Dastan

Fae-Tality: Dastan

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[Day 1]

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Dastan had run away soon after hatching. Barely adult enough for others to take him seriously, he came to the conclusion many children do; that he would be perfectly alright on his own.
It turns out that most non-dragon creatures are not nearly so friendly towards dragons as he was expecting.

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[Day 2]

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The birds in the forest were cruel; swooping at him and trying to peck his eyes out. He made every effort to keep them off his back, claws and teeth and tail all at work to keep himself safe from their attacks.
Still small enough, even as an imperial, to curl up and hide in the roots of trees, he shielded himself in that way; wings pulled up over him as a sort of shield. Delicate as the skin and feathers were, they still kept his face and neck safe from the claws of the birds.

It was not long before the assault slowed, then stopped. He stayed in his fetal defense, shuddering when an insectoid chittering sounded behind him, accompanied by a clawed hand touching itself to his back.
The chittering continued. He looked up, quietly, nervously. "What..?"
A brown mith waved at him, a spear of wood in one hand and a bag of flowers around its body. With a little flutter, it left- leaving Dastan with no idea of what it had been doing here, or why it was uninterested in attacking him where every other creature had.

The night passed uneventfully, despite the earlier daylight hours being less-than-easy.

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[Day 3]

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Another day. He stood, testing the injuries of yesterday. While most had scabbed over and were barely worth making note of, his wings still felt the effects of the avian claws. He suspected that a fair number of the feathers had been removed from them; a fact which he was passingly aware would affect flying. The marks, where the scabs had fallen away, had shimmering golden colors in them as they mended.

Miths, who seemed to have made a large city in the woods, flew at him each time he encroached; through a long process of getting more injuries than he could count, he made out the edges of the mith territory. The houses in the trees were similar in make to the few fae nests he'd seen in his home clan before having left.

A brown mith waved at him from in the air, then tried to shoo him away. He lifted a paw, stepping back before another dart could find itself wedged into his scales. It nodded, fluttering down closer; accompanied by two others, blue and green.
"Hi?" He started, flinching back as the two miths on the sides gestured in a manner threatening. The brown one looked at him, then made some comment he was not privy to with the others.
They were unreadable like the Fae too, he noted.
The mith fluttered up to him, blinked twice, then gestured for him to follow her.
He followed. What else would he do? Try and pass through the Mith territory again, only to get fatally wounded? No.

So there wasn't much to do but follow until night-fall, when he could no longer see the small creature. Since they were quiet even when they spoke, it vanished quickly- leaving him alone to the crawling beasts of the night.
The nearest tree provided a degree of safety as he curled into its roots, shivering against the cool winds of the south.

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[Day 4]

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The mith seemed to have vanished again.
He wondered if it was just trying to lead him away from its territory. He wouldn't be too surprised, since all the creatures had been so intent on driving him away from there.
Stretching, he stood up, padding away through the woods. Testing his wings, he pushed himself into the sky, straining against the weight of his body and pushing what little magic he had to create an updraft to ride.

The warmer winds above pushed and pulled him along, allowed him to soar, but it took little time before he became too tired to continue, drifting back into the forest to walk. He was athletic, but lacked the interest to fly constantly. His clan- ex-clan, was built on the ground, in bamboo huts, so that getting around was easier by foot than by wing.

Moth wings fluttered in the distance- the mith? Indeed. It waved, an action he'd come to associate with big, shining blue eyes and brown fur. With the innocent look of the meter-and-a-half tall creature.
It chirped at him, a sound he'd never heard before from the species.

He walked along with the mith, pausing only briefly as he found a stone the color and clarity of ice tucked under a layer of dirt and grass. He picked it up, but he had nothing he could use to hold it with, so it was set back down. He wiggled his claws. The stone was chilled beyond the usual cool stone temperature... Weird.

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[Day 5]

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The brown mith, who had stopped its game of flying ever out of Dastan's reach, paused in its flight entirely, setting feet back to ground.
Dastan was grateful for it, even if it had been squirrelly for the earlier days, and he couldn't say for certain that it was the same mith at all. He hadn't expected to become lonely while out here. The world was awful big, even for creatures that grew to the sizes that imperials did.
It walked up to him now, reaching a hand out to pat his arm.
"I wish I understood anything you said," he muttered as the mith began speaking again. It fluttered up, resting on his back, and made some other comment.

A few bags woven out of vines, and a green stone with a degree of magic imbued in it, were found through the day; the mith had begun functioning as diplomat between Dastan and the other miths that were found in the area, preventing too much fighting from breaking out as it did so.

At night, the mith dismounted, and pointed at Dastan with its spear of a twig. He stepped back, not knowing exactly what it meant by that.
It started to write in the sand. Not in some language he couldn't make sense of, either- these were draconic runes!

"You can write?"
It nodded.
"Why didn't you before?"
It gestured to itself, then to Dastan- if I wrote on paper, you would have been unable to read it. It took a while for it to write the whole thing, having to make each rune as wide as its own stance was, but eventually Dastan nodded.
Made sense, he supposed. "But then, you can understand Draconic?"
It nodded again.
"Is this because of what I said earlier?"
Yep.
"... Sorry I can't understand you."
Do you want to learn?
He nodded, this time. It would be nice to carry out conversations with the mith, if he was able to. "But we should sleep now, right?"
It shrugged, putting its spear away.

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[Day 6]

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The mith was quick to begin chattering at Dastan, even as they entered into a deeper part of the woodlands. Dryads would be visible, only to hide away as soon as they were sighted.
Above, owls wearing pink feathers intermingled with their brethren. "Nearly in Arcane, huh?"
"Yeah." Linguistically, the mith-speech was substantially less difficult to decrypt than would be something like another iteration of draconic- at least, that was the impression that Dastan had gotten, after a few hours of speaking with his companion and her giving gestures that indicated her meanings.

It certainly wasn't easy to speak, and not exactly simple to understand, but as a language it was less complex. The issue was hearing the minor shifts in pitch and the spacings between her 'words'.

There were a great deal of things which they found in their time in the woods, but none of them seemed particularly interesting to Dastan- and certainly nothing he could use. So all the stones that felt of magic and power he left behind, and all the bundles of treasure which belonged to dryads or maths he was ushered away from by his companion.