The Dragon just stared at him for another heartbeat, then turned and departed the cave, leaving him alone. He didn't realize until she left that she had been illuminating the cave, and without her presence it was a void. He carefully maneuvered his way over to his sitting rock, easing himself down onto the hard surface while he thought. He had been thinking about what he should do a lot recently, since it was either think, eat, or play his rock stacking game. But he honestly wasn't sure what to do, he couldn't find his way back to the city, and even if he could he was too small and weak to do anything.
He had daydreams of luring the Dragon to the city and having her burn it to the ground, but he doubted he could do that. He had really just been existing ever since the Dragon took him in, not giving much thought to what the next day would bring. Mainly since it brought more eating and boredom, but partially because he didn't have any options. He wasn't a nobleman, or a wealthy merchant, and he certainly wasn't a Chosen, he was just Kase.
His eyes had somewhat adjusted to the darkness at this point and he realized that the Dragon hadn't been the only light source. He crept closer to the gentle glow suffusing the cave, staring in wonder at the tiny figure barely showing through the shell. It looked like a lumpy oval, but it would move occasionally and he would see the outline of its head or tail. He gingerly reached out and touched the warm shell, smiling at the gentle thumps he could feel from within.
Then he heard a new sound, a quiet snuffling as something crept its way into the cave. Kase was terrified and hid behind the only thing he could see, the egg. He listened for whatever was moving around, hearing it creep closer with gentle clicking sounds. Kase felt a drive to protect the tiny Dragon and grabbed a rock from the pile around the egg. He took a deep breath and leapt out from behind the egg, coming face to face with a tremendous, long rat thing. It reared back up on seeing him and he threw the rock with every ounce of strength he could muster.
He hadn't expected the rock to shatter on impact, or for the thing to run away shrieking, but both happened and left him in a stunned silence. He found a rock in his pile to replace the one he took and waited for the Dragon to return; albeit armed this time.
She finally came back and stepped into the cave, a boar similar to the first he had seen was dangling from her mouth. She froze up on entering the cave and her nostrils flared, eyes narrowed to slits as she growled. He had thought he had heard the Dragon growl before, but that was nothing compared to the blood-chilling rumble that escaped now. He could practically feel his bones shaking and his stomach seized as his organs tried to hide behind each other.
He held up his hands and her attention snapped to him, her eyes blazing in the dim cave nearly blinding him. Kase felt confident that she wouldn't hurt him, for some reason, and called out to her. Although if she actually understood what he was saying was a different matter altogether.
“Hey, it's okay!” Her eyes flared and he flinched, “T-there was a thing, but I drove it off!”
The Dragon seemed to consider his words, before dropping the boar carcass and examining her egg. Kase let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding, and had the realization that he needed to pee. After taking care of that in his self designated corner, he approached the boar. It was mangled, crushed and punctured, nearly bitten in half and still leaking blood onto the stone. He kicked the carcass in revenge for what it's brother had done to him.
The Dragon nudged him, knocking him to the ground just shy of the blood pool. He looked up at her and she tilted her head at him before miming a bite. She wanted Kase to eat the boar! He would like to eat some roasted boar meat, but this wasn't roasted, he wasn't even sure it was far enough from dead to count as raw. Maybe if he was a Dragon he could cook it with his-
Hey, that was an idea!
“I can't eat it raw, you need to cook it.”
The Dragon blinked at him, not seeming to understand, so Kase thought over his options. It took much longer than he would want to admit to realize that he could communicate with the Dragon the same way she talked to him. He got her attention again, her having gone back under her wing and led her head to the boar. He turned to the corpse and let out a grumbly breath, trying to mimic breathing fire. It took a few tries before what he wanted seemed to click and the Dragon nudged him away from the boar.
