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An egg laid outside the territory of the eleven elemental gods will not hatch: without their magic, soul never knits to body and the embryo inside withers and dies. Without an anchor, the little waiting spark of Mind that might one day have become a person slips away through the cracks in reality. Most are eaten by the pneumavores that lurk in the hungry Void outside, but a few--lucky or clever or both--survive and grow up to become predators themselves. Shade-touched, these lost souls lurk in the dreams and nightmares of dragonkind, feeding on their fears and growing fat.

The largest of them are the greater horrors, dream-beasts without an identity beyond their Names--the specific terror they draw strength from. Most horrors are little more than beasts, unconscious and unaware of the minds around them, though they ably ape the manner and speech of dragons they meet while dreaming. The larger they are, the more they resemble thinking beings, though the veneer of intelligence lies only skin-deep over a terrible animal cunning. Sleeping dragons caught and seduced by a wandering horror might never wake again, trapped beyond saving in their own nightmares--or worse, awaken possessed, without dreams or mind or reasoning of their own.


The Fear of Shattering was once a thing of flesh and breath, a dragon like the rest; but it was not to be her form. Barely a day after she came into the world, blinking and hesitant, her clan was attacked by outsiders, her life snuffed out without so much as a scream. It seemed an eternity that she floated in the gloom, less than a dragon, barely anything, before that life was snuffed out as well.

And then she woke up.

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This.
This place.
There was no light. There was nothing here at all but a space where breath should have been, a blackness where she should have had eyes. Her body felt wrong. Twisted, mangled, too flexible and too bent. She... she seethed. Her body was wrong.
Distantly, distantly, vibrations echoed over her skin. Dim screeches, roars, garbled semblances of speech that reminded her of light. The memory surged over her for a moment, a precious moment, and she grasped for it, her wrong body elongating and groping the nothingness before her until the light dimmed, faded, vanished and... nothing. There was nothing.
Her body was wrong.
She tried to speak, but her mouth was not what she remembered it to be. She tried to move, to run away, but her legs were not what she knew them to be. She had no legs. She tried to see, but there were too many eyes, too much nothingness in all direction, and she contorted herself. She had to escape. She had to leave the deafening darkness, this muted screaming.

Broken tendrils wove into wings, and her body was suddenly right. Hollow, keening for a substainance she knew not how to provide, but right. She knew herself like this. Her body knew itself like this.

Empty, she drifted into dreams.

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Letters
From her son:


Mother,

I am not sure you will be glad to hear from me but I have been encouraged to write to you despite the … unfortunate … circumstances of my leaving. Because after all you are the one who gave life to me though I often think it might have been better I would never have drawn breath like my poor little brother. Anyway, I am alive and I intend to enjoy it as much as I possibly can. Though I do not seem to be very good at it. Yet. After some consideration, I have asked the Imperial Fujin to deliver the letter when he and his comrades go on their next journey to battle the shade-touched beast clans for honour and glory (and spoils of war of course).

I know I must have been a disappointment to you. From the day I was born, I was different. Afraid of the dark and the horrid things that seemed to move inside it. Sick, but not at all willing to spread the sickness to others. Terrified I might end up just like some of the … strange members of your clan. Everything I saw either frightened or disgusted me, I was a misfit and everyone knew it. It was only a matter of time until they would get to me. So I ran away. But nobody ever really escapes, or do they? Well, I was found and rescued by Janus who took pity on a battered shivering hatchling who could barely speak in coherent sentences. Against the reservations of his companion, he took that grubby and sick bundle of feathers with him. Janus is a very compassionate dragon, maybe because he is a Guardian? Or maybe because he started his life in such a different place. After all, he was born into this Clan though hatched from an abandoned egg of the Windswept Plateau. But I am straying from the subject, this should be about me and not my friend.

The Clan took me in, despite me being obviously sick. They are a Nature Clan which calls itself The Clan of the Forgotten Sanctuary. You cannot imagine how different it is here. Everything is lush and green and so very much alive. They reside in huge trees which have been magically altered to house even the greater dragons in their cavernous trunks or amidst their roots in spacious caverns. The old stone ruins are too derelict to live in but some have begun working on their restoration. I love exploring those old buildings, in some you can find relics of mosaics, paintings or sculptures. Not everything is peaceful here though. There are vicious beasts and a dangerous Serthis tribe is threatening the boundaries of our territory. And the Clan is also home to a lot of sick coatls. All of them were accepted into the Clan as I was. They uphold the idea of a sanctuary for all vigorously. I don’t live with the other sick coatls, most are from Plague and I find their red eyes unsettling. They remind me of…the past. I live with Janus instead, outside the center of the Clan where it is more quiet.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I am alive and well. I hope you find it in your heart to be happy for me. I have found a home here. And friends. I have included some tokens of my new life to remind you of the son who got away. I hope you like them.

Your son,

Meliander
(I chose a new name when I began my new life)
From @Silwyna