Lore:
That Involves Hatchlings
Lore From:
- The Covenant's Lore Commissions -
Periphery
(Father)
Harsh eyes glinted in the dark, illuminated by a soft flame, appearing to be glowing. Skittering sounds echoed through the dark caves, and the eyes disappeared for a moment, appearing next by the ceiling of the rock cavern. The dark brown eyes blinked slowly as a hissing came from where the creature was.
It seemed curious about something. It moved slowly, as if trying not to startle prey that it was hunting. Slow, quiet footsteps softly echoed through the cave; the quiet clicking of claws on stone reverberated through the stale open air. The lantern that was sitting on an empty box flickered weakly, then blew out with a gust of silent wind. The eyes vanished with the light, and all that was seen was the void of the dark cave. All was silent. All was still.
"Trog, come up to eat!" The sudden voice made the creature yelp as it fell from the ceiling, crashing to the rocks just a few feet below. Huffing and rubbing the spot on his head where he had hit, he slowly skittered up from the cavernous basement to greet his mate and his younglings.
"What have you been up to all day? You haven’t exited that cave since you woke up this morning.” Cloacina’s voice was casual; this was a normal thing for Trog and she was used to it, but she liked bothering him about it anyway. He glanced up at his mate but said nothing, turning to the food as a response, grabbing a plate and sitting by the table and nudging aside the scraps of fur and bone that was being used to make a new armchair.
It was clear Cloa had been tinkering with the chandelier earlier, seeing as though the lantern flickered every once in a while as the shadows of the rib cage holding the torches. The pale light illuminated the small room, showing the furniture made of bones and the rotting hides of small prey strewn across the floors in a lame attempt for carpeting. Dozens of small skulls, antlers, and strings of teeth hung from the ceiling and were stuck on walls as decor.
It was Trog’s perfect home.
More footsteps ran through the lair, getting louder and louder until a smaller version of Cloa appeared in the room, grinning from ear to ear.
“Peri, Peri! Did you just come back from exploring?” the hatchling asked, clambering up the table to sit in front of him. The young creature looked up at him with bright brown eyes, his voice light and happy, the complete opposite demeanour to the feral beast across him.
“Yes,” Trog replied stiffly, clearly irritated by something. The hatchling blinked and continued talking, oblivious to Trog’s hostility.
“But you promised I could join you today!” he whined. Trog allowed a quick glare at the youngling with an annoyed expression, but said nothing. “I even brought my own map!”
That was enough to capture the beast’s attention. “Let me see,” he said briskly. Paper flew out from behind the hatchling and Trog grabbed it with sharp claws, not even bothering to wipe the grease from his scaled fingertips.
An unsophisticated drawing of the cave system underneath the lair was mapped on a dirty piece of ripped parchment paper, reaching out to the corners like the roots of a large tree. It wasn’t a professional piece of work by any means, yet Trog’s mouth widened in a crude smile. It was certainly a start, and a start was something he could work with.
“Impressive.” He placed the paper on the table. “First, you have this wrong. The tunnel here doesn’t connect to this one down here. I blocked it off-”
“Why did you block it off, Peri?”
“Don’t interrupt me,” Trog snapped. Cloa hit him lightly with a towel in a warning-type manner, and Trog sighed. “I dug too deep and caused a cave-in.” The hatchling laughed, sending a shiver down Trog’s spine.
“Well, if I got it wrong, how about I come down with you tomorrow so I can map it out properly?”
Trog clicked his teeth with his forked tongue and was about to decline, but he studied the map again, tracing the pathways that he had created with his dark eyes. One by one, he saw how detailed it was, how much care had been put into something that looked like it took a mere five minutes. It was indeed impressive, for sure, considering his child had only been in the cave system once or twice before.
“You must promise me two things.” His voice was sharp and impatient. He didn’t bother waiting for an answer. “You mustn’t get in my way, and if you fall behind, I will not come back for you.” His eyes flickered from the hatchling to Cloa; she just shrugged and looked away, unperturbed; it would be a bigger deal if the cave system wasn’t literally their basement; she could find the missing hatchling if he did end up getting himself lost.
