Chinaru

o o

It was unmistakeably an egg. Crystal and Pixie puzzled over the rocky specimen for an hour, but it simply couldn’t be anything else. The egg lay in a nest that was not currently occupied, and slight sounds could be heard from it with the use of a stethoscope, as one could hear from any other egg. Most evidently of all, the egg would move, shedding pebbles all around it.

Indeed, the egg had the rough, rocky texture of Earth eggs, and was pretty much egg shaped. But it had four stubby protrusions, and small gemstones littered the shell. And no one knew where it had come from.

Eventually, it was settled that Crystal - and consequently Michael - would care for it. Although no one was sure if it required tending to, seeing how it had appeared in the nesting grounds so suddenly. But just to be sure, Crystal kept the egg warm and watched over it.

o o

The protrusions grew longer and larger in girth. The small gemstones that littered the shell moved a little every day, until they congregated in two circles. The shell thinned a third of the way down, or perhaps two parts swelled while a small middle section remained the same. Two more stumps protruded from the opposite side of the original four and grew thinner and longer.

The egg was not hatching.

It was being molded into the shape of a dragon.

o o

It was a month before the egg finished morphing into a dragon. Two weeks after the egg was found, it was clear that it would become a Snapper dragon.

Within the two circles formed by the small gemstones grew the shape of eyes. Three weeks into its transformation, the egg bore the rough shape of a sleeping hatchling Snapper.

After four weeks, the hatchling stood up on shaking legs, tottered to the edge of the nest, and tripped over the side.

‘Come here, now,’ Crystal said, nudging him back to his feet.

He stood up and turned his head around and around. If it were not for the stripes on his body, he would be near invisible while standing on the earth. Crystal bent her head down and chirped gently, encouragingly.

The hatchling’s eyes were not closed. The earth-coloured orbs above its snout were eyes - blind, unseeing eyes.

o o

‘He is a gift from the Earthshaker,’ Daichi declared to the clan.

In the middle of the floor, the newly named Chinaru waddled around, laughing whenever he bumped into an obstacle, butting his head against it if he sensed that it was another dragon. Some of them were in awe of him. The others were mildly afraid.

‘Does the Earthshaker do that?’ Hershel asked. ‘Just drop eggs - or embryos, or whatever - of dumb, blind dragons into people’s lairs?’

Lullaby smacked him around the head with her tail, and Hildr said rebukingly, ‘He can hear you!’

‘I only mean he’s not talking!’ Hershel protested.

‘No-o’ Daichi said slowly. ‘But dragons hatched with those eyes are said to be a blessing from him.’

‘Yes, that makes sense,’ Duskcloud said. ‘Dragons born with strange eyes completely unique to their region exist everywhere. But they can see, and they are hatched from eggs, not randomly found and transformed into hatchlings.’

‘That is why I say it is the Earthshaker’s gift. He may even be a direct child of the Earthshaker, molded from himself and in his image.’

Those of the clan who had been part of it from their time on the Windswept Plateau turned to Crystal, one of the direct children of the Windsinger. (Michael was currently away on one of his patrols.) Her bulky shoulders rolled in a shrug.

‘If you want to ask me what it is like to be a child molded by a deity, I can’t answer. I can’t tell between dragons like myself and dragons like the rest of you.’

‘Should we keep him?’ Hershel said, voicing the question that was at the forefront of everybody’s minds.

Everyone had an opinion. No one said outright that they thought Chinaru should leave, but some of them said he was a strange creature. If he had come from the Earthshaker, however, it would be very bad luck to get rid of him. Zinnia quietly voiced the view that there was no reason to make the child leave until he wished to do so. Ren raised an eyebrow, and then agreed.

The crowd conversation went on for several moments. Only Lullaby, curled up on a seat of down, and Osiris, hanging by his tail from an overhead crystal beam, refrained from speaking. Then, Lullaby thumped her tail on the floor, causing stalactites to shed small streams of water.

‘Chinaru will stay,’ she said. And that was the end of the discussion.

o o

After the first time he had risen to his legs, Chinaru ceased to grow. He would never become a fully fledged male Snapper.

Perhaps it was just as well. He was incredibly strong, even considering his size and breed.

Caramel, the other permanent hatchling of the clan, played with him often. Sometimes, she tickled his soft belly with her little claws and tail, and he would squeal with laughter. Wanting to return the teasing, Chinaru pounced on her and prodded her with his big, thick nails, his stubby tail lashing wildly to hit at any part of it could reach.

He didn’t know his own strength, or that despite being the same size, he was fifty times heavier than she was.

