You crack open an old tome marked "Born of Stars and Sea:
Flight of the Starry Seas, set in the First Clan Era."
The pages smell like sea air, and the ozone tang of raw magic.
The froth of the sea washed forth over the runic circles etched with precision in the glistening iridescent sand. From the glow of the arcane language, light coalesced in a miniature mirror of the ocean's tide. Swirling back out with the waves, the light followed the ebb and flow and dimmed to a weighty shadow under a wave, until it pushed back towards the shore with a new shape. A small form surged forth, large frills dragging water and seafoam as it emerged onto the shore. The lithe body of the dragon arrived in a gentle curl around itself, back in the center of the now softened lines of the summoning spell.
She took her first breath full of sea mist, surrounded by the glint of starlight and sand. Her vision disappeared and reappeared in a blink, taking the world with it and bringing it back. There was an expanse and contraction below her, lungs pushing air out and pulling it back in like the seawater around her. The body of the beach shifted beneath her, disturbed by the gentle waves and loose in her claws.
Many sensations rolled towards her mind, taking it all in with senses beyond just sight. Her frills expanded and captured the echo of the sea around her, the wind as it swept along the beach, and the shrill call of strange flighted creatures overhead. She breathed faster, there was so much to notice!
In her mind the sensation of being pulled through a void that was both too dark and too bright lingered. She gazed at the twinkling starlight above, past the white crying creatures, and she felt the claws of her mind catch one of those stars as she was moving through that void. Starcatcher. An idea, a name, that fit in her mind comfortably. It settled, that was
her.
The loud, flying creatures soon passed, and another sound entered her mind, bypassing her frills and new extremities entirely.
'Awaken, and seek me'
Four-legged figures with bright pink eyes, resplendent frills, long lithe tails and wings specked with water and sand stood in faded arcane circles where the land met the sea. Each dragon along the beach adjusted their head and gazed the same direction in a ripple.
One by one, they alighted into the air. The pull beckoned her too, spurred by the words in her head, and a yearning to fill the emptiness in her chest. Not an emptiness in the spaces where she could feel her beating heart and lifeblood circulating, but somewhere else, almost back where she came from, though she knew no other place but this one.
Light with the emptiness and the spark of something as new as the rest of this world, Starcatcher bounded into the air on gossamer wings.
Beyond the flock of her kin coasting on the breezy dark air in front of her a shape loomed, the largest singular entity she had yet seen aside from the ocean itself. A great sharp steepness of it met the softer form of the land around it, and it's shell shimmered glossy, pricked with pinpoints of the bright reflection of the starry night sky.
Starcatcher glided through a large circular opening surrounded by a slick material that glittered pink like the trailing lights on the beach. Most of her siblings gracefully angled their wings and landed lightly on the floor, but some like herself didn't catch the air quite right and were met with the force of gravity as they tumbled onto the internal ground of the space.
An echoing rumble of laughter sounded from above her as a tall and flexible column writhed. A creature, a dragon like her, but massive, with a crested head, pink eyes pale in their bright luminousness, and large ears. It appeared out of the shadow of the ceiling and into view, the glowing eyes becoming apparent a moment before the rest of the form.
Starcatcher felt her frills dip behind her head as she met the eyes of the large creature, and scrambled to twist her body away from the light teal wing that her unpracticed landing had trapped. Though she wanted to flee, back to the beach with it's comforting sounds and beautiful sights, an exuberance filled that emptiness in her chest and she couldn't look away from the figure in front of her.
Sound filled the space "My children, welcome to the world, and welcome home," He lifted one pair of his arms in a sweeping gesture, while the other pair remained clasped together at the extremities.
"I am your father, The Arcanist, god of magic."
His two pairs of wings reached outward in a similar gesture as his arms, the larger pair nearly encircling the round room. The Arcanist's seated scrawny haunches and incredibly long purple tail emerged from shadow as small fires sparked to life around the area. Starcatcher watched and wondered how they formed, all of the flames dancing upon small white pillars.
She blinked up at her father, and he peered down at her. A small smile appeared on his face, above a dangling white patch of something that looked soft. His eyes glowed a little brighter.
'Starcatcher, a fine name…'
Starcatcher startled, and then mimicked the Arcanist, opening her mouth to respond in the way of sounds that he had been addressing all of them, but only a barking screech emerged.
"Fret not, my children! I will get you all up to speed, the world is just as eager to meet you as you are it."
The gigantic pink and purple serpentine dragon cast a large glowing rune into the air with all four of his arms, and sounded words into the air once more, "Waltz, quick nymph, for bad jigs vex!" A line of light soared to each small dragon in the room, washing them over with that sparkling pink light.
She blinked and tried to open her mouth again. "Sounds," She straightened her body further and craned her long neck to face her father. "I can make the sounds too! What is this? What was before this? Who am I, why am I here now? Where is here?" The thoughts became speech in a rush as the light filled her head, and streamed out in a blink.
The Arcanist smiled down at her, and all of his children. "I have called you here from the ether of magic to be my children, and to help me with some very important tasks, should you find one to your liking."
"You are now experiencing consciousness, likely for the first time by my calculations, coupled with a corporeal body made of flesh, blood, scales, starlight, and seafoam. I have many books and scrolls to answer all of your questions, and I'm excited to teach and learn with all of you." A happy tear evaporated from one of his supernova eyes.
All of the frilled dragons were listening intently, including Starcatcher, hungry for more answers.
"Magic allows us to weave the fabric of reality to our liking. It, like many such matters of life, is a learned skill that you may come to use." His face grew more serious, "And it will be imperative that many of you learn such skills, for our world is also a dangerous one."
A ripple of fear moved through all the children in attendance, though they had just learned the word and could understand it, the general idea of it sparked more questions, as more children decided to test their new abilities of speech.
"Shh, shh, children. Answers will come. And let me reassure you that we are safe here, for now, in my Observatory. But we must make haste, for dangers will approach, which is why I have created you all.
Let me teach you now, of the world."
