If anyone was ever wondering what a magical stone that allowed a person to read minds tasted like, I am proud to be able to convey that the taste is like the citric burn of lemon juice combined with the shock of a 9 volt battery to the tongue. Oh, it also tastes like pure unfiltered agony inducing heat. The shimmering crimson stone had only just passed between my teeth when the enchanted power held inside began to pour from it rapidly, causing my diminutive frame to shudder as I tried to not cry out from the torture it inflicted on my insides.

Bahruk and Juaki were at my side before I could hit the ground, and both were attempting to force me to regurgitate the stone. As much as it hurt me, and as awful as it was that I was subjecting them to such an awful sight, I knew deep down that this would work. Maybe it was my own intuition, or perhaps this is what it meant to cut the strands of fate. Whichever it was, I was adamant that I must endure until the power of the gem was mine.

For a few minutes I struggled against the grasping hands of my parents, desperately trying to keep them from holding me down, until the pain subsided. Once my insides had returned to a state of calm I allowed them to force me to vomit out the now inert stone, which hit the ground with a dull thud before crumbling into blackened shards. Mother held me tight to her chest as tears poured from her eyes. Her unusual barks and trills were interrupted by sniffs and sobs.

For a moment I felt as though I had failed, until something in my mind snapped like a rubber band against skin. At that moment everything changed.

“Why is world so cruel to you? You are just child, not even of moon-rise! Damn the old ones! Damn the magics! Damn them all! No-one takes my daughter again!”

Even if I could speak, I would have been left speechless. The anguish in her voice tore a hole through me, leaving a jagged and hollow tear in my heart. Nobody had ever said such words before, ever cared what had happened to me, or even called me their own kid. Without another thought I threw my arms around her and hugged her as tight as I could.

I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, that I was just doing what it took to understand her, and that none of this was her fault. I never wanted to hurt her feelings.

From behind me I could hear a cacophony of small voices.

“Momma sad?”

“Bad happen?”

“Dada, why?”

The trio were now anxiously standing at the feet of our dad, who was barely holding back tears of his own. He knelt down and hugged all three and ran a hand over their scaled heads to calm them.

“It is alright. No more bad happen, promise. No bad magic coming, we safe home.”

My mental self was now kicking itself in the ass at full power. Look what you did to them, you selfish little shit! This is all your fault! I tried to shake my head to rid myself of these thoughts, but only wound up nuzzling against and jabbing my chin into my mother's neck. I tried to remind myself that this wasn’t my fault, and the only person to blame was that Zhathrael prick.

Eventually, once all of the tears had dried up, the rest of my family were able to carry on with their morning food. Not everybody was calm, since now I had a large green tail coiled around my waist preventing me from leaving Juaki’s side. I couldn’t blame her. After all, if I had a kid and they had suddenly been over in the corner eating batteries, I would be freaking out too. To hopefully reassure her that I was fine, I attempted to eat double the portion size of Humey. This was a mistake, since he was nearly twice my size and had a bottomless pit where his guts should be.

Once we had all relaxed and taken our post-meal break, it was back to the fun and games for the boys, who had decided that chasing after a beetle was the most entertaining thing in the world. Maybe they were onto something, because that bug looked yummy. Whoah, slow down there lizard brain, we’re trying to learn magic from mom, not munch on juicy, crunchy little morsels.

Lessons first, snacks later. Now that I could understand her, it turned out that mom was kind of an all-round badass. I’d already seen her tear through Iron bars with strength alone, but it also seemed that she was one hell of a fire mage. She demonstrated how she could control the temperature of the air around her, and will the flames she could conjure to only arrear on her claws. Luckily, she seemed to know that a fire indoors was a terrible idea, and refused to do much more than a brief showcase, and make the tip of her claw burn like a birthday candle.

“Watch the fire, little Kayrux. It burns bright, too hot for scales. Be focus, hold fire inside until need it, then become dragon when fight. Learn this soon, you also can be strong like mother.”

