Atium

Atium had never been bothered to think about god-things. Too many root things to eat, too many bright things to wonder at.

The brood-things that made her were someplace else, she had never bothered much with them as well. Quick as fungus Atium had slithered from the nest, and down the darkened roads which lead to Starwood Strand. The flowers were what caught her eye; she thought that they were bug-things she could eat. Oh, well.

Atium grew clever, bold, and strange. The cold night glow of her runes seemed familiar to these woods. Listening to the things the flowers said, her mind began to mechanize, complex fractal patterns, crystalline and bright, traced their fingers all accross her brain. The seeds of arcane magic took their root.

The Arcanist? Well, she had never seen him. Probably a sham, she might have said, rooting though the moss to chase a worm. But something brought those clever fractals to her brain. She stole a cauldron from a darkened lair, and made a hut from mud and leaves, deep in the strand where none could reach her. Clever Atium, she mixed the bounty of the wood beneath the stars into that metal pot, learning poisons, medicines, and brews. And she was good enough alone.

But then the other dragons had to come. First one, and then another, her quiet bit of forest became loud. Fires and dancing, music and cooking... almost too much for her to bare. So she packed up her cauldron, and her best green slimes, and took flight.

Who is the Earthshaker? Atium does not know, nor does she care. Brightmyrtle told her it was he who's sleepy memories had brought her here, but that just wasn't true. Atium has wings, those brought her here. And when she saw a brooding mother, a fae, like from her old woods-home, she had stopped to talk and liked it well.

"Your belly scales are chafing." she had rasped.

"I hadn't noticed" Brightmyrtle replied, unamused. Without a word, Atium had slung her cauldron off her back and started up a little fire. The pickings were slim here, compared to her old wood. Lots of... she searched for a word... Sand-things. But some of it was still familiar, and soon she'd brewed a salve to rub on Myrtle's scales. It soothed the pain of brooding, and Myrtle offered her a place to sleep.

It's too dry here, and too hot. The little one is nosy and the bigger one is loud. Soon those blasted eggs are set to hatch, and Atium has no idea what she will make of hatchling-things. But something tells her, this is where she'll stay. Perhaps it was the god-thing Myrtle spoke of?

Atium is joking. Gods don't speak.

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Pig was meant to be a travel meal, hap-hazardly packed before she left the woods. But by the time she reached the Shattered Planes, she'd grown accustomed to his company. Pig-things need no name, and so she called him Pig. And while she still remembers how he once was food, every day she's grateful he is not.

Atium is quick to point out, to anyone who'll listen, the intelligent way in which he digs for worms and roots. Dragons are talkative and noisy, but Pig keeps to himself.

"If only" (Atium's been hard to say) "we all could too"