Fluorine

Clan Role: Chemist, Chemistry Researcher, Scholar Mate: Amaranthus Friends: Cerulia Morrigan

Lore Like most true children of the Lightweaver, Fluorine has dedicated her life to the pursuit of knowledge and truth. She was adopted as a hatchling by an Arcane clan, but her circumstances have not kept her from following the natural instincts of one hatched in the Sunbeam Ruins. Indeed, her clanmates have been nothing but supportive of her efforts. In her wide reading, she has learned from the scholars of her native land that while there are eleven elements of magic in the world, there are also more than a hundred elements of matter. Her studies and experiments center around harmonizing the study of magic with the science of matter, and understanding how they interact with and complement each other. She often travels to distant parts of the world in search of information to further these studies. There's more to Fluorine than books and experiments, though. She loves meeting and getting to know all kinds of dragons, and has extremely strong and wide-ranging romantic inclinations. Fortunately, she has plenty of love to go around for all her hatchlings, and a healthy respect for any and all deities they may end up serving. (Notes for a future story: Today (8/27/2016), Fluorine and Amaranthus became the proud parents of Clan Adeptica's very first five-egg nest! Naturally, Snowblossom is slightly annoyed that she, of all dragons, half of whose children weren't even hatched in the clan, is the one with all the luck. Adeptica herself, of course, is delighted. Fluorine had decided to stay at home this time because it was finally time to name a child after her father, and she felt like it ought to be with her long-term mate.)

Short Story


FWOOSH!

The sound startled the two Skydancer siblings, Crestwave and Rarity, out of their sleep. They looked at each other, not having to say anything to know that they were needed elsewhere in the lair.

Stepping out into the hallway, they saw a sight that confirmed their shared suspicion. Something in one of the other chambers of their lair was on fire! They ran down the corridor to put it out, hoping that their burgeoning, but still-inexpert Water magic would be powerful enough to face the threat.

As they approached the entrance, they saw flashes of green wings and iridescent white scales through the smoke and flames. Their owner was alternating between coughing fits and cries of fear and panic.

"Fluorine!" Crestwave called out to her. "Get out of there! We’re here to help you!"

The panicked Spiral flew toward the sound of Crestwave's voice, still coughing. Rarity focused her thoughts on her inner magic, visualizing a tunnel reaching from the ocean that surrounded their spine-like island to the tips of her claws. She had no conscious memory of hatching on the shore of the Sea of a Thousand Currents, but the sea remembered her. Her connection to the element of water surged, and a stream of seawater emerged from her claws.

She was so delighted and surprised at her success that she almost forgot to aim. She pointed her claws toward the brightest flames she could see in the room. They hissed and steamed as they died down. She realized that a second stream of water was also coming from somewhere beside her, going in the same direction - Crestwave was channeling the surrounding seawater successfully, too.

Finally, a few intense moments later, all the flames were out. The only light in the chamber came from a few bundles of glowing pocket baubles hanging from the walls. Rarity and Crestwave turned their attention to Fluorine, who was standing in the corridor, catching her breath.

"Are you all right?" Crestwave asked.

"I… think so…" said Fluorine.

"Would you like us to take you to see the healers?" said Rarity.

"Yes… probably a good idea…"

Crestwave and Rarity each took one of Fluorine's forepaws in one of their own, and escorted her to the chamber where Clan Adeptica’s healers, Flamestrike and Cobweb, did their work. Rarity hoped that they weren’t also asleep; maybe one of them had heard the commotion.

Sure enough, Flamestrike was waiting for them at the entrance to the chamber. "So you’re the one who was making all that racket," she said gently to Fluorine. "What happened?"

"Well, I was running a chemistry experiment… trying to create water by manipulating its component elements together.... Instead, it started a fire." Fluorine laughed weakly, which made her cough again. "If these two hadn’t been able to summon water to put it out… who knows what might have happened."

"You sound terrible," said Flamestrike. "Does it hurt to breathe?"

"Mmm-hmm." Fluorine nodded.

"Go inside and lie down on the exam table. I'll have to go and get Thundercloud. Excuse me for a moment."

Rarity and Crestwave helped Fluorine get settled on the table in the center of the healing chamber. After a few minutes, Flamestrike returned with her mate, Thundercloud.

"Is this the patient?" Thundercloud said, indicating Fluorine.

"Yep," said Flamestrike. "Now, Fluorine, just lie down and try to relax. I've got my healing scent generator ready to go. Thundercloud will waft the scent over to you. Be sure to breathe it in as deeply as you can when you start to smell it. Okay?"

"Got it," said Fluorine.

Flamestrike held up a small, purpose-made ceramic vessel with a collection of firestarters in the bottom chamber to serve as a heat source, and a pool of melted wax, leaves, berries, and flower petals in the concave dish on top. A floral scent emanated from the dish. Flamestrike held the device up between Fluorine and Thundercloud; the latter raised his wings and beat them gently, infusing the soft currents of air he was creating with his Wind magic. The moving air glowed pale green as it wafted over Fluorine, who took deep breaths, just as she had been told.

