“You didn’t tell them,” he said.
I arched an eyebrow at him. “Tell them what?”
“What the star dragon told you.”
This made me pause. “You heard?”
“Bits and pieces. It was… blurred. Like a dream.”
“You can dream?” I asked, unsure why this surprised me.
Zero sounded amused. “I am alive.”
“What do you dream about?”
“Trees. Fire. Flowers. Stars.”
“Why do you dream of fire?” I asked.
He snorted, and a little curl of smoke shot from his nose. “I’m a dragon. I was born in fire,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell them?”
I watched him for a moment, trying to decide what to say. It felt important, like he was testing me. And I wanted to get this right. Finally I said, “Do you believe the gods are absolute? That they control everything?”
“If you’re asking me about free will, I’ll remind you that I’m fourteen and really only care about myself.”
I couldn’t help it: I laughed. “Dude. You’re an ass.”
He smiled, looking rather pleased with himself. “I like making you laugh. It’s a nice sound. Can I tell you something?”
I nodded.
“When I was five, humans came for me. I don’t know if they were terrible people. I don’t know if they were villains, or if they were just scared of something they didn’t understand, but they wanted my blood spilled upon the earth.”
My hands twitched to reach out and touch him, but I kept them at my side.
“I escaped, but not before they’d cut me. Broke through some of my scales. I thought about hurting them, about putting my teeth into their flesh, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I didn’t understand them, and they didn’t understand me, even when I cried at them to stop, that I would leave if they just let me. They didn’t let me. I got away, but only after I knocked them down. I didn’t mean to, but I hurt one of them. A woman. She hit her head on something. A rock, I think. It was scary, because she was bleeding and crying, and I just wanted to go. I tried to tell her that I was sorry, but she thought I was coming to eat her, because she screamed and ran away. So I left.”
“It doesn’t matter if they were villains or not,” I said. “No one should hurt another just for the sake of doing it. Or because they’re scared.”
“But aren’t you scared?” he asked me. “You’re scared, and you’re going to have to hurt someone. To stop this. Because when a life ends, it hurts.”
“My hand is being forced.”
“Maybe those people who came for me thought the same thing. That they were being forced.”
“Did you hurt anyone?” I asked him. “Did you give them any reason to see you as a threat?”
“No.”
“Then what they did was wrong.”
“Is that absolute?”
I balked at that, wondering how he’d been able to complete that circle.
“They chose to come for me,” Zero said. “They made their decision out of fear. Am I supposed to believe that was the path the gods set them on? That if they’d succeeded, that my life didn’t matter as much as theirs did?”
“Dude,” I breathed. “So heavy.”