Gadalik focused intently, although on what, he wasn't sure. The green seer-earth dragon hybrid had been struggling to figure out the use of his foresight ability ever since he had his first visions nearly three months ago.
He was standing on the small patch of land before a cenote, where dim light from the overcast sky filtered in, the beginnings of snowfall drifting down through it to melt in the calm waters below. When Gadalik wasn't attempting use of his seer ability, he spent most of his time practicing the swimming lessons his adoptive mother had given him, but he had never attempted to go back to her lake–nor did he want to.
A light blue water dragoness surfaced from the underwater cavern connecting to said lake, dropping the fish she had caught onto the ground between them. “Hey, big guy. You hungry yet?” she greeted him with a smile, but her tone was weighed with concern.
“Not really,” he murmured honestly. His appetite had dwindled a lot recently. The longer he failed to use his foresight, the less he cared about eating.
“Come on,” she prompted her adoptive son gently. “You can't expect to use foresight on an empty stomach, now, can you?”
He hesitated. “I guess not…” He crouched to take a small bite from the fish, but ended up zoning out instead of finishing it.
“Gadalik, are you alright?”
“...Huh?” he answered, coming to. “Sorry, Glacia… I'm just not feeling well.”
“Are you sick?” she fussed, lifting his dark green front paw in her hand to feel its temperature.
The young dragon gently pulled it back. “No… It's just–” He caught himself.
Her red eyes watched him expectantly.
Gadalik breathed. “What if I never get full use of my foresight…?”
“Don't worry so much. We survived this long without it,” she assured him.
“But if I hadn't had those visions of the purple seer dragon, we wouldn't have survived. What if he's still looking for us?”
“Gadalik, those visions happened months ago. I doubt he'll search in this same area for that long.”
“But he's a seer. He doesn't have to wait here; he can use his foresight to predict when we'll come out–then he'll come back and kill us…!”
Glacia sighed. “Well, we can't stay in the cenote forever. The lake will freeze over soon, and if we're here when that happens, we'll be trapped with no access to food.”
Gadalik averted his striped blue eyes. He was too young to have lived through winter yet. Pure seer dragons didn't survive well in the cold, though, so maybe they were safe from the evil dragon in his visions–if only for the season. “Alright,” he finally agreed. “When should we leave?”
“Well, we can wait a little while if you're not feeling ready to swim through the cavern,” she offered.
“N-No, I can do it,” he stammered. “But can you stay near me just in case…?”
“Of course…!”
He smiled slightly. They finished eating, and the winged earth dragon dipped his dark green paw into the waters leading to the cavern. It was cold, but bearable. With a glance back at his adoptive mother to reassure himself that she would rescue him if he drowned, Gadalik took a deep breath and descended the sandy slope until he was submerged underwater.
He closed his eyes from the iciness, and because his sight was useless in the darkness. Then he kicked off of the land and paddled with all his might to keep himself from sinking too deep. He counted how long he swam in each direction: forward, east, then north again; until he opened his eyes to see the light through the lake on the other side. At this point, his need for air was making him more desperate, so the motion of his paws were losing their rhythm. Despite his efforts to swim up toward the lake’s surface, he began to flounder and couldn't hold his breath anymore.
Instantly he felt the water dragoness embrace him in her arms and carry him effortlessly to shore with just her tail fin, webbed feet, and large back fins.
Gadalik coughed out water and leaned against Glacia, both to rest from how strenuous swimming was for someone as heavyweight as himself, as well as for comfort. This wasn't the first time he'd almost drowned, but he could never get used to it.
After he calmed down, the two headed for his old home in the forest across the plains. There was a light coating of snow over the grass, and Gadalik looked to the sky, having not properly viewed it due to his refusal to leave the cenote since fall. Everything seemed so different now.