After her explanation I nodded in agreement, which made her eyes widen like when she had seen me with the porridge. Her snout came close to my own as she looked deep into my eyes.

“Child, you hear the words? Understand me?”

I wasn’t sure how to smile like they did, but I did what I could as I nodded again. The tail that was wrapped around my waist released me in a heartbeat as she raced over to where Bahruk was observing the boys’ hunt. The two rushed over and sat on the ground in front of me. Once again Juaki looked at me with her bewildered eyes and asked if I understood. Both of them looked absolutely baffled at my new cognitive ability. It was Bahruk who asked me the next question.

“You eat magic stone, it make you think more? Is that what happen?”

Spot on pops, you would have earned a gold star if I had one to give. My acknowledgment of this claim seemed to utterly floor him, sending him reeling.

“Too much strangeness for one egg. Laid on night of shadowed moon, blue scale and silver mark, standing after hatch, resist unraveling magic, now eats the stone to learn our words. Pure dragon blood is in this one!”

Stolen story; please report.

The sheer jubilation that he exhibited told me that my unorthodox existence was maybe not such a bad thing. I didn’t understand half of what he said, but I’m pretty sure I heard something about unraveling magic, as in disassembling me. Is that what Chalk Eater was doing to me in that cage? Trying to fucking dissassemble me? I thought it was some kind of inspection spell, like identify or something, but instead it was just another way that he was trying to kill me.

I didn’t have the energy to dwell on that, so I would instead focus on following the lead of those I knew I could trust. Dad had gone off across the room, rambling to himself about how great dragons were while they boys just watched him pace around. Mom was just sitting in front of me, her expression unreadable. Using her tail as a longer arm, she pulled me closer to her until we were almost knee-to-knee.

“You are too smart to be just hatched. If demon touched, old one would killed you. If not demon touched, maybe given by gods. Is true?”

I’m not sure if I could call Death a god, but since this world had some kind of teachings about the end and even acolytes, if Chalky were any indication then I suppose she isn’t wrong. I once again gave her an affirmative response, to which she almost broke down into tears. Her hands on her knees bunched into fists.

“Sorry… So sorry little one… Not strong enough to keep safe, not even keep old one away. I am bad mother. Little god gift deserve strong mother, stronger than all old ones. Promise to get stronger, to stop old ones to hurt you. They never take away any more.”

No, please don’t beat yourself up, you’ve done nothing wrong and I understand that! That’s what I wish I could say. All I can hope for is that actions speak louder than words, even in this world. With my frail little fingers I took one of her heft clawed hands and pulled it close to my chest. Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I pushed my forehead onto her clenched fist. Through the skin atop my head I could feel the tension leave her grip. Her other hand swept behind me, holding me still as she lowered her own head until our foreheads were touching.

One thought crossed my mind at that moment.

“Forgive.”

Her own voice, though unspoken, could be heard in one word.

“Love.”

As she pulled away from me, I had the sense that she had heard me, and she knew that I had heard her. Her tired smile put every one of my worries to rest, and for a while we just sat there silently watching the other.

Our bonding time was cut short by the sneaky approach of Tokols, who had somehow gotten behind me without making a sound. He was suddenly by my side, his gecko-like head pushing against my shoulder. He was sitting just behind me and to my left, but I hadn’t seen him approach due to my entire focus being on our mom. He and I were almost the same size, though he had a bit of extra bulk to his limbs. He smiled at me and giggled.

“Dada say sister sad. Chase bug!”

Utterly infallible logic there bro, when you’re down you really should just chase a bug. I couldn’t bear to see him upset, so I stood up and eagerly nodded for him to show me the direction of our quarry. His bright little smile simply radiated joy as he took hold of my hand and led me over to the far side of the cave and into an alcove made a few feet off the ground. It took the two of us working together to reach the ledge, where I had to pull him up after getting a boost.. From the corner of my eye I saw that this was making both mom and dad laugh.

