Seeing Over the Mountains: Chapter One

Dragons are such fickle creatures: never quite sure what it is that they want, but certain nonetheless that they don't have it.
     'It's too hot outside now.' I could feel her thoughts, languid and stubborn and tugging on mine. 'I won't go.'
     "Syraine. Be reasonable. This morning was too cold, now it's too hot. We need to get back sometime, you realize."
     'You do, Princess. I do not. I may stay here as long as I like.'
     I looked at her for a moment, locked in an invisible contest of wills with a creature larger than a drafthorse. She met my eyes, examining the stout, dark-haired person unwavering before her, hand on sword, sword on hip.
     Yet in all this time, I had moved her no father than the ledge in front of the cave where we'd spent the night. Her spindly tail, with its gold-tipped frill, flicked. I flexed my fingers into shed-dragonscale riding gloves. "Let's go."
     The violet bulk before me, though still rather small for a dragon, contained more willpower than its mass should have permitted. The same could have been said of me - it was something one learned as the Empress' daughter.
       Which had its perks. The subsequent ceremonies to my bonding to Syr were unforgettable. We'd taken to the air together, that first time, with the ritual velvet streamers unfurling behind us. At the end of our sunset lap, the two of us returned to the palace as a pair, sun-draped and wind-scoured. Fireworks and bonfires had leeched the night's color and its chill until dawn swept the last vestiges of both away.
     Ever since,  I had noticed my dragon growing up in the same way I did myself: very little, and then in great leaps. I had noticed when her horns started growing in, but never the start of this obstinance. That had been there all along.  
     "Syraine."
     'Kiara.'
     I sighed and ran my thumb over the ridges of a glove. How can someone be both so capricious and so stubborn? "We need to go back home to report to Mother."
     'Reporting back can wait,' she decided, curling up tighter and tucking her tail tip beneath her. But not, I noticed, receding any further into the cave.
     This little mountain cave was the place we'd been sent to scout after hearing reports of newcomers in the area. They were just traveling nomads - nothing to concern the Empress of Aether overmuch. She was busy enough as it was. Our job here was done, and the subsequent one of reporting to the palace awaited. Along with my personal job, of course, of reasoning with the unreasonable.
    Coyly turning away from the dragon, I began to trek the rocky path down the mountainside with the surefootedness of practice. I felt Syraine's surprise in her eyes on my back. 'Where are you going?'
     Stifling the smile on my face and in my voice, I replied nonchalantly, "Home, like I said."
     Then followed silence, broken only by the pebbles my boots scattered on the trail. After a minute or two and an audible shifting of mass, I heard another set of steps thumping over the rocks behind me. "Glad you could deign to accompany me," I called back, smile cracking through.
     'As long as we must be out in this suffocating heat, we may as well be flying. Up in the sky, the breezes will cool us both.'
     Behind me was my purple dragon, legs bowed and wings stretched wide to help me mount.
     I couldn't fight the smile any longer. Didn't I say they were fickle?