If there was one thing every dragon knew how to be, it was sneaky. Whether their personalities were cruel and vicious or lovable and friendly, all dragons knew how to properly trick people into getting what they wanted. And Keita was no exception.
When she'd found out from Leuce that Simus might know something about why Tzegorn and a few others seemed so angry with dragons, she'd wanted to rush straight to the tigerman's house to question him; Luckily, her sister had come to warn her that Darbi was looking for her to tell them about… well, pretty much the most shocking revelation both she and all of her siblings had received since they managed to crack their egg shells. After that, Keita needed a couple of days to recover, and she still wasn't sure what to think about it; she knew that if she brooded about it endlessly she would go crazy, so she decided to let it go for now and live her life as she always had, and so she went back to her job as an undercover. When she went back to impersonating Tzegorn full time she realized that in some sense it was a good thing that her sister had stopped her days before: in fact, at that moment she had no plan to make Simus confess, and almost certainly she would have risked to blow the cover. Keita had reproached her impulsiveness: unfortunately that was her defect, or losing her lucidity too easily when she was too excited or angry. Instead, thinking about how to make Simus confess after a few days, she had instead come to a perfect plan.
No matter how she pictured the conversation, she couldn't get what she wanted. She couldn't ask Simus to tell her everything: since Tzegorn technically knew everything they were hiding, why would he make such a request? In a normal situation it would have been illogical. And then, all Keita had to do was change the situation to make it abnormal, giving Tzegorn an excuse to ask all the questions she wanted: amnesia. All it took was an arrangement with her sister Glausar to bring down a wall as she passed by it and then impersonate a healer and diagnose him with memory loss, which however would only be temporary (that way she would not risk losing the power that Tzegorn had). She had assumed that Simus would want to make sure Tzegorn was safe to resume his usual work: whether or not he was involved in Haku's attempted assassination or anything else, it was obvious that the tigerman didn't want Tzegorn out of the picture too long. And as expected, he had begun to visit him (indeed, to visit her!) periodically. At that point it was enough to play dumb for a few days to divert any suspicions and gain his trust, and now Keita could finally ask the questions that really interested her.
It had been incredibly easy, like a carnivorous plant attracting an insect by emitting the scent of its favorite flower. Once well camouflaged, the predator would never be seen by the prey. And dragons were still predators, even when it came to politics. Keita had lured her prey into a perfect trap, and now she just had to listen to what Simus had to say.
"The reason we know we can't trust dragons is very old. It dates back to about three hundred years ago" the tigerman began. "Our people remember that moment as one of the greatest disasters that ever befell our people. One day, a dragon appeared in the sky and tore apart everything in its path. It sought out and devoured every tigerman it could find, it burned all the houses, it tore the palaces to pieces with its mighty paws. Its carnage was stopped only by the intervention of the god Tharon, who forced it to flee to the east, and since then nothing no one ever heard of it again"
Keita already knew that story; it was quite common among tigermen and Tzegorn had told it to Darbi during their very first meeting, almost as if to throw him in the face of the event that had occurred three centuries before their birth. And indeed, many tigermen who were hostile to dragons often came up with that excuse to justify their dislike. However, Keita was sure that story couldn't be the only justification: both she and her brother Haku, who had both had the opportunity to draw up a psychological profile of Tzegorn (Haku having interacted with him often when he was alive, Keita for how others behaved towards her while she was impersonating him), they were sure that he would not feel such hostility just for the deeds a dragon had done long ago. They might have believed that if he had been alive at the time and had witnessed the massacre, but that clearly couldn't have been the case. There had to be more to account for Tzegorn's fear and distrust of dragons. "But that was many years ago... and that dragon wasn't one of the ones helping us now... so... why would this story have any relevance?"
"Because that's not the whole story. It's only a small part, the one known to the common people" Simus answered. "We of the upper class have handed down the complete story from generation to generation. And the complete story carries a great teaching: never trust a dragon. Because that dragon who brought so much pain, Tzegorn, had been friends with a tigerman for several years"
Keita nearly jumped when she heard those words, but she managed to keep her composure and pretended to be just a little surprised. "A friendship? Between a dragon and a tigerman?"
