Dragon Thief by Marc Secchia

interrupted his reverie. “How does it feel to fly Dragonback?”
    “Stomach-wrenchingly wonderful.”
    “And the view?”
    “Spectacular.”
    Sulphurous smoke puffed into his face. “The insides of your eyelids must be marvellous indeed.”
    “Sherwibble,” said he, cracking open his left eye.
    A fiery orb greeted him, filling his field of vision with the knowledge of a Dragoness’ irritation. “Where’s the trust, Kal?”
    “If man were meant to fly, we’d have wings. Look, don’t fulminate your furnaces at me, lady. My head trusts you to keep us aloft. But I’m pretty sure we abandoned my stomach back there on the cliff.”
    A cliff which had receded with frightening speed into the distance, while the untameable reaches of the Cloudlands engulfed a Dragon and her Rider, an endless realm of death awaiting the slightest mistake. Yet her wings cut the winds with supple simplicity, and her long body undulated to the rhythm of her surprisingly slow wingbeats. Kal’s heart rode high in his throat. From afar, he had many times admired the serpentine grace of Dragons winging across the five moons. This was … he had no words. Well, true to character, perhaps a few words. Breathless. Humbled. He felt intoxicated, high on the fumes of life itself. Also, slightly aggrieved. Dragons could shoot the winds like this whenever they wished? Unfair!
    “You’d rather be aboard your Dragonship, right?”
    “Wrong.” Kal’s grin was only semi-functional, but the iron in his voice pleased him. “Flying with you is an unforgettable shade of miraculous.”
    She spoke no word in response, but the tenor of her long, ululating trill lifted every hair on his arms and prickled the back of his neck. Until this moment, Kal realised, he had considered her to be beastly, an animal. But he realised now that her soul was also attuned to wonder. It made her comprehensible. Sentient. Not so much the bright-eyed beast.
    For a time, it seemed her song became the wings that floated them above the Cloudlands.
    At length, Kal wriggled uncomfortably. “Tazithiel, I’ve a question about Shapeshifters.” For questions could supplant this treacherous feeling welling in his breast, an emotion he feared more than any other …
    “A question about kissing lizards?”
    Kal planted a loud smacker on the spine spike directly ahead of his saddle, which stood half a foot taller than his eye-level. “One kiss duly delivered. May I ask, Tazi, how do you do the changing thing?”
    “My transformation? I think, therefore I am.”
    He sniffed, “Ancient existential philosophy is a poor substitute for solid science. Tazi, where’s your Human right now? Because–”
    “Shapeshifter magic is inherently transformative.” Tazi swivelled her neck to scan the horizon. “My joke has substance, Kal. I am one soul which exists in two forms, or two manifestations, if you prefer the Dragonish technical term. We believe there’s another plane of existence, a spiritual plane, which houses our non-manifest being. For Shapeshifters, the draconic fire-soul and the Human soul are intertwined, two but one. We exist simultaneously, intermingled.”
    “So could I speak to Human-Tazithiel right now?”
    “I am here.”
    “And Dragoness-Tazi?”
    I also am here. Her Dragonish filled his mind with colours and nuances of dizzying complexity. Why are you frowning like that, Kal? Should the wind change …
    “Tazi, I sense both of you.”
    A glitch in the Dragoness’ wingbeat betrayed her surprise. Her muzzle tilted, bringing an interrogative arch of her brow-ridge to his notice.
    “When I wandered into your lair with all the gumption and flair of a flummoxed ralti sheep, I knew there was a Dragon present–aye, snort fire! I know I was confused, thinking you were some kind of magical likeness or enchantment, but when I kissed you–”
    “Which confused you even more.”
    “Thoroughly addled my wits,” he admitted, eliciting a rumbling laugh from his magical