Caring for a newborn dragon was always a great challenge. You had to learn their pattern, their personalities, how they liked things and build a connection. I watched the white dragon as she slept beside me. It was hard to think that it's been a week already. Tanwen was almost the length of my torso now. I stroked her fur as I closed my eyes. We had, had a busy day. Tomorrow she would come with me to check my traps. I drifted into sleep with her at my side.
The smell of smoke greeted me as I woke the next morning. It wasn't something that immediately set alarms off in one's head when you live with dragons. I opened my eyes. There across from my bed pod was Greyson, our resident blacksmith. He was trying to cook breakfast. The guy was huge, could do a lot with a fire when he was handling metals. When it came to meats, let's just say I rather eat grass than his cooking.
I sprang up, good thing I was bonded to an ice dragon, I slept fully clothed now. I yanked the pan from the fire. Greyson blinked at me. "Is that what was burning? I thought it was the fire dragons." He gave me a wide grin as he stroked his brown hair. I glared.
"Where's Shea?" I grumbled.
"He said to let you sleep in, he went to feed the hatchlings." I groaned. He was going to get himself killed without me. I stood up.
"Can you make coffee without burning it?" I asked. He smiled. Zia walked in then. "Oh our savior!" I cried. She laughed as she took in the sight around us.
"Greyson, let me help you..." Zia walked past me to the big bear like man. I whispered a thank you as I dashed out to the hatchery. It wasn't until I hit the warm spring air that I realized my Nuare was still inside. I touched her mind. She was silently giggling at this. I rolled my eyes asking her to stay with Zia. She apparently liked the flame haired fire dragon nearly as much as me.
I stepped into the hatchery, and found just what I expected. Utter chaos. Shea was standing in the middle of a huge open space. We didn't pen in the hatchlings. A giant fake sun shined from over head to keep the dragonlings warm. Shea stood well over six feet tall, his muscles bulged out from a black tank top. I couldn't even see his legs as the dragons were climbing each other to reach the bag in the man's hand. Shea was yelling at them to stop it and settle down. He once was good at this. I recall in my youth how he had mastered this. Yet, with my ability to talk to all dragons, feeding these hungry beasts had been my first responsibility. I had been doing it for over ten years now.
At my inability to stifle my laughter, Shea turned to see me standing in the door way. "Stop laughing and control these brutes!" He demanded. I chuckled. Sending out my usual comforting images, I walked into the room. I held my hand out about waist height. The hatchlings hurried to me. These were dragons that had hatched in the past three weeks. Once they reached a month old they were moved to the fledgling grounds. If it wasn't for me, Tanwen would be housed here.
Since we bonded she stayed with me. These dragons haven't yet come into contact with their Nuare. It was my job to care for them until their knight found them. I greeted each one with a touch to their minds. I gave them placeholder names. Something, usually an image, to call them to me. Now I reached Shea's side. At sixteen I was only a little less than a head shorter than the man who had raised me. I snatched the bag of ground up meat products from him.
Tossing out the food I was good at getting it to go down various gullets. This was just the beginning of their breakfast. I then had to go to the cook house and pull out the meat for that meal. They each got the same amount, although you wouldn't believe how they squawked for it. Before leaving I poured a troth filled with meal grain and milk for them to enjoy until I came back with their lunch. I stepped out to see Shea waiting for me. He had his arms folded over his chest as he looked up to the beautiful blue skies.
"Zyn, you make that look too easy." He muttered. I chuckled.
"They know me. I come in to the egg house often just to talk with them." His dark eyes fell down to meet mine.
"You are their first contact in this world. They know you from before they ever hatch." His hand clasped to my shoulder. "Thanks for coming to bail me out, but now we get to go eat charcoal." He muttered. I laughed.
"Zia came just before I left." I told him. He pressed his hands together as if in prayer.
"Thank the maker." He bowed over them. We laughed as we headed back to the Wry. Once the dragons were old enough to fly, they would have homes here in the large mountain like Wry.
Zia was kneeling in front of the cook fire. The little white dragon curled happily in her lap. The smells coming from the fire were far easier to deal with. She made us some sausage, eggs and pancakes. I kissed the top of her head as I sat down. I could tell Tanwen was full.
"Thanks, I owe you." I told her.
"We owe you!" Shea glanced to his left were Greyson sat. The large quiet man just rolled his eyes over the coffee cup he was sipping from. Shea nudged the thick muscled shoulder of the man. Greyson turned to look down at my father. They shared a look. Sometimes I swore they had their own way of communicating.
"So, what's on your agenda today?" Zia asked. I frowned . She was blocking part of her mind from me.
"Don't you dare!" I growled at her.
"What?" she opened her large eyes to look at me innocently.
"Quinn!" I hissed. Zia waved a hand at me, letting out a tiny chuckle. I snorted, I knew her better than that.
"Give me my Nuare. We are going to check traps today." I told Zia.
"Oh, can I come?" She asked. Tanwen lifted her head. I felt her comforting thought to having the fire dragon close by. Zia brushed a kiss over Tanwen's eye ridges. "She wants me along." She teased knowing she had already won. I fumed as I finished eating. Tanwen did hop to my shoulder as we walked out.