"How do you feel?" Flamestrike asked after a few minutes of this treatment.

"Much better," said Fluorine. "The burning feeling and the cough are gone."

"You sound better, too," said Flamestrike. "That’s good."

"Maybe we should see about getting some better ventilation for that lab of yours," said Thundercloud. "I’m going back to sleep."

"Good night, dear," said Flamestrike as her mate left the room. "And thank you!"

"Any time," said Thundercloud.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rarity decided to return to the lab in the morning to help Fluorine clean it up. The vials, jars, and other tools and supplies that had been broken or damaged in the fire were easily replaceable, but what really hurt was the loss of Fluorine’s chemistry textbooks and research notes.

Fluorine had come to Clan Adeptica from the Sunbeam Ruins. That temperate region was well-known as the academic and scholarly capital of the world, rivaled only by the Starfall Isles in its pursuit of knowledge and truth- though the two regions pursued those ends with very different methods, emphases, and goals. Fluorine had only come here seeking knowledge which they would not teach her up at the colleges of her homeland, but had found life here to be more fun and exciting than she had ever imagined it would be. Her original plan had been to prepare to serve the Arcanist as a scholar of the Observatory School of Magic and Astronomy, but she was more extroverted than most scholars and made friends easily, so she had decided to remain a member of Clan Adeptica.

Since settling into the clan, Fluorine’s research had been, like her Spiral inclinations, all over the place. No one knew the ins and outs of magic or the breadth and depth of the things it could do like the Arcane Flight, and Fluorine devoured all the information on spellcraft, sorcery, and alchemy that she could get her claws on. She never forgot her roots, though, often looking back at the notes and scholarship she had brought with her from the Sunbeam Ruins. One of her preferred lines of inquiry from the Light Flight’s academic tradition was the nature of matter, and how it compared with and interacted with the nature of magic. While the foundations of their world, the magic that suffused it, and the deities who ruled over it were inextricably bound up with the original four elements- Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water- and the seven other elements with which dragons and clans could be aligned, the physical materials that comprised their world were made up of elements of their own. It was possible to isolate some of them from each other and combine them through experimentation.

It was Fluorine’s treatises and personal journals on the studies of matter and chemistry that had been lost in the tragic lab accident. Losing these documents threw her research into sharp focus. The big, hardbound treatise on chemistry wasn't an irretrievable loss; there were great printing presses in the Sunbeam Ruins, as well as great libraries. Getting a new copy would mean traveling back there, which she resolved to do at some point in the future. On the other claw, she was deeply upset and disappointed in herself for not making any backup copies of her personal lab notebooks. She would have to start all over, repeating every experiment from memory and taking new, better notes.

Fluorine's scientific research wasn't the only part of her life that the accident made her see from a new perspective, either. She had inherited her interest in chemistry from her parents, Boron and Phosphorus. She had come from a large family, and had always imagined she would have a big family of her own someday, but had been putting it off in the name of science. Now, she decided to get serious about working toward that goal, in parallel with her work to reconstruct her research notes.

How had her clanmates gotten into their happy relationships? She asked several of them, and they told her their stories. Not one for games of chance, she decided she would be much more likely to find a suitable mate among the bargain-hunters and alchemists who gathered near the Trading Post, rather than at the Fairgrounds. She was right- the next time she visited the traveling caravan, she brought home a green-eyed, inquisitive Fae named Amaranthus, with bright colors that both contrasted with and complemented her own. He tended to favor Magatama’s research and work with plants over her work with chemicals, but that was no obstacle to their developing a flourishing relationship.

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OOC

About the Challenge

Fluorine was an AH find whom I purchased during the very first profit push I participated in, back in early September of 2015. I was originally planning to exalt her... then I saw what her parents were named. I decided to keep up the "chemical elements" theme and name her Fluorine, after the fluorescent green color in her wings. I also decided she was too cute to exalt, and decided to keep her as a future fodder breeder. I found her a mate,[/color] Amaranthus, and waited for the next push.

The first time I bred this pair for fodder was during Battle of the Bay 2 in November 2015. I knew I wanted to keep the naming theme going. Then, it occurred to me that this was the perfect opportunity to start my own lineage challenge.

My inspiration for this challenge was middletone's fantastic To Isengard - A LotR Lineage Thread. Like middletone, I'm trying to recreate the lyrics to an entire song in one of my dragons' offspring lists. The song I'm using is "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer. However, for my challenge, I'm only using the names of the chemical elements as dragon names. I'm leaving out all the other words in the song lyrics.

Hatchlings from this challenge will each be named after one chemical element, in the order in which they appear in the song, and will be exalted to prevent name changes from interrupting the list. (The lyrics to the song can be found here.)

Fluorine's page will have the only copy of the offspring list. From time to time, I may change up her breeding partners and/or rent nests if I decide I want the offspring with a particular name to have particular colors.

The forum thread for updates on this project is here.