amrev_intrigues

dragons

By the time a lookout spots the dragon, she's already close. It was the blue of the wings that disguised her against the sky, and the fact that no one was looking to the south -- General Montgomery calls a rank of soldiers to order, but they haven't yet managed to raise their guns by the time a white and red striped flag flutters out under her.

She lands in the middle of the camp, causing a general exodus away, because of the general fear of dragons, and the superstition that they're willing to eat people.

She's smaller than her wingspan suggests -- the wingspan of a heavyweight, of which America only has a bare handful, all of them with the army around Philadelphia. But she's small, smaller than a middle-weight, and carries only four crew: one captain, on her back, two riflemen, and one more officer. Her wings are blue, shading to a subtle red where they meet her body, and her body is blue, with splotches of darker blue all down her spine.

The captain, a slight young man, jumps off of her. He is disheveled, from their passage through the air, his light-colored hair pulling out of its queue. He salutes to General Montgomery, and pulls out an envelope.

"From the Continental Congress, sir," says Alexander Hamilton. "Updated orders."

He is escorted into the command tent, leaving the dragon behind.

After Montgomery reads them, he frowns. "These are from the 12th?"

"Yes, sir," says Hamilton. "I'm sorry it took so long to get here. The maps have the lakes all wrong, and the mountains are nothing like how they're drawn -- we had to backtrack, and lost a few days. Besides which, we needed to forage along the way."

Montgomery stares at him. "Son," he says, "you made it up here in eleven days, and you're apologizing that it took too long?"

Hamilton shifts, uneasily.

"I've never seen a journey of five hundred miles take less than three weeks," continues Montgomery, "even on dragonback. What breed is your beast out there?"

He raises his chin. "She's Caribbean native," he says. "Island hopper, they call her, or a blue hopper."

"Leave the letters," says Montgomery; "When are you due back?"

"My orders say 'all due speed'."

Montgomery frowns, considering. "Well, my aide Burr can find you rations, and a better place to sleep. And -- you brought the mail?"

"Of course."

"He'll help you distribute it. Go on; I'll have a response for you by morning."

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Burr stares straight faced as the dragon descends. Inscrutable, too, as Montgomery orders him to find the dragon 'rations'.

"A cow will suffice, I hope?" Burr asks, but he is already walking through camp, issuing orders.

He stops before a tent, his own. Pulls back the flap. "Here is where you will sleep. Your other men will be with the rank and file." Burr has no qualms with giving up his tent for a night, and if he sneaks into Montgomery's, no one needs be wiser.

“Alexander Hamilton, sir,” says Hamilton, a little offended that Burr hadn’t introduced himself properly. “Captain of Minerva. And I thank you, but it isn’t necessary — A dragon is warm enough, and she’s accustomed to having me close by.”

A large head looms over the line of tents, though she has to shift up on her hindquarters to see so far. Her wings beat to balance her, creating a prodigious breeze. “Did he say I could have a cow?” comes a melodious voice, from her. “You should have said there would be a cow, Alexander.”

“Greedy beast,” says Hamilton, “you shan’t gorge — a sheep is better,” he says, “though she does have some trouble with the wool.” He grins at Burr, his love for the dragon overcoming the initial awkwardness. “Will you come meet her?”

"Regardless, I have my orders, and this tent shall be assigned you whether you use it or not--"

The dragon's voice then, drawing Burr up short. He blinks, stares, face still blank.

"Ah, you can speak." Can they all speak? And she called Hamilton Alexander, which clearly indicates some deeper level of intelligence and recognition. "You heard her as well, I hope?"

Hamilton laughs. “What she can’t do is be silent. Speaking, now that’s hardly a trick.”

The two rows of tents in between them have rapidly cleared of a couple groups of men, no doubt out of fear. Hamilton’s smile flickers as he sees that.

He steps forward, weaving through the vacated rows, and she drops to the ground, gently, and noses at Hamilton. It nearly knocks him off his feet, as her muzzle is half his height — but her eyes close in pleasure as he scratches the tip of her nose.

“Minerva,” he says, “this is Captain Aaron Burr. Captain, may I present Minerva.”

Edited 2022-06-27 15:45 (UTC)

Burr doesn't step forward as much as Hamilton does, but hangs back, tense and a bit scared. He's open minded, but, well. Dragons are very large.

"Pleased to meet you," Burr says, which perhaps comes out a bit weaker than it should. And if she turns to him or extends her head he jumps and makes a very undignified squeak.

Edited 2022-06-27 18:47 (UTC)

The dragon dips her head. “He is polite, at least, and doesn’t run screaming,” she says to Alexander. To Burr: “I think that is very gentlemanly of you, or at least it isn’t rude, and also very handsome of you to offer a cow when you have so many hungry men.” She looks back to Alexander. “Is that enough manners? We brought the mail, after all, and it was a very long way. Alexander is teaching me to read, and I think it’s silly that you make your writing too small for a dragon to see. As though you would like to keep the things secret that you put in your handsomest books, with the gold gilt. Do you have any books like that? Alexander has a chest of them and I don’t mind carrying them, as long as he reads them to me, but the histories are so very dry. The gold is nice though.”