Her tail wrapped around my neck. She was growing long. I pondered just how big ice dragons could become. Her comforting coolness was nice as the days were starting to warm up. It had taken Shea until the morning after I had bonded with this tiny beast, to ask me what she was.
The morning she had been born he had searched half the day for her egg. Not finding it, he had finally come to me. I had been asleep beside the new hatchling, bonding had tired us both out. He had woken me.
"What is she, Zyn?" he asked crouching over us like a protective wolf mother over a cub.
"Can't you feel it?" I teased him. When he shook his head, thick brows pulling together I eased up on him.
"Tanwen means white fire." I explained. He nodded knowing the language he himself had taught me. "Then what would be white fire?" I asked him.
"It refers to ice. But there are no more ice dragons. They vanished thousands of years ago."
"They may have vanished, but they are not extinct. She is an ice dragon, Shea. I'm not sure where she came from since she only remembers her mother and her nest. The moment she opened her eyes into the world she came to me." He had sighed, glaring into another fire.
"You're troubled." Zia glanced at me. It wasn't a question. The two of us were parabonded. This was a secondary bond dragons could forge. They bonded fully with their knight. In a sense they blended their souls together with only one other living being. If either pair died, their soul literally ripped in half. Often this killed both Nuare's. One doesn't live long with a damaged soul. Yet, dragons were born of magic. They were powerful in their own right. Zia was one of the strongest. She had chosen me to sort of be her back up. If anything happened to Fauner, she would still live as I was a part of her soul. A person could have many paranonds and never become a knight. I smirked.
"You know me too well." I told her. There wasn't a need for further talking between us. That didn't mean we didn't communicate. I let her in to see my worries. How I feared for the safety of the hatchlings if I went to the dorms. How I was terrified Shea would replace me, not want to be my father any longer if I left the Wry. How, even after all this time, I had this intense desire to stay as far away from the Knights as I possible could get. They had often bullied me in the past.
She soothed me. Showing me that I would still be on campus. I could tend to the hatchlings, teach Shea how to do my job. That Shea loved me as the son he always wished he had. I sighed. I wanted to believe her, I truly did, but some fears are not easily put to rest.
Shea didn't need to learn to feed the hatchlings. We had many people that helped care for the dragons. The handlers were the ones that went out to rescue or recover dragons who got lost in the woods. There were the maids who tended to the eggs before they hatched. Then there were the wranglers. These were people who taught the fledglings how to get their own food. They would take groups out into the woods to teach them to hunt for small animals. I loved doing this. Someday, I just thought I would take over the fledging fields. Never before in my life had I ever thought I would bond. I stroked the head of the dragon on my shoulder.
Tanwen pressed her head up into my hand. I felt her excitement just as she heard the rustling in the grass. She flopped to the ground after a field mouse. I let her enjoy her kill. As a dragon she would need to learn to hunt for herself soon enough. She was young to be doing things like this, but that was the difference between her and the other hatchlings her age.
A bonded dragon tended to mature more rapidly. Some thought it was due to the age gap. Most often the knight would be several years older than the dragon. One aspect of the dragon magic was to adjust to the age of their knight.
A dragon could only shift to human form if they were bonded to their knight. In some way the knight helped select the appearance of their human configuration. It was hard to determine just how this was. I liked to think that since the pair were so closely linked, the dragon saw how the knight believed them to look. Then the dragon just took on the form their knight enjoyed to look at. But then, were would be the dragons will in that? That was the debate in the world of the shifters.
Of course the shifters didn't really care that much. The bond was all consuming. They were one soul. It had to be some connection so deep that the dragon nor knight even thought of it. The magic of the land somehow combined to make the dragon's human form. I smirked. I was filling my head with anything to avoid thinking about the reason the fire dragon was with me.
Tanwen turned to me, the mouse in her jaws she smiled up at me with her glowing silver eyes. I felt her joy at finally catching her own lunch. Stooping I rubbed her fur. Sending her how pleased I was with her ability as a mighty filed mouse hunter. She beamed up, pressing into my hand again, as she slurped her kill into her mouth. She found three other field mice to fill her up.
There was an open field near one of my traps. Tanwen wondered out into the grass. Zia stood on the edge watching the sky as I collected the animals from the traps. I heard the startled squeal. In my body I felt the sudden fear from my Nuare. The ground was falling away from me. My wings spread. I snapped my head up.
"ZIA!" I bellowed as I raced to the large red dragon who took up a quarter of the field. No sooner had I leapt to her back and the mighty wings pulled us upward. A hawk was flying away with my Nuare. The tiny dragon didn't even know how to fly yet. I reached up for the bow normally on my back. It wasn't there. I swore. Having been upset with Quinn for recruiting Zia in her crazy scheme, I had forgotten the weapon.
I snatched the machete from my belt. My mind connected to the dragon below me, she was already maneuvering to assist me. I heard the hawk squawk. It didn't like the idea of a bigger predator after the prey it caught. It tried to zigzag to out maneuver the dragon. I was prepared for this.
