Eilidh

Eilidh, a young Skydancer, stood in front of a hatchling class, trying very hard to stop herself from jittering. Not going to lie, she really didn’t want to be there in the first place! One could see how excited, overwhelmed, nervous, anxious, overzealous, and even a little scared she was. First of all, Eilidh wasn’t even sure if she was cut out for this; and second, the thought of watching and teaching a bunch of rowdy hatchlings was just overwhelming, to say the least. And it was all Étaín’s fault! The ambassador had boasted about her great idea of some sort of ‘Career Day’ and how she was still looking for some volunteers. She wanted to invite a couple of clan members to the nursery so they’d share their knowledge and experiences with the little ones. And even though Eilidh never agreed to participate, she was somehow dragged into it anyways. Ambassadors were truly scary beings when they truly want things to going their way.

Nonetheless, it was Eilidh’s first day in a teacher’s role and she was waiting for her class in front of her place, a decent sized building squeeze in between Nuria’s pyrotechnics and Levan’s glass blowing workshop. For reasons of simplification, Skydancer had set up camp there as she shared a couple of essential chemicals – that made her lights even brighter – with Nuria, while Levan provided her with some amazing new glass creations for her lamps. Fortunately for the class, the both of them decided to go on a little vacation, so there would be no explosions or broken glass tonight.

It was late afternoon when a group of seven young dragons and their caretaker landed just a few steps away and approached Eilidh. The Imperial lady had no problem keeping them all in order and by her side, but soon enough she passed them over to Eilidh – not without giving them some last reprimands – and left.

‘Here goes nothing…’, Eilidh thought and wave them nearer and together, they entered the workplace. High among the high rafters of the workshop a half hundred glass spheres hung from chains. They were of varying sizes, colors and brightness, though none were much larger than a Pearlcatcher’s head.

“Good evening everyone, I’m Eilidh. I’m the one who makes all the lanterns…” And then she froze. The Skydancer did prepare a little inspiring speech for the occasion, but she just couldn’t remember it! In the end, she recited a figure of speech her mother used to tell all the time to get back into track. “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it… Ok… As you all kn-”

“What are those things up there?” “Can I touch that?!” “Lanterns are boring; can’t we go over to Nuria and blow something up?”

The hatchlings suddenly just exploded with energy; running all over the place, asking questions and trying to get their noses into everything that wasn’t nailed down. Eilidh just stood there and watched the chaos unfold. The sound of breaking glass brought her back into reality. Fortunately, none of the little one was hurt by the shattering glass of the light orb she had forgotten on the table. But it reminded her of what had happened to her sister back in the days… she decided to just forget about the speech and to set everyone down for a little story time instead. One nice feature about Eilidh workingplace was that she could actually darken the room at any time of the day. While doing so now, she put some soft wrapping blankets on the floor and gave each hatchling a nice little – and very, very sturdy, definitely not easy to break – light orb to hold onto, creating the perfect environment for her story.


“When I was your age, I just loved to watch my mother handling those precious bits of light. The where very much alike the orbs you all are holding right now. But she actually captured the rays of light the old way: gently plucking them from midair as if they were solid strings and putting them into glass spheres so they would stay on Sornieth a bit longer then the split second it was born for.

“You know, at first I also thought of lanterns being boring. I liked watching my mother handling them, but I never imagined following in her footsteps. Maybe some of you noticed, there are some lanterns that are a bit different than the others. Well, I can’t catch the light quite as effective as my mother did – it takes many, many years of training to do that –, so I’m currently experimenting with chemicals that can create light! To tell you the truth, light orbs created out of a single light ray are still the most beautiful lanterns in the whole world.

“But let me tell you about the day, I decided to become a lantern maker: It was a cold and moonless night of winter solstice. As there was no moonlight to be harvested for light orbs, I wasn’t very motivated to go out with my mother that night, but she dragged me along with her anyways. We met up with other dragons, most of them I’d never seen before, and we were all standing still on that field. It was cold and I lost my patience very quickly, but my mother just told me to ‘wait for it’. Then she pressed something papery in my claws. It was some kind of lantern but of a sort I’ve never seen her work before.

“ ‘Now listen to me.’ She said. ‘Wait for my signal and then break this light orb, take the ray inside and bind it to the lantern. It’s not easy, but you can do it!’ And though I never thought it to be possible, on that moonless winter solstice I caught my first a ray of light and bound it to a paper lantern. I stood there with the lantern I had created and every so gently I pushed it up to soar into the sky. But then,… something truly magical happened!

“As my eyes followed the lantern flowing upwards, all the other dragons sent off their lanterns as well. We were surrounded by the warm glow of hundreds of lanterns. Everywhere I looked I could see them rising up into the dark sky, piercing the black with light. It is so beautiful. Really something you can’t describe. It’s like nothing else. Seeing all those lights coming together, we created something so beautiful that would make the deities proud. … Dragons from all over Sornieth gathered that night and for a brief moment everyone stood together filling the sky with “what lights them”. That was the night I joined the guild of lantern makers; it was a beautiful and magical, something I’ll never forget.”


Somewhere along the way Eilidh began to thrive in her role as storyteller. Time actually went by too fast. When the little ones said their goodbyes, they clung to the lantern maker and to finally send them off, the Skydancer gifted each of them the light orb they were holding onto during the story. Eilidh wasn’t entirely sure, but she could swear she noticed a certain light in their eyes. Was it just a reflection from the lantern’s glow or was there something deeper, more profound being light inside the young dragons?

Eilidh wasn’t sure. However, she would continue to make lanterns. Lanterns to bring light into everyone’s lives, to pull them closer together, to actually guide someone back home and to share cherished stories with.