Strid

It’s been months since I touched this thing, but the clan leaders have been telling us all to try and get back into our old habits. Not that things will ever be the same; B keeps telling us not to expect everything to be the way it was, but also that we shouldn’t just keep mourning.

So, Strid. I used to think of her as kind of a quiet, serious dragon, not the kind to goof around or say more than she has to. She’s a good hunter, and partners with Kyankith to run the scouts under Jast, but she really started proving herself this spring when the centaur clan upriver started trying to move in on our territory. I guess they found out we were rebuilding the lair instead of keeping an eye on them. Anyway, it turns out Strid’s as good a fighter as she is a hunter, and pretty good at strategy, too, since her team always came back. It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise, given that she’s the offspring of our two greatest warriors, Cruach and Jast.

(Which is a little bit scandalous. I sometimes hear the older dragons murmuring about it, but I’ve never found out if that was before or after Cruach met Azurelle and at this point I’m not going to ask.)

The clan leaders actually asked if she wanted to lead the expedition to Lysiae’s clan – that’s the mirror who stayed with us last winter. Some of our younger dragons wanted to go join them, after Brer came back to visit and say how well it was going. So Strid led them off, and she actually came back with one of their clan who’s living with us now and hangs out with me and Kaas. And that’s how we started our partnership with a Nature clan, which is probably the best thing to come out of everything that’s happened.

For example, I think we were all glad that we could be here when three of their littlings stumbled into the valley. They’d been lost, and even though they hadn’t been raised to find the river, they’d managed it anyway. Strid was actually our lookout that day, and heard the commotion when a couple centaur scouts caught these younglings above the waterfall. She and some of the other fighters went down there and drove the attackers off, and brought our visitors back to the lair proper.

The three were objects of great interest, especially after they brought back two lost hatchlings, a skydancer and a fae. Who knew there were so many lost littlings around? But these two came to stay with us too, and I remember on the first night that Strid stuck by them all evening as they slept away their exhaustion.

They were called Athos and Xanthos. I only really interacted with them one time, when Strid brought them along with the foraging party one day. She’d apparently shown them how to make crude baskets from big maple leaves, only Athos’s had broken and it looked like he was struggling to make a new one.

“Want me to show you how?” I asked him after a while.

“Sure,” he squeaked, and then looked affronted. “I mean, uh, sure,” he corrected in an artificially deeper voice. Xanthos flicked his frills and vibrated them at Athos, who pushed him.

We were collecting early salmonberries. At least half of the ones the littlings brought back were unripe; littlings always get too excited about berries to leave the ones that aren’t quite ready. I know because I still do the same thing sometimes. But at dinner that night, Athos and Xanthos got a kick out of watching Strid eat the green ones with a straight face.

The next day, we heard them shouting. We don’t shout here, especially now; too much noise might draw the wrong sort of attention, but the visitors and their little adoptees weren’t to know that. Athos was arguing with the big guardian; I came outside just in time to hear him yell, “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong so I can help you? I’m not a hatchling anymore!”

With that, he turned and crashed away into the undergrowth. Across the valley, I saw Goss and Tephra poke their heads up sharply at the sound of plants being broken. Everyone had paused their chores to watch, but no one moved to stop Athos. I know from experience that storming out is the worst way to get attention in this lair; the adults just let you stew out there until you get bored or hungry and decide to come back. Besides, the scouts are always out there to find you if you need to be found. Our guardian guest seemed to take his cue from everyone else and didn’t run after Athos, and everyone just went back to their chores.

We didn’t find out until later what had happened.

I was too far away to see clearly when Rosebud stumbled out of the forest with Athos over his shoulder. He was bellowing for help, and the clan was already clustering around him. But I spotted Strid, sitting bolt upright with little Xanthos on her head, his frills beginning to tremble. They rushed off and vanished into the crowd, who were now backing off under Cruach’s barking orders. I went and joined some of the other younglings whose job it is to fetch supplies when our healers need them, but we waited without being called until Vayne came over and told us to go to bed.

Everyone was subdued in the days after that. Rosebud and the others left to continue their journey. Cruach, Jast, and Maliberte all took teams of scouts to battle some centaurs, and they must have been working some feelings out, because they drove them not just out of the neighboring valley, but also out of the one beyond that. Strid wasn’t around during this time, but none of the fighting groups said she was with them.

She reappeared suddenly at dinnertime on the third day, with her normal stoic expression back on. Cruach stood up and went over to press her nose against her.

“I’m thinking of starting a school,” Strid told the clan.

“What kind of school?” asked B from across the clearing.

Strid’s resolve evaporated momentarily and she shuffled her feet. “Actually, I was thinking more of an apprenticeship program. Or a series of them. For the littlings.” She looked back up and around at those of us who were there. “We’ve been growing without a plan or structure. What if everything we did was linked? To the protection of the clan?”

Cruach gave a faint rumble of approval, but not everyone seemed so sure. I saw heads turn to look at B, who had listened to Strid’s little speech.

Strid seemed to notice it, too. “Not that the landslide was anything but an accident, or – or any of the other things that've happened, but it seems to me that we’ve been reacting to things instead of trying to plan ahead.”

“Strid is right,” B said. She looked around as everyone turned to her, and sat up. “The growth of this clan has been organic, like the forest. Maybe it’s time for a Goss or a Tephra to come along and help give it direction.”

Eos put her chin in her hand. “Hmmm, I never thought of you as a teacher,” she told her friend Strid dryly. “But if you need someone to lead alchemy, I’d be willing to do it,” she added in a more serious tone.

Kyankith sat up. “I think it’s a fine idea,” he said. “I’ll teach navigation, or whichever related subject you want to include.”

Goss shared a look with Tephra. “Botany,” she said. “Which shouldn’t be a surprise; Shadowbinder knows we teach hatchlings about plants often enough already.”

Long after almost everyone else had nodded off or stopped paying attention, the leaders of our clan, both old and new, fed the fire and laid out the plan for the future growth of the clan, starting with the education of the littlings.