That is a lot of eyes. An absurd amount of them if I can say so myself. That is also an absurd size for any creature to have, even a god damned dragon. If I was a clownfish she is a whole blue whale! Seriously she could eat the entire nest as well as all the gemstones and coins and I doubt it’d even fill her mouth! I take a deep breath, but I am not assaulted by spices, instead there’s something completely different. I realize then that this must be her scent. Yes, her, my mother.

She is a lake with reeds and lilies and willows and algae. She is a slow river filled with life that decided to get up and walk off. She is beauty and peace, a quiet that makes you just want to sit down and exist. I cannot be afraid of her, for she is nothing but the kindness that nature gives to those that take the time to appreciate it. She is a life giver, she made me and my siblings after all, so why would I be afraid of her?

Maybe it’s the six front facing eyes that are absolutely focused on me. That might be it. Now that I am no longer assaulted by hallucinations I can see her, and maybe as an after effect of whatever that was, I am not terrified anymore. Rather, I think she is an absolute beauty even if she looks more like an eldritch creature than a dragon. Don’t get me wrong, the basics are there. She has scales, a long neck, wings, tail. But no, she is much more than a big lizard with wings slapped on her back.

Let’s start with the head. Ten eyes. Why so many? I don’t know, but she has ten whole eyes, of which six are front facing and the other four are spread between her sides. The front ones are arranged in a sort of sideways hourglass shape, with the inner two being much larger than the other ones, turquoise and having round pupils, while the other four are either deep blue or verdant green, with the upper two having plus shaped pupils while the lower two having them in an x shape. Her four lateral eyes are similarly split between green and blue, with the pupil being similar to a goat’s. Just a big rectangle. They are also arranged strangely, with two slapped just on the side, while the other pair is actually much lower and seems to be actively angled towards the ground.

She also has horns, at least 20 of them, all reaching upwards and seeming to make a sort of crown. They’re not big, comparatively, but they look carved, complex patterns and ridges being visible around. They’re also a pure white, cleaner than any ivory I’ve ever seen. She has four wings, all of them folded neatly and pressed against her body and her legs are just something else, since she has six of them. They’re thick, with only the two up front seeming to be a bit slimmer and actually having long fingers, the back four looking a lot like elephant legs.

Now that by itself shouldn’t make me think she is more horror than dragon, even if the eyes are weird, but her neck and tail(s?) are making it pretty hard not to think of her as such. I am a bit confused on the tail situation because it looks like she has a lot of them, or maybe it’s just a weird big one? Whatever the case, it looks like someone took a lizard and made it cosplay as a peacock. Not only does she have the same green and blues of a peacock, but also has a lot of small feathers with the same pattern of multiple, hypnotic eyes. As she steps towards us I see her tails move, now confirming that they are in fact just many of them wrapped to look like one. They are extremely dexterous, have a sort of spike coming out the end, and there’s even a thin membrane seemingly linking all of them to one another, though that might also be part of the illusion her feathers make.

Then there’s the part that solidifies her eldritch aspect: Her neck has tendrils. Not just one or two, mind you, but I swear it looks like she is a willow with how many she has and how they sway as she moves her head. They do not look like decorations or plants, they literally look like scaly tendrils with small spikes at the end of them. The fact that she carries what looks like half a deer certainly points to them being used as limbs.

Scratch that, what really earns her the title of eldritch horror is her mouth. Why does she have five rows of teeth? Who, in the history of everything, has ever needed that many? Ah, and don’t think that this is a shark situation with the rows being in the back of her head, waiting to replace the forward ones as she loses them. She literally has five rows of huge sharp teeth all of them placed at the front, with barely any space between. Some are serrated, some look just sharp, some look like oversized canines and all of them are ready to work as she bites.

She makes sounds, they don’t seem threatening but they are sounds I cannot comprehend and that would probably paralyze someone with fear. Her eyes then shift from me over to my other siblings. They all are awake and squeaking fearlessly, their eyes more focused on the carcass than on the huge dragon thing that apparently made us. She does not seem too surprised by that and places the body on the floor, right next to the pile of riches we sleep on. After that she makes a short sound that seems soothing compared to her other vocalizations, but it doesn’t seem to calm my siblings at all as they quite literally slide like penguins down the almost two meter tall hill of valuables, before starting to rip at the body, clearly enjoying the fresh meat.

I don’t know what to do. My instincts seem to want me to just focus on the meat as it smells really good and my eyes keep going down to it, but then I remember about the huge mutant dragon and I look back up at her. She tilts her head and I do the same. She tilts it the other way and I follow. She laughs. She actually just laughs. It is a melodious yet powerful sound and the coins bellow me rattle as they are hit by the low vibrations. After seemingly having her fun, she looks… kindly? At me and lowers her head, wrapping a few tendrils around my body.

At first I panic, thinking that I may have done something wrong by hesitating, but instead it seems like this was a hug, as her tentacles retreat after giving me a bit of a squeeze. She makes a few more sounds, no, scratch that, she speaks a few words. There’s a clear pattern to the sounds, but I do not yet get it and learning it will take a lot of time since it sounds completely different from anything I heard back on Earth. Still that should solidify it. She thinks, she can be amused, she can embrace her confused child. She has emotions and a mind and is a fully sapient being.