"Exactly" Simus replied. "The name of the dragon, or rather of the dragoness, was Natharal, and she was only a few months old baby dragon when she arrived in the lands of the tigermen. She was the last survivor of a litter of dragons that had been born in an unknown place in the mountains not far away. When she arrived in our territory, she tried to hide as best she could, but was still found by a brave tigerman named Manak. He was the son of an important noble of what was then the city-state of Merz, and he was destined to inherit his father's title. While he was executing a hunting party, he was separated from his companions by a sudden storm and was lost. It was then that he found Natharal. When they met, the dragoness tried to attack him, but Manak was a warrior and was stronger than her, and to top it off she was also seriously wounded in a paw due to a fight to the death she had with her last surviving brother, whom she killed personally. Realizing she had lost, Natharal made Malak an offer: she would take him to a safe place to shelter from the storm and she woud watch over him as he slept so he could rest properly, and in exchange he would spare her life. Since Malak was tired and wounded from the battle, the storm was getting more and more violent, and there were wild beasts around, he decided to accept that deal. So Natharal led him to a nearby cave and there Malak could sleep while she kept watch, knowing that he could rest assured that no dragon would ever break a promise"
As Simus spoke, Keita listened with interest. Up to that moment the story was quite plausible: given the geographical origin, Natharal was almost certainly one of the first daughters of Neytiri, her own mother (as even Darbi had assumed some time before), and the situation in which she found herself was... well, the normal situation young dragons lived in: alone, hiding from everything and everyone, and competing with their own siblings for resources to the point of killing them.
"The storm lasted until the next morning, but when the sun rose it finally ended. Natharal expected Malak to go away and leave her there, and the two of them would never see each other again. But Malak did something completely unexpected" Simus continued to tell. "He offered her a healing potion he had with him, so that she could heal her paw. Natharal didn't accept it, but he placed it on the ground in front of her and said he would leave it there whether she wanted it or not, and then he left. Natharal remained near her shelter, and at last she decided to use the potion, and her paw was healed immediately. But that evening Malak returned, dragging a large boar with him: he told her that he had lost the road and that he was willing to share his prey with her if she would be willing to host him one more night. That scene was repeated the next day, and the day after that, and in the end Natharal, impatient and convinced that Malak was fooling her, decided to bring the tigerman back to his city-state personally, even if that would mean getting too close to it. And in fact as soon as they arrived near it numerous soldiers sent by Malak's father to find him surrounded them, convinced that the dragoness was trying to harm the young nobleman. But Malak stopped them and even ordered them to let Natharal go, because it was thanks to her that he was able to shelter from the storm and return to the city"
Simus made a strange noise, which sounded almost choked. "For a week, Natharal was alone again. But then, Malak came to visit her. And he came again, and again. She didn't understand the reason for so many visits, and he simply replied that he wanted to get to know her better, and that he was sure that she wasn't a bad person, and that if she only had the chance to be different and not live in fear, she could be happy. Natharal laughed at him, telling him all the awful things she had done in her life, including killing and eating her own brothers and sisters, yet Malak stood by his beliefs and continued to visit her. She could not understand why he wanted to help her so much, and when she asked him he simply answered: 'I can't avoid it. That's my nature'. Natharal teased Malak for his good heart, but at the same time she too began to enjoy his visits, the visits of the only person in the world who treated her as if she too was a real person and not a monster. Slowly, a deep friendship developed between the two of them. Malak found a safe place for Natharal, with plenty of food and a very comfortable cave where the dragoness could rest peacefully, and promised her that when he took over from her father he would make sure that she could enter the city and meet other people. Natharal didn't want to, as she feared all those she called 'newcomers', but the fact that Malak was so nice convinced her that perhaps there was indeed hope that she could be accepted"
Keita could almost empathize with Natharal; she had always lived with her siblings, so she couldn't understand what it meant to be truly alone, to have no one to count on and above all to have no one to love and be loved by. It was natural that she would be so reluctant to accept the friendship of a newcomer, and it was equally obvious why she had finally relented. Malak had been the only one in her life who hadn't been afraid of her, and for her that must have been the equivalent of finding a treasure.
"Natharal and Malak's friendship continued for many years. As they both grew older and moved towards adulthood, they strengthened the bond between them more and more. Eventually, their friendship grew into something so strong and steadfast that not even the friendship between Malak and the other young tigermen could be compared to that" Simus continued. "Every day, they met. Natharal told Malak everything she knew about nature; she explained to him the behaviors of animals, how prey behaved, how various types of plants grew, what had to happen for flowers to bloom. At the same time, Malak was telling Natharal about the city of the tigermen, talking about its stalls full of foods from all over the province, the houses with sloping wooden roofs, the cries of children playing in the streets, the high-class palaces full carvings and paintings. Both were fascinated by each other's world, and both wanted to immerse themselves more and more in that world. And when Natharal's wings grew strong enough, she gave Malak the greatest gift anyone could receive: she let him climb on her back and together they flew up to the sky, and she showed him the setting sun and the moon rising to infinity, and the stars that shone in the firmament, and she showed him how the world had become so small beneath them. That first flight together was the maximum expression of their friendship, the representation of two extremely distant worlds that tried in every way to merge with each other"