To Shape a Dragon's Breath (Nampeshiweisit #1)

by Moniquill Blackgoose

The shapeless medicine of a dragon’s breath is change.

I had no doubt that she’d have gotten on fine without me—which made her choosing me mean that much more. She didn’t need me—she wanted me.

“This is how Masquapaug will die,” Grandma said. “Not murdered, like Naquipaug, or smothered, like the Naregannisit and the Akashneisit, but slowly by bleeding away its young people. More and more of you every year. My own grandchildren. I shouldn’t have lived long enough to feel this pain.”

“Dragons are sacred to my people,” I said, trying to understand how she could so casually talk of dragons being put to death. “Being chosen by one is an incomparable honor that changes one’s life forever. The word for ‘dragoneer’ in Masquisit is ‘Nampeshiweisit.’ It means ‘person who belongs to a dragon’—just like Naquisit means ‘person who belongs to Naquipaug,’ and Masquisit means ‘person who belongs to Masquapaug.’ I don’t think that ‘dragoneer’ means the same thing at all, from what I’ve seen. I don’t think that your people understand dragons.”

The fundamental purpose of a skilta is to direct and channel the power of a dragon’s breath—to break down the chosen inputs into their simplest forms and recombine those forms into the desired complex outputs, containing any harmful products and by-products of the process.”

When we entered, my first impression was of carefully controlled excess—more things fitted inside than really ought to have, made possible by clever arrangement.

I had become like Crow, venturing to dangerous and unknown lands to bring fire back to my people. I wondered, as we sat together in one another’s company, what we were going to burn with it.

There are lots of girls like me—” “There are no girls like you, Anequs,” Theod said. I felt my breath catch, because he was looking at me like I was the most important person in the world. I looked away, feeling terribly flustered by the intensity of that look.

I was going to make sure that the Anglish understood that we had never gone anywhere. That despite their best efforts, we were still living here among them on the lands where we’d always lived. I was going to show them just how many of us there were.

“All I’ve ever tried to do is the right thing,” I said. “If that’s so very different from how things have been done before, then what’s been done before was wrong.”