Lands of hope

      Rainbow always stands opposite to the sun. In the East the dawn shone above Blessed Hardol left behind by the refugees that escaped disgusting power and silly wisdom of the demiurge Radver. Rainbow arched West, up the rain-drenched forests of newly settling continent.       “What shall we meet there?” a young dragon with dark fur and four horns asked his father, Surt.       “Why do you ask me, Zorath?” old dragon Surt replied with a grin, “don’t you know what’s best to get and what’s wise to avoid? Think future yourself. Children are kinder than adults, so Universe is more pleasant to fulfill their wishes”.       “That will be our land,” Zorath said, turning away from Surt and once again contemplating the beauty of untamed nature. “And we’ll conquer it!”       Surt wasn’t happy with his son’s “decision”. “We don’t need a battle. You think that our leader, Amenemhat, wouldn’t dare to kill Radver to become a demiurge himself, so he can rule everyone on Hardol? No, Amenemhat wants freedom for everyone. When one kills other, freedom is halved”.       “But we still need to kill animals for food, or attakers for self-protection,” Zorat said, raising himself on his hind legs, balancing with his tail. “Death is permissible if it preserves life, isn’t it?”       “I don’t feel sorry for unintelligent creatures, but I do for dragons,” — sighed Surt, — “Besides, had Radver ever eat supporters of the old demiurge? There are such rumors, but no, it’s madness even for him, he just kills them. Though if he ate them, their bodies and souls wouldn’t be wasted completly. Even so, repentant rival better than dead.”       “What do you teach to your little highwaydragon?” Solkar, the black-and-gold-maned captain, came up and shook his head. “On the old coast we had prisoners, sinners, and aliens to snuff for their soul energy. Whose souls you’ll gather here? Our people’s? Better wish us plenty of natives who are uglier and weaker than us, so we can easily harvest them.”       “We have a small supply, enough for the first time,” Surt replied, “there’s no point in turning locals against us. Not until we know what they’re capable of, anyway”.       “Can these lands even be inhabited by intelligent beings?” Zorath was surprised. “I thought we’d be first.”       “Just because the scaly ones from the stars didn’t find anyone in the sands of the Ardean that you can see all clear up to the horison, doesn’t mean that there’s no one hiding in local jungles. Dark Ones, who we are, are always ready and fully armed,” — saying so, Solkar suddenly emerged a knife from his pocket dimension and threw it at Zorath. The boy catched it by handle, even being scared by surprise.       “Enough unnessesery knife-throwing,” grouled Surt, “Dark Ones are always ready, but they also allways have to think with their heads. We don’t have extra energy to heal wounds and revive our fellows, and we don’t know what dangers we’ll face on this splendid continent”.       Solkar grinned, turning and walking away, “Than think of it, not about dull teammates.” Zorath cast a wary glance at his father.       “Choose three dragons and send them out to explore the coast,” Surt said calmly to him, changing the subject. “But only those who have already left offspring.”       The boy touched his chest in surprise. “Me? But I’m none of leaders”.       “Learn talk to your mental age peers,” Surt snorted, moving away from the bulwark. “If you even don’t manage to control them, then you can forget how to understand them.” Needless to say, this instruction caught Zorath off guard. How can he cope with adult dragons, coaxing them to take off somewhere? Even with his peers, he never quarrelled, but they weren’t friendly. And now he was offered to command!       Grumbling something under his breath in confusion, Zorath flew to the poop. There few rebel Light Ones dragons song morning orahs, joined by some Dark Ones, who, despite their love of freedom and self-servise, were attracted by well-coordinated harmony of the choir, emotional power of music at dawn, and the meaning of words, appealing to the minds of immigrants.

Ga var

Da dey

Gavar

Seeyariy

Ga v ur

Da ver

Nor ne ra yariy!

Rise up

To do!

Rise up

To shadow!

Dark One

Is you,

Not the Light shining!

