The next two weeks quickly slipped into an easy routine for Rosalyn.
First, she would wake up in her bed and lounge in the warmth of the sun gathering ambient mana from the air as a sort of breakfast until her natural need to move and be active overtook her catlike desire for a warm spot in the sun, followed by a quick bit of exercise to get further used to her new body, usually in the form of some quick martial arts practice.
Rosalyn was quickly finding out that she was going to have to relearn everything she had already knew, but Cham had already promised to help her with that so for now she was merely content at using the familiar forms and movements as exercise. Her morning workout complete, she would then stand in front of a yardstick that Cham had tacked onto the wall as soon as they realised how fast Rosalyn was growing and using a bit of chalk in her mouth would very roughly measure how much taller she was that morning. She was currently more than twice as large as she had been when she was born and was still growing fast. Cham had expressed some worry over it, but Serena had assured her that dragons just grew as fast as food would allow.
Her morning routine complete she would then wander outside of her room to look around and see what the other residents of the household were up to that morning or explore the house and confines of the grounds. She had also taken to playing with younger kobolds in the breaks between their school lessons as a way to continue to stretch her legs, often under the discreetly watchful eyes of Cham and Serena plus a dozen or more suitably fretful adult kobolds. She found that the voice in the back of her head, her dragon instincts according to Serena, really liked to be pushed high in the swing. An act that one kobold in particular, a young female named Poh, really enjoyed helping with.
Poh was apparently the first of the kobold kids to approach Cham when she woke up and had been the only one of the younger kobolds to have the discipline to attend every single one of the halfling’s school lessons. She would chatter merrily at Rosalyn in the weird kobold tongue sprinkled occasionally with a few words in common and use a crude block and tackle attached to the back of the swing to really get Rosalyn frightfully high in the air. Birdie would even occasionally show up in between his trips into the forest with his crew and with their help use the block and tackle that had been set up on the swing to send both her and Poh in the swing way high up together, although he never really said much more than hello. Rosalyn got the impression that he didn’t know how to treat her now that she was technically an existence that he understood at a genetic level was superior to him, or that was at least what Dragon-Rosalyn in the back of her head told her.
After they were done playing for the day Poh would often drag Rosalyn into one of the afternoon lessons and force her to sit in her lap, despite the fact that the kobold was already a bit smaller than Rosalyn. Still, she would carefully pick whichever spot had the most sunlight and Rosalyn would doze in her lap while the kobold kids learned new things.
This would continue until around mid-afternoon when the lesson ended and either Serena or Cham would sit down in a rocking chair and feed her one of the potions that Serena had procured from the nearby city. Serena would talk and ask questions about her day and Cham, who she still couldn't directl converse with, would just sing. It was a surprisingly happy routine, and one that Rosalyn would have gladly continued for a lot longer. Unfortunately, life and time always does what life and time do. It marches onward.
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“Well, I have lingered here for long enough.” Cham said, “I have recovered and Rose is safe. I have to report in to the nearest temple before they send a search party after me. I imagine the Abbess is quite worried after the letter I sent her. I also want to at least inform someone so that an investigation of the potential cultist activity that Serena spotted in the nearby city can start.”
“I told you that I wasn’t sure that they were cultists, they just smelled similar to that lich thing. There are probably a lot of reasons someone could get that death smell around themselves.” Serena said from her rocking chair. Rosalyn, now around the size of a medium-ish dog, was sitting comfortably in her lap listening intently while she drank greedily from the goat bottle.
“Regardless, I have things that need doing and if there is even the SLIGHTEST chance these are cultists then not only does the temple in Spite need to know, but WE need to know. They know that you are out there somewhere Serena, and they covet magical power.” Serena rolled her eyes at the small woman’s explanation which caused Cham to stomp over to where she was sitting.
Rosalyn instantly recognized the look in Cham’s eyes and started to chuckle as she did something that stunned the ancient dragoness. She flicked her in the forehead. “You. Are. Magical. Power.” she continued, punctuating each word with another flick. “I swear, you are just as flippant and reckless as this child,” Cham pointed at a still laughing Rosalyn, who was making a soft chuffing noise as she finished off the bottle, “Also, I have another child to check in on. War is on the horizon, I can feel it, and she was drafted by the Kingdom. I want to see Janie and give her some more details in private. She has a right to know, we are family after all.”
