Listened to the song in the thing, many inspired, here have this crappily written short story. 

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Everyone has a bondmate.

A kindred spirit who never really leaves your side once you meet, a soul that understands yours without ever speaking a word between you. Once you meet, you are no longer two. You are the same, united until the moment that death rips you apart.

Even then, there are legends that sometimes even death itself is not enough to separate you.

Most find their bondmate early in life. My sister found hers when she was five. Never have I known her to be without him, but his grey hairs are more numerous each year. When she loses him, we will also lose her. Bondmates share their lifespans. One will shorten to gift their partner with years they would never have known otherwise. When I asked my sister if she was scared about that, she said she wasn't. It was with nothing but bliss in her gaze as she told me that fifteen years were a blessing with him, that she would have taken a single day if her only option had been to never know him at all.

I envy them. Watching them fall asleep, his head on her lap--I want nothing more than to find my own bondmate.

Mother has tried to comfort me, telling me that my bondmate will come along eventually, but I can't help but feel that I've missed them. I can't help but worry that maybe, just maybe, I'll only ever get that single day my sister spoke of and be left hoping it is enough to change me.

I don't want to be a human without a bondmate. It is said the gates of paradise only open for those humans who have been cleansed by their bondmate's innocence. That only an animal's love--only that pure, selfless devotion--can wipe away a human's sin so that they may pass through the gates and into the eternal.

Eighteen years of sin. That's what I've been living with. Most people barely go twelve. Fifteen maximum.

Bondmates are supposed to give you direction in life, too. Those chosen by dogs or wolves are protectors, those who you can turn to and know you will not be judged. My sister is one of the best fighters we have in our village. Those bonded with owls are our wisest, our scholars, while those bonded with deer are healers who can stave off death itself. Our swans are our dancers and our elephants are in charge of the stories that we pass down to the next generation.

And without a bondmate, without being deemed worthy in an animal's eyes, you are not worthy in the eyes of your race, either.

Maybe that was why I was out here now, alone and running through the winter snow in nothing but my leggings and a thin shirt that was meant for summer or the inside of a house with a blazing fire. Maybe it was because of the looks I'd recieved after Nyala had finished telling the story about the human which every animal had rejected. The human who had tried, so, so hard to bond, yet at every paw, fin, or claw, had only found rejection.

That human's name was lost through the ages. We now only know them as Slaughterer, the immortal Bondless one. They wander the land, still searching for their bondmate, refusing to let death take them until they find it, slaughtering any animal who rejects them. According to the story, the Slaughterer's rampage started in a once-lush oasis, but the innocent blood they'd split had parched the land and bleached its soil, turning it into the death trap we now knew as the Red Desert.

I stopped, breathing hard, the snow up to my knees, finally giving myself a chance to look around.

Aside from at the edge of a cliff, I didn't know where I was. I'd been moving blindly, so caught up in my thoughts, not particularly caring if I didn't make it back before dark of if the healers could fix the frostbite I was going to get from being out here like this. That maybe it was better if I just died, if I didn't become another Slaughterer. Maybe death wouldn't want me either.

But I could feel it. Death was reaching for me with the icy fingers of a breeze that cut through the cloth of my shirt. Every breath was sharp and painful, stabbing my lungs, and my earlier indifference was fading. I didn't want to die. I still held this fierce, desperate hope that an animal somewhere--somehow--would find me worthy. That, if even for a minute, I'd know what true love was like.

Snow was falling now. Not hard, but enough to let me know that going back to the village wasn't an option. I'd freeze first.

I backed away from the cliff. Somehow, I made my way to a rocky overhang. It wasn't huge. Even hunched over from cold, I still had to duck my head to fit inside. I made my way to the back--maybe five or six steps--and huddled in the corner, as far away from the reaches of the snow as I could.

I knew I shouldn't be sitting down. That I should have stayed standing and moved around to stave off the urge to sleep, but I couldn't. My leggings were wet, keeping the freezing cold clinging to my skin. They were so numb I didn't trust them to hold me up.

So I sat, giving a few bounces before getting bored and coming up with something else to keep me awake and alert through the weight sliding my eyelids shut.

Singing. I'd always liked singing, no matter how many times my sister had told me to shut up while doing it.

It was hard to find my voice. I gave it a few experimental hums before getting enough confidence to make those louder. The rock echoed the sound nicely, making it sound richer than usual. I wasn't exactly the best singer in the world, but hey, I was dying--may as well make my last few thoughts happy ones.