      The song ended, but everyone was still under its influence. Surt once had told his son that in the past, in temples, speeches were made immediately after the hymns — to directly access the heart, bypassing the accumulated reflex thoughts. It was time for speech, before someone else starts talking.       “I suggest you to be the first to fly ashore,” Zorath said, approaching the adult singers with wily innocence. “Your thoughts are pure and holy, so you’re the best candidats for a first step on the new land. That honor and your stories about your adventures will ensure you a place in the good memory of your contemporaries and descendants. You’d better fly now, before some thug gets the same idea. You are certainly better and more worthy! I believe in you.”       “Surt’s offspring gives us our first flight,” one of the males sneered. “Strange, but I thought Amenemhat was leading us to a future where noone hindered by stupid obligations and orders.       “Stay here then,” Zorath said, trying to suppress his resentment and shrugging his wings indifferently, “so the reward and first place will go to the others who don’t sit on their tail. Or, as my father used to say, “get your ass ready for the new demiurge”.”       “Really, what we’re waiting for?” said another dragon suddenly. “I’m tired of sailing, and there is a solid land! Let’s spread our wings a little”.       Zorath sighed softly as his gaze followed the dragons who set off to the great deed.       “They song beautifully, but such a scum they are, driven only by greed and rudeness.”       “Oh, who did say that, a Holy Hermit, one who don’t even masturbates on the pictures in the book,” the scaly head of a young dragoness poked out of the hold.       “Be quiet!” Zorath hissed at her as he flew up to the hatch. “Shouted it all over the ship!”       Scaly one stuck out her tongue at him, put her paws on the edge of the planks, and stood up.       Zorath knew that her name was Nammu, and that her parents had never be lucky to cheat or steal in either Ardean or Hardol, so the colonization of the third continent had been just right, but their daughter’s upbringing had been utterly ruined. Surt scolded his son, but teached him right things, and Nammu was praised by her parents even for being nasty and harmful.       “Don’t you want to see the view?” Zorath changed his tone, thinking that this would endear him to the young female. “Enough sitting in the hold!”       “I got out already, your advice is late”, Nammu sat on the cool planks of the deck. “Don’t you want to play spillikins? With your mind, it’s strange that you don’t beat everyone for souls and blowjobs, or even the gods has problems with erection?”       “I’m not sure about the gods, but I’m certainly not going to play with you,” and this time the boy restrained himself. “I’m clever, but smart ones often beat clever ones.”       “Strange that you had born into the world, you’ll never become either a demiurge or a demon, so what is the point of living for you?” Nammu continued to exaggerate and bully with this.       “From your point of view, I don’t live at all. I don’t cut ropes to make fun of the sailors who get more work to do. I don’t smear sleeping companions with honey to be licked by ship’s rodents. I don’t sex on the sly with a partner two years older than me just to be considered a macho dragon among those who two years younger than me. My life is empty, so there is enough space for me not to be stuffy.”       Nammu flared up, it was clear from the expression on her face. Then she moved closer to Zorat and spread her wings. “You’re fool”.       She flapped her wings and soared into the sky, setting off to catch up with the adults.

* * *

      “What did you say to them, dumbass?” Surt snarled at his son, grinning with displeasure at the dragons that fought over the shoreline, looking from a distance like grappling birds of prey.       “Don’t scold our son!” a horned female with a gray coat streaked with red was heading toward them with determination, even getting tangled in all four paws in her indignation. “They may respect you around here, but you’re acting like regular gutless moral freak! Zorath’s our child! If you raise him like that, what he’ll become?!”       “He will become, ether, and you won’t become anything”. Surt abruptly switched his attention to his female. “You allways were a hen, and you’ll stay like that”. Then just as abruptly switched back to his son, with much less irritation, because he already chilled out on Zaryana, who was silent from dissatisfaction and complexity of the idea. “So what did you tell them, Zorath? I’m starting to wonder.”       “I told them that whoever comes to new land first and tells others what he met there, will receive many rewards and dominate rest of the dragons,” Zorath replied, looking more at his mother than at his father. “They didn’t listen to any other reason.”       “A trick worthy of demirge Radver’s brain, but not of my son’s”, Surt fetched a sigh. “You not only told them to scout, but you ordered them to fight for the championship, so one male would get all the asses. How do we calm them down now —”       “Come on!” Zaryana shouted, spreading her wing in the direction of the fight. “Do it now, wise ass!”       “ENEMY!” Surt roared, not without magical amplification of his voice. The dragons immediately stopped fighting and rushed to the sides, intending to repel the attack.       “Where is the enemy? Who is it?” the returning scouts asked in alarm, looking around.       “You all the enemy, pests and fratricides,” Surt said in a contrastingly low voice. Silence seemed to muffle the sound of surf.       Zorath was the most ashamed among them all.