She inhaled and he almost thought he felt the temperature in the cave dip lower, but that thought was quickly washed away. A torrent of flames poured out of the Dragon's maw, bright yellow and crackling with the power inherent to her species. She only released the fire for a few moments but when she stopped, the boar had been reduced by quite a bit. All the hair was burnt away and the legs had been reduced to thin sticks. He walked up and pressed a hand to the meat, peeling away the charred exterior.
Belatedly he realized it should be burning him, but it felt pleasantly warm instead of unbearably hot. He saw the beautiful browned meat beneath the black outer layer and wished he had a better way of portioning out- well today was just a day for ideas it seemed. He walked over to his rock pile and grabbed one the rough size and shape of a yam. He smashed it against a bigger rock for a while until it broke, not quite how he wanted. He tested the edge with his thumb and nodded, it wasn't too sharp but should serve for his purposes.
He returned to the body and started to scrape away the skin, using his jagged rock to carve juicy steaks from the roasted meat beneath. He bit into his first piece and closed his eyes, it tasted, well, it wasn't bad. It was roasted boar and had some nice flavor to it, but honestly the egg had kind of spoiled him. That had been extremely delicious and while this was good, it just couldn't compare. But it was better than subsisting off of eggshell, so he had three fat hunks of meat and some shell for dessert.
He felt something new then, something he realized he hadn't felt since he woke up in the Dragon's cave. He was thirsty. He hadn't realized before that he wasn't thirsty, nor had he noticed that he wasn't drinking anything. It hadn't crossed his mind, but now he was curious, the Dragon had retreated beneath her wing again, so he walked to the entrance of the cave. He had been intending to look for a source of water, but what he found stopped him in his tracks.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The trees in the area and the ground as far as he could see were covered in a thick layer of pristine white snow. He had seen snow before, but the only time it had been this clean and white was during one particularly bitter winter where it had snowed deeper than he was tall. Granted he had only been 6 at the time, but that was still a lot. Kase felt desire welling up inside him and made no effort to restrict the need he felt deep in his bones.
Kase took off in a run and tumbled into a particularly large drift, giggling like a child. He tossed an armful of snow into the air and watched as it drifted back to the ground, smiling as it covered him in a thin blanket. He was somewhat surprised at the snow since it didn't feel too cold out here, but that didn't warrant much thought since he was so excited by the snow. He leapt from the snow drift in an explosion of white powder, then flopped onto his back and swung his arms and legs as wide as he could.
He hopped up and looked back at his imprint, nodding at the nearly full circle he had managed to make. It was a game he and the other boys would play, well, that they would play before Bahks and then he grew out of it. They would try to make as close to a perfect circle as they could. Bas’qet was always the best at it, but Kase was a close second and it seemed he still had his touch. He smiled to himself before a growl caught his attention.
He turned back to the cave to see the Dragon standing at her full height. Kase was afraid he had angered her by leaving the cave, but she wasn't looking at him. She was staring into the trees on the edge of the clearing and when he followed her gaze all the cold that he hadn't felt before lanced directly into his bones.
A cat, almost as big as the boar had been, was stalking towards him, and was staring at the Dragon in terror. Kase wasted no time in sprinting back to the cave, the cat choosing the same moment to move as well. Thankfully it moved in the exact opposite direction of the giant fire breathing monster who could eat it in one bite. Which was arguably much smarter than the human moving towards it, but really, if she wanted to hurt him she would have done so already.
He was about to move past her into the cave when she stopped him with her wing. Kase felt a flash of panic at the thought that he might have angered the Dragon. She leaned her head down and with a quick movement threw a tide of snow over him. He stumbled back under the weight and flopped into the soft powder, giggling like a fool. He sat up and threw a handful of powder at the retreating Dragon, in an effort to avenge himself. He looked up at the clear blue sky and smiled, feeling a weight he didn't know he had been carrying evaporate.
