Tempering A Dragon

Every dragon in the huge cavern raised their head, staring toward the great door.

“Who is insane enough to be traveling in this weather?” Tempura said, dropping the harness she was mending. No one answered her.

All the dragon chatter around her had ended abruptly. She knew the dragons had excellent hearing and had heard something.

All of them had heard it.

“The wind is close to one hundred miles an hour, and the temperature is hovering at minus forty,” she said, repeating the weather report she had heard earlier.

Tempura knew this meant a single dragon and its rider had landed in the courtyard.

“Insane,” she said. She rose and instantly broke into a jog.

A dragon out in this cold needed to get in fast. She jogged up the ramp toward the great door.

“Damn rider. How dare you take your dragon out in this weather? I’m hurrying for the sake of the dragon, not you.”

She reached the double inner door first, where she grabbed a thick fur coat from the racks. “It’s insane just to open the great door without a coat.” She threw out the words to expend some of her anger.

Tempura pulled on the coat, then tugged out a fur hat from a pocket. She pulled it down over her head.

Wisps of her brown hair had escaped her ponytail. She drew a finger across her forehead to move the hairs out of her eyes.

As fast as she could, she pushed open the inner door and slipped through. The quicker she was, the less heat lost and the fewer cold drafts allowed in.

“Damn, it’s cold.”

She hastily buttoned the coat while she hurried up the ramp. It curved around, almost doubling back on itself.

Her fingers were already going numb with cold when she put on her gloves. “I bet it’s as cold between the two doors as it is outside.”

She could feel the cold pass through her light tan pants. They would hardly protect her from the cold unless she kept moving.

She was glad she always wore her fur-lined boots.

Tempura reached the lever that controlled the door mechanism. She reached up and pulled down hard.

The wheels turned, pulling open the two halves of the great door. In an instant, she saw a huff of dragon breath swirl in through the opening.

A dragon nose was already pushed against the doors, helping the pulleys from working so hard. The doors were heavy, being double wood slabs that were two feet thick.

The doors’ design wasn’t to keep a dragon in, but to keep out the bitter cold of winter.

“Get in here quick,” Tempura said, although she needn’t have.

The dragon, who was in an obvious hurry to get inside, pulled his rider through the door.

“Tail,” she said, barely able to breathe with the cold. Her voice seemed lost in the wind.

The dragon’s tail rapidly cleared the threshold, and she pushed up the lever to close the doors. The rush of wind subsided; however, the air was still frigid.

No one moved until the doors were firmly closed.

“This way,” Tempura said, leading the way toward the inner doors. She walked fast, just as eager to reach the warmth as she knew the dragon would be.

“Warmer down below.” She knew what she said was obvious, but people preferred a chatty person to one who remained silent.

She swung open both inner doors to allow the dragon to pass. However, the dragon and his rider had only come so far down the ramp.

She thought the dragon looked a little too timid.

“Warmer down below,” she said again, wondering why the rider just stood there, holding the rope attached to his dragon.

“I need my dragon tended to,” the man said, still encased in his heavy flying coat. His hat and scarf covered his face. He took a few steps toward her.

“Yes, I know. Send him on down,” Tempura said with an impatient wave of her hand.

“I want to make sure he gets chained,” the man said.

Tempura glared, feeling anger well up in her. “We don’t chain dragons here. You think a dragon’s going to want to escape out there?”

She pointed toward the great door.

The rider’s eyes followed her gesture, but he didn’t move any farther down the ramp. Was the man crazy?

Tempura stomped over to him and grabbed his rope away. She thought the rope was a joke.

Did the man really think he could control his dragon with a rope? This dragon could haul him around with ease.

“Go on down,” she said to the dragon, tossing the loose end of the rope. It snagged on the dragon’s harness.

The dragon flinched at the touch of the rope. Tempura could see the conflict in his eyes. He was eyeing his rider and then her, looking very unsure what to do.

She knew she would win the battle. The dragon looked to her for encouragement.

She waved her hand, urging him to go. That was all he needed, and he moved down into the cavern.

Tempura turned her gaze to the man and impatiently waved for him to move on. She almost struck him when she did so.

Finally, the man moved, passing through the doors, allowing her to close them, although the doors just missed him since he wasn’t moving as fast as she had calculated. She almost wished she had.

No one liked the doors left open for too long. It allowed too much cold air to sweep in.

However, she heard no complaints from any dragon. That caused her to look around.

She heard no dragon chatter, which made her feel concerned. Silence meant something was wrong.

