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Caelan lifted his head as he walked, the marten’s ears remaining perked to the ongoing noise of the swamps around him. He blinked, looked one way, looked the other, slowed in his pace, then continued on a second later, all of the old stories passed down through his family stirring in the back of his mind. Rumors of monsters and spirits, of great ancient beasts lurking within the muck or shifting between the tightly knit trees… though the day was nearly halfway done, only a few wisps of its light made its way through the canopy to illuminate the way, and at the edges of his vision he could occasionally see the little glimmers, the twinkles, the flashes and swirls and wisps that he figured had given rise to some of those rumors. A constant, pervasive stench simmered within the back of his nostrils as well, the familiar aroma of stagnant mud, airless muck, and rich verdancy all around, halfway between the stink of rot and the swelling breath of life.

And he loved it. He gave the rope wrapped around his paw another gentle tug, feeling the work beast at the other end pull away in brief distraction, and whistled over his shoulder just the same. This path he walked cut its way for some miles between his home village and then the pits where mud of just the right consistency and composition would be sourced, dug, and then barreled, in preparation for the task which generally occupied most of his day: transporting the barrels from the pits to the village, and then the empty pallets back from the village to the pits, and again and again.

From behind him he heard a low, rumbling chuff, like the sound of two great slabs of stone grinding across one another. One of the marten’s ears flicked; he scoffed softly and looked over his shoulder towards the work beast, laden with three of the reed and treated wood pallets, each of these stacked with mud barrels tied fast.

“Almost there, Ajax,” Caelan called, and then chuckled again at another following chuff. “I know. This will be our last load for the day.”

Another little tug to the lead coaxed Ajax back onto the path behind him, the sound of the heavy pallets scraping across the treated earth a familiar, comfortable sound to Caelan’s ears. Long years had packed this route into firm solidity, though still he had to feel forward with each footpaw before taking the next step in case a hidden sinkhole lurked beneath the surface: often the nearly constant rainfall and stirring sludge would work its way within the ground, leaving the thick mats of intertwined grass and moss and vine stable while eating away at the earth underneath. Before too long, he knew, this earth woven with gravel and reed would give way first to fragments of wood, and then smooth chunks, and then full planks, which would finally mark the boundaries of the village…

...and a sigh of relief as another pair of villagers emerged from the shadowy haze of the swamp to take Ajax’s reins from him. Bare skin brushed together as one paw slid into the other; village tradition, as well as simple practicality, demanded that each worker keep their arms shaved up to the elbows, as digging the mud and working them into the bricks would often result in much of it sticking and drying, and in a village of brickmakers, everyone had to put in their own work. Caelan wiped his paws together, calloused pads brushing, bare skin sticking; he reached up and picked at an itchy spot between an ear, then flicked a little bug away.

“Could you make sure he gets fed afterwards?” he asked the worker now by his side, a stout otter named Bracken. “He was a little… ornery on the way back.”

“Of course. Wet out there, it looks like?”

“It’s always wet. But, yes: Gorse says the recent rains have saturated the mud too much, so this’ll be it for the day.”

Already working with Ajax’s burden, the other villager, a ferret named Perrin, perked his ears. “This is it?”

Caelan shrugged. He stepped over and rested a bare paw along Ajax’s head, the stout, muscular reptile lifting up into his touch: halfway between an alligator, a monitor, and some kind of dog or perhaps bear, the beast – dragons, the village called them, after the old mythology – sported a rugged, streamlined physique perfectly suited to traversing the swamps, marshes, bogs, sumps, and otherwise. They ate bugs – Caelan smacked another one from his other arm, then offered the pulpy mass for Ajax to slurp off – and could be venomous when stress demanded it. None lived wild in the surrounding area, and by the limited amount of trading that Caelan had seen with the other few villages sparsely planted throughout these southern swamps, theirs was the only to utilize the creatures in such a capacity, with their stables built into the marshy fringe of the village where the reptiles could freely swim out and back as they pleased.