“Deal!” The child of the two dragons spun around happily, jumping off the table and scampering away to get ready for the next day. Trog scoffed, shaking his head as he returned to his meal.
“I wish they didn’t get in the way so much,” he grumbled; to himself or to Cloa, he wasn’t too sure, but his mate decided to reply anyway.
“If you hated it so much, you wouldn’t have let him join you,” she chided. Trog rolled his eyes, but said nothing in response. However, there was a warm feeling in his chest as his eyes wandered to the map once more; it was a nice feeling, no matter how much Trog would never admit aloud.
Perhaps tomorrow would go well.
Cloacina
(Mother)
As the young Cloacina aged, the more she grew to enjoy spending time in the darker parts of her lair. Sei and Atria often found her chipping away at old rock, her eyes glinting with sly happiness when glimmering crystals and interesting fossils poked out from the dull grey stone. The two, practically adoptive parents to the orphaned dragon, often wondered to themselves if this peculiar hobby had something to do with where they found her, so many years ago, behind the rock wall of the cave. Even as she became fully grown and started her own clan with Trog, she still kept her fascination with underground mines and the dark unknown of the depths, so much so that often, she came back late to take care of her hatchlings.
When she did return, though, she made sure that they were cared for. Oftentimes, she brought back trinkets from the caves, sparkling gold or glittering crystals for the younglings, handing them out like chocolate eggs on Easter. There was no such thing as too many shiny objects for Cloacina; if she could, the entire lair would be surrounded by the glimmering stones.
The young children that she cared for obviously didn’t mind; they had just as much affection for the glimmering rocks, almost as much as she did. When they heard her walk through the lair entrance, they scrambled to her, shouting for her hoard for the day, what she had brought back, which ones were for them. And with a laugh, like always, she dropped her sack filled to the brim with small crystalline rocks, allowing her children to scramble to find their favourites.
Piling on each other, tackling from behind, screaming and shouting; it often became something close to a fistfight to grab for the biggest ones. And, as always, Cloa sat back and watched with a smile. They were growing hatchlings who had to learn how to fend for themselves; what better way to do this than by brawling with their siblings to fight for what they wanted?
It was one of these common days where Cloa stepped through the entrance to her lair that she heard the familiar scampering of multiple young hatchlings, eager to grab their share of Cloacina’s hoard for the night. Automatically, she let the bag of crystals slip from her grasp. It fell to the floor, bright golds and shining silvers and glimmering purples and gorgeous blues scattered across the muddy ground, starkly contrasting with the rest of the cavern system. All of a sudden, like a tidal wave of dark brown and dull greys and blacks, young hatchlings drew to the pile and started grabbing as much as possible, their arms already full of rocks of varying sizes. Periphery, her mate, slowly turned the corner, his cold eyes glaring at the mess on the ground. Scoffing, he turned around and went back the way he came without a word, but Cloa just smiled, clutching her little sack just a little bit tighter.
“Alright, clean up the mess and go to bed, all of you,” Cloa said, nudging the leftover rocks toward the stragglers of the group, those who had come a second too late to grab what was considered the good stuff. Slipping on the mud and loose stone, the rest of the kids ran off, their arms filled with their own hoard. After they had all gone, Cloa went to her part of the lair, taking the pouch, no bigger than the size of her hand, and opened it up.
The contents of the bag brought tears to Cloacina’s eyes; small fossils of beings no larger than her eyes were packed in; ambers filled with insects and bugs, perfectly mummified remains of a past she had yet to know. The closest thing to living in history that she could get to.
She was in awe of it.
Slowly and carefully so as to not crack the fossils or chip the amber, she took out the pieces and placed them beside her bed so she could examine them and learn from them. This is what she really wanted whenever she went out to search in the unexplored caves; she could care less for the gems, the crystals, the shiny rocks that were much too bright and much too overwhelming for the dark lair. However, the fossils? The bones found deep within the earth, a part of history that she could physically get her hands on, touch, examine, explore… in its entirety, this is what Cloa lived for.
The others? The kids could have them. Whatever helped them leave her precious fossils alone.
Periphery
Cloacina
