Bay

Mantis Falcon: Chamomile
Sable Saturn: Tolboia
Maroon Crackle: Gardd

Bay was a dragon hatched and raised in the Sunbeam Ruins, a scholar hatched and raised. The pride of her clan, she tirelessly hunted for academic achievement, her desire for praise only matched by her thirst to learn. Anthropology was her life, and it wasn't long before she was assigned her first mission.

She was to spy on a herd of centaurs, and eventually drive them out so that the clan could take their ground for their new hatchlings.

She took to the task with as much zeal as she had every other task, anticipating praise from the clan leader when it was done, and set off at once, making a temporary nest at the edge of the woods the heard remained in and keeping her quills poised to write.

She watched for a day, and a week, and a month, and ever-so-slowly, her goals began to change. She watched them work the land, watched foals play in-between their houses, watched them make dyes and weave fiber into fabric with a growing fascination. She was on the outside looking in, seeing a way of life she never could have imagined, and she longer to know more than what she could gather with passive observation.

On the third day of her second month, she finally acted on her curiosity.

She approached the herd, pausing at the edge of the forest and asking to meet their leader so that an arrangement could be made. The tension was tangible, the meeting lasting hours, but eventually, an agreement was reached.

Bay would be allowed to learn their traditions, but only so long as she came up with some way to give back to the herd.

It would prove to be some time before she found a way to help. Her claws were too clumsy for their traditional textiles, a lifetime of academics far from what she needed to carry heavy lumber, her jaws too crushing to hunt in a way the herd could make enough use of.

It was farming that proved to be her specialty.

Clearing the field was heavy work, although not as taxing as carrying lumber through miles of forest, but she was determined. Her claws broke up the land, her experience with schedules keeping her watering regular, and she learned the diseases and creatures that could harm the crops quickly.

She watched the fields studiously, watered them punctually, learned solution after solution to problems she'd never thought of, and when her first harvest came she was accepted into their ranks.

The following seasons were filled with learning, of hearing the background behind what she had seen and the traditions she hadn't, tending to the fields and bringing what she could to the table. She felt as though she had found her place, and it was in this time that she nearly forgot what she had been sent to do.

Springtime came around, and she received a message from her clan's leader telling her to send her information for the upcoming battle. She was unsure of what to do, for a moment, paralyzed with indecision, caught between the dragons she'd been hatched and raised with and the centaurs she'd been living with for well over a year by now.

Days passed, and she made her decision.

She came to the leader of the herd, warned him of the incoming dragons, and presented the journals of her time before approaching them. The village prepared for battle, and shaky-clawed, [name] penned a message of how they were unready for war.

The clan's warriors came, unprepared for the resistance they would be met with. [name] received a message saying that her information was wrong, telling her to return to the clan and explain herself.

It was burned, along with the rest of the letters connecting her to the clan.

The village celebrated, and things went back to normal.

Unknown by them, the clan was gathering their forces for a second attack.

The dragons came again, and this time, they were unprepared, swooping down on a village that frantically rallied its warriors in an attempt to counter them. Bay was overwhelmed with guilt, seeing dragons she'd known and laughed with for years on end attacking her friends simply for living in a place they'd occupied for generations. She tried to ward away who she could, beg them not to do this, but it at most gave the centaurs time to run as her old friends called her a traitor and drove her back.

It was chaos, plain and simple, and as Bay ran her way through the battle in desperation her eyes landed on a sight that made her blood freeze in her veins.

Her old clan's leader, raising a blade to behead the leader of the herd.

She didn't think. She reacted. Legs strengthened from seasons of working in the fields propelled her forward, between them, and the blow meant for the leader went to her.

The clan's leader was shocked, startled, and the herd's leader took advantage of it to push him back. Another stroke of his spear ended the dragon's life, and he was back into the conflict, stabbing at dragons left and right to protect his herd.

There were heavy losses on both sides, but in the end, the dragons were driven away. The centaurs rushed to check if Bay had lived the blow, but it was too late, and her scales had already gone cold.

Her body was buried beneath the fields she worked, a mantle weaved in her name as if she was any other centaur. The herd recovered, despite the odds against them, survived, and remembered.

Her story was donated to The Archive by a member of the same herd who'd heard her story, remembered by spoken word since nearly three generations back. It was sent in hopes that, were the herd to eventually die out, its heroes would not be forgotten.

Wildclaw: 0g/2000g
Silhouette Scroll: 0g/400g
Falcon: 0kt/170kt
Saturn: 0kt/160kt
Crackle: 0kt/190kt