“This is it,” he repeated and stepped away from the dragon, velvety scales and leathery skin slipping easily beneath his fingerpads. “We have plenty in the stocks in the cellars, don’t we?”

“Well, yes, but…” Perrin looked over to him as he made his way down the line barrel by barrel, tapping each one along its top, its side, and then its bottom to check for stability and leaks. “That means we’ll have to go back and actually shape the bricks.”

Again Caelan shrugged. “Yes? That’s what Gorse told me to do.”

“Shame. I’d much rather – oh, my mistake, Ajax – I’d much rather stand around here waiting for you to get back.”

At the dragon’s other side Bracken barked out a short laugh. “Speak for yourself. I can’t stand standing around doing nothing. I wish I had a dragon of my own…”

“He’s not mine, he’s the village’s.”

“Sure. But that doesn’t change that I want one of my own. I could go so far. I could see so much.” The otter wrapped Ajax’s lead around his paw in the same way that Caelan had had it. “Hey, have you ever gone with the caravans?”

A laborious, time-consuming process: digging the mud, packing it, transporting it, unloading it, then packing it again into the brick molds, only to then load those once more onto pallets to then carry them along the weeks-long journey east, until the low, sticky earth of the swamps rose into shallow, open grasslands, where the surrounding humidity dropped enough for the bricks to actually cure and set. From there the bricks would then be broken from the molds, unloaded, and then reloaded once again, ready for trade, and – “I haven’t yet,” the marten answered over his shoulder, trudging towards the village. “But I hope to. Gods know I’m gonna keep on asking Old Fogbank at each meeting; I’ve been tending Ajax this long, and I spend most of every day with him. I should be able to handle him for that long of a journey.”

“Well-” Bracken lifted his head again. Perrin nudged at him. “Put in a good word for me, will you?”

“Of course. Good luck.”

“And to you.”

The village itself had been built and expanded over the decades, from the tight-knit core of reed, thatch, and wattle huts braced and reinforced with the same mud used to cast the bricks, interspersed with more wooden planks marking paths in between. Still Caelan could smell the lingering stench of the swamp as he made his way through, sensitive nose tuned to the various moods of nature: soon someone would have to go out to ignite the stray pockets of swamp gas, if Fogbank had not already assigned that duty today. A vast yet sparse ruin of the village’s original incarnation slept silently to the west, charred structures jutting out of the marshy earth like so many black bones; this had happened before Caelan’s birth, but still he knew the dangers of letting the pressure build too high.

By the time he reached his hut his footpaws had started to sting, pricked and poked by gravel, roots, sticks, and whatever else may have lodged itself in the mud between here and the pits. The marten pushed through the hanging door of woven vines and sighed with relief, the shaded interior and thick, treated walls beating back the majority of the marsh’s heat and stench; it smelled as though his mother had been out gathering herbs again, and sure enough when he stepped around the central support column his ears brushed against the hanging bundles, shaking loose a few leaves and bits of pollen from the blooms.

“You’re back early.”

Again his ears perked, flicking back towards the opposite end of the hut. Bright eyes regarded him from within the dimness, the silhouette around them soon materializing into his mother’s familiar form, fur dark like the mud used to pack the walls and floor, shaved arms bearing scars from old wounds and work. On one side of her muzzle her whiskers had been singed off, and though they regrew regularly, they never did so properly.

“Yes,” he answered, and told her the same that he had said to Bracken and Perrin. The older marten nodded slowly.

“I thought so,” she rumbled, and slid her paw across her son’s as she passed by. Just as always, the touch sent a sweet, sharp jolt up through his arm, as though she spent her days cultivating an energy deep within her to then pass on to him. “Rain, rain. It’s always rain here, one way or another.”

“And if it’s not rain, then it’s flooding,” Caelan continued for her. He dunked a ceramic mug into the small well by the wall: dug to a particular depth and fortified with a mixture of gravel and charcoal, the structure would slowly fill with cool, relatively clean water over the course of the day. “I’m to pack bricks for the rest of the day.”

