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“I’m not leaving the mountain for good… I just wanna go to the city for a bit…. Will she understand that…”

Lucella drew several pictures on the rain-soaked ground.

A human going down the mountain.
A human entering the city.
A human coming back to the mountain.

Lucella wanted to go to the human habitat. He wanted to patch his fragmented memories together and find out who he was. He wanted to clear away the feeling that he had something left undone.

The reason he also drew the part where he would come back was that Kafal seemed to fear that Lucella would leave for good. Whenever he separated from the nest for good, she would fly to him right away and try to bring him back.

The dangers that lurked away from the nest were part of the reason, but he thought that there might be more to it.

Kafal stared at the pictures he drew. Eventually, she added a drawing, even more realistic than Lucella’s, to the ground with a surprisingly skillful use of her sharp claw.

It was a figure of a small person… Lucella, being attacked by a bear-like monster.

It’s still impossible, she seemed to say.

“Ugh, I see…”

He had fought with the teaching materials that Kafal brought many times now. He felt that he had at least become pretty good at fleeing from them. However, Kafal had judged that it wasn’t enough to descend the mountain.

“T-Then, how about this?”

Lucella stamped out the drawings of him going down and back, and instead drew a flying dragon with a small person on its back. It should’ve been easy if he borrowed Kafal’s strength to make the trip.

Or so he thought.

However, Kafal quickly erased the second half of the drawing with her finger. And then, she replaced it with a dragon surrounded by humans in armor and helmets.

“…I see.”

Dragons were powerful. Kafal was naturally no exception. However, they were neither immortal nor invincible. In fact, there were heroic tales of human heroes slaying evil dragons.

Someone defeating a dragon was a rare event, but not enough that it would shake the world to the core.

Thinking about it, Kafal was a dragon not belonging to a group. It was said that there were dragon strongholds where dozens of them lived together, but most likely no hero could ever set foot in there.

But what about Kafal who lived alone?

If, for example, she was judged to be a dangerous dragon for descending near the human settlement, it was possible that skilled dragonslayers would be called from all over the world which would lead to the start of dragon subjugation.

“Okay, I understand…”
“…Groowl…”

She responded with a sad cry. Then she drew her nose close and attentively rubbed it on Lucella. She seemed to be apologizing for the hopeless situation.

“I got it! Then this should do, right?”

Lucella drew a new picture. It was a picture of him having beaten a magic beast.

“Gruuuh…”
“Agh!”

Kafal gave a happy cry and started licking Lucella all over. She must have been happy that Lucella acted in consideration of her feelings.

“Ahaha… But well, I’m a human so I don’t know how far I can go. But I’ll try my best.”

The training that Kafal imposed was generally dangerous, but it, fortunately, was effective too. Lucella decided that it wouldn’t hurt to try harder if it was necessary for going to the human habitat.

Until then, it should be fine to just savor this stagnant happiness.

“Ruh.”
“Huh?”

With a short cry, Kafal suddenly flew up.

Just as she did one revolution around the mountain, she suddenly swooped down and landed with a force that shook the mountain. And then, she flew up again after grabbing something from the trees.

“Hissssss!” “Shhhhhhh” “Meeeeeeeh”

Seeing a sheep with four snakes on its head and poison drooping from its mouth, Lucella turned on his heel and ran.