Bizila

{ Bizila }
♡ she/her
♡ young adult
♡ Imperial ghostheart

The first few generations of any new part of the world are always a little odd, a little unsteady, still learning the land and the ways to best live there. Tiamat's daughters in particular are a fine example of that type of oddness.

Bizila was born wrong, all wrong for the sort of creature she was meant to be. This sort of thing sometimes happens to imperials: the call of the emperors is distant but always present, and ghosts are not what they were, not always compassionate dragons anymore. Sometimes the children of the living who hear them howling in the egg come out like them, ghosthearted, cold of mind as the lizards from which dragons sprang.

At first nobody notices, and then the child grows, and the other children learn certain things. They learn the gestures of obeisance and apology, they learn to wait and respect the sacred hoard-rights of others. They are generally truthful and they generally do not steal - borrow yes, take to use without knowing yes, but not steal. They learn to know and worry after the hearts of others and they learn most importantly of all to regret.

Bizila did not quite learn some of these things. What Bizila learned, the world she lived in, looked very different to her than it did to anyone else.
In Bizila's world, there was never enough of anything to go around -- food, water, shelter, toys, honest love. Anything could have been stolen from her at any point in time by anyone, and often was, and so she got to be very defensive of what was hers, and very unconcerned with what was everyone else's. After all, didn't everyone only play pretend at saying sorry, so as not to get cuffed or scolded or resented and revenged upon? Wasn't everyone always looking to point out how different she was, how flat and faelike her expressions, how Ninlil was kinder and sweeter and better? Didn't everyone do that because that's just how things are? If not, what was wrong with her?

She had a difficult start, but understood very quickly what one had to do to get ahead in that sort of world, and that there was no room in it for sentimental feelings. Just like everyone else, she got very good at pretending to have them, and suddenly Seirios was telling her she was brilliant and empirical and incisive, and Mother was praising her for her wit and her adherence to the rules. There were rules. There were rules! Follow them, and throw the right people to the gryphons at the right times, and dragonkind bends before you. It almost doesn't even matter if you're the best at anything, though Bizila was always the best at everything for as long as the opinions of authority mattered to her and safeguarded her life.

Pathetic people, though -- all of them. Well, that's how it goes: you pretend, they pretend. Sometimes children die. Bizila almost died more than once, and everyone was more concerned with how Ninlil felt about it than the bare fact, so what was the problem? Besides, at least they aren't dying in service to the gods -- what a god is doesn't matter, only that the elders of the clan dislike them. It's like that with everything, isn't it? You don't need to have any principles of your own. You only need to find out what everyone else needs to hear, and say it, and then you'll be safe, and your lizard brain will feel the warmth of the sun of their false affection, and you will be comfortable and content.

Ninlil didn't kill Aldebaran, who was a self-important cad anyway, and Zodiacus ending his own narrative prematurely was purely a him issue; the delight of it all was that Bizila finally got to get mummy's favourite back for her own grievances with her, and nobody ever even noticed.

But then, of course, Ninlil got to come home with an "undying love" and two little chicks that looked at her with these adoring googly little eyes.

Bizila didn't quite want that, herself. Raising chicks is a cooperative endeavour, and nearly nobody in this mess of a clan is capable of cooperating with her. But she had finally just barely earned the parental adulation she'd always been striving for, and now there are a niece and a nephew in the picture, more people to be obligated to love more than her own self, more people to cede her bare glimmer of sun to.

It's not that she wishes them ill. But Qadeshtu and Attar's mother is a whimsical fool and their father is just the least offensive mate-choice of the lot of her agemates; if that was her legacy, she'd never tell anyone for sheer embarrassment. It's distasteful even by the Ruinflight's comparative lack of standards. They would benefit from a stronger start than that.

A level head. An aunt who looks after them because they need looking after, and not because they symbolize a love that's going nowhere and a new beginning about to wear out. Some better relative than Mudskipper's son and Bizila's mother's one-time co-creator Maturin, who is so insufferably optimistic and believes so deeply in some inherent draconic goodness that it makes the teeth ache.


Around the time they were born, the wanderer returned who had apparently sired Maturin's half-sister, the resident ball of joy Rockskipper and her deceased siblings Hush and Arapaima, whom Bizila had actually liked. She got an impulsive clutch of three out of him, to the disapproval of entirely too many silly romantics, and now Nanaya, Inanna and Utu bear their mother's curse; it seems that no matter what she does, no love comes of it, nothing real. It's a good thing that Bizila never regrets anyway, but she could never regret them.