Titania

Clan Matriarch
Mate: SirFuzzyboots
Heiress: Morgana

~***~

I will be a great and powerful queen, or I will die trying! Titania thought savagely to herself as she clawed at the earth beneath her. It barely gave beneath her tiny claws, more use for catching insects than for digging. Her kind normally did not burrow, preferring to spin delicate amber colonies from tree sap with their gentle magic, but there were no suitable trees among leaning peaks and she refused to venture any closer to Starwood Strand. Starwood Strand had been where he had found her, and she couldn't face the Fae Dragon clan of her birth. Not after everything.

His name had been Oberon, and for years he had been her mate. He had come to Starwood specifically looking for a mate, dazzling all the young Fae females with his Imperial glory. He had strutted along the strand, preening at the attention but not looking twice at any of his admirers until he had seen her. He'd strode confidently up to her, her tiny body quivering in experienced excitement, and pronounced her His Titania.

I was a good queen! She spat at the unforgiving earth, remembering those first few years. She'd been sweet and kind, not crossed him, cared for all the dragons in his clan and spun him a magnificent lair; at the base of a cliff, and large enough that even the bigger dragons could live there. She'd hatched him many strong sons, and allowed him to send all her darling daughters away from the clan at tender ages to seek mates elsewhere.

The trouble came when Oberon insisted on continuing to expand. Their amber lair grew crowded and had to be continually built upon to house all the new additions. She'd tried to warn him, over and over she'd pleaded with him to let enough be enough, but he insisted on still more hatchlings, still more new additions to the clan from outside, adult Skydancers and Wildclaws that needed room to pace and squabble. The collapse, when it came, was no surprise to her, but she was the only one with enough sense to move her clutch out of the amber before it all came crashing down. Oberon, however, hadn't seen her prudence as forethought. He had believed, insisted, that the only way she could have known the lair was going to collapse, was that she had caused the catastrophe herself.

Wretched, wretched fiend! she railed. Banishing his own mate! And for what? For having more sense than the gods gave him? Churlish monster!

Out on her own, Titania had wandered wearily back to Starfall Isles. She couldn't stomach the thought of returning to the clan of her birth in Starwood. She couldn't face her family, the sisters she had left behind, and confess that she had sent her daughters out into the world with nothing and no one to protect them. Coming to the edge of the wood she had realized that she didn't even remember the name she had borne before Oberon had made her his abused Empress, and knew not how to tell them who she was. She was Titania, now and forever.

Titania hung her crested head. Her little claws would not dig her a burrow to spend the night in, nor carve her a nest in which to lay her eggs. She had no mate to put pips into her eggs, nor a clan to fill her days with joy. She would not be a great queen of a great hive, burrowed into the ground and boasting so many beautiful hatchlings that dragons came from every region just to see them. She had nothing.

"Hello," said a voice off to her left, making her jump.

There stood a Tundra dragon, looking horribly out of place with his shaggy coat among the sun-bleached stone of the Crystalpine Reaches. He had the sort of cheerful, untroubled look that Titania remembered from the Tundras in Oberon's clan, but this one would never have lasted long in her old lair. He was clearly male, as betrayed by his voice, but the colors of his wings and fur were soft, pastel pinks and blues: not at all intimidating or adapted to striking fear into dragons' hearts.

"You're very pretty," he continued timidly, and Titiania preened a little, fluttering her crested wings, Rose-colored like his own, at the praise.

"You're rather pretty yourself," she replied. "Your coloring is very . . . unusual. I like it."

"You're the first," he admitted, and while Titiania couldn't be sure without a crest on his head, he seemed to be very shy.

Titiania scoffed. "I have more sense than most dragons. It's why I'm Arcane. What about you? Your breed comes from the Icefields, does it not?"

"I'm not sure," the Tundra confessed. "I was hatched in this region, I believe, but I have no clan at the moment, and I'm very lost."

"I, too, have no clan at the moment," Titania told him solemnly. "And, in a way, I, too, am very lost."

Titiania did her best to smile in the way that she had found dragons of other breeds best understood. "I am Titania."

"And I'm SirFuzzyboots."

"I beg your pardon?" replied Titania, quite certain she had misheard him.

"I'm SirFuzzyboots," the Tundra repeated, and Titania didn't need to see a drooping crest to tell that he was disappointed by her reaction. "You don't like it."

"I love it," Titania decided, then and there. "It's marvelously ridiculous. All names for males should be so gloriously silly. It should be a tradition."

"Really?" said SirFuzzyboots, somewhere between surprised and hopeful. "There's a bit of a story behind it, actually. If you'd like to hear it."

"I'd love to," Titania told him, "but truth be told I really should get back to digging this lair. I have nowhere to spend the night, you see."

"I can dig!" cried SirFuzzyboots excitedly, and if he'd had a crest it would have stood on end. "I can dig a lair for the two of us, and then you can listen to my story!"

"We should start a clan," Titania proposed. "One where all males have silly names like yours, and every name has a story."

"Can all the females have pretty names like yours?" SirFuzzyboots asked, head ducked timidly again.

Titania took to the air, swooped once around SirFuzzyboots' head, and settled primly on his shoulder. She dragged her claws through his fur, surprisingly soft for how thick it was, and nuzzled into the warmth of his furry back.

"Absolutely."