A pensive look appeared on Serena’s face as she digested the last bit of Cham’s tirade, but she nodded her head after but a moment, “I am not worried for myself, there is little that can be done to actually kill me at this stage of my life… it is for my little duckling here and any future daughters I bear that I must say I am worried about anyone else knowing. I wish to maintain a low profile.. However, both of you seem to trust her so I will extend that same amount of trust. Oh! Give her the address of the bank! They accept mail so she can send letters and they will hold them in trust until we can collect them. I opened an account in all three of our names for such mutual use. It even has money in it in case you need something while in the town!” Serena beamed while examining the now empty bottle.
“... How much money? What did you do?”
“Well, I mean… It was only a medium sized gold nugget…”
Facepalming at what Serena had done, Cham gave an exasperated sigh before looking sadly at Serena, “You really have no common sense do you? What part of pulling a “medium-sized” hunk of gold out of your bag screams low profile? It’s bad enough you buy flats of obscenely alcoholic mana potions that no normal person can even drink without falling on their ass, but you can’t just whip out huge sums of money like that! That is how you get a Thieves’ Guild watching you! Do you want thieves? That is how you get thieves!” Throwing up her hands in exasperation she marched out of the gazebo and to the house. Rosalyn leapt out of Serena’s lap and made to follow while Serena sheepishly did the same.
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Yelling behind herself as she walked across the lawn, Cham said “I will be back in around two months, three at the latest and will contact you if it looks like it will take more than that…” Stopping suddenly, her red hair gently swaying in the breeze she sighed and turned around to look at both of them her face and voice suddenly soft, “Please be careful while I am gone.”
A week later, Cham had already left to make her initial report and then book passage to see Janie and the Abbess, who apparently was near the RMA at this time of the year with several other high ranking members of their branch of the church to teach a class about combatting undead and other unnatural creatures, and the mood of the estate had noticeably gotten more melancholy without her presence, the kobold kids especially were much more subdued without her around and did little more than lay around in a funk.
Rosalyn too had found herself missing Cham as well, but the feeling had done little to alter her daily routine. Still, she was in for a shake-up of her own as one morning as she walked outside Serena was standing there waiting for her in her full dragon glory.
Staring up at the shining silver scales and spread feathered wings made Rosalyn feel acutely aware of how small she actually was when compared to her mother despite the fact that she had grown to be almost three and a half feet tall now. Dragon-Rosalyn started panicking and running around in circles in the back of her skull screaming facts about how some mothers ate their young, and despite her best efforts it did start to get to her a little bit. Thankfully, Serena spoke before she could truly break and run.
“You are growing nicely, although again you are a little on the small side for the amount of mana you have ingested, but you have grown and retained enough for me to start teaching you things.” Craning her long neck down to be on Rosalyn’s level she looked to the right and then the left before dramatically whispering, “Do you want to learn how to fly?”
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A few minutes later they were standing on the cliff face and Serena had entered into full blown lecture mode as she looked down at the attentive form of her daughter. “Today we are going to start the first lesson in a class I like to call ‘How to Dragon: a Beginner’s Primer’... what do you think? I have lots of lessons planned!” In response Rosalyn stared blankly at her mother.
“Oof, tough crowd, and that look… I can tell that Cham raised you until now. Well, regardless… today we are going to teach you to fly!” In response an excited look blossomed on Rosalyn’s face that made Serena giddy with joy. Suddenly her younger self’s desire to avoid having children seemed like foolishness. Whelps were so adorable!
Spreading her wings outward, Serena continued her explanation, “Not all dragons were fortunate enough to be born with wings. Generally speaking, only the nobility had them among the larger dragons. There were some smaller breeds that had wings and could fly short distances, but only the greatest among our kind could soar high among the clouds.”
In response to Serena’s excited words the tiny whelp started furiously beating her wings trying to achieve lift, but sadly nothing happened. A puzzled look appeared on her face and Serena heard her unspoken question. “No, it isn’t because I have feathers on my wings. I have feathers on my wings because I like feathers. I do not know if you noticed duckling, but we are not very aerodynamic creatures. We fly with magic, not physics.”
