Lepi: a sweet baby with Sight problems

Lepi was dropped off at Asima's as a very young hatchling. Charlie brought him in one rainy day claiming that his parents thought that he would do better in a clan more prone to dealing with powerful magical peculiarities and...personality problems. With the assurance that his powers, whatever they were, would be a boon to the tiny lair in the future he ended up being the first child that Asima took in.

It helped that they were too broke to take in members at the time and his clan price was pretty cheap.

They never saw his parents. Charlie mumbled something about half-water and vision impairment, but that's all they got out of her. They thought it just meant that he needed glasses. Which he did. But of course, there were things a good prescription couldn't fix.

Lepi was a wonderful, happy child who adapted quickly to his new home. He was sweet and calm and was constantly chirping happily or trying to snuggle up to someone which endeared him to the clan leaders so much that he was pretty much raised as Asima's 3rd child.

Arriving during the rainy season, all he ever wanted to do was run around outside during the varieties of....rain? well, the weather phenomena that passed as rain in the Arcanist's land. He would sleep out there if the adult dragons lost track of him. Hematoma even got into the habit of getting up in the middle of the night if he heard a raindrop hit the ground (or phase through the floor and splat against the ceiling. Whatever) and dragging him back to bed.

No problems were never even hinted at for months.

Then, the rainy season ended.

Suddenly, Lepi didn't want to go outside anymore. Sunny days scared him, warm breezes made him nervous, and he wouldn't have anything to do with playing outdoors.

When flowers around the lair started to go into full bloom, he had terrible night terrors.

One day a butterfly got in and he screamed until he passed out.

When Amethyst finally got him to talk, he learned that Lepi suffered from a fear of butterflies. This fear had extended itself into a fear of anything that could attract them. That fear was what was making him afraid of sunshine and open windows and Arcanist knows what else. After gentle questioning and comforting it was revealed that the root of his fears were the visions.

The visions varied in power depending on how close he was to a butterfly and consisted of the splintering futures for whatever object or person it had interacted with last. Needless to say, some of the visions were equal parts gory and confusing for a small hatchling. He did see things of use sometimes, but he was often too scared to sustain the prolonged contact needed to see them clearly. It's hard to focus when you're a small child suddenly seeing yourself getting read a bedtime story and your house burning to the ground with everyone inside at the same time because a bug flew in and landed on your nightlight.

At Asima and Amethyst's urging Thelema took him into magic control lessons immediately. She encouraged him and always tried to match his learning pace but her aggressive training approaches were never a really good fit for him. It didn't help that the nature of his powers made his progress less visible to the other young dragons. He was too shy to tell them the details of his magic and they didn't know if he had spontaneous murder voice or something so they kind of handled him with kid gloves.

It was a lonely time.

It was Silt who brought it to Amethyst's attention. The young dragon had been going to Amethyst for what Amethyst knew in his heart were increasingly bs reasons and not so slyly asking him about Lepi for about a week. Silt had arrived soon after Lepi and was even shyer, if that was possible. He had powers of observation like nobody's business though, and he had figured out that Lepi was growing more and more detached by the day.

Amethyst soon took the hint and started taking over Lepi's training. They focused on working on his social problems and lessening his panic attacks, which in turn helped him control his visions. In time, Amethyst also pushed a very nervous Silt into a kind of 'apprentice counselor' role. Someone had to be nearby when Amethyst was too busy to supervise Lepi's exercises. Silt had proven himself really effective at bringing him out of his panic attacks and they had grown pretty close pretty quick and Silt didn't have any real plans for what clan position he wanted to take. As far as Amethyst was concerned it was settled. Lepi was delighted. Silt blushed hard enough to break something and accepted.

Lepi's doing very well now barring a few bad days. His phobias are greatly reduced but not completely gone, and forcing him outside is still not recommended. He hopes that one day he'll be able to walk alone on sunny days but has settled for long walks outside of the lair in the evenings with Silt.

He likes sweet things, writing, fake flowers, and rain. Since he still spends a lot of time inside, he's come up with a multitude of games ranging from boardgames for hatchlings, to elaborate strategic roleplaying games. Every week he holds two gaming sessions, one as a kind of family night for the entire clan, and the other just for his friends . Though he's known as sweet and meek, his friends start to sweat when these nights draw near. He weaves wonderful engaging adventures with his games that sometimes leave them teary eyed and their characters lured into very creative deaths.

He's currently writing a book.