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Mate: None Family: None Occupation: Nest Mother

Artwork: ---

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Demeter emerged from the shadows of the Tangled Wood in the same manner a flame flickers to life in the deepest night. At first, one must blink to be sure it is there, and then once sure it is, it is blindingly obvious. She came without warning at the turn of the year, bringing with her the first whispers of spring and the warmth of a hundred candles.

If asked, Avon-Kei would say he felt her arrival, but no one is truly sure how.

At the time of her coming, Nocte was in a state of heavy sadness. Though their borders were kept and their lands patrolled, hatchlings were still plucked from them one by one by unseen hands. The clan was smaller then, a group of bone weary Archivists and a few broad shouldered soldiers and little else. They did what they could, but again and again, the children were lost. It hurt some of them so much they laid down and simply died, adding the corpses of mothers to the pile.

Demeter was the solution. They knew it as soon as they laid eyes on her, even before Avon-Kei proclaimed she would become the Nest Mother of their clan. She exuded warmth from her glowing core, an aura of heat and safety radiating out from her wherever she went. Her ethereal appearance did not make her frightening, but instead seemed to be an image ingrained in all of their memories. Something from long, long ago; almost an instinct.

She settled into the clan, a glowing warmth in their cool darkness, and began to take hatchlings beneath her wing. They grew, cared for and strong, beneath her watchful eye. All she asked was a guard or two when the time was right and the dragons meant for the task passed into the clan, for she herself was not a fighter. It was readily agreed she would have this, for since he coming the clan had lost not a single child, and they would do anything to keep it this way.

It was some time before she found her first guard, and in the space between there were Warriors to watch over her. Irshtu was hardly the choice any of Nocte thought she would make, and yet, she saw something in him others did not. Her kindness reached a part of him he wasn't aware he had, and soon he had shed his vain self in favor of a dutiful young man, prepared to do whatever it took to defend the nests he watched.

The second guard was young Thallane, who slept beneath Demeter's wing before he grew at all. He did not leave her side, after he was grown, and Irshtu tutored him in the ways of a Guard, so soon the two were both at Demeter's side. Things were peaceful, for the three of them, their work only to watch over the young lives that passed through their clan. Many children came and grew beneath Demeter's wings.

When the Revolt came upon them, she feared none would ever again. The nest where Demeter and her Guards resided was swarmed for the very purpose of eradicating any young that might lay there. It seemed a blessing there were not hatchlings or eggs to guard when the Siege came, but it was a small blessing.

Irshtu and Thallane fought their way through their enemies, begged Demeter to remain where she was, safe at least for a moment, while they disappeared into the fray. All around her, the clan struggled for its survival, the earth a writhing mess of fear and blood. Something sickly crawled from the depths. The shadows recoiled from it, hissed as it touched them, and in her core she could feel its coming. The mortal enemy of all those things magic.

The Shade.

It was true Demeter was not a fighter, that her claws were not meant to rend and her teeth were not meant to tear. She was kindness and love at its purest. And it made her deadly to a thing so opposite herself.

No one but Demeter knows just what she did that day, how she drove the Shade from their land as her fellow dragons tore its emissaries apart. Some might say she let her core burst, that she burnt herself out, but in the aftermath her glow was dimmer. It weakened as time went on, more and more, though her temperament never changed an her kindness never wavered, until it had almost gone out. She told her Guards not to worry, and once the last of the fledglings had grown, the fire in her died out.

What came next, only the Guards know, and they will never speak of it. But from where before there had been an old dragon with age on her face and years on her back, there was born a new creature, with the heart of the old. Surely she was Demeter, she held her aura, her kind eyes, her gentle smile, but she was fresh. Young and even more breathtaking than before.

It was as if nothing had changed. Though her appearance was altered and her body was different than before, she was he same Warmheart the clan had loved since she had arrived. And now they loved her more, if possible, for her sacrifice for all their sakes. She returned to her nest, settling back into the act of caring for the young, and there she remained.

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