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Also, that’s a pretty positive first interaction. Her scent is intoxicating but she does have a calming presence, and I actually feel comfortable just looking away from her, now that I know she is not just an animal running on instinct that might turn around and crush me by mistake. So I climb down, a bit more gracefully than the others and I try to get in on the fun, but it seems that I won’t have the chance to be picky. Less than a minute and they ate most of the body. There’s still some meat and bones, as well as intestines that I can only imagine why they are untouched…

Ah, problem, I have to eat raw meat. It looks disgusting. I sniff it and it smells good, even if less than before, but it still looks like a corpse torn apart by wolves and I don’t know how to feel about it. The others seem full as they just curl up close to the body, mother reaching down to pick them up and place them back up on the nest. At least I now know how she kept placing me back with the others.

Alright, here goes nothing. I chomp down on the meat, using my left front foot to keep the bone down and after a bit of quick chewing I am certain that his is the best meal I’ve ever had. It is also my first meal in this life, to be fair, but really it tastes way too good for raw, unwashed flesh from a wild deer-like animal. Still I continue eating and I actually continue enjoying it. It’s different from eating back as a human. This time I feel it all. I think my digestion is a bit different because not even a minute after eating I feel my body warm up and energy flood me. It makes me want to eat more so I do just that. I quite literally devour all that is left, and this is how I find out that my tongue is cat-like, at least in the sense that it has papillae which really help with stripping the bones clean. Even after that I still felt a bit hungry so I started nibbling the bones and they crumpled under my teeth, showing their juicy insides.

10/10 meal, would certainly eat half deer raw meat again. Damn do I feel full now... I think I went back to ball shape. Looking down at my victim I only see bone splinters, intestines and a bit of fur and hooves left behind, and realize I literally ate the entire creature. No wonder I feel full. My eyes move up just fast enough to see the tendrils reaching down for me and I close my eyes, collapsing into sleep.

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Things are different this time. The next time I wake up I do so for only a moment. I am on my back, a sibling’s head resting on my expanded stomach, and after that moment of observation I am right back in my library. This happens again. I just wake for a moment, have time to notice that I am in a different position and then I collapse again. I doubt it’s been a day each time I fall asleep, but at the same time I have no point of reference for time, especially with the fact that I am underground, permanently illuminated by those crystals.

What happened? Why am I no longer able to stay awake? Well, my siblings did presumably sleep since they were born, only waking up enough to crawl around a bit. I guess this is how I was supposed to act. That’s going to be a pretty boring life…

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It takes me waking up about five times before I am able to wake up properly and I see change. Looking around I realize that I grew at an alarming rate, as did all my siblings. Secondly, the only one still with me is the one with a crown forming. The two with red scales are actually down below, squealing and play fighting. The one next to me was curled up and sleeping, at least until I raised my head. It seemed to instantly wake up from that and turn to look at me, letting out an adorable squeak as it stared at me with bright blue eyes similar to a cat’s.

I instinctively sniff her, and that’s how somehow realize it’s a “her”. I am taken aback by that somehow working, but then remember that scents are a big part of how animals recognize each other, so maybe humans are just weird for relying solely on appearance. Well, her horn crown has already started to sprout, and I now realize that it will probably look like mother’s. Her colors are also more defined, really she is looking to become the spitting image of our mother at some point and it would probably fit her well.

Right, mother, who somehow has a lot more limbs than either me or my siblings have. I look down at the other two as my sister nuzzles my side and I see Red Tail spreading his tiny wings as he does a dive attack into Spots. They’re both males, I realize, as I focus on their scent. The wings don’t seem to carry him at all, but it probably trains his muscle memory for when he does get to fly. Well, seeing as I finally get some time to be awake, I decide to use it and get up. It’s easy. My whole body feels lighter, or maybe my legs are just stronger after growing a bit? Regardless I take a step forward, shift my weight forward, then move the leg furthest back to follow and I am walking.

I am a tiny predator so I just have to act like a cat and I should probably make do. For now I actually want to try and see myself somehow. Sure I can analyze my front limbs and tail, both seeming to just be longer and thicker than before, but nothing else being changed, so I instead focus on finding something shiny. There’s a lot of metal down here, so there should be s-

My instincts scream and I instinctively twist my whole body, swinging my tail with all of my weight behind it. I swat red tail from the sky, knocking him down on the rocky floor. I feel my body remaining focused, almost in a combat mode for a second, before getting back to reality and rushing over to him. I hope I didn’t seriously injure my brother during our first ever interaction, that would suck for years to come

As I reach him I notice that he is already up, squeaking and taking nips at the air. He’s playful. That didn’t hurt him. Damn, ok, dragon infants are tough. Wait, no, babies are tough in general. At least that’s what I heard about human babies back when I was alive. They’re indestructible so long as you don’t let them realize they’re hurt, might be what happened now. However rushing to my brother wasn’t useless, just a bit to the side of him I see something I didn’t notice before, probably because of the limited awake time.

It is a sort of ornate shield, but it’s not the shield part that’s important, but rather the mirror. Because somebody had the bright idea of making a tower shield and slapping a whole mirror on top of it. Well, regardless of bad design choices, it does help that I can see myself in it. I am weird. Lots of horns with little pattern starting to grow, bright red eyes like a tree frog’s when all the others seem to have blues or greens and my scales are mostly sky blue, with a light grey belly. I am also pretty damn cute.

You know what? I can work with this.