The seer hybrid couldn't stop himself from looking toward the ocean north of the forest, half-expecting the dragon from his visions to suddenly appear there. They made it to their den without incident, though. The winged earth dragon used his big paws and natural strength to dig it out more to accommodate for how much he's grown over the months. While he was at it, he made sure there was extra room for Glacia as well. They both went inside when he was done; it was nostalgic in a sense, and he held onto hope that the purple seer would be deterred by the worsening weather.
The next morning, there was several inches of snow, almost blocking the entrance to their den. Glacia was still asleep, so Gadalik pawed through it and peered outside. The forest floor was blanketed in a stark white, and as he pulled the rest of himself out, his paws slowly began to burn if they remained in the snow for too long–a problem pure earth dragons never faced.
He gave each paw a chance to warm by lifting them in an awkward dance, then was distracted by how the motions kicked up the freezing powder around him. Gadalik grinned and scooped up the snow into a large mound, then jumped into it, laughing as it plumed around him.
He instantly regretted that when he found he had sunk into the base of it; the snow was now compact, making it hard to move. The young dragon panicked, especially when that burning cold sensation was building up. “Glacia…!”
After a brief moment, his adoptive mother shuffled through the entrance of their den and instantly caught on to the situation, lifting the juvenile out. “Be careful! Just like in water, earth dragons are heavy in deep snow, too.”
“S-Sorry…” Gadalik had never felt snow before, and was the slightest bit disappointed that playing in it wasn't safe for him.
“It's alright. Why don't you stay in the den while I get us something to eat?”
Despite the risks of him being in this weather, the hybrid didn't want Glacia to be alone in the forest. She had a poor sense of direction, and most of the usual landmarks were concealed by the snow. The dragoness was too prideful to admit that, though. Then he got an idea. “Can I go with you to hunt?”
She blinked. “Normally, yes–but it could be risky for you this time of year,” she pointed out, gesturing to the snow-pile she had freed him from.
“I promise I'll be careful,” he pleaded. “Besides, you'll save me if I get stuck again, won't you?”
“Of course!”
“So I can go with you?”
Glacia hummed indecisively, but when he looked up at her with sad blue eyes, she heaved a defeated sigh. “Oh, alright. If you really want to, you can come with me.”
He instantly brightened; she laughed and pushed him lightly since that sudden change in his expression exposed his previous one as a bluff. The water dragoness led him into the trees and explained how differently prey acted in the winter than in the previous seasons. How some became more or less active, where they burrowed, and so on.
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Despite his main motive being to keep Glacia from getting lost, Gadalik did listen to her, summarizing her words in ways his mind would better understand to prevent forgetting them. She had him watch her as they spotted a hare nearby, nibbling at some grass it had dug up. The seer hybrid used what he had discovered to be his perceive ability to ‘slow down’ time and study her movements as she crept up and pounced on it.
He managed to do the same after a while, and once they gathered enough food–and dealt with a few more instances of the hybrid sinking into deep snow–the two returned to their den.
This went on for a couple of months or so, and at present, a wicked snow storm had been brewing, making it impossible to safely leave their den.
“Blizzards shouldn't last too long,” Glacia assured her son, who was huddled against her for warmth, listening to the trees creaking in the wind. “We have enough food to last us until it's over.”
As soon as it ended later that night, it seemed, a new storm started again.
Their stock of food was running out, and after Glacia gave him her last morsel, she moved for the entrance.
“Where are you going? The blizzard hasn't passed yet,” Gadalik called. “We can go without food a little while longer. It'll be over before we starve.”
The water dragon frowned. “I hope so, but it doesn't seem like it's slowing down any time soon. We'll see, I guess.”
A couple days later, Gadalik couldn't stop his stomach from growling. But he woke up to silence outside; the wind must have died down at last. He dug through the snow concealing their den and looked out. Aside from how deep the snow was now, it was finally calm. He cheered and rushed out, then yelped when he sank.
“Gadalik!” Glacia cried, having to literally dig him out from how deep he had fallen.
“S-Sorry, I forgot,” he mumbled, embarrassed.
