Sinking your front claws into the smooth floor of the cave, you slowly pull toward yourself, enjoying the slight pressure it puts on their roots as you gouge ten little trenches, idly watching the stone knit itself back together once you’ve stopped.
There is little you do not understand about the world, you think, having observed it for as long as you have, but, somewhat ironically, the nature of your home and your very self still evades comprehension. This cave you call home and the mountain in which it lies have never changed, seemingly defying the one constant of the outside world, and you are much the same.
In the early times, before life, before the world had cooled, when the seas were still molten rock, it was not uncommon for fiery stones and boulders to fall from the sky. They always made for quite the sight, leaving craters of varying sizes, altering the land, the larger ones even shaking the earth. However, on the occasion that your mountain was struck, even by stones the size of which would shatter many other mountains simultaneously, yours would always largely absorb the impact, quickly healing any damage that was left.
Not all change comes suddenly though, in fact most does not. Most change is slow, chipping away at the land one spec at a time. You have seen many other mountains slowly whittled away by the water and the wind, carved by great swathes of ice, but never yours. Yours is still the same as the earliest times you remember, its exterior never smoothed nor chipped nor broken.
And you, you are much like the mountain. Your claws and teeth have never dulled, your scales have never lost their sheen, your wings have never torn, spines never chipped, horns never broken.
Pondering these things as you have so many times before, you settle on the same conclusion as always. Perhaps not everything can be understood.
Ceasing your mind's fruitless wandering for the moment, you slowly rise, rear legs standing, splaying the front two on the ground before you, spine-covered back bowing, stretching and feeling the ecstasy of all your tendons and muscles being pushed to their limits.
The whistle of wind loudens to a howl as you plod toward the mouth of your cave, claws clacking against the stone. Flakes of snow whip past, the wind viciously wrapping itself around the mountains seen in all directions, some reaching so high as to breach the dark grey cloud cover, their rocky, uneven faces coated in pillowy white, even more of which is collected in the troughs where the roots of the mountains meet.
A snowbank has collected itself at the mouth of the cave, as is bound to happen in weather such as this. Flopping down in it, you enjoy the soft, slightly crunchy support it provides as you shift around a bit, getting comfortable and ready for a nice long session of your favorite—and really only now—pastime: watching. You used to get out more, but after exploring the ever-changing world for so long and gaining a deep understanding of the forces of nature, at some point you just lost the will to go outside. It felt as though there was nothing left to see or learn that was worth the effort. Even when flying is near effortless, lazing around is still easier. And, with eyes like these, there is so much to see without even leaving the mouth of your cave.
Focusing your vision, you languidly scan a distant cliff for something to watch. Soon a small twitch snaps your eyes to a point on the bluff’s upper left where a tiny, winged creature shields its nest from the blizzard. Occasionally it gives its wings a small shake to rid them of built-up snow, of which its coat, a mixture of downy fluff and feathers, is the very same color. Two large, yellow, immobile eyes sit upon its head which flicks side to side, presumably on the lookout for any threats to its nest or prey to be had judging by its long, hooked beak.
After some time, the creature hunkers down, clutching its nest with its wings and closing its eyes. You shift your gaze elsewhere, this time to a pile of snow collected on the same cliff face that seems bound to fall soon. Resolving to watch until the snow pile does indeed fall, you stare intently.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
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Two darkenings of the blizzard-filled sky later—the risings and fallings of the sun and moon not readily visible due to the thick clouds and snow (though you could of course see them if you were intent on doing so)—the pile of snow has finally grown tall enough that the raging winds push it off the cliff, tumbling in clumps to the ground far below.
You wiggle and flick your tail in satisfaction, shifting the mound of snow that has formed on top of you, reveling in the feeling of a wait paid off. Your little celebration is cut short however, as you are startled by a small creature entering your cave.
Dedicating the entirety of your attention to watching that pile of snow for the past few sky-darkenings must have prevented you from sensing this intruder’s presence on your mountain. The creature does not notice you; you have learned to keep yourself imperceptible and tend to stay that way as you are quite a lot bigger than most creatures you have seen, and typically creatures will flee and hide when they see you, this of course making them difficult to observe in their natural state. Despite this, it is still exceedingly rare for any creature to venture onto your mountain as they seem to all sense it is your territory in some subconscious way.
