How to Catch a Phoenix

How long had he spent in this fucking swamp? Too long, that’s how. His blue fur was plastered to his arms and legs, he could practically feel the leaf mold rotting on his skin and clumping the long fur on his tail. If he ever left this cursed place, he’d be damned if he ever returned. 

Milarose, a dracus of considerable size and hunting prowess, floundered as he struggled through fields of sucking mud that smelled of disease and tried to pull him under every time he took a step. 

Yes, he could fly. But he didn’t fancy concussing himself on the crisscrossing branches of ancient trees that blocked his path forward, backward, up and down. Everywhere he looked he saw gnarled mangroves and murky water that looked like it would kill him if he took a sip to soothe his parched throat. 

He pulled his hand free and reached out for a low-hanging tree limb for support. He started to climb out of the muck when a loud *crack* made his gut clench. 

“No!” he snarled as he fell, too late to catch himself mid-air as he came crashing down into the mud. His head landed last in the muck and he squeezed his eyes shut, spitting as the foul water seeped between his teeth and bathed his tongue. He cursed viciously and decided in that moment that getting out of here was worth the headache he’d give himself by flying. 

He started to wriggle his legs free of the muck so it would be easier to take flight when he heard a strange chittering sound. His ears pricked and he stiffened, pressing himself flat into the mud, heedless of how long he would have to scrub his scales later to clean them. 

His blue eyes flicked left and right, looking for the source of the sound. It couldn’t be…he’d spent ages following this creature, tracking it by word of mouth as often as by scent. He’d never laid eyes on the thing, and the thought of doing so now filled him with a feverish excitement that set his limbs trembling. Today he would look upon his quarry. Today he would finally catch it. 

Milarose steeled himself as a bird exploded from behind a tree stump, squawking an alarm call that would warn every prey animal in the area that a predator was near. If he’d been hunting for food it would be devastating, as his belly felt as hollow as the hole in that tree trunk. But he was focused, desperate at this point. 

He had just relaxed and turned his head away, disappointed that the sound must have come from the frightened bird, when a flash of something bright caught his eye. 

The dracus did not turn his head. Instead, he looked only with his eye, ignoring the burn of the mud that had slipped past his eyelids. 

There, perched on the broken shards of the tree stump, perched a bird that looked like it was made of fire and gold. Its feathers swept from its wings and tail in elegant plumes of red and orange that ended in tips of gold. Its eyes, though the pupils were dark, looked like molten golden coins, and as it turned to look at him, the crown of feathers on its head raised up in interest, giving it a regal expression. 

“Are you the dracus who has asked after me all this time?”

The voice emanated from the bird’s mouth, but its beak hardly moved. Milarose could see a tongue moving between the halves of its beak and its throat working, but the voice was so clear that it seemed impossible this creature could be anything other than drakiri. 

“You…talk?” Milarose asked. 

The bird shuffled its feet and lifted its feathers in a way that Milarose could only interpret as annoyed. 

“Of course I talk. I am a phoenix, not a woodpecker,” the bird said. “Do not waste my time.” 

“Phoenixes are immortal,” Milarose protested, “you have all the time in the world.” 

“And I would like to not waste it on mortals with impertinent questions and less sense in their heads than a badger with a head cold,” the phoenix said with a sharp nod. It lifted its wings and took to the air more gracefully than the wind racing through the trees. The weak sunlight filtering through the canopy caught the gold filigree on its wings blindingly and Milarose flinched away, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, the phoenix had vanished without even a feather to mark that it had ever been there. 

“Are you fucking SERIOUS!” Milarose raged, leaping free of the mud in his anger. “Three months of hunting and THAT is what I get for all my trouble!” He turned to pursue his prey and promptly smashed through a tree, falling with it back into the mud where he lay in a heap. Maybe he should start again in the morning…