“I thought so,” she repeated. “I’ll come with you. I can’t stand sitting around doing nothing.”

“You know, that’s exactly what Bracken said when I came back, just earlier.”

“Of course he did. That otter reminds me of…” She trailed off. “Never mind. What did you feel today?”

Caelan pursed his lips. This was a question his mother often asked of him, and each time he inquired what she meant, it seemed as though her answer changed just a little bit. Where he had first told her of the temperature, the humidity, the particular feeling of the mud beneath his paws, he would eventually give way to describing the presence of the trees around him, Ajax’s breath and strength, the smell in the air; and then from there, in more recent years, to the thickness of the air itself, the way the little coating of fuzz along his shaved arms tingled as it grew back in, the way the sunlight cut through the trees and split into hazy, dimmed shafts.

And no matter what he told her, she always seemed satisfied with the answer.

“Ajax wanted to come home early,” he said, handing her the mug. She sipped from it while watching him, uncannily bright eyes sparkling. “He could feel something stirring out there.”

“You’re sure of it?”

“No.” Caelan dropped the mug back into the well. It bobbed down, then floated to the surface and hung there sideways. “I’m not sure what I want half the time. But that’s what I felt from him, just the same as I felt that you had gathered some herbs today-” he nodded at the bundles again, “-and that the swamp gas is building up again.”

His mother grimaced. “I’ll take care of it myself. Damned elder doesn’t get out of his hut anymore; he’s losing touch with nature. Good thing Gorse took over the digging operations, or we’d still have bricks crumbling to dust halfway into their curing…”

“Are you sure? It’s-”

“Caelan. I’m not that old.” She brushed the vines aside and stepped out into the swelling daylight, lifting one paw up to shield her eyes. “Aah. I thought I could smell that when I was out earlier. You’ve got a good nose.”

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t, with taking care of Ajax…”

The two martens stepped out onto the boardwalk, then started their way over towards the workshops. “He appreciates it. And that I do know. That beast loves you like he loved your father.”

“I just wish Old Fogbank would-”

Even though he had turned away to watch a few of the other villagers between the huts, Caelan could still feel his mother’s sharp gaze piercing through him. He winced.

“Sorry. I just wish Elder Fog could see that, too.”

“You know what he’s afraid of.”

“I do. I just don’t think fear is a good reason to hold me back.” He stepped over a gap in the boards. “You came from out there. Do you think it’d be good for me?”

“I think…” The older marten rubbed at her bare arms for a moment. “I think while his fear is misplaced, his caution is not.” Then, a moment later: “We need you here, Caelan. I need you here.”

And that was that. He took in another breath of the foul swamp air, held it, and sighed back out.

The process of packing the bricks themselves was tedious, yet oddly fulfilling: the molds had to be cut from a specific type of wood sourced from out in the swamp, but the very nature of the work meant that these molds would have to constantly be replaced, which in turn led to another branch of work within the village. Everybody always had something to do, no matter what; Caelan carried the buckets of mud over his shoulders and angled them down towards the molds, and he walked back and forth with the empty molds and prepared bricks, and before long forgot about his conversation with his mother while she worked alongside him.

Mostly. Near the end of the day, when he lifted his head and saw the distant glimmer of the sun retreating somewhere within the densely forested horizon, a shimmer of heat haze glittered over the surface of the swamp like a restless ghost watching from between the trees. Overhead the twin moons had risen and hung in the star-studded sky, bleached white bones jutting out from blackened marsh mud; the marten wandered through the thinning crowd, found his mother, and walked her home, then continued on his way over towards the dragon stables.

The familiar scent of the giant lizards overpowered the swamp’s stench the closer he came. The village housed only a relative handful of the beasts, with Ajax being the largest and oldest of the group; Bracken was just finishing up with righting all of the tack and gear as Caelan approached, small teacup ears flicking back towards him.

“Hey there.” The otter turned back to the side of the stables. “Just wrapping up here. Your day go alright?”

