Bismuth

Meg and Rainbeau adopted her from Rumplesnakeskin

Excuse you, this child is beautiful

The baby Tundra shook off the rest of her shell and ruffled her fur to make sure she’d shaken out the rest of the shards. She blinked her eyes and peered up at the enormous, hooded Ridgeback who was staring down at her with a dismayed expression on her face.

“Damn, another ugly one,” the Ridgeback muttered. “Colors only a mother could love…”

The Tundra’s ears, which had fallen sadly at the first harsh statement, perked up.

“M-mama?” She stammered hopefully.

The Ridgeback cackled.

“Oh gracious, child, I’m not your mama, I’m Rumplesnakeskin. Well, I guess technically since I’m the one who hatched your egg but it wasn’t mine until I borrowed it. I was hoping for a looker and I got saddled with you instead. S’what I get for hatching the egg instead of selling it, I s’pose… good thing there’s a circus in town. I’ll drop you off there. Oh stop your sniveling, no one wants a sadsack!” With that, she bent down and grabbed the baby by the scruff and set off from her lair.

The Tundra sniffled sadly for a while, before finally blowing her nose against her paws to clear out her sinuses. Once she was sure she could catch a good whiff, she drew in a deep breath through her nose. It was a little hard to separate all the new scents competing for her attention, but she finally got a lock on what she was sure was Rumplesnakeskin’s scent. The Ridgeback definitely didn’t smell like a friendship, but… she didn’t smell like an enemy, either. It probably didn’t matter in the long run since Rumplesnakeskin seemed determined to wash her claws of her latest hatchling and the two would likely never cross paths again, but it was good to know these things.

At last, a colorful group of tents came into view, and Rumplesnakeskin craned her neck this way and that, looking for a likely candidate for parenthood. To her delight, she saw another Ridgeback fussing about with a deck of cards. Excellent, it was always nice doing business with someone who understood how these things happened, she didn’t have time to bother bandying with some moral fusspot who’d accuse her of theft.

She approached the other Ridgeback, a real stunner with a magnificent mane of red hair, and set the baby down between them.

“Hey, I borrowed this egg, do you want to watch it for me for a while?”

The other Ridgeback blinked at Rumplesnakeskin, then peered down to look at the miserable ball of fluff at her feet.

“Oh,” she murmured softly, looking back at one of the cards she’d drawn in sudden understanding, and Rumplesnakeskin grinned. That sounded like love at first sight.

An angry shriek ripped through the air and Rumplesnakeskin was startled to see a Wildclaw charging out of a nearby tent, wings flared and crest spiked high in aggression.

While the Wildclaw was only half her size, Rumplesnakeskin was not prepared to fight one in such close quarters, especially on what they considered their turf.

“Whoops, time for me to go. Enjoy your new kid!” With that, she launched herself into the sky, wings creating a powerful downdraft as she took off. Out of the corner of her eye she watched as the other Ridgeback gathered the baby in her arms, mindful of her thumb claws, and the Wildclaw skidded to a stop, checking what was probably their mate over carefully before inspecting the hatchling.

“That went well,” she chuckled to herself as she flew back home. “Shame I didn’t have time to borrow anything else while I was there…”

————————

The Tundra was scared. That loud shriek had her wanting to burrow as deep underground as she could get but to her surprise, she was carefully bundled into the other Ridgeback’s arms.

“Meg! It’s fine!” The Ridgeback protested as the Wildclaw fussed over her.

“Rain, who was that?” Meg glared angrily up at the sky and the retreating Ridgeback, before turning curious eyes to the Tundra. “And who is this?”

“I don’t know, dear,” Rain answered primly. “We were rather rudely interrupted before introductions could be made.”

Meg scuffed a claw in dirt, slightly abashed, before shaking her head and growling, “She looked like trouble. And you know how you get when you’re doing a reading, an Emperor could come crashing through and you wouldn’t notice.”

The Tundra surreptitiously took a sniff as the two continued to bicker, and relaxed for the first time since she’d hatched this morning. These two smelled like home.

“Um, it’s nice to meet you both,” she interrupted what sounded like a well-rehearsed argument between the two of them. They startled and looked down at her. “I don’t have a name yet, Rumplesnakeskin said I was ugly and she wasn’t my mama, so she never gave me one.”

Rain looked horrified, and Meg growled some more before gently butting the baby’s forehead with her own.

“That wasn’t very nice of her to say, and I’m sorry it was the first thing you had to hear upon coming into the world,” Rain said gently. “We’ll give you a name, don’t you fret.”

Meg stared at the Tundra intently for a few seconds, before she smiled, and leaned in to whisper, “Do you want to know a secret?”

The Tundra nodded eagerly.

“Rain’s gift is with her Tarot cards, they tell her things about the future, although maybe not always in a way that’s easy to understand. My cards are also magic, but my real gift is auras. And kid, you’ve got one of the prettiest ones I’ve ever seen!” She dug around in a pouch, and produced a small statue of a maned dragon, made of a material that shimmered with rainbow hues.

“This is what I see when I look at you. It’s called Bismuth.”

The Tundra reached out in wonder, and when her paws touched the statue, there was an audible POOF and an explosion of glitter-filled smoke.

When it cleared away, Meg and Rain were startled to see that in place of the plain little Tundra, there was a glimmering rainbow colored dragon with an enormous fluffy mane, just like Meg’s statue, which was nowhere to be seen.

“I like Bismuth,” the baby Obelisk said, looking curiously at her now much bigger, more colorful front paws.

“Then Bismuth you shall be,” declared Rain. She and Meg traded a look of wonder between them. For all that they made a living off of misdirection and sleight of hand, occasionally they ran across bits of real magic.

God magic.

There’d been a big to-do over in Earth territory a while back, but all the hubbub had already settled down by the time they’d pulled stakes and headed over from Fire to investigate. Meg had bought the statue off of someone who’d been there - the fae had been trying to get an outrageous price for it, saying that the Earthshaker himself had carved it and it would protect the owner from danger.

There’d been some interesting whispers on the wind as they’d been traveling, about a new breed of dragons created by the Earth deity and the uniqueness of how they’d come into existence, so Rain had been inclined to believe the fellow, but Meg had also watched some grifters in the process of carving out their own statues to sell to clueless travelers, so she’d snorted and haggled the vendor down to something a bit more reasonable.

Now, though, she had to wonder if maybe she owed the old fae an apology… and a hefty bag of gems.

Bismuth smiled happily at her new family. She wasn’t sure what had happened to change her, and her sense of smell wasn’t functioning quite the way she was used to, but she felt… stronger, more sure of herself. This was where she belonged, she knew that with a surety that felt like it was engraved into her very bones, and she’d protect her family to the best of her ability.

Protect them from what, she wasn’t sure, only that if a threat arose, she would rise to meet it joyfully.