He took in a breath of the cold air over his dry tongue and remembered what he had left the cave for. He grabbed some snow and formed it into a ball before crunching into it like an apple. He smiled at the other game the boys used to play, snow food, it was a way to envision all the nice things they wanted to eat. He wondered what they were up to-
In an instant all the lighthearted joy he had been feeling was gone. Somehow he had been able to repress thoughts of what happened, but thinking of his siblings brought it all back. He wondered if Lily Blossom was okay, if she had been punished for his ‘misdeeds’. Was Bahks being forced to take up his work, or had they made Poht take over since he was next in line? What had happened to Lad- his mother? As he stared up at the sun slowly creeping across the sky he was consumed with thoughts of home.
He laid there for hours, fretting about things he couldn't change and worrying about things he couldn't know. When he finally sat up from the snow he saw a neat circle had been melted around him and the ghost of a smile touched his lips. He hadn't meant to keep playing the old game but it looked like he won. It was a surprisingly warm day for snow and his body heat must have finished off the fragile flakes. He ate a few handfuls of snow to get hydrated, then shuffled back into the cave.
He laid down against the wall and picked up a rock, scratching a new mark next to his previous nine, bringing the total up to ten. He shut his eyes and let the dull aching in his chest lull him to sleep, dreams of his siblings guiding him though the night.
The Dragon went out again two days later, and he hunkered up to watch the egg again. She hadn't repeated her weird licking this time, apparently trusting him not to hurt the egg. He sat against the wall with a small pile of stones ready for the throwing in case another Long-rat came around. The gentle glow of the egg had increased quite a bit, and Kase wondered if that meant it was close to hatching. He stayed sitting against the wall for what might have been 15 minutes, but eventually went over to the egg.
He touched the shell and felt the thumping heart of the baby inside. He smiled at the gentle warmth and was surprised when it intensified as the baby Dragon inside pressed its head to his hand. Well, technically it pressed its head to the spot he was touching on the shell, but the sentiment was felt. He laughed and rubbed the spot.
“I wonder if you can hear me from in there? Lady Silver Plum said babies can hear in the womb, but is that the same for Dragons?”
Shockingly, the baby didn't respond, just wiggled around a bit more and bumped the outside of the shell. Kase heard a shuffling again and managed to hurry back over to his rocks as a new creature crept into the cave. It was built like a person and he almost thought it was for a moment, but it was completely covered in hair. He had seen some men with a lot of hair on their bodies, but nothing close to this thing. It moved in an odd hopping motion and stopped just a few feet into the cave.
Kase wasted no time, stretching his arm back and preparing to throw the clutched rock with every bit of strength he had. The hairy man-thing seemed to sense something and turned towards him, it tried to move but the stone flew fast, smashing into the direct center of its face. It rocked back with the impact, head striking the ground with a sickening crack, and laying there motionless. Kase inspected the figure, throwing a few more rocks that did nothing to the body, before he moved closer.
The thing turned out to be male, it was pretty obvious when he got closer, and his hands ended in wicked claws. The face looked really weird, and Kase couldn't tell if that was what it was supposed to look like, or if it was the result of his rock. He supposed it didn't matter either way, since it was dead and all. He took a peek outside the cave but didn't see anything but the coating of snow with the tracks from the thing breaking the surface.
He went back to his new game of trying to break off chunks from the rocks to make them square. It made them much easier to stack after all. And he was only a foot from beating his personal best!
The Dragon returned before he could get the third rock broken down and he stood up to see what she brought back this time. She opened her mouth and the corpse of one of the Long-rats hit the ground with a thump. While he examined her kill, she returned the favor, sniffing at the hairy thing he took down earlier. She looked over at him and snatched it up to eat it, which he felt was fair since if he had her cook that one it wouldn't leave much meat left. She breathed at the Long-rat and in short order it was burnt enough that he could safely eat it.
He tore into the meat with gusto, pausing a bit at the odd grassy taste of the flesh. He shrugged and wolfed it down, stopping only when a faint crack echoed through the cave like a firework. He turned and saw the dragon staring fixated at the egg, which now had a large oozing crack down one side. Kase swallowed the mouthful he was chewing and moved closer, also fixated on the egg.
It was hatching!