“If you want a warming bath, keep going to your left. Jak is there, and he’ll take off your harness,” Tempura said, removing her coat.

Tempura turned her back on the man while she hung up the coat on the rack by the doors. She stuffed the gloves into one pocket and the hat in another, so all she had to do next time was grab the coat.

That was the easiest and most efficient way of doing it, which guaranteed everything one needed to stay warm. Tempura frowned, feeling annoyed that she was the only one who did this.

She always found herself double-checking. The cold weather was too severe to be without them.

“A bath?” the rider said.

Tempura couldn’t see his features since he had yet to remove his face covering, but his voice had a tone of puzzlement.

“I was talking to the dragon. You can keep going straight. You’ll find the door to the great room. Just go up the steps and ask for the person you are here to see,” Tempura said, dismissing him and following the dragon.

The dragon had taken her guidance and was heading toward the bath. His feathers, which had been frosted white, were now showing the blues and greens of a juvenile.

She figured he was probably five to seven years old. He was old enough for a rider, but inexperienced about traveling in this type of weather.

The dragon should have refused his rider.

The dragon paused and rumbled his name.

At least the dragon knew his manners and knew to announce himself to the most senior dragon, who was Nona. She acknowledged him by saying his name back to him.

Both dragons were using a normal voice. Because no other dragon was talking, Tempura felt the vibration of their voices echo in the cavern.

She glanced back at the man but saw no response. She knew the man couldn’t hear his dragon, but she should have guessed this by how he thought he could control his dragon by holding onto a rope.

Ferrari bowed his head toward Nona, then continued on.

“Ferrari,” Tempura said in response to Nona’s rumble.

“Yes, his name is Ferrari,” the man said.

Tempura felt annoyed. The man wasn’t going to the great room like he should but instead was following her.

“How did you know?” he said.

She spun around, stopping to face him.

“He announced himself to Nona. All dragons are required to announce themselves to the matriarch.”

Tempura knew he wouldn’t believe her. That was the biggest problem with most people. They couldn’t hear the dragons.

The man finally removed his face covering. He was a massive man with a thick black beard.

While he shoved his face covering into his coat pocket, another dragon rumbled to Nona.

Tempura smirked to herself, expecting a reaction from the man, and she got it. He did exactly what she thought he would do.

“But…hey, that dragon’s loose.”

He stepped back with his arms raised as if he was under attack when a striking black and gold feathered dragon stepped over his pen wall. The man looked frantically around, as if searching for a place to hide.

The dragon passed him with hardly a glance.

Tempura almost laughed.

“He’s going to the bathroom. Their pens are for resting. They go out there to poop. They eat over there. I don’t need poop-scoopers like you do,” she said, waving her hands toward the appropriate areas.

“H-how do you know he’s going to the bathroom?” he said, eyeing her like she was some crazy person telling him that fairies haunted the place.

“He asked Nona for permission,” Tempura said with a roll of her eyes.

“Where’s my dragon?” the man said, looking around in a startled manner.

Tempura could tell he was getting too worked up, especially now that his dragon was no longer in sight.

“He went to the bath. This way, if you need to see,” Tempura said with a sigh.

Showing him was the only way she knew to get him to settle down. She hated ignorant dragon riders who treated their dragons as if they weren’t alive or needed care.

This man wasn’t concerned about the care of his dragon, only concerned that she contained him. Why couldn’t the man just go to the great room and let her tend to his dragon? As if the dragon needed help, anyway.

Tempura entered the bath area, which contained a huge pool. “Hey, Jak,” she said.

Geothermal springs fed the pool, which kept it at a warm one hundred and one degrees. It was deep enough for two dragons to submerge and even swim.

Tempura enjoyed swimming laps for exercise.

Jak, as average-looking as she was, was unhooking Ferrari’s harness. Ferrari stood absolutely still until he was free of his harness, then he slipped into the water with a huge, rumbling sigh of pleasure.

All the snow and frost were now melted off his feathers.

Tempura thought Ferrari looked larger than the typical adult male dragon, and he was showing signs of maturity with his mannerisms. For never having been here before, he was being very observant and a quick learner about what he needed to do.

She liked him. Too bad his rider was an idiot.

“Clean?” Jak said, holding up the harness and watching only her.

He could not focus on more than one person at a time and ignored the man as if he didn’t exist. More often than not, he ignored everyone except Tempura and the dragons.

“Yes, and put Ferrari in the pen beside Nona so no one picks on him,” she said. “Don’t you want him fed? Frozen, thawed, or live?”