Caelan leaned in against the door, paw resting along the reed fastenings. “Well enough. Cellar mud is fermenting nicely. Mother was saying we’ll probably be able to trade those bricks for a little bit extra.”

“Wonderful. Gods know we need as much ‘extra’ as we can get.” He looped one of the rope reins over a wooden hook jutting out of the wall. “Did you get a chance to see Fogbank today?”

The marten shook his head. “Didn’t see him at all.”

“I hear rumors he’s really starting to consider naming his successor.”

“I would hope so. It’s been great living under him, but you don’t need me to tell you that most of us think it’s about time.” Caelan undid the latch and stepped in, the warm, humid air within the stables wrapping around him like a wall of cloth.

Bracken poked his head around the corner. “You know who’s currently in highest consideration, right?”

Caelan looked around the dimness of the stables, glancing across the shapes of the resting dragons. There was Voja, Szara, Mux snoozing together in a lumpy pile, sharing as much warmth as their cold-blooded bodies could find… Salo seemed like he was out hunting in the marsh, and then right up by the boundary with the open swamp, he caught sight of Ajax’s familiar form and coloration. He drummed his fingers along the soggy wood. “...Gorse, probably? He knows the routines better than anyone else.”

Bracken chuckled. “My thought, too. But I hear it’s Sariya.”

Caelan stopped in his tracks. Across the stables Ajax lifted his head, sharp predator’s eyes glittering in the dimness; his posture shifted slightly upon seeing his caretaker. The marten turned to look back at Bracken.

“My mother?”

He nodded and shrugged. “Just what I’ve heard. Elder Fog himself says he’s still got a good two decades in him, but… at least when he does pass the reins, I imagine I’ll have an easier time changing work around here under your mother.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it.” Caelan scoffed. “She turned me down for going along with the caravans today. Says I’m needed here instead.”

“Damn. Oh well. Worth a try, right? Anyway – have a good night, Caelan.”

“You too.” He waited until the sound of the otter’s footsteps disappeared into the blanket of swamp noise, creaking trees and whispering wind and the constant, lilting buzz of so many different insects, and then continued further in. Soft mud squelched beneath his footpaws and across his toes; an excited shiver shook down across Ajax’s body, sleek streamlined muscles pulling, leathery skin tightening and settling out.

The beast rolled halfway over onto his side as Caelan approached, showing the boundary where the stiff, somewhat more rigid scaling of his back gave way to the softer, smoother, more velvety skin of his underbelly. Caelan grinned, reached in, and ran his paws along that bared skin, pushing up underneath the dragon’s forelegs and then back down again, digging his claws in to scratch and rub and tease.

“Good work today,” he cooed, then continued in to bump his muzzle alongside Ajax’s. The dragon rumbled in satisfaction, a deep, stony sound reverberating from deep within his chest; those grand jaws smacked wetly open, sharp fangs clacking, and he nudged his head back against the marten’s again. His long, thick tongue briefly flicked out and tickled across the back of Caelan’s neck, the ridged fork at the end splitting among his thick fur. “Tomorrow should be about the same, I think. No rain but – you heard Perrin – it’s always this wet.”

He turned, lowered himself down to the mud, and then sprawled out across the large reptile, draping his arms back over Ajax’s revealed side. Caelan spread his fingers, brushed them across smooth yet stiff scales and skin, felt the shape of his ridges and spines, closed his eyes… breathed in the scent of the stables, the rich, almost metallic tang of the lizards’ body oils and effusions spreading over the marsh. They did not sweat, exactly, and often Caelan found his fingerpads smeared with the thin, greasy substance after spending enough time with Ajax; he slid his arm down along the beast’s shoulder and brought it up underneath the wattle of his neck, tilting him in towards himself. When the marten nuzzled up into the space behind where he thought Ajax’s ear was, he felt the dragon’s rumble lift out in volume again.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” he admitted, voice low. “There’s been this… feeling in the air, out on the marsh. I know you picked up on it, too, when we were on the way back today. Mother knows it’s there, too, but she hasn’t been saying anything about it. That’s what bothers me the most. I was hoping I could see Elder Fog today, since I know he’s… also…” The marten trailed off, took in another lungful of Ajax’s coppery scent, and sighed again. “And then with what Bracken mentioned just now, about her… being…”

