Guidanz

I had a vision. It wasn't even supposed to be possible - supposedly all the visions had all dried up. But there it was, blotting out the sight of the shoreline behind my father, just at the worst possible moment. Confusing images I couldn't understand, then suddenly a different scene - three eggs on an ice floe. A sense of purpose. Then more confusion, jumbled sights and noise drowning out my father's strident voice. Then another sudden jump to clarity; a clan, younglings of many shapes training in the beams from a massive lighthouse. Light dragons - learning to fight the Shade!

I came out of the vision in the middle of my father's rant. I couldn't follow what he was saying - something about not being god-blessed like my ancestors (I just had a vision!) and being a curse upon the holy mission (a vision about dragons fighting the Shade!) and when my mother put her two cents in, it was only to say I shouldn't interrupt, and I sounded like a mad creature anyway.

Then they said I wasn't their child anymore, and not to try to claim them as parents ever again.

And then they left.

I didn't know what to do, so I just...sat. For a while. I slept some. I found a hydromelon and ate it. I was so small and confused and didn't know North from South. I thought I would recognize the place with the three eggs if I saw it, or the clan if I saw it from the air. I didn't know what to do about it, though.

Then Keeper Solspec found me. He asked who I was and what was I doing there. I didn't quite know what to tell him at first - I was nameless and parentless. I was no one. He wouldn't take "nobody" for an answer, though, so in the end I told him the whole story, including the visions. He took me flying over the edge of ice lands, and we found the eggs, just hatchling. They were like me - gaolers with wrong-color eyes. Keeper Solspec said it was wrong, abandoning hatchlings just because something new had happened to us. He said, we were still Gaolers, still made to contain the evil Shade and the creatures that it infects. Surely if other deities blessed us, it only meant that they agreed with our maker.

He took us all and flew back to the warm lands, then, and we looked for the clan from the second part of my vision. Sure enough, we found them late in the day, the light from the Beacon stretching across their clan lands, and especially their training field, like an anti-shadow.

I was tired, and the younger hatchlings were more tired. Keeper Solspec found the leaders of the clan and set us down while he talked and talked to them. We four curled up in a ball together and slept. The Keeper woke me to tell the clan leaders my vision. I told them, and then sat quiet and thought how strange it all was...

My parents taught me that mirrors were plague dragons, but this clan leader mirror had four bright yellow eyes and claws that glowed when she was agitated. Her mate was mirror too, but he had the ice-blessed eyes I lacked. There was a water guardian like the ones I hatched next to, but his mate had lightning eyes, even though she was a guardian too. There was a nature-dragon, a wildclaw, that they said was a training leader, but her eyes weren't green they were deep purple. Keeper Solspec sniffed her a lot, especially when he learned her name had something to do with the Shade, but she didn't smell like Shade any more than anyone else.

I think we're staying here. Keeper Solspec says the clan gave us space to make our own training group. He says he thinks Warden Solveig will let him stay to teach us. After all, we have to grow strong and skilled to contain the shade, just like any other Gaoler hatchlings.

It's what we were made for.