Pyre

Privately, Pyre thought the plague nesting grounds were not as bad a place to hatch as you might think. As a hatchling Pyre hadn't known to mind the smell; if it's the first thing your nose meets, it doesn't really know to be horrified. To this day it doesn't strike him as that bad, though he knows his mate would cry to hear him say it. By the time he was big enough to soar above the stench and get his first breath of sweet, clean air, he was already leaving it behind.

He can't help his fond memories of the place. The hatching nest he and his siblings shared was warm, well-fed, a tumult of bright and shimmering noodles in a sunset of colors. To travel to another clan was a fact of his life from the earliest age, but his parents spoke of their own places of birth with warmth. They told him he was welcome back, if he couldn't find a home elsewhere.

For days after his birth he never saw his parents apart from each other, and the great and confusing meters of them made it difficult for his young eyes to see where one ended and the other began. It took him some time to understand that they were, in fact, separate dragons. Even so he struggled with the idea that they had existed before each other, had in fact met as adults, and not been created specifically to suit the other. In the nest they wove around each other like the most remarkable slipknot, and he dreamt that he would someday find a mate to tie himself around like that, tangled and untangled like a dance as they traced great patterns in the sky.

He found the dusk to his sunset, the skydancer Valencia, in the plains of Wind flight. Their first clutch was impulsive, their new lair barely established and formal nests or pairs still far from being established. When their clutch of four eggs arrived, there was barely a stir in the flight except to set aside some space for them. All kinds of eggs hatched that day, babies of clashing colors and swirling patterns tumbling into the world, and Pyre was alone with Valencia as the first sharp claw (a claw!) punctured the shell. And then another claw, a snout, and Valencia was leaning forward to pull off a bit of egg that might poke the eye. As she touched one all four eggs moved and cracked at once and Pyre wound his whole body around the nest, a full circle to protect his mate and their eggs, as their first clutch tumbled into the world: every single one a vivid kaleidoscope of dawn.