I jumped from the dragons back. The machete swung out, a perfect extension of my arm. The hawks head rolled away from its flying body. My other hand caught the tail of the falling dragon. I snatched her against my chest. Cradling her to me as we both plummeted to the ground.
Instead of hitting the ground, we plunked heavily onto the back of a fire dragon. Zia was furious with herself. I sent a soothing thought to her, but my full focus was on the infant in my arms. Poor Tanwen was shaking from her ordeal.
Since her birth I had been teaching her the language of people. She was doing well at recalling it. At times like these, that wasn't what she needed. Instead I reverted to her original language. I sent her the images of safety, warmth, happiness. It soothed her fear. Using our link I searched our body for any sign of pain or damage. We were fine, just upset over the whole ordeal.
"One day you shall be bigger than any hawk." Zia sent to the child. We landed just outside of the Wry. I leapt from Zia's back. As she transformed she looked up to the school.
"Does pretty boy want his Nuare back?" I scowled. Zia turned to me.
"He's fine." She walked up to touch her hands to the trembling beast in my arms. She sent her own form of comfort to the tiny beast. I reached out to stroke Zia's arm.
"It's not your fault either." I told her. She glared at me.
"I just stood there watching the sky. I didn't even see the hawk!" she fumed.
"It was an accident."
"How can you be so ..." she stopped. Her mind wrapping around mine. She sensed my fear. The fear that had flooded me, not because I was connected to Tanwen as the hawk took her, but the fear any knight would feel when their Nuare was in grave danger.
I had felt helpless at first. Though I had taken many fledgling into the woods, returning them as safely as if we went on a stroll, the first time I take my own Nuare she nearly gets killed.
"Zyn, stop. You will be a great knight. You are strong enough to protect not just one hatchling, but many. We were all taken in by you at one time!" Zia pulled me into her arms.
"Stay strong, brother. This was but one time. Every Nuare pairing must go through their first scare at some point. Just because you're you, doesn't mean you get to skip that part." She chuckled. I drew in her slightly smoky scent.
"Why did you agree?" I asked drawing back. I didn't want to think about what had just happened. Not right now.
"Because, you belong to the ranks of knights now. No matter how much you despise them." She smirked at me.
"I only really despise yours." I snorted. She laughed.
"Have faith in me. He isn't all that bad. I chose him, remember." She winked as she walked away. I knew Fauner called for her. I went to finish my daily chores. Slipping the calm dragon to my shoulders once more.
I felt her talons dig into the leather padding I put there just for that purpose. She cooed to me. She was upset, not that she nearly became food for a bird, but because I had to rescue her. I snorted. What a crazy little one I had. From the moment our minds touched, I had known her knight would have a more difficult time with her. Her spirit was strong. I smiled.
That was fine, my little white fire. Together we would grow even stronger. My eyes went to the school buildings. I still had the summer. I didn't need to enroll just yet. I was sure Quinn would try even more daring tactics to get her clutches on me. I smiled, it was going to be an interesting summer. I decided.
Back at the Wry, Shea was cooking dinner. Although we had many handlers and other personal that worked with the dragons, only Shea, Greyson and I lived in the Wry. Therefore the three of us rotated cooking and cleaning duties of the large space. The Smithy was beside the Wry, though Greyson was only there to do his job. He slept in the Wry.
Today it was my turn to clean. At least we didn't have to feed the dragons that lived here. They came and went, Hunting on their own. These were dragons who had yet to meet their knight. They ranged typically from about three months to three years. Often if they didn't find their mate within the first year, which was two cycles of bonding ceremonies the school held. They would be transported to other schools and towns. They only came back if they hadn't found their knight. The oldest dragon living with us was nine months. She was a strong fire dragon who lived at the very top of the mountain. She liked seeing the sky. I could tell her knight was coming soon.
Often times people marked as knights would come to one of the schools since that was were most of the dragons stayed. We would have them filter in throughout the year. I went about sweeping up the ground level of the Wry.
This was were we all had our rooms. It was where the cooking, bathing and living facilities were for the three of us. We kept tack here for the dragons and gear for the handlers. Once a month Greyson pulled everything to check for any damage or repairs needed.
I worked up from the bottom. I swept out the empty caverns, cleaned out the old used hay in those that the dragons stayed, adding fresh hay for when they came back to bed down for the night. By the time I was done with this, it was time to go fed the hatchlings and get them settled for the night.
Although settling them down wasn't my job, I often helped out with it. My mental connection to the small lizards helped to calm and soothe them to sleep. It made the job easier for the wranglers assigned to the hatching sheds.
Coming back home I saw a familiar sight. Greyson and Shea standing by the cook fire. Shea had just finished cooking the stew. The two were close, had been all my life. If Shea was my father, Greyson was like a kind uncle. Shea turned as I came walking in.
"Just in time." He smiled at me as his arm slipped from Greyson's side. He pulled a fresh baked loaf of bread out of the fire. I smiled. I loved it when Shea cooked. He was by far the best of us all. We sat down to enjoy our meal together.