Stux

Skipper's frills flared and then flattened in anxiety.

"Sweetpea, you're...not really gonna keep your hatchlins, right?"

Sweetpea chomped on her hibiscus with an air of contemplation. Her eyes slid over towards the Gordian knot of young spirals, vigorously competing for a few still-articulated vertebrae.

"We-e-e-ll, cousin, they're good kids, but they'll have to grow up and roll out of the nest some day. Can only fit so many wingspans b'low decks, what?"

Skipper's frills flicked, shivered, flattened down again.

"Had a thought."

A pink-coated tundra, only a little older than the convocation of spirals, had wandered over to see what the fuss was about. Skipper watched, fins spread and shivering, as she batted gently at a spiral snout, paws still adolescent oversized.

Sweetpea sat, still placidly chewing her flower stem for a few seconds before getting the clue. She bopped Skipper's shoulder with a forefoot, gentle and clumsy.

"Aw cuz, you still feel bad about the baby?"

His fins shivered more rapidly. "We stole her."

Sweetpea snorted so loudly she had to wipe snot off her snout. Skipper performed one of the expressive gestures held in common by all dragon breeds and rolled his eyes.

"Shut it," said Sweetpea. "But we didn't steal her, she just kinda turned up. Stop being a sadsack about it."

Skipper's fins pressed so flat against his head he looked snakelike. "Ever lost a hatchling?"

She at least had the courtesy to quail a little. "Well, no."

Skipper, mollified, slowly spread his fins back to normal position. "You'll leave em one day anyway," he said, gesturing at the spiral clutch, who had now wrapped themselves round the young tundra's neck and wings like slithery, giggling jewelry. "I say we leave one with that arcane clan. It'll grow up safe, with good dragons, and maybe..." His fins flattened down again, for a moment. "Maybe Windsinger won't take us all for separatin' a little girl from her family."

"Still didn't steal her, cousin. But..." Sweatpea's eyes grew warm as one of her sons, the one with the glimmering brown belly, curled proudly on top of the tundra's head, string of vertebrae clamped in his sharp young teeth. "...fair's fair. Plaguema says, let your children spread to the corners of the earth. It'll be good if in the spreading, one of em takes some lost kid's place."

She patted Skipper's shoulder again, clumsy and gentle. "Lessee what the cap'n has to say."