Another unspoken question as Rosalyn tilted her head, “Physics are... not really relevant to this lesson. Ask Cham when she returns, she likes to teach stuff like that.” Ignoring the cross look on Rosalyn’s face she continued, “Different winged dragons use slightly different specifics on how they flew, but that isn’t really relevant to how you and I fly so I am going to skip it for now. I fly by using my mana in two-fold ways. First, I extend the reach of my wings with mana, basically forming a larger set of invisible wings and I also push up on my body from underneath to create artificial lift to help me get off the ground and also stay in the air. However, since this is your first lesson and you do not seem to be extraordinarily good at manipulating mana outside of your own body we are going to just try and augment your wings today.”
Reaching down Serena looped a cord made of her own mana to Rosalyn’s torso and attached it to the tip of her tail. Again Rosalyn’s head tilted and she gave a questioning look, “No, it isn’t a leash… Well, okay it is a leash, but it is just to catch you if you fall. Cham would literally find a way to murder me if you died while she wasn’t here.”
Coughing into her claws, Serena started back into the explanation, “Look inside yourself and feel the mana. I know that you have gotten pretty good at moving it around inside of your own body, but today’s practice is about extending it to be outside your body in a controlled manner. I want you to move it to your wings and picture it coating them, extending them, making them lighter and stronger. Try and match the shape of your own wings… just bigger! I will let you know when you have it.”
A look of intense concentration crossed the little dragons face as she started shaping the mana from inside of her center and pushed it out of her wings. The invisible force was clear to her eyes and she watched the misshapen forms take shape on top of Rosalyn’s small bat-like wings. Nodding in satisfaction for her first attempt, she gave the young whelp a critique and some pointers and then forcefully dispelled the mana surrounding them with a wave of her own wings, much to Rosalyn’s chagrin, so that she would have to try again from the start. “Don’t give me that look, this is important practice. You need to be able to shape mana child. You do seem to have a gift for the internal stuff and you can direct mana fine as long as you don’t have to maintain it, but maintaining forms is arguably the most important skill you have to master and there is a long divide on what you can do now and what I can do. There is no rush, but we do need to make sure that you can do it quickly, correctly, and most importantly safely.”
Another cross look from the whelp, and Serena rolled her eyes at her daughter in return, “You do remember I can hear you right?” In response the smaller dragon stuck her tongue out.
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Rosalyn was thoroughly frustrated. It had been almost six hours of non-stop failure and she was starting to get hungry which was causing Dragon-Rosalyn to get excessively grumpy in the back of her head. It didn’t help that she seemed to be incapable of actually shaping the mana in a competent fashion once it left her body.
“Again! This time focus more on making them uniform. You are making the one on the left much too large.” Crossing her tiny arms Rosalyn concentrated as hard as she could on the image she had in her brain, an invisible pair modeled after what Serena had on her back. The process was surprisingly like working with mud or clay… if you were using sticks from forty paces back to shape it that is… but she was getting a better handle on what she was doing.
Overall, the exercise was so wholly foreign to what she had learned about the movement of energy during the, at the time, purely theoretical lessons that Cham had given her when she was younger. Still, it those lessons had allowed her to surprise Serena and better circulate and absorb the mana that she was being fed into her heart thus speeding up her own growth significantly.
Panting heavily from the extended exertion, Rosalyn finished shaping the mana and extended her wings tiredly for inspection to her mother. “I see you like the feathers too. Good job! You pass the first lesson. Jump off and listen to your instincts. They will tell you how to fly. I will be above you, so do not worry about falling.”
Rosalyn looked at her wings, noting that she could see the faint outline of the shaped mana and then peered over the edge of the cliff for a safe spot to land, but none became evident. Suddenly worried that she had not done a good enough job at shaping her wings, she hesitated as an odd sense of Déjà vu washed over her.
She didn’t know how long she would be able to maintain the wings, so without thinking about the consequences too deeply she lifted her wings and made another rash decision. For Mother Cham and Serena who had blessed her with this second chance she flapped her wings once, twice, and three times and re-affirmed the decision that she was going to work as hard as was in her own power at this being a dragon thing and made up her mind.
She jumped.