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CHAPTER 1
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There was a dragon named Candasar. If someone were asked to describe what they thought a dragon might be like, Candasar would probably fall short of their expectations. She was not overly large, nor did she have wings or the ability to breathe fire. Those attributes had been taken from her and every other member of her race a long time ago. If someone was lucky enough to spot one of her kind, it would be while visiting a very specific lake and looking at the water.
In terms of outward appearances, there were not many differences between her and the others. Her hide was the only thing that seemed to set her apart. She was a beautiful blue color. Almost without exception, the others of her kind were only grey. All of the water dragons lived their lives, propelled on short flat flippers that helped them swim. These helped them catch and eat the fish in the lake in which they lived. The dragons of the lake led simple, relatively short lives. They fed on fish, fought petty internal squabbles, reproduced, and died.
Candasar had an overpowering feeling that there must be more to life than this. Because of this, she lived a lonely life and felt estranged from the rest of her kind.
Candasar had different desires. Nothing about how the others lived made sense to her. Because her blue color made her stand out, and despite her eccentric ways, the young males of the tribe found her very exotic and were attracted to her. She had never accepted their offers to breed. Sometimes this rejection ended violently. They seemed to feel that she needed additional persuasion. She learned quickly how to fight back.
Strangely, she seemed to be more skilled at fighting than they were. She seemed stronger and faster. She did receive a few cuts and scratches, but if they persisted, many of them left badly injured. She usually left their bodies and pride in tatters from her strong rejection. To reduce the frequency of these confrontations she lived alone and as far from them as possible.
When she was young, her immediate family was often the subject of ridicule. This contributed to her to her social difficulties. From the tribe's perspective, Candasar's grandfather Mo-rung had been born with what were considered severe birth defects.
Not only was his skin red, but instead of flippers to propel himself through the water, he had legs. At the end of them, his strange feet ended in segmented pointed joints of bone. They were hard enough to scratch the rocks over which he occasionally scrambled. His unsuitable build caused him to be almost useless to the other males as they hunted their fishy prey in packs and swam swiftly.
Crippled as he was, he was called upon to perform the work of the females in caring for the young while his normal-looking mate did her meager part of fishing in his stead. The clan elders had been relieved when Candasar’s father had hatched normally. Making fun of Mo-Rung became a popular pastime of young dragons from other families. This was well established long before Candasar came along.
More hideous than her grandfather’s disfigured and segmented feet, were the ragged and easily torn flaps of boneless skin that hung limp on his back near his shoulder blades. Though he could still swim by thrusting himself through the water like a snake, he grew tired quickly. Because he preferred to stay on land, he was more likely to be spotted by the men who inhabited the town at the far end of the loch.
Due to his having been seen several times, the men of the town had developed a renewed and zealous interest in the dragons. The humans seemed especially happy to see Mo-Rung. They had some sort of temple and revered the dragons. This seemed to upset the tribe leadership and they often reminded Mo-Rung to keep his distance from them.
Because of the tribal mandate to remain inconspicuous, Most dragons avoided the end of the lake that was the site of the human town. Because of the human's increased interest in trying to see Mo-Rung, they more often wandered the shores of the lake. If humans were present, hunting parties had to temporarily forego some of the better fishing areas. Mo-Rung and any dragon related to him had suffered socially for that. This especially affected Candasar while she was young.
Despite all of that, Candasar had adored her grandfather. She clearly remembered several conversations that she had with him before his death. One in particular stuck in her mind. He had been watching her and her cousins while their parents were out getting fish.
“The creatures that we are now, are weak and deformed, " Mo-Rung had said.
That drew a strong reaction from Candasar's cousin Heath, who had laughed at him.
"I am already a better swimmer than you are Grandfather!"
"That is because I look more like our ancestors." her Grandfather had answered. "Dragons did not always have those flippers that you are so proud of. They flew with wings. Your water-shaped bodies are a mockery of what dragons once were!" he had said sadly.
"Those dragons must have hunted flying fish!" Heath had said laughing. Then he had swum away to spend his time with dragons from another family.
Very few of the youngsters paid attention or listened to Mo-Rung's rantings. They all eventually left.
Only Candasar stayed, listening to every word.
"Are those things on your back supposed to be wings?" she had asked sincerely.
"They are supposed to be." he had said with a grimace. "You must have noticed that no one else has them at all.”