Words drizzled away into musings, musings into low, pulsing thoughts. Caelan shifted to cross his arms over his chest, rolled his head back across Ajax’s shoulder plate, sighed again; the beast churred and wrapped partially in around him, nestling the smaller marten within his bulky frame. The long, ridged tail flipped up and rested over Caelan’s lap.

“Maybe… tomorrow…”

~ ~ ~

A thick haze squeezed in at his eyes, his nostrils, his ears, pressing from all around, drowning him within its presence. Caelan’s body jerked, it thrashed, it flailed; the marsh reached its damp, sticky grasp up to pull him down, forcing him to sink deeper, deeper, deeper, until the breath sizzled out from between his teeth and his heartbeat rushed in his ears…

...and that luminous fog made his eyes water and scratched at his throat until he coughed, sitting bolt upright with deep, retching hacks racking his body. Bleary dizziness swam through him; he was stuck to the ceiling, he was tossed sideways again the wall, he was held stock still while the entirety of the world swished and danced around him, an eddy caught cycling within a marshy delta – and then that scent, that stink, punched through and yanked him back towards the fringes of lucidity.

Fire. He blinked, felt his eyes stick together, groaned and shouted out as he tried to rub the sizzling tears from them. Peat fire. That’s… I’m…

Loose mud sucked at his footpaws. He hoisted himself upright, wobbled, fell; bits of dried mud cracked from the bare skin of his arms and paws; he was leaning against the wall of the barn; he was struggling with the reed fastening of the door; he was right back where he started, sprawled sideways across the ground, steaming muck creeping up his legs like a living thing. Again he coughed, spluttered, choked; then he was out of the stables, head swinging this way and that, vision following a few seconds later.

Where thick trees and mangroves stood the previous day, now blossoms of glowing, billowing flame poured upwards into the sky. The twin moons blazed ichorous yellow across a crimson field, all shadows banished from the earth below; Caelan’s ears burned with the heat from the fire as well as the sound, the noise, the din shrieking out from all around, wood splintering, muck boiling, steam hissing and screeching, and the other villagers…

Where-?

Again and again he took a misstep and slipped from the boardwalk underfoot, some of the planks beginning to curl beneath the intense heat. Vaguely he thought he could feel the skin of his bare arms tightening, cracking, peeling back; his fur prickled and singed as though it were melting in places, his muscles shrieked like the crumbling structures as he blindly stumbled his way through the smoke; his whiskers twitched and seemed to curl, just like his mother’s-

Where is…

A terrible pounding thumped in the back corner of his head, dimming his vision every time it pulsed. Caelan gritted his teeth so tightly that he could feel his jaw pop; when he inhaled it felt like he had just breathed a lungful of sunbaked sand, sizzling and tearing the inside of his throat, pulling at the back of his tongue. Again and again he coughed, the force of the hacking sending him stumbling off the boardwalk yet again.

I should… I need to find…

He found himself leaning against the baked wall of Elder Fog’s hut, right in the center of what was once the village. Still the flames seethed around him; Caelan closed his eyes, felt the tears continue to pour down and then evaporate off his face before they could soak into his fur, and opened them again, yet could still see as little as before. Twisted, lumpy shapes rested inside, stark shadows thrown across their contours by the illumination from outside, and still the stink of char and burning peat and foul, acrid flame penetrated everything else. Then in a space beneath the dancing blaze, in a breath of clarity woven between puffs of stinking smoke:

Where is it? Where did we put it?

