Which posed another question…
“Are you going to kill me now?” I forced the words out, this time my throat refusing to even push the sound from fear of the answer it might bring.
To my surprise, this question earned me a quicker reply.
“I wasn’t planning to…” he replied, blanketing relief all over my body, but before I had a chance to truly breathe a sense of safety, he continued. “Unless you keep disturbing my rest. Then I’ll have no choice but to kill you and gain myself some peace and quiet.”
His words came out like a warning, though he also sounded curious. I felt him listening, daring me to say another word. To challenge him.
I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.
I even started massaging my cramping hand to prevent it from shaking, taking away the metal-on-metal slapping which had disturbed him in the first place.
A few minutes later, silence filled the tent, settling the bed and my own movements, both the stranger and I keeping as quiet as a living, breathing person could.
On my part, I knew I wouldn’t be getting any rest, but I also wasn’t a fool to challenge him and see if he would actually murder me for not letting him sleep.
If history lessons had taught me anything, it was to live to fight another day, so I settled my body into a more comfortable position, if such a thing was even possible, and tried my best to respect my captor’s wishes, keeping quiet in my corner with the metal bar.
While my mind focused on the most important question: who was this man?
Either I managed to sleep in that uncomfortable position, or my body simply gave out, I was not sure. What I did know was that light shone from outside of the tent through two flaps to my left side, where I assumed the entrance would be. I had just enough space to rotate my body and take in my surroundings with the fresh glow of the morning.
One gaze around the tent told me that I had been right in my assumption from last night, before the mysterious man confirmed it.
The first thing I did was to check towards the part of the tent where the bed was situated, to find it neatly arranged for the day, the stranger long gone.
I didn’t know what time it was or how he’d managed to walk past me, without even feeling the need to wake me up or continue the conversation we had the night before. If our dialogue exchange could even be called that.
I asked, he grunted.
I wanted clarification, he threatened to kill me.
Not much of a conversation in my book.
I took the opportunity to scan my environment, lest there be any surprises. I wasn’t sure what my day would bring, if I would even have the opportunity to see the light of day again or if I would find my death in this tent. But if I had any chance at continuing for a little longer, one thing was certain. I had to take the present as it was. Analyse the known factors. And find a solution to the problem.
Right now, I was captive in a faerie camp, a drake one nonetheless, and the important attributes that had kept me alive the night before were my age, my location and my ability to receive orders. Either that or my ability to keep my mouth shut, it was still to be determined.
For some reason, I was tied up in the tent of a stranger, who cared more about his rest than my presence, which again, worked in my favour. Maybe he would care enough to release me?
One question at the time, Nora,I tried to settle myself and continued to learn my surroundings.
There was a lot of noise outside. Lots of chatter, lots of banging and rustling. Lots of voices. Both male and female. Which meant that this was a rather large camp, if I was to make an assumption. A large camp that would most likely make a move towards my town.
Focus, Nora, focus. What can you see?
Metallic bars to support the structure of the tent, also used to hold prisoners. Check.
Large bed fit for royalty in the far corner, removed from the entrance flaps to offer more comfort. Check.
Leather made ornaments and decorations to commemorate what I assumed were gods and battle scenes. Also check.
I stopped my mental list and took the time to analyse these. After all, the artist in me could not resist the temptation ofsorting through shapes and colours and admire the masterfully painted wall decor. It contained such vivid colours that my tutors would have probably passed out at the sight of them and the way they combined the brown background of the leathers to obtain such stunning hues was beyond me. Such a technique had not been shared with the humans, that was for sure.
It looked as if they were repainted over layers of dust, some of the work creaking under the weight of past colours to obtain such vivid tonalities. And the main focus of such artistic offerings was fire.
Flames engulfed a myriad of portrayals, always presented at the centre. Always portrayed as the main element. The very purpose of the work. And they always seemed to expand into other parts, as though wanting to conquer the entirety of the canvas. One thing was for sure, if I were to find my ending here, it would be an honour to perish surrounded by such mastery.
