There were also rocks shooting up from the ocean, and I often used this as a sort of perch when fishing. The water was clear, and I could see many kinds of fish swimming, crawling, or just sitting at the bottom of the ocean. All I need do to catch my supper was swoops down with my claws exposed and snatch up some unfortunate sea dweller, as I had learned and practiced dozens of times. Hunting, therefore, became uneventful. To break the melancholy I either had to go farther out to sea, where it was harder to find something non-sentient but still edible (I also didn't have the advantage of a perch), or hunt on land. At first I was wary about doing so, because there are certain unwritten/unspoken rules of land hunting pertaining to each area, and as I was a newcomer and didn't know the rules well enough, I usually remained seaside.
But one day, I simply tired of fish. My clan was omnivorous, as long as the animals we ate were not sentient. Rabbits were common. On occasion, one of the humans' sheep would stray from the group, and we, reasoning that the herder must not want that sheep anymore, would be sure to use as much of it as possible, from the meat for food to the wool for blankets. I flew inland around dusk in search of some small animal. I was hoping for a squirrel or a possum, figuring that I couldn't eat a whole rabbit on my own. I watched the ground for any sort of small movement. A few times I saw some animals and tried for them, but I was out of practice. I used to be a reasonably good hunter, and my failures discouraged me. It didn't occur to me then that I didn't remember the specifics of how or why I, a storyteller, learned to hunt at all.
I continued on, and soon to my surprise I saw the bat creature with a large dog-like animal. I floated down to where she was, but kept my distance. I hadn't spoken with her since our first meeting, and I was sure to be cautious. She saw me, and lifted her head from the dead animal's neck, which was a mess of blood. There was blood around the bat's mouth as well, and she licked it off before speaking.
"The fragile prey returns," she said to me.
"You consider me prey," I asked, with some wonder. The bat dropped the corpse.
"I consider everything prey. And in your case, easy prey."
"If I am such easy prey, why not attack me in my sleep?"
"There is no fun in attacking such easy prey." She indicated the dead animal. "This poor fellow I had to chase through the field."
"You said everything? You would eat something intelligent?"
"Intelligence matters not," she replied. "So long as it is alive before I get here."
I looked at the corpse. "But it is dead."
"Now," she said.
"I understand. What do you do with the meat?"
She made a noise of revulsion. "I cannot stand to eat dead meat. I usually take it to my mate."
"The blue dragon?"
"Yes. He is weak and dependent. He doesn't like to kill, and so I kill for him."
"You sound so bitter," I remarked.
"Live among those who call you the devil as long as I have and you will be too." She picked up the carcass in her mouth and flew away. Completely against my better judgement, I followed. I stayed a reasonable distance behind her. Flying with a dead animal locked in her jaw didn't seem to inhibit her flying. She could still maneuver quite easily. She looped over my head and tried to force me from the sky.
"I don't believe you are the devil. Evil is a state of mind, and is only what we make of it" I told her. She continued flying, not glancing back at me. "It is a label assigned to an object by society." We continued flying towards the mountains. Sometimes she would growl at me, or try to hiss. When we finally reached her home, I perched on the same nearby rise as before, and watched her land at the cave entrance. She spit out the carcass and glanced up at me. I looked on with curiosity.
The blue dragon stood at the entrance to the cave. He had an elegant form, the presumed nobility of the dragon evident. The only thing that separated him from other dragons, physically, was his color. But as he looked upon his mate with a deep love, I knew that his hue was not the only thing that made him special. They stood face to face, and engulfed each other in their wings. It was clear to anyone with eyes and a heart that the bat's hatred for the dragon was either just a pretense, or a role-playing tactic. In the eyes of the humans she was the personification of evil. But there was nothing evil about their embrace, or the somewhat content expression on her face.
And I felt my own solitude and isolation most keenly.
They released each other, and she glanced up at me again as he picked up the meat. Then he saw me as well, and asked me to come down off of my perch. The bat opposed the idea, but the dragon insisted. I glided down very slowly, landing in front of them lightly.
I quickly learned that they make a rather odd pair. Where she had done all in her power to make me fear her, he warmly invited me to share the meat with them. She clearly didn't want me there, but said nothing. I ate little. I watched as the dragon ate most of the meat, and the bat infrequently trying to squeeze a few more drops of blood from it. I waited until they were finished before I asked them to tell me their story. I learned most of it this night, with a few details the following nights. We became good friends that night, and never again were boulders hurled in my direction.