Its lack of this sense is far from the only thing that sets it apart from most creatures you have seen though, it looks to be of the same nature as the furred creatures that create offspring without the egg stage you began seeing occasionally before your last sleep. Before the furred ones, feathers, scales, and chitin seemed to be the coverings creatures stuck to for the most part, and you must admit, you’ve always had a preference for the scaled ones.
While this intruding creature does bear fur across its body, upon closer inspection it would seem the only fur native to the creature is the long, white fur that lies upon its head, and most of its body is coated in the removed pelts of other creatures. Quite distasteful, and quite strange. It must be rather intelligent to take other creatures protections upon itself, however.
As it lurches into your cave, you observe it is bipedal, you’re not sure if you’ve seen a furred biped before.
Physical oddities mostly noted, the creature does not seem to be in the best of health. It stumbles farther into your cave, and just when it is mostly out of reach of the harshest of the wind and snow, it falls forward, lying flat on the ground.
Thoroughly intrigued, you reach out with your mind and touch the creature’s consciousness—not something you do often as nearly all creatures who’s minds you’ve touched have been far more interested in escaping you (quite a bothersome thing indeed before you'd learned to hide your presence), finding their next meal, or finding a mate than they had been in conversing with you, pondering the nature of existence and what their place in it is, or any other such interesting thought.
Physical world fading away, you extend tendrils of powerful, glowing conscious through the murky dark of the mental plane, wrapping them around the small, fading bubble of silvery light before you. It is in a sleep-state, it is weak, growing weaker, you feel great hunger, bitter cold, exhaustion—all very unpleasant feelings that you’ve only ever experienced while touching a creature’s mind. Beneath its suffering though, you can feel an intelligence the likes of which you’ve never encountered before, far, far below your own of course, but high above any mind you’ve touched in the past.
Extremely curious, you delve deeper, penetrating through the fluid of this one’s conscious until you find memories. They are hazy, difficult to make out due to the creature’s pathetic state, but you can faintly see it communicating with others of its kind in a language unlike any you’ve ever known, a language that is more than simple vocalizations, pheromones, or body language, one with abstract concepts and many intricacies for sharing fine details of experience.
Retracting your conscious and returning your focus to the material plane, you feel something you haven’t felt in a very, very long time. Real excitement, giddiness even. You had grown conceited, thinking yourself above the wonders of nature. The things that, at a time, gave you this very same feeling had grown to be just another rock, another plant, another creature. But this, this is not just another creature, this one is almost like you, sapient, a sapient creature. With time you have discovered many things, even how to bend the basic forces of nature to your will, but this discovery easily outshone all of that. The creature may be small, only about the size of one of your larger teeth, but its mind is precious, and you certainly can’t have it dying on you before you can even attempt to communicate with it.
Tail nearly vibrating with excitement, you hold your front claw above the little creature, claw tips pressing into the cave floor around it, and will the smallest trickle of your life-energy into the tiny sapient—too much at once and it might pop. Slowly, a blue tinge you weren’t aware was unnatural leaves its exposed face, lips, and pointy little ear tips that stick out of its head-fur, the skin settling on a pale white tone, almost like the head-fur, but slightly pink, like there was red blood running beneath it, which you imagine there probably is. The muscles in the creature’s face relax too, giving it a more peaceful look as its hunger and fatigue are relieved by your transferred energy.
Though you are certain its needs are met, the creature still sleeps. Intent on keeping your prize alive, you lean down and trickle a large drop of saliva a short distance from the creature, then light the spit with the smallest puff of flame you can manage. The saliva fire should burn for a few suns worth of time provided you do not interfere with it, and its diameter being roughly half the creature’s horizontal length, you have little doubt it will be kept at a comfortable temperature.
Still feeling as though your insides are buzzing with excitement, you curl up behind the tiny creature, watching it intently for any sign of wakefulness.