She screamed, and by the time Crystal and Duskcloud ran into the room and dragged Chinaru away, Caramel’s belly was bruised and bloody. She wept, and coughed blood onto the cave floor. Chinaru, securely held in Crystal’s arms, could neither see nor understand what was wrong, and squirmed to get away, as if to resume playing.

It took several weeks of Pixie’s and Crystal’s careful care before Caramel was fully healed, and Duskcloud thenceforth would never let Chinaru near Caramel when he was around.

o o

It also became clear that Chinaru, for some reason or other, could not speak. He squealed, murmured, and laughed, but the power to form words evaded him. With time, he was taught to understand traditional draconic, and even a little of the language of Coatls, but he would reply with barks and gestures that the clan had to learn to interpret.Shortly after Caramel healed from her injuries, Lullaby instructed Daichi to bring Chinaru to meet his family, a noble family held in high regard amongst the Crystalcourt Elite.

‘They might be able to tell us about him,’ she said.

‘Oh, er, if …’ Daichi mumbled, ‘if you think so …’

‘Is something the matter?’ Lullaby said mildly.

‘Well … no …’

Of course, Lullaby knew, without Crystal or Zinnia having to tell her, that having left his family at a young age, Daichi was bashful about reuniting with them, and perhaps even going as far as asking them a favour. After all, his family now was the Cupid Clan.

‘They will be glad to see you,’ Lullaby said, and Daichi nodded.

The next day, Daichi set out to his childhood home, using his tail to nudge Chinaru in the right direction as the little Snapper snapped and bounded about him with childish cheer.

‘What are you hoping for the Crystalcourt to tell him?’ Osiris asked her, as Coatl and Snapper disappeared over the horizon.

‘How to take care of Chinaru,’ Lullaby said. ‘I do not want him to become afraid of himself.’

Osiris nodded. They might not know where Chinaru had come from, but what was certain was that he was now part of the clan.

o o

… he did not lay eggs as dragons now do (and presumably would have been incapable of doing so anyway). Instead, he picked up the pebbles that fell off his hide and shaped them into the image that are now known as Snapper dragons. He breathed life into them, and the little creatures sneezed and opened their eyes.

The Earthshaker’s children began life small, but they rapidly grew and grew, until they became the moderate size and highly respectable bulk of Snapper dragons. Then they dispersed, throughout Dragonhome and the rest of Sornieth.

But, the Crystalcourt believed, not all of the pebbles which were given life, became living creatures immediately. Some of them did not have receive enough breath, or life, or spirit, or whatever the Earthshaker had used to animate them, and so those pebbles filled with living magic continued to sleep, unknowing and unaware of the world around them.

Very rarely, when a clan of dragons happened to make their home near one of these stray pebbles, the residue magic they emitted would be absorbed by the pebble. Eventually, the pebble would come to life, as the Earthshaker had intended. No dragon, or even a whole clan’s, magic could equal the magic of the Earthshaker, however, and the spell would not be quite complete. These pebbles could never reach the full form the Earthshaker had intended them to take, and the insufficiency of life magic manifested in the form of physical defects.

For Chinaru, he would never grow, never see, never be able to speak any form of draconian.

Not that this in any way diminished the excitement Chinaru’s visit incited. Upon hearing of his origins, Daichi’s family had swarmed around Chinaru to look at him, some of them reaching out to touch him as if to check if he was dragon or ghost, wave claws in front of his face to see if he would respond, take his temperature and pulse to see it was normal. Not long after his arrival, word spread and others of the Crystalcourt, curious about the Earthchild, came to see him.

Chinaru was delighted by the attention. He was given treats of fish, and the Crystalcourt were no less entertained by him when he tackled and tried to wrestle a full-grown Guardian, who good-humouredly rolled around with him in the dirt.

‘He is, and always will be, a child, my sister told me,’ Daichi narrated to Lullaby. ‘He should be treated as a child. Not put to work, or his strength used to the clan’s advantage.’

‘So he will not grow, neither in form nor mind?’ Lullaby asked.

Daichi shook his head. A frown formed on Lullaby’s brow.

‘Poor creature,’ Crystal said sadly.

Caramel, too, had a body that would never grow, but her mind continued to mature like a normal dragon’s, if continuing to retain a childish curiosity and naïveté many years on. Chinaru would never be independent, self-sufficient, or be able to strike out on his own.

‘We will make you happy here, Chinaru,’ Lullaby said to him. ‘Depend upon it.’

He didn’t understand, but he recognised the sound of his name said by a clan member. He scampered over and nipped at her legs, trying to get her to play. She raised a claw and stroked his head.
o