Ashbel

He was born alone, a singleton, the only child of his mother. When he looked into her face, she could not hide the disappointment. She had dreamed of a beautiful child, a magnificent, vibrant dragon like his father. The ragged, dull creature that tumbled from its eggshell was not that dragon. She tried to hide her discontent, but he knew. He always knew.

She could not even bring herself to give him a proper name. She called him baby, she called him darling, but he could see that her heart wasn't really in it. His father was kind, but distant. He understood. His father had many children, and he was the least of them.

When a traveling clan passed through, he saw the diversity in their ranks, and thought that here, at least, he could disappear into the crowd. When he told his mother that he would go with the wandering clan, she could not hide her relief, and he knew he had made the right choice. Now she could try again, bear the beautiful child that she had dreamed of, unburdened by her plain first-born.

Around the clan fire in the evenings, he listened to stories of the Flamecaller, the great force who shattered mountains and forced the hidden places of the earth to light. Wishing for such a power of change, he cried out to the Flamecaller, and offered her his heart. In return, she gave it back to him, glowing, steadily pulsing with her light, a mark of her favor.

For she was not only a creature of fierce passions and wildfire, but also the keeper of hearth-fires and watch-fires; the warmth of the clan, a beacon to guide the lost ones home, the light bravely burning against the darkness.

She gave him his name, Ashbel, "old fire". "For you will be the one who endures, the constant flame, steadily burning when all others have flickered and died," she told him. "You have always had fire at your heart, my son. Now it is only that everyone can see it."