”Why are you the only one Grandfather?” She had asked.
”Once in a while, if the magic of a particular egg is strong enough, something in the “debilitating evil magic” that was cast on us fails. Then some of our original shape emerges. It might exhibit like these legs and wings that I have, but lacking their original size and strength. It is proof, however, of what we were meant to be!"
Candasar looked at her own back, lacking any trace of wings.
"I may not have legs or wings, but I feel like a true dragon inside" she had said defiantly.
Mo-Rung had looked at her and smiled sadly.
"I believe you are Candasar. Your blue color is evidence of that. Your soul craves for more, and you may never be happy living in this lake."
As all of the young of her generation grew older, it seemed that only Candasar had continued to believe what he said. It struck a strange chord in her. Deep inside she knew what he said was true. It had changed her life.
On the day before he died, her grandfather had pulled her aside for a strange conversation.
"I am very old Candasar. I have long outlived your grandmother. The new tribal elders consider feeding me too great a burden. Before I die I need to tell you something."
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"But you look healthy Grandfather!" she protested.
"Listen! There may be a chance for your children Candasar" he had said. "These others do not have the magic inside them that you do. I have seen that for a long time now."
"Do not accept one of these dragons without magic for your mate. You must be patient. You may someday find a male dragon like yourself, that is closer to our ancestors. The crippling magic that affects the others may have somehow missed him like it did you. The differences might be inside like yours or outside like mine. Both are the result of our magic."
Candasar started to protest.
"There is no one like us." she said sadly. "None of them have magic!"
"Wait for him! Find him Candasar. Together you and he may be able to have offspring that can fly. Also,” he said, looking around suspiciously. “Hide your eggs. Over the years, many of your grandmother's eggs somehow went missing from our nest. Something strange is happening in this lake.
The next day he walked out into the forest to die.
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For the vast majority of the water dragons, the use of magic had dwindled until it was something more like wishing than actual magic. Only a few females still found uses for magic. They sometimes used it to “change their luck”, causing dazed and hapless schools of fish to swim up to them allowing them to skip hunting and providing them with an easy meal.
In most of the lake dragons, even a small use of magical energy usually left the user drained and unable to raise even a glimmer of power for several days. The females seemed to have only one other use for magic. It was to attract prime males by increasing their sexual appeal. As aggressive as the males had been towards her, Candasar wondered why they even bothered. She wished she had a way to keep them as uninterested as possible.
After her grandfather died, Candasar lived alone and hunted her prey with only flippers and jaw. She conserved every scrap of magical energy she could and diverted it into her ovaries. The unfertilized eggs she was born with and carried were as healthy and improved as she could make them. Her pattern and reason for the changes she was attempting on the eggs were bolstered by the strange tale of lost glory passed down to her by Mo-Rung. She willed her magical power into her future offspring. They would have the shape of her grandfather. She missed him greatly.
After her grandfather had died he had not been mourned, except by his strange and reclusive granddaughter. His death had severed something deep within her and she had grown more distant and distracted, even from her immediate family. She continued to spurn the advances of several of the larger, more powerful males, even if not magically provoked. Their humiliation and damaged pride caused several of them to begin telling lies about their conquests of her. They were lies she did not find credible enough to even bother to deny.
Somehow these stories took hold and she often found herself the recipient of haughty looks from the females or worse yet, leering or aggressive physical contact from the single males if she happened to cross paths with them as she hunted her food. Her once smooth flanks were scarred by gouges and teeth marks, souvenirs of her fending off their unwanted advances.
Eventually, as the prime age for the pairing of her kind was past, the unwanted attention faded to an angry sullen apathy toward her from all others, including her previously sympathetic and tolerant family. She swam and hunted the cold waters of the lake alone, biding her time dreaming at night of star-filled skies and silently stoking the magical fire burning deep within her body that denied everything she had been taught about her place in this world.
When she wasn't trying to catch enough fish to feed herself, she used her time alone to work on her nest. A short underwater tunnel was the entrance to a small cavern she had carefully excavated into the steep bank of the shore. She had used her large flippers to dig out the area, dissolving and pushing out most of the dirt and mud. She also had been fortunate enough to find a flat natural rock shelf inside that she could climb up onto for a place to sleep.
