiful.
And he learns he is ugly.
He learns the language, and understands he is coarse. His voice grates against the ears and he learns to be silent.
But his dragon is beautiful. So he speaks with their words and he basks in the shadow of their wings, the stars could not compare to the light bouncing off scales the color of moist earth.
 The girl means to be respectful. She knows to listen and be silent. She listens and learns.
And she is angry. She is furious.
The elves discuss magic and beauty and health.
They discuss politics and religion.
The girl keeps her mouth shut.
She receives a letter from a cousin, it talks of the building of a temple- the first since they came to the continent. They have had a good harvest and new births. They are not at war. She cries until her dragon thrashes with her emotions.
She tells her master of this, excited and exultant. Her people live and are healthy.
The elves say nothing.
A year later, she learns the elves have stopped the humans from building. They allow no more trees to be cut down, they allow no animals to be killed for worship.
She is furious. She is angry. She says nothing.
Her dragon, who is green like her mother’s eyes, flies off in the night. It is many days till he returns.
She learns he ate three bulls in front of the elven ambassadors in Palancar’s lands.
Necks broken, blood flowing out. He bore his teeth.
The temple is built within the next year.
Her dragon is beautiful and she tastes power for the first time in years.
 The dragons do not temper them. He grows wild. He is trained, then he leaves. He wanders the forests- hunting, growing, shaping his magic. He talks even less. He runs his hands over bark until his mind knows the shape and feel of each kind of tree in the dark.
He stays in the dark.
His hair grows white, wrinkles form around his eyes, but he does not age. He finds freedom in the silence.
Eventually, she comes and finds him. He follows her to the land where his family’s descendants farm and learn. He shows them how to build forests on their own land and how to grow crops to feed a population. He watches as she shows them how to build as the dwarves do.
 Her anger is a blue flame. When the elves teach them no more, she flies and flies and flies away. She finds the children of stone and puts herself under them. She learns of their gods, of their armies, of their writing.
She learns to dig and to mine and to understand the stone.
 She brings it back with her.
 She finds him. He is not old, but he still does not speak. He knows the forests and plants better than any other she knows. She sits with him for many moons as her dragon speaks to his. She convinces him to come back with her.
He helps her. Their king and his children died, but she still has nephews and nieces who sit hunched down in tattered huts. She brings him to them. He listens as they speak. They need no more words to know what must be done.
 The elves gave them nothing in the end.
 He shows them agriculture in a way he learned while lonely. He shows them without magic, but with hands calloused from work. He shows them how wolves hunt and dragons devour and what is needed for the animals to thrive.
 Her hands show them the forming of the stylus and the mining of stone. She shows them the measurements of the city they could build.
 They do not leave for many years.
 The elves do not speak to them, but they speak to their dragons. His laughs and delights in the attention, but becomes cruel when the elves speak ill of the strides his rider’s people have made. Hers listens and waits and speaks with Umaroth.
Vrael flies many times to speak with the elves. It is no use.
She grows angrier and angrier- and he grows quieter and quieter.
Yet, while the elves lay fallow in their magic, the humans grow and grow.
And grow.