As she chatters, Alexander sends a rueful smile at Burr. “I suppose you haven’t met a dragon before. You can touch her if you like — it’s perfectly safe.”

He has noticed, too, that Burr didn’t run screaming, and he thinks the little flush on Burr’s cheeks is very fetching. Would it be any harm to speak with him a little longer?

Burr isn't sure what to say, to a dragon directing complaints his way regarding the printing of books. Not that it matters--he can't get a work in edgewise, with the way the dragon carries on, and Burr wonders if it is for want of regular conversations partners or if it simply is, well, chatty.

The dragon continues on talking as Burr tentatively approaches and extends a hand. "Is this alright, madam?" he asks, but isn't at all sure asking is any less rude than interrupting her while she speaks, so the question is very faint. He doesn't want to touch her without her permission.

"Oh," she says, "of course." She actually seems a little bit bewildered that he asked, and she crouches down, settling, folding her incredible, lengthy wings. It doesn't actually reduce her profile by much, but Hamilton, at least, is grateful for the show of non-aggression.

Her hide is leathery and indeed warm, despite the frigid air. She is harnessed in thick leather, painstakingly cared for, around her chest, down her back, and making a net under her belly, where the mail sacks are nestled next to the crew's baggage. It leaves room for the crew to climb in and sleep, while the dragon flies, though Hamilton never left her back for all the journey.

"I think we have some acquaintances in common, in New York," ventures Hamilton. "It was very audacious, what you did at the College of New Jersey. I hoped to use you as an example, but -- well. They wouldn't admit me." His eyes move to Minerva, who was, of course, the main cause of the denial. It was quite one thing to admit a small young man as a scholarship student, with room and board -- quite another to house a midweight dragon.

Edited 2022-06-28 02:42 (UTC)

Burr smiles, and stretches his arms wide to hug the dragon. She is warm, and Burr feels himself melt into her immediately. He hasn't been warm the whole of the winter, it feels, though January is just around the corner.

"No, I suppose they wouldn't have," Burr says to Hamilton's comment. A little bitter, that they hadn't admitted him earlier, and that he'd needed to wait a few years for his uncle's permission and influence. That's how those institutions worked, and the country at large, no matter what anyone said. Hamilton can't have good breeding. Nothing about him suggests it, though his manner and lack of awareness is a bit cute.

"What acquaintances do you speak of?"

Hamilton may have bristled at the words, but he is too flattered at the way Burr melts right against Minerva. And Minerva is flattered too, clearly, as she sighs, settling her foreleg such that her body curves around Burr, and says, "So this is little Mr. Burr? I don't think he's any littler than you, Alexander. Why do they call him that?"

Hamilton's cheeks go red. "That's not polite, Minerva!"

"Oh," she says, "I hardly think he doesn't know about it, if his friends called him that. Your politeness really does have so many rules."

"I -- I meant the Livingstons," says Hamilton, trying to recover, "and," he names a few more people. "They opened their home to me when I arrived in New York, quite friendless."

"I'm sorry," Burr says, as he settles into the crook of her arm. "It's just that you're quite warm, and it's been so cold here. I think many of the other men would be more receptive, if they knew how warm you were." Which perhaps isn't polite himself, either, but it is honest. He'll have to leave soon, when the men come with the cow. He won't want to witness that. Better to warm while he can.

A little blush, at the nickname. "It's alright, they call me that here, too." At least, Montgomery calls him that, and takes delight in embarrassing him too. A little disappointing, that he's an inch shorter even than Hamilton.

"Where are you from then?" Burr asks Hamilton. He said Minerva is from the Caribbean, so it is likely that Hamilton was a ship hand on some trading vessels, though he is quite young.

“Nevis,” he admits. He doesn’t at all know how that will be received; it is a land of traders and slavers, and few gentlemen. And perhaps that’s obvious, in how impolite Minerva is. “I was born in Nevis, that is, and most recently lived in Saint Kitts, before New York. I left to pursue education, and I was enabled by a fund, created after a publication of mine. I had no relatives to sponsor me.” He lays a hand flat on the dragon’s head. “Her passage paid for itself, as they had us run off a privateer, who was not at all expecting a middleweight to bear down on him out of the sky, and couldn’t tell the difference between a fighting crew and one scrawny youth.”

“I would go again,” exclaims Minerva, her head rising. “If only you’d let us go to the coast, where we might take prizes — then I could have you in better treasure than your gilt books, I know it.”

“They contain greater things than treasure,” Hamilton tells her, in the tenor of an argument well-trodden.

“You only say so because you haven’t got any,” returns Minerva, reasonably. “I’m sure you’d change your mind then.”

“And we go where we are sent, dear,” Hamilton reminds her. “That’s our duty.”

“Duty isn’t much on treasure,” she grumbles. “But I go where you do, and I hope we have a good fight, soon.”

A good fight--it seems more than men are craving advancement, then. But it's doubtful Congress would allow Hamilton and Minerva anywhere near a battle, with how valuable they are as messengers. Something he doesn't choose to say.

