Nalani

The night sky! I consider it one of the most peaceful things in my life thus far! Did you know that as a young hatchling I was actually terrified of being outside in the dark all alone? Something about the vastness above my head scared me, made me feel as if I was all alone in the world. As if I was cut off from a place I should have been at but had no idea it even existed. It was after much later, when my mother explained some things to me that I grew into loving the night sky. Today, it’s the most comforting place for me.

Tonight I decided to go sit outside in the first grass of spring and stare up at the sky. For it being late march it was a cool almost summertime night. The sky was clear – not a cloud to be found anywhere –, a mixture of dark midnight blues and purple all swirled together to make up all these beautiful contrasting lights and darks. The stars just came out from their hiding place and started decorating the sky. It almost looked as if someone took a handful of glitter and just threw it up there. They were as sparkling and gorgeous as on the day I came to life.

I was used to listen to my friends’ parents never ending stories about the hatchdays of their little ones: How they impatiently looked over their eggs, documenting every single crack that appeared until the young dragons would finally crawl out of their shell. And while my friends tried to hide their embarrassment and to draw the attention off to a more saver subject, I would just sit there in wonder. My mother Galaxy rarely spoke about the day I came to life and I also don’t remember me crawling out of an egg. There was just that moment… a moment I became aware of the fact that I was there.

It was just her and me that day, standing under a beautiful night sky. The constellation shimmered so strongly as to wish me the best of luck for my future. There was just enough light to see the pale shape of her arm as she sat me down on the grass. Her whole body just blended in with the night sky and the stars surrounding us. It felt so unreal, like the realization of a dream. Today I would say the most comparable feeling is floating in water without the sensation of water on your skin. Weightlessness, as if one had all the hang time in the world. And it scared the hell out me! Badly shaking I had closed my eyes tightly and I kept them shut until my mother picked me up and brought me into the clans’ nicely lit nursery. Only years later – and when I finally grew tired of being afraid of the dark – I got the courage to ask my beautiful mother about that day and the meaning behind the celestial map-like markings on our bodies.

She told me about how galaxies were so much more than just collections of stars, gas, dust and dark matter held together by gravity. Their appearance and composition were shaped over billions of years by interactions with groups of stars and other galaxies. My mother herself had hatched out of a moon in a far, faraway universe. As it cracked and shards of the moon scattered, a dragon blanketed with stars was created that floated out there in a deep slumber for such a long time, until she finally came upon this planet, radiating with life. After plummeted to Sorneith and landing on The Behemoth she was taken in by a nature clan and lived her life like any other dragon. For now, that was all she ever told me about herself.

About my birth, well, this is how my mother told me about it: While swirling through space she had actually started to gather some small clouds of stars and dust without knowing at first. They snuggled themselves into her body patterns where they careened into one another and started to knit themselves into larger spinning packs over time. After coming to Sornieth and growing up – at some point – my mother got aware of them and took them out. They were starting to outgrow her body pattern! She hesitated, not knowing what to do with the floating star clouds, but then she grinned and gently helped them to form and then merge together. The pack’s light continued to swell. First the merest flickering: a fleck, a distant star. Then more of them began to glow, some firefly’s worth. Still more of this brightness grew; a body was formed, till it was all-over cluttered with shine. She smiled at it while it roused itself the rest of the way, taking the form of a dragon hatchling. Yours truly was born.

The stars were sparkling and gorgeous, reflecting of my newly formed body. The moon accented the night sky perfectly. It was three quarters full, bright and beautiful. And while I had forgotten all about the beauty of that night for some time, the sky remained calm and peaceful waiting for me to find my way back to it again. There was no way I could actually leave Sornieth and wander it like my mother did, but I wanted to get as close to it as possible. So I left my mother and the clan I grew up in not knowing exactly what I was looking for but eager to find out.