“You stay here this time, alright? I'll stock up on enough food so we won't run out if there’s a storm like that again,” she promised. “I might be gone for a while. But I'll definitely be back, okay? Just wait for me here.”
The young hybrid had no choice but to obey her since the snow was too deep for him to follow her. So he watched his adoptive mother disappear into the trees without him.
Now what…? Gadalik wondered. He went back into the den and sat down…before standing up and pacing it in his boredom. He periodically poked his head out to see if she was on her way back, only to retreat when there was no trace of her. He sighed heavily and plopped onto his belly, where he laid and flicked the tip of his short tail impatiently.
Gadalik must have drifted off, for he awoke from a distant creaking sound. His heart sank when he saw the entrance to their den had been sealed by snow again, and he pushed through it in a panic to see another blizzard had begun. “Glacia!” he shouted, his voice drowned out by strong winds.
When there was no answer, the green hybrid plowed himself through the snow in the direction he had last seen her go in. The snow continued to rise around him; the unavoidable contact with it burned his half-seer scales to the point of numbing them, and the snow building up around his legs restricted his movement, but he pushed on, determined to save his adoptive mother.
Eventually he couldn't see anything ahead of him over the wall of snow that he was trying to use to climb out of the deep tracks his body made, all the while harsh winds were tossing the loose powder over him and scattering the snow under his paws so he'd slip back down. He growled with frustration, and the icy gales retaliated by collapsing the mound he'd been climbing when he next fell.
Helpless in the trench of his own making, Gadalik cried out, but his voice was instantly muffled as the toppling snow buried him.
Gadalik woke up to find himself inside a large tree hollow. It was wide, but just tall enough for him to stand within. Confused, he turned and nearly fell backward out of the tree when he recoiled upon noticing a dragoness with pale blue-and-pink fur and ears, and golden antennae, her extremities tipped with white, lying behind him. She had long, iridescent insect-like wings with yellow inner markings, stacked on either side of her spotted back and glowing faintly.
A fairy dragon? Gadalik recognized from Glacia’s descriptions of other dragon types. Her yellow eyes watched him, but they gave nothing away of her thoughts or feelings.
“Did you save me from the snow…?” Gadalik dared himself to speak. She nodded. Then the memory of why ventured out in the first place returned, and he panicked. “You have to save my mom, too! Please!”
“Worry not. A water dragon will fare just fine in this weather.”
“But what if she gets lost–”
“Then we'll find her once the storm passes.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then the fairy dragoness’s words registered. “Wait… How did you know my mom was a water dragon…?”
“I have lived here for a decade. While I stay sheltered during the cold, I remain in tune with all of the life in this forest. I can feel her presence; she is alive and well, waiting out the storm.”
Gadalik sighed with relief, taking a moment to recover. “Life?” he echoed. “So, then… Would you know if someone died, too…?”
Her eyes narrowed solemnly. “Yes. And I'm aware you are no stranger to death, either.”
He tilted his head, confused. “What do you mean…?”
“The reason you're being raised by a water dragon,” she answered simply.
Gadalik gaped at her. “Did you know my parents…?”
“Not personally, but they had lived here for three seasons. It was last winter when I sensed their demise.”
Gadalik quailed. “Who are you…?”
“My name is Guinevere. You are Gadalik, yes?”
“Y-Yeah,” he stammered, a bit scared that this stranger knew so much, but he figured her knowledge could be useful. Glacia had told him that he had been orphaned as an egg, but she had never met his parents prior to finding them dead, so all she had to offer him were their descriptions. “What can you tell me about my parents…?”
“What do you wish to know?”
“E-Everything!”
“Hm. Then it may be better to show you instead.”
Show me…? Before he could ask, she fanned her wings out just enough for him to see them. Their glow grew brighter, and the hues around the inner yellow markings began shifting colors. Gadalik was mesmerized by it, unable to look away.
