Unnamed

They said it was impossible, but there was no denying the hatchling blinking up at them with mismatched eyes. Hatchlings were said to be touched by the gods; claimed by the mighty elemental beasts circling their domains. To have a single creature bearing the marks of two deities spoke of destiny. Or, perhaps more worryingly, of tragedy.

Nothing like this had happened in the clan before; the Icewarden had first claim (the Arcanist occasionally absconding with a few hatchlings due to sheer proximity). That was the way of the clan: Ice and Arcane. Tradition and Innovation. A blank slate and the scrawled runes that cover it: a rewritten narrative ever evolving.

None in the clan had been claimed by Light in a place that suffered through such long stretches of uninterrupted night. Or by Plague since the cold prevented travel and killed before disease could take root. This deep in the tundra, in the cold, isolated darkness, those elements held little sway.

And yet, there they were. Housed in the stonelike fur of their newest hatchling. It was an ill omen, indeed, though none could agree on exactly what this unexpected birth heralded.

Some claimed it was a sign of the upcoming Melt- a time of unusual sun and heat that loosened the mountain ice and thinned the frozen lakes in the name of a false, insidious summer. Others claimed it was a sign of Hunger to come- of crops rotting in their cavern fields and oxen withering away. A few whispered, quiet enough to try to invoke fate, that it could be both. A total annihilation of their way of life: a disease of heat that would melt away the ice and snow and leave the barren earth cracked and pustuled and blistered.

And, if the hatchling had been less sombre, the clan would have been relieved. But the child was morose. Serious even when his hatchmates were giggling and shrieking with laughter. Almost as though he could see something on the horizon that the others simply weren't privileged to see.