Patch

Coding made by Disillusionist | Dividers made by Vertigris


I remember the cold most of all.

The memories of the nest linger only as a sense of faint warmth, comfort, security without detail or definition; the scent of my mother's dusty scales, the press of my siblings' tender claws as we jostled for space, the warmth emanating from the craggy stone walls cradling us in comfortable shadows.

Then a grip on my scruff, and the shock of cold air across my scales as something lifted me up and away from safety. Unhappy, I twisted in the air, squalling and protesting as best a hatchling could, soft claws flailing at nothing as if movement might ease that grip and return me to my mother.

"Be brave. It will be all right," I thought I heard my mother murmur, her words weighted with an unfamiliar sorrow that deepened my fear.

Then this isn't all right? What's happening? When would it be all right?

Then she was gone. I remember crouching on a platform next to my brothers, shivering and afraid, under a cacophony of impersonal voices and touches. I made a sound and reached for my older brother as he was pulled away from us, but the tumult and speed with which someone lifted my remaining brother and I and took us from that place shocked me into stillness and silence.

The new lair felt wide and clean, and smelled of dry earth and autumn leaves. The press of a hundred other warm, small bodies felt like a consolation, all of us staring at each other with the same stunned questions in our eyes. Where are we? What will happen to us? When will it be all right?

I tried to find a comfortable place to rest, curled against my brother. His breath ghosted warm over my scales, his claws tangling with mine, and for a moment, I felt a hint of contentment. Maybe now it would be all right...?

I couldn't help my yelp of surprise as I felt another grip on my scruff, lifting me up and away from my brother. I scrabbled for him, as he woke in surprise and pain, my soft claws scratching him and the others nearby in a futile effort to hold myself in this place that had only started to become familiar. To cling to my brother.

Eyes followed me as I was carried out alone. Hundreds of eyes, gleaming in the earthy darkness, with only my own strangled whimpers and the echoing sounds of my brother's whines to accompany me. Why? Why me? Was it my scales, that didn't hold the same warm, sunny light as my brothers' did? If the Flamecaller didn't want me, if the Earthshaker didn't want me, was I not brave enough? Was I...not enough?

I didn't know how to be brave.

Another room this time, smaller and simple, airy and light, decorated with carvings in the high corners. Empty except for a pile of blankets in one corner, water and food in small containers, and a window looking out at trees bending under the howling whiteness of a spring snowstorm. Curling in a corner I wrapped my tail around myself and shivered, warmed only by the fiery tears sliding down my snout, staring at the whirling snow outside the window. Missing my mother. Missing my brothers.

After a while, it stopped feeling so cold, but the emptiness inside still ached. I lifted my head and looked out at a line of trees half covered in white, bending and waving under the pressure of the wind but still remaining upright, barely visible through the scatter and swirl of snow in the air.

For an instant, I thought I saw the shadow of a dragon there, under the trees.

Heart leaping, I scrambled for the window, scraping tender scales over the edge as I heaved and then flopped myself over the edge, ice crackling under my claws as I landed. Wind cut across my scales like the same ice that numbed my toes, but my hopes warmed me. With a shiver I lunged into the snow, heart in my throat as I tried to find that dragon, a new friend perhaps, someone who I could sit with and maybe then I wouldn't be cold anymore.

The trees closed in around me as I dived through them, searching for the dragon I had seen. They had been right here, I was sure of it! I called out, hatchling voice wavering and thready, but only silence answered. Nothing moved except for shifting trees, the swirling snow, and the icy, icy cold that sank under my scales.

Even the snow beneath my claws lay pristine and trackless, except for my wavering, uneven clawmarks even now fading as the snow filled them in, and like the drip of tears, slow realization seeped into my mind. No other dragon had been here. Had I imagined it, or seen something that looked like a dragon, and thought it was one? Had I wanted a friend so badly I imagined one?

Ice needled along my hide and I gasped with the shock of it, freezing through and through, but the cold didn't truly settle into my soul until I looked back along the track of my own clawsteps and realized with growing fear I couldn't see where I had come from. I couldn't see my backtrail at all in the swirling snow.

Calling out then, I turned, taking a few steps, then bounds, back the way I thought I had come. Trees. Nothing around but trees and snow, and cold. No shelter, no safety, just me and a terrible, aching, growing fear.

I turned to the largest tree and slid down the snowbank toward its trunk, pressing myself against it and curling in around myself as tightly as I could, fiery tears sizzling holes into the snow. Sleet spattered my hide, cold wedged its fingers wherever it could - stinging in my nose, chilling me under my scales, numbing my claws. In a matter of minutes the snow began to settle and cling on my back, no longer melting, and I wondered how long it would be before I, too, became as snow covered as the trees.

I don't remember those hours clearly. I remember the howl of the wind. I remember the endless ache of the cold.

I remember that my tears stopped burning through the snow, eventually. I don't know how long I lay there, or how long it took before I didn't feel the cold anymore.

The snow danced for me, then. It flirted with the trees, spun through the air as if each snowflake wanted to show off its individual beauty before it fell and snuggled alongside me like my brothers once had. The wind no longer howled and bit with cold teeth, but sang instead.. After a time, I don't remember why I had been afraid, why I had thought I hadn't been alone. I'd had company all along; the snow, the wind, the trees, and the encompassing, soul-deep numbness of winter's chill. Perhaps this is where I was meant to be all along.

My mother was right. It will be all right, and I am enough.

Because the wind tells me so.