Noelani

FR Fifth Anniversary Baby.

---

Zora heard the noise first and took off immediately into the underbrush. Rako raised his head, alarmed, but then he heard it, too: the faint but distinct sound of a hatchling in distress. His first inclination was to ignore it, but Shadow rose up into the air a few moments later to follow Zora at a distance. Rako trailed them both. Zora could handle herself, but Shadow needed to keep his distance from enemies, and Rako had no interest in leaving his companions to deal with an obvious trap themselves.

To his surprise, when he arrived, he found that there was a hatchling after all, a sickly looking thing with dark eyes and clearly defined ribs. Zora had scooped them up and cradled them against the ridge on her chest. "There, there," she murmured. "It's all right. You'll have a new home and plenty of food soon enough."

Shadow's crest flared forward. "Is that your charge?"

Zora huffed at him. "No. Not that it's any of your concern, but she hardly has to be my charge for us to do the decent thing and take her home. Shadow, if you wouldn't mind…?"

And wasn't that just a Nature dragon all around, Rako thought wryly as Shadow craned his neck forward and took a deep breath to cast Regeneration on the hatchling. Some of his reflexive animosity had faded: certainly Zora wasn't pushing the Gladekeeper's message, but she was quick to rely on healing magic for herself and others. Rako had to bite back a reflexive remark that the hatchling didn't look anywhere near death.

"She's a stolen dragon," Zora added, interrupting Rako's increasingly annoyed thoughts. She nudged a bit of pink eggshell away from the hatchling's head, and they whined. "It's good that we found her when we did: who knows what her kidnappers were planning."

"Are you sure?" Shadow tipped his crest this way and that.

"We're nowhere near the Arcanist's territory." Zora nuzzled the hatchling again, and they cooed. "How else would she have gotten this far on her own?"

Rako coughed to draw the attention of his companions before jerking his head back in the direction they'd come from. "If training's over for the day, better get back."

Zora spread and resettled her wings. "Right. This is no place for a hatchling." She adjusted her grip on the hatchling, and Rako felt a moment of sick, irritated certainty before she made the jump straight up, crashing through branches and creating a rain of broken forest growth.

Maybe not so much a Nature dragon after all.

Shadow emerged from the tree he'd huddled against and glanced over at Rako before silently fluttering up after Zora. Rako growled and launched himself at a tree, then off again to give himself some momentum. At least Zora had left a nice open space to work with.

Strange, though, he thought as they flew off towards the lair that had somehow become home. The hatchling watched him and Shadow, silent and solemn through the whole flight, and something about their eyes bugged Rako. They looked too dark. Maybe he'd spent too long staring at Nikephoros' handsome profile if he'd started to notice the exact shade of pink they looked in sunlight. Or maybe it was malnutrition. Either way, he felt uneasy over the whole thing and resolved to keep his distance once he'd made sure that Zora was leaving the hatchling with Tala and the others and wasn't going to try to care for the tiny dragon herself.