The rock shelf above the waterline had finalized her decision to choose this cave as a refuge and continue its excavation. A few holes up near the top let in air and filtered light, providing some needed ventilation, their exterior openings hidden by boulders and ferns. At night, the walls shimmered softly with bioluminescence from an algae that Candasar had found growing on some rocks. She had carefully brought a few of them into the nest and the glowing algae had spread. Candasar was very pleased with herself, but all that work had taken a great deal of time. Now, more than ever, she could feel her biological clock ticking. She realized that if she couldn't find the mate she needed then all her efforts would be wasted.
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Then at last came the day that changed everything. While passing through a narrow underwater passageway, that her people used to remain unseen near the human town, she caught the end of a conversation that she had waited far too long to hear. Two females, engaged in some sort of clan gossip, smirked at her before saying the words:
“His parents are so discouraged. That poor young dragon looks like that wretched creature that was Candasar's grandfather.”
Candasar gave them a long cold stare before shouldering past them and continuing on her way. It was very hard to deny them the satisfaction of a reaction to their insults
After soon doing some covert investigation of her own, she learned that a distant cousin had been found to have a defective child. At the insistence of his mother, and despite being a burden, they had hidden him from the clan and elders for many years, raising him to young adulthood. Then another child, a normal-looking female, had hatched. She soon, as children often do, began to complain about her family to her friends. Her brother's existence was exposed and the tribal leaders had been called to a meeting.
This council was far less tolerant than those presiding over the generation of her grandfather. Because of their fear of additional attention by men, and due to the young male’s complete inability to swim, the solution seemed an obvious one to them. He was to be banished to die, forcibly dragged to the deepest part of the lake, and left there to drown, where hopefully his body would never be discovered.
Despite his mother's protests, the sentence was to be carried out that very night. Candasar allowed her cousin to cry on her shoulder as she learned the details.
Candasar quietly paddled out, following the execution party. She listened from far out of sight, slowly circling the area of the youngster’s imminent demise, She heard the occasional cursing from the elders as his sharp claws flailed and scratched one of them. But they were large and he was smaller. They dragged him out into deep water. As they pulled back from him, Candasar could hear the young dragon's futile desperate splashing. His pointed claws were unable to support him and his billowing leathery wings filled with small pockets of trapped air as he struggled to hold his head above the water. The struggles were surely and swiftly sapping his strength and he began sinking inexorably toward the bottom. The tribal elders swiftly headed away, lingering only long enough to make sure he did not resurface.
The timing was terrible. The dragon mother had a strong desire to rescue her child. Her instincts kept her circling back to try and save him herself. She had no idea Candasar was trying to stealthily do the same thing. The stern voice of her husband and the elders kept the mother from actually acting, but she would not fully swim away. At last, unable to bear it any further, she turned and fled leaving Candasar alone to dive deeply and unseen toward the drowning male. He was quite a way down.
It was probably best that she reached him at the end of his strength, for the sharp talons of his strange feet cut into her as he thrashed briefly as she drew near him in the dark water. She bit as gently as possible into his neck to subdue him and swam upwards. Her years of exercise and extreme fitness were the only things making pulling a weight like his out of the depths possible. He was not completely unconscious as they surfaced. In his frenzied desperation, he tried to climb on top of her to get out of the water. His talons left scratches on her side. Stifling a scream, she tried to remain calm. She again grabbed his thrashing neck in her jaws and bit down firmly enough to temporarily choke him into unconsciousness. Easing her pressure she pulled his head and snout once again out of the water and began the arduous task of towing his limp and lifeless body back toward her cavern.
Even with her abnormal strength she almost didn’t make it. She had to spend some of her precious magic to reinforce her muscles and slow the bleeding of the gashes on her body just to get back to shore. With a final great effort, she forced him through the tunnel and getting under him, levered him up onto the rocky shelf of her cave. He was unconscious and his breathing was shallow and very fast.
Years of not using her magic and here she was spending so much of it, all in one night! Reaching within herself, she felt more of it push out toward the young male as she wished to stabilize him. Suddenly he coughed and a stream of water gushed out of his mouth. He began to breathe easier.
‘He might yet live” she thought. There was not enough room for the two of them on the shelf. Wedging her head and neck into a crack nearby, she gazed blearily at the softly glowing algae, out of focus, just in front of her eyes.
“Hopefully I won’t slip down and drown after all that! She thought”. Too tired to further consider her wounds, Candasar let her consciousness fall into oblivion.
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