Caelestis

Daughter of the Garden, where several of the clan's members have found a home, Caelestis was not born a Tundra; she hatched from the egg a bewildered Wildclaw, confused at the shape of her own feet and body. Nor did her mother make her any less puzzled... how could she, when she made her nests with another female, and not Caelestis's father? The young dragoness saw the love between her mother and the other female Wildclaw, but could not help feeling disoriented by the entire affair. Was nothing about her normal? It didn't help that Helvetica took one sniff of her and said, 'She smells like a Tundra.' And, brightly, 'Send her to the Lair by the Sea. She should have brine in her fur.'

'But I don't have fur,' Caelestis wanted to say, and that was the last thought she had before she embarked on the journey to her new home.

On arrival, Reina had one look at Caelestis, furrowed her brow, and said, 'That is a Tundra child in the body of a Wildclaw.'

'That can be fixed,' Hephaestus, keeper of the Hoard, observed. 'We have a scroll.'

'Then fix it, before the poor hatchling grows any more confused.'

...and so they did, and Caelestis was astonished to discover herself, and to feel seated in her body at last. Helvetica had been right! She had fur, and it felt natural... normal! And she liked her new clanmates, who smelled--she discovered, startled--like SolarFlare and Nyala and Aharoni. Like the sea, and the wind over wildflowers. Like a garden, of sorts. Her life at last created a circuit, and a spark traveled it: from the Garden to the Sea, from one body to another, from the smell of clanmates to the smell of family and back again.

She wonders how her mother is, though. Mothers? That part, she will admit, she still hasn't figured out yet.

***

The first dragons the clan prepared for the Earthshaker's heavenly service went to the Pillar to pledge themselves amid great celebration and fanfare. How not? The clan was used to the Windsinger's rite, where their candidates shed their flesh and spiraled up into the air to join the god, light and joyous as breezes. It was as beautiful to witness as it was to enact. Everyone looked forward to the moment of apotheosis.

The Earthshaker interred them.

The shock and horror of it was overwhelming. The clan spent the day frenetically digging, until their claws broke and their hides dulled with mud. They had not promised an afterlife trapped in the rock of the world to their clan-members. The very idea was abhorrent. And yet it could not be undone...! The keening when they discovered they had lost their family to a dark and claustrophobic tomb lasted for nights on end, and in their grief they rent themselves bloody and lost themselves in a fugue of despair.

After stumbling home from the disaster, Caelestis went to the clan garden and planted the first flowers to honor the lost. Perhaps if she carved stones and named the plots, the exaltees would find the roots of the plants and follow them to the surface, and be free? She admitted she wasn't thinking very clearly, but she had to honor them somehow, and mourn them in her own way. So she built out the garden, and chose flowers or trees or useful plants based on each of the lost dragons, so that each plot was distinct and unique.

But the worst was yet to come. After conferring, the clan decided that all future exaltees would be sent across the water, either to be exalted to the Gladekeeper's kind realm, or to wing their way home to one of the Lair's allied clans on the Windswept Plains. Given the length of the journey, the clan held the exalts back until enough of them were collected to help one another home. The group set out together amid great fanfare... and several days later, one or two dragons stumbled back with the horrifying news that they'd been swallowed by an earthquake.

An accident? the clan whispered. Or had the Earthshaker claimed another pawful of souls?

Once again, Caelestis turned to her garden and worked her grief into the soil, tearing into the Earth with bitter claws, watering it with tears, and planting her memorials. She returned one day to find one of the clan's dragons sleeping alongside one of the plaques... and after that, she redoubled her efforts, flying over the water to her birth-home to bring back sacks of fertile earth to enrich the dry and barren soil of Dragonhome. She and later Ban went to work enlarging the garden, spreading it... her own form of defiance. From death, life. She would will it.

***

It was easier when they left Dragonhome. Her gardens grew profusely while they were in Light, and while it was a challenge to find large enough patches of sun, the Shadow plots were... an adventure, and at night, a delight. Many an evening found her sitting amid her gardens while the clan tarried in Shadow, staring at the glowing flowers, mushrooms, and leaves that had found their way into the earth she'd turned.

She was thrilled to accompany the clan to Nature, where she'd been born, and there the gardens were extravagant, and the land so fruitful it was hard to tell where her efforts ended and the land began.

After that respite, they moved on to Arcane, where among her more mundane flowers, Caelestis found blossoms made of crystal and gemstone-edged leaves. That was the first time her labors resulted not just in seed stores, preserved food, and flowers for offerings, but in cabochons and treasure, set aside in the hoard.

"Everywhere we go," she said to Eirene, her assistant, "we learn something. And we collect something."

"It's wonderful," the other tundra said, cheerful. "Though some places are easier than others."

"Yes," Caelestis said, and did not look at the flowers she still planted for the dragons the clan had lost.

Eirene nudged her, shoulder to shoulder. "So it goes, on Sornieth. We abide."

Caelestis shifted her wings, resettled them. "Yes," she said more firmly. "We do."