A Shard of Sun by Jess E. Owen

from the dazzling sun, banking in a long turn until Shard felt sun at their backs, and soared nightward, leaving the erupting mountain and the raging wyrms behind. Shard waited to hear roars again, but they remained in the distance. He kept their flight nightward. Windward, he knew, lay the Dawn Spire and more problems than he had answers for. They wouldn’t go there. Not yet. Shard had no plan beyond fleeing the mountain and getting Hikaru to safety.
    After another moment, the blaze beyond his eyelids darkened as clouds passed over the sun. Shard risked peeking, found his eyes beginning to adjust, and studied the land below them.
    Out in front of them and as far as he could see nightward, the land slowly crawled away from the desert of the Winderost and rolled back into grassy foothills lined with juniper and pine forest. Shard squinted, scanning the far horizon. When he’d first flown there he’d been lost, Nameless and bent only on survival and following a small inner tug toward Amaratsu. He hadn’t paid attention to the land. He did now.
    Far starward, beyond the Horn, rose another low mountain range, white with snow, and a cold wind buffeted them from that quarter. Nightward, far in the distance, it looked as through the land grew more lush, wooded and hilly. Windward, and dawnward, lay the Winderost, plains of grass and red rock, canyons and the ruined Outlands where the wyrms usually dwelled. Shuddering, he turned his gaze away. They would fly nightward.
    The sun still stood within first-quarter mark. The wyrms would be distracted by the volcano and the sunlight, and would have no time to pursue until night, if at all. Shard thought of the she-wyrm, wondered if she’d escaped—if he would have a chance to avenge his uncle or if the mountain had claimed her.
    Wind buffeted them from all sides. Wind, sunlight, and a view of endless land.
    After a moment, when the fresh wind hit his face again, Shard laughed in hysterical relief, brushing other worries aside. He looked over to Hikaru, feeling triumphant.
    “So, now we…” He closed his beak slowly, watching the young dragon’s face.
    He stared at everything, everything, eyes huge and glowing in the light. With every breath the black dragon took in the bright sky, the roll of sweet scented trees and the brown, waving grass, the ring of white mountains on the starward horizon. He looked hungrily in every direction, gasping, ears perking, his talons stretching now and then as if to point out a new wonder. Shard looked again, and through the dragon’s awe, saw everything for the first time.
    “It’s even better than I thought it would be,” Hikaru whispered.
    “The land?”
    “The world .” Hikaru swiveled to look again at the sky, the spires of trees, the pale light slanting on the sides of the mountains. “Everything you said is true.”
    A warm tightness closed Shard’s throat, the same as the day Hikaru had first broken out of his eggshell. “Yes. And welcome to it, Amaratsu’s son.”
    On impulse, they glanced back at the Horn of Midragur.
    They saw that it wasn’t clouds that had covered the sun, but smoke and ash. Shard stared at the column of heavy, white and black clouds that crowded into the sky. Now and then red fountains leaped and fell from new cracks in the slopes, earthfire splashing out of the depths. He couldn’t see any of the Winderost wyrms, and a strange part of him hoped they’d all escaped. Bleakly he thought of the Dawn Spire, but was sure in his heart that their sky would only be dimmed, that they were nearly four days’ flight from the mountain and would see no poison or fire.
    Ash and smoke closed over the sun. “We have to keep going,” Shard said, drawing Hikaru’s attention. “We have to fly as far as we possibly can before you tire.”
    “I could fly forever!” Hikaru beat his wings, soaring around Shard in a loop, then settling alongside him again. He seemed to have grown even since leaving the cavern, as if his