After making it through a lullaby my mother had sung to me and almost falling asleep, I remembered something from a few weeks ago. As someone with no bondmate, I had experience in a lot of fields--all things that exposed me to several types of animals on a weekly basis and would prepare me for life if one of them chose me. Before the snow had come, I'd been put with the scouts. Those that went through the forests close to where we lived to find new scavenging areas, to explore, to map, to seek.

Really, I wasn't sure what they did, but they'd had a system of calls to communicate when they were so far apart they couldn't see each other. Each one was different and easily distinguished from the others, but there was another one--a personal one that the scout I'd been put with had to call his bondmate back to his side.

Back then, I'd asked if I could try it and he'd looked offended by the very idea of it, but here--well, I was too far away for him to hear me, and even if he did, I'd probably be dead before he could yell at me about it.

I whispered it under my breath a few times first, testing my vocal chords, getting them used to the sound, then graduating that to a hum. I felt strangely self-conscious about the whole thing, calling out to nothing but the winter for a bondmate I didn't have. For several minutes, I held quiet, unable to make myself release the sound I knew I had in me, wondering what I'd do if it didn't live up to the sound I'd heard in the back of my thoughts for weeks.

I was being ridiculous. Before I could think about it any more, I drew in one sharp, painful breath, and I called.

The sound started low and rose, a brief few seconds where the call echoed and bounced off the rocky wall and out into the snowy abyss, a brief few moments where I was lost in the wonder of the moment, everything held in suspense like nothing outside this overhang was real or mattered and everything inside it was frozen before it faded from my ears.

So I made it again, louder this time, pouring everything I had into that sound. I let it reverberate through my voice, expending every bit of air I had into the life of the note that rippled through my body and warmed my insides, desperate to keep it from fading.

But I ran out of breath, and it did.

Languid, I was in the middle of a gulping breath when something answered me back.

I thought I was hearing things--was hallucinations part of freezing to death? But no. As I released the call again, this time, a second voice joined mine. It harmonised under my notes, not quite perfect, but--I adjusted my voice, making the second part not quite as high pitched--and our voices twined. I found myself singing, not with words, but with sound, following nothing but what felt right, and each time, that second voice answered me back, louder every time.

I was on my feet, staggering out of the rocky overhead, back to the snowdrift I'd soaked my leggings in earlier, eyes scanning the whiteout for a hint of my harmony.

I found nothing.

My body was shaking, but I couldn't go back to the overhang. I was going to die out here before I went back in that overhang without finding the owner of that second voice. Once again, fear struck me, keeping me quite. I was no longer of scared of no one hearing me. I was scared that I'd hear no answer back.

I called.

It sounded different out here, without the rock to reverberate it around inside my ears. It was clearer. Not quite as loud, yet somehow stronger. Raw with my desperation.

And I was answered.

Not from where I was looking, but from behind. Off the cliff, somewhere in the snow swirling to fall into the chasm beside me. I turned, searching, wondering if I'd see my harmony atop one of the pillars of rock that dotted the chasm, even though I knew the snow would block them from my sight.

I saw them.

Neck stretched long as their song left their throat, my partner rounded the nearest pillar with a beat of their magnificent wings. They flew in a void of snow, the sheer heat of their scales melting it to rain around them. At the end of their note, blossoms of orange fire trailed from their nostrils, their head shifting, searching.

For me.

I was delirious now. I knew I was. I stumbled to the edge of the cliff and called, reaching out with more than just my hands or my voice towards this awesome creature that defied any sane reasoning.

The dragon saw me. Three long, graceful beats of its wings turned its body towards me. I waited, arm outstretched, still singing that wordless song of the same eight notes with the same final call as its talons of its front paws gouged the cliff beside me, its back legs and tail steadied against the wall of the cliff.

Its great head snaked forward as I reached the call, its eyes resting on my hand as its own song soared from deep within its chest and placed its snout in my hand. The vibration ran through me, banishing the chill with the doubt and hatred I'd had for myself for not being worthy.

My second hand joined my first as I pressed my forehead to the dragon's snout, our wordless song still echoing in my throat. I'd been so selfish, complaining that I had been alone for eighteen years.

My bondmate had been alone for far, far longer than that, waiting for her hamony.

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