Chapter 41

In all the lore on dragons Brendan's ever read, there has never been a trace of anything to suggest that dragons in any way communicated, let alone bonded, with humans.

Brendan has read more than the average person, given that books had been his solitary escape from most of the world all his life – but this is all too surreal.

There has never been a recorded instance of a human coming into contact with a dragon and having cited any sort of comprehensible interaction.

Speculations, perhaps, on their behavior, but nothing to suggest that dragons would ever deign to interact with humans on any substantive level, beyond hunter and hunted.

Both ways.

Brendan briefly contemplates the idea that dragons - like other small, baby animals - have some sort of animalistic imprint nature ingrained in their biology.

He contemplates that Alcina, being the first thing they'd seen, had been their idea of their mother.

But even that seems dubious and unsatisfactory to explain the way the dragon's circ