"I am not familiar with Nevis," Burr says, "though I have heard of Saint Kitts. I am curious how you found the mainland, if you are from the islands. I hear they're not terribly developed, though perhaps their struggles are simply different than what is faced in New York." He means of course pollution, corruption, water quality. Though, he does think the islands must have been maddening, for want of good society and connections, advancement.

"It is generous that you found your way from there--men with talent might find no outlet for it, in some circumstances. Regardless, your want of a fight won't likely be fulfilled. We must move on soon to the assault, and Montgomery will need you to deliver his own missive back to Congress."

Burr's words are simple, boring politenesses; Hamilton is still intrigued, though, by the way Burr's body opened towards the dragon, when he felt that warmth. He supposes there's some need, there. A loneliness, even?

"I found it cold," he says. "As we all do, this winter." A tilt of his head, and he closes the distance between him and Burr, brings them within arm's reach. "I'll be using the captain's tent tonight -- tucked right up next to Minerva. If you need a respite from the... cold, you are welcome -- it has room enough for two, if they don't mind a certain intimacy."

Besides a certain quiet slyness in his tone, and the subject matter, there's nothing to indicate that this is a sexual suggestion.

Burr blinks at him, processing. He supposed he had indicated a need to get warm, but--

"I have my own sleeping arrangements, Alexander," he says, smiling politely.

He had complained about the cold, but he couldn't come out and say that him and Montgomery were quite adept at staying warm.

"Oh?" He drifts a little closer, drops to a murmur. "Always good to have arrangements in a time like this. With a companion who can lend a warm body, or -- something else." Lighthearted, teasing, in a way that Burr could take it as a joke in poor taste if he so chose.

Burr can't help it--Hamilton is attempting to be sly, or charming, but Burr laughs.

"That is bold of you, but I'm afraid I am taken. Perhaps you can find company in some other desperate soldier--" Untangling himself then from the dragon and stepping away. He can hear the cow coming, though it is no doubt held up, fighting its lead.

"I don't think you're a common desperate soldier," Hamilton returns. No, Burr is something else -- he must be something else, a fierce fighter under that initial reserve, or else he wouldn't have done what he did at the College.

Hamilton is, admittedly, jealous that evidently someone else did pierce that reserve. Someone male, given Burr's reaction. He takes a breath, ready to speak again --

"Sir," says Hamilton's lieutenant, Mr. Reed, rounding the dragon. "Perhaps we could begin distributing the mailbags."

"Very good, Mr. Reed," says Hamilton, through a clenched jaw. The man's a born and raised aviator, and doesn't think that an island urchin should have a dragon so distinctive and skilled. And, in fact, Minerva's eyes have gone round and vaguely hostile, in reaction to Hamilton's reaction, no doubt.

"And the supply train has sent a cow," says Reed, stiffly. "I took the liberty of sending it away and requesting a smaller animal instead."

Which was what Hamilton was going to do, but the presumption of it rankles. "Couldn't have done better myself," he says.

As Burr is leaving, he might catch the dragon's unsubtle voice: "I quite liked Captain Burr. Perhaps we could have him instead of Mr. Reed? I would like him, for my crew."

(And in the morning, Burr might find that one of the other aides-de-camp for the General wasn't in his tent last night, and comes in somewhat disheveled, a bit late.)

The next day, in the cabin the General has commandeered, Hamilton tries to offer. "Send us up with one of your aides," he says, to Montgomery. "They won't expect a dragon this fast -- they won't catch her, and we can get you intelligence on the enemy lines."

Burr doesn't give much thought to Hamilton, or his dragon. That is what he tells himself, anyway. There are more important matters to attend to, than frivolous, childish fancy.

The next day, in the tent, Burr doesn't really think Montgomery is going to agree, but, well. The man can be flamboyant and much too generous, for all his respectability. And he seems to like Hamilton, for all the briskness the situation demands. Packing tents, though it's likely they'll abandon supplies.

"I suggest Captain Irving, sir," the late aide. A little look at Hamilton--detached, inscrutable.

Irving goes the color of curdled milk. "I -- sir -- I couldn't possibly --" He doesn't look at Hamilton.

Hamilton's eyes rest on one aide after another, and they all avoid him, except for Burr, that brief glance like brushing fingers. Irving's nerves are a combination, Hamilton thinks, of fear at the prospect of being thrown around the sky, fear of the dragon herself, and an instinctive aversion to the ungentlemanly reputation of the aviators.

He should hold his tongue, and leave it be. Instead, he says, "Then I can fly it alone, or the run back to New York. I know my duty, General." He picks up his gloves from the table. He doesn't dare be more pointed -- if one of them demands satisfaction of him, he cannot provide, as much as he would like to. He lifts his chin. "On your orders, sir."

"Why Mr. Irving, you seemed so eager to be free of your duties the other night, I thought you would be glad of the opportunity to see the dragon again," Montgomery says, a hint of a smile on his face. "Very well, you may fly it alone then. I've no doubt a British canon could have no hope of striking her, but godspeed to you regardless. We shall be moving out in but a few hours, to commence the assault--"

They are going in the daylight, in hopes the city will surrender. They don't expect a drawn out engagement.

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