In my past life I wasn’t much of a fan of things with more than four legs, especially if that number was eight or more. In this life, however, I found my mouth watering as I imagined what kind of taste the bug would have. Surely I could attribute that to having an actual reptile brain, but right now I was just rolling with it. Said bug was skittering behind a box on the shelf, and had just gone in from the left. I looked to Tokols to see if he had an idea. Sure enough, he had one.

“Let’s get bug!”

Genius plan from a tactical mastermind. While he busied himself with shoving his arm in from the left, I merely waited on the right side like a cat ready to pounce. As soon as the beetle, which was about the size and color of a kiwi, scuttled from beyond the safety of the wooden box I was on top of it. Being careful not to crush it, I adjusted my grip until I had it held aloft by the wing covers, unable to find any purchase in escaping my grip.

Tokols was still rummaging around behind the box, so I let out a small cough to get his attention. His pale face and orange eyes peeked over the box and a smile lit up the room once again.

“Gotcha! Sister smart!”

Aw, such a flatterer. He scrambled around the box, clearly eager to take possession of the prize. Once close enough to reach it he suddenly froze. Gears were turning inside of that head of his, and the deliberate focus needed for it showed across his constrained face. He eventually had his eureka moment and beamed with joy.

“Eat bug, sister. You catch, you win!”

As much as the primitive desire to scarf the crunchy little beetle was, I felt as though he deserved it. I had caused him so much stress at such an early age, and he was such a good kid. He deserved a buggy little treat on me. I extended the bug towards him, but he only looked at me puzzled.

“But… you win, eat bug… why sister still sad?”

I quickly shook my head, trying to convey that I wasn't upset. Shit, what would be the diplomatic approach here? I gestured towards his mouth, then towards the bug, but only the top half. It took the poor kid a little while to put the pieces together on this one, though it seemed that he had a streak of that Bahruk intellect.

“We both win? Both eat bug?”

Yes! My aggressive nodding almost made me lose my grip on our soon-to-be-devoured treat.

“Sister smartest! Okay, I take top bug, you take left bug.”

Pretty sure he meant “bottom half”, but he had the free pass of being less than a week old. I held the bug just in front of his face, allowing him to crunch through the brown exoskeleton with his dangerous little incisors. Once he had his mouthful of buggy goodness, the rest was for me to consume. The crunch was good, like a nice fresh tortilla chip, and the inside was a deep nutty taste almost like peanut butter with bits of walnuts. Damn, I wish I had a dozen more of these little guys, and by the look of it so did Tokols.

“Dada! We eat the bug!”

It was only three steps for Bahruk to cross the distance between us and stand there at eye level with us shelf-board munchkins. At this height I could see in great detail the features of our father, and I’ve gotta say he is one slick looking fellow. Seriously, his head is almost a perfectly smooth iguana-like head, with four small spikes where a pair of ears should be. He cocked an eyebrow at the two of us as he stood in the penultimate hands-on-hips proud dad pose.

“Both of you? Must been a big bug, big enough two hatchlings could share.”

With one arm he was able to scoop the two of us from our seat on the upper shelf and deposit us on the floor safely.

“You two play with hatchmates, over there. Draw with white rock on wall, any thing you think!”

Official permission to draw on the walls? Either pops is the coolest dad, or kobolds don’t care about property damage. Who am I kidding, he’s obviously just that awesome. We followed the direction that he was pointing and saw Humey and Mibata scratching at the floor as they broke jagged chunks of white rock loose from the floor to use as drawing implements. Tokols took off ahead of me, too eager to play with the others to pay any mind to how viciously his tail swished around behind him. He’d almost hit me with it, but I had the advantage of having the leg of an adult kobold between myself and the impact.

Instead of sprinting over and potentially tripping on the imperfect stone floor, I preferred to walk over carefully and calmly. A part of me was genuinely curious about what those three had drawn.