The tall grass reflected the warm light of the summer sun, and a green seer dragoness almost camouflaged within the blades. The only movement from her thinned, bruised, serpentine body was the undulation of her sides as she caught her breath. Her wide, clawed wings were splayed out stiffly as though they had been gliding in that position for far too long, and her sky blue eyes stared calmly at nothing in particular.
“Are you okay?” sounded a male’s voice, low but gentle.
She lifted her head weakly, meeting the concerned sapphire eyes of a wingless, muscular dragon. “An earth dragon…in the forest? Why?”
“I could ask the same of a seer dragon,” he chuckled. “You know this forest is temporal. Come winter, you will freeze.”
“I'd rather freeze than remain on the seer’s island,” she murmured with scorn directed at her homeland.
“You mean…you flew all the way from the middle of the sea?” He sounded genuinely impressed. “Why here?”
“You said it yourself… Seers will freeze here.”
The earth dragon considered her words. “Perhaps I can make some shelter for you. The forest has a cliff with the beach below it. I can excavate a cave there for you.”
“No… if you truly wish to help, then allow me to rest–alone.”
He hesitated, then left. She lowered her head into the grass once more. After maybe a half-hour, she was startled by the thud of a freshly-killed deer dropping in front of her.
She glanced up to see the black dragon had returned. “What is this for?”
“I know it may not be what you're used to eating…but deer are abundant here, and they aren't half-bad,” he answered.
“No; I mean, why are you helping me?” She finally rose to all fours, staring him down with distrust.
“Well…I only just got here from the mountains a few days ago, so I understand how hard adjusting to life in a new place can be. And…I also know how much it hurts to leave your old home behind, regardless of the reason.”
Her light blue eyes softened and looked down at the deer he had gifted her.
“My name’s Trent,” the earth dragon introduced himself.
“...I’m Vilodia,” the seer replied slowly, still not meeting his gaze. There was a beat of silence, and just as Trent moved to leave, she nudged the prey between them in an indication to share. Their eyes met, as if gauging each other’s intentions, before he smiled genuinely. The two ate together.
Gadalik blinked, coming back to reality. What was that? he wondered. A vision? No–visions don't have sound… Then he recalled that fairy dragons had the ability to hypnotize others.
“Those were your parents,” Guinevere explained. “I had studied them both on the days they first reached this forest, but seeing they were no threat, I left them alone.”
My parents…?! The young dragon committed that scene to his memory, reflecting on it as if that would somehow fill the void in him that he never knew he had until now. “Please… Can you show me how they died…?” His adoptive mother had told him they'd been killed, and that there had been tracks in the snow that ended abruptly–implying a dragon capable of flight had been involved.
“It was late winter last year, so I didn't bear witness to their deaths, myself, since I had taken shelter for the season. However, it was that very day I detected the presence of a new dragon in the forest, and it departed shortly after your parents lost their lives. Because of this, I got worried, and left my hollow to see who it was.”
“Did you spot them before they left?”
“Yes. He was a dark purple seer dragon with red wings.”
Gadalik felt his heart skip a beat, then race, as his mind flashed back to the murderous dragon from his visions. Was he the seer Vilodia was hoping would freeze if he followed her? Wait--he came here during winter?! “No… That means--” He scrambled awkwardly in the small space to stand in preparation to leap out of the tree.
“It isn't wise for you to leave in this storm,” Guinevere advised him.
“I have to! If that dragon finds Glacia, she'll be killed just like my parents were! I have to protect her!”
“What makes you think he will return?”
“Last season, I had a vision of him–the purple seer–and he attacked her, killed me twice, and murdered a dragon who had tried to save me,” Gadalik explained. “I ran and hid with Glacia before he got here in reality, but after that, I couldn't figure out how to use my foresight… I have no way of knowing when he'll come back–or who he'll target–or–” he was hyperventilating, his quick breaths coming out in puffs of steam against the freezing air.
“Calm yourself, young one,” the dragoness soothed him. “If ever I sense his return, I shall warn you.”