Forgetting the shapes in the gloom, Caelan yanked himself upright and swung his head around, trying to pierce through the billows of smoke. He licked his lips, felt that wetness sear off just as quickly, and then started back towards the stables, this time foregoing the boardwalks completely. The mud sucked and grasped at his footpaws, trying to pull him further down, and yet he persisted regardless.

Over here the smoke presented a stronger barrier than the fire itself. Caelan waded out into the marsh, the unsettling heat of the thick water simmering through his pelt, and cast his gaze this way and that. The building itself had been empty save for twisting shadows and dancing scent: the dragons were each and every one of them likely more intelligent than some of the villagers themselves, and as such would have – should have – been able to escape. Further the marten went, sinking into the bog until it crept up his thighs, his waist, his belly, his chest, and began to squeeze in at his throat, restricting his breathing, pushing the life out of him-

-And at some point he found Ajax. He must have. The rhythmic, lilting gait of the dragon pounded underneath him, the swirling flames continuing to dance behind the pair as Caelan rolled back to something resembling consciousness; he clutched the reins in his paws, felt the cured leather of the beast’s riding saddle lifting up underneath him, the shockwaves of each step reverberating through his back.

Blearily he looked out across the remains of the swamp around him, the trees blackened, patches of mud baked to crags, most of the ruins still smoking. It must have started out here, he thought, and then once again: I must find it. It’s out here. It’s… over there…

He was riding Ajax; he was yanking the dragon around to dodge a crumbling mass that had once been a mangrove; he was slogging through half-liquid muck with the dragon swimming behind him; he was on his knees in a clearing, strangely solid earth beneath him, untouched grass stretching out in a radius and then suddenly giving way to crisp, charred black.

Caelan swallowed, throat dry and stinging. He licked his lips again, felt the moisture remain… took in a breath of air tainted by smoke, but still yielding the taste of the swamp. And he pressed his fingers together and jammed his claws down into the grass, twisting, squirming, digging; tearing the earth out in chunks, finding handholds within damp soil, pushing down deeper.

It’s here. It’s here. We put it… We hid it. I remember. We…

Mud clung to the thin fuzz along his bare arms. The marten gritted his teeth again and wiggled his fingers around the buried boundary of the object in the ground, finding purchase, gripping, tugging… yanking… pulling it free, until the rest of the earth chunked away from its surface and he fell back to his haunches. In his paws he clutched a box of glassy black stone, still reflecting the light of the now unseen flames,

A faint, distant recognition slid behind Caelan’s senses. He ran his fingers across the edges of the box, where twisting runes danced, then came down to the front where the lock waited. The precise mechanism of the system evaded him, but so much time spent buried seemed to have weakened its efficacy, as with only a small amount of rattling the marten managed to pop the thing open.

Black stone yawned open, completely bare on the inside, devoid of any further markings, save for the length of chain curled around itself. Again Caelan swallowed, one ear twitching with Ajax’s breath behind him; the marten slid his fingers beneath the chain, and for a moment nearly jerked away again for the way it, too, felt like a living creature. Silver metal one moment, shimmering liquid another, then back again – and that faint recognition pulsed like the memory of a dream.

The chain twisted and turned in his grasp, trying to bind itself around his fingers, his wrists, his arms – and then in the same moment remaining perfectly still, exactly as it had always been.

Head clear, mind empty, Caelan stood up, the stone box clattering shut when it hit the ground. Ajax lifted his head up to appraise him, the stout feral taking a half-step back; Caelan looked at him, smiled, and sighed with relief. He dropped to his knees before him and brought one paw up, gently caressing the side of the reptile’s head; Ajax’s forked tongue slithered out and then back in, and in another moment his eyes shuttered closed, under-lids fogging over from the sides, then eyelids sliding into place as well…

...and Caelan drew back, the chain resting around the beast’s neck. Ajax lifted his head, eyes folding open a second later, and the two watched each other; then Caelan leaned in again, briefly rested his arms around his mount in a soft embrace, and once more clambered up into his saddle.

Overhead the twin moons had just begun to set, glittering orange in a rusty red sky.