Adhara

ADHARA

Birthplace: Reedcleft Ascent

Adventurous | Curious | Loyal

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Inventory

Raw Lapis Lazuli

Minerals & Ores

Hey! It's a big chunk of that rock that no one knows how to pronounce!

100

Traveler's Runestone

Trinkets

The sigils indicate that they will grant swiftness to the bearer... but they don't seem to work for dragons.

325

Seeker Orb

Dragonmade

Seeker eyes are desirable commodities; dragons believe that jewelry crafted from these smooth stones may provide insight into their dreams.

30

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"O' wise and wistful daughter,
When your hearth doth shun the moor
May stone birthed of polished water
Bring you safely back to shore."

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From the time that she is born, the sky is a distant, dizzying blur above her.

"Her eyes will clear up in a few days, I think," says a hazy figure above her. It smells like dust and deep earth, and she cuddles into their soft fur.

They don't clear up.

But that's alright. She has four strong legs and a nose for trouble, even if she has to squint blearily at it before she dives in headfirst. She's the smallest of her brothers, but that means nothing to a hatchling whose heart is as stubborn as it is brave.

"Mother," she asks when she's old enough. "I want to see the clouds." Her mother laughs. She doesn't understand what's funny, so she laughs too. "Of course you do," Mother says. "You're a daughter of the sky." She doesn't know what that means, but it makes her feel warm.

She tries flying the next day, and gets a broken tooth for her trouble. The old Wildclaw scolds her, but she smells worried as she pries Adhara's mouth open to look at the sluggish ooze of blood. "Lucky your new ones are growing in," the elder dragon tells her. "I suppose we ought not be surprised. You are the Pilgrim's daughter, after all." She's heard that word before, but she doesn't know what it means. "What does 'Pilgrim' mean?" she asks around the claws in her mouth.

"It means someone who's from far away, who's looking for something," the old hunter tells her.

"What are they looking for?"

"That's for them to know. You should ask your mother."

She finds her mother by following the scent of rot. "What does 'Pilgrim' mean?" she asks.

Her mother is silent for some time. "Sometimes," she says, "Where you are born is not where you belong. A Pilgrim is someone who follows where their heart pulls them."

She doesn't quite understand the words, but she holds them close to her heart until the day when she does. Mother is very wise, and Mother often understands the questions Adhara asks better than anyone else. Mother teaches her to cast bones in the dust to tell fortunes, tells her of a sun-baked world festering in the heat, red sand so vast that many get lost in it for so long that they become part of it.

Father is the one to take her flying. She grasps his mane as she peers over his broad sides to watch the distant smear of green ground whirl past. He tells her grand stories of trees as big as gods, of deep blue water and endless green forests, of dark woods that whisper to themselves, dotted with glowing eyes. He shows her the best rivers to play in, takes her to the edge of the Arcanist's territory and lets her squint up at the glowing crystals that lean towards the center, lets her run up and down the beach chasing the ocean until she's too tired to move.

She takes her first flight in a thunderstorm that rolled in from the sea, flies so high that her fur catches static. The rain pelts her wings and soaks her to the skin, but the wind lifts her up, up, up until she can greet the clouds she's looked at her whole life.

She returns to the den exhausted and soaking wet but more alive than she's ever felt.

With her wings under her, there's nowhere she can't go. She chases the harpies in the Plateau, sleeps under the sea of stars in the Reaches, tries the freshwater delicacies from the Fishspine reef. She brings home the stones that Father likes, and gathers strange, exotic bones for Mother to adorn herself with.

Where the wind sings her name, she is home, and always she returns to it.

Mother and Father know it before she does. "The whole world awaits you," Father says, his green eyes shining. "I know you'll find what you're looking for." He gives her a stone band to take with her. "For luck," he says, but she knows he means more than that.

"Daughter of sky," her Mother says, softly. "Your heart pulls you."

She sleeps by their sides that night, like she did when she was small.

The morning wind sweeps her up, up, until the ground below seems like a distant dream. Up, up. until the sky is all she sees, the wind's song all she knows, to where the next adventure awaits.