For the second time in as many days, I awoke to darkness, though this time not as complete as before I hatched. The mouth of my little cave was slightly illuminated by the yellow glow of the kobold’s light sources. The blanket of moss I had lying beside me was completely devoid of its characteristic blue glow, likely having died at last.

I could just make out the outline of another basket at the side of my alcove. It likely contained another food offering, but I wasn’t actually hungry yet, so I ignored it for the time being.

Instead, I turned my attention to my left wing. It felt like it had finished healing completely while I was asleep, as I couldn’t feel any pain at all when moving, or touching, it. High rate of healing, huh? Can’t say I don’t appreciate that. Now, how to learn to fly proper, without making myself look like an utter fool in front of the kobolds?

I started out by actually getting up from my all too comfortable pile of pebbles and stretching my body like a cat would do. I didn’t know how to properly do that for my wings, so I just moved them in all directions as far as they would go, and bending each individual joint back and forth.

I hadn’t realized just how many there were, that I could consciously move. I guess I should have considered that they would be more like a bat’s wing, rather than a bird’s. Maybe that was my mistake. I tried to recall what little I knew of how a bat’s wing worked, but only came up with some minor facts about their structure, not how they move in active flight.

Trial and error it is, then. Training all the muscles connected to my wings wouldn’t hurt either.

For the next hour or so, until I was interrupted by my my language teacher, I worked on the few things I had identified as the most important. Firstly, flapping both wings in unison. At the start I was constantly stumbling around from one wing pushing down faster than the other.

Secondly, after i had that down somewhat, I worked on getting my wings as far up as I could, as quickly and efficiently as I could. I didn’t think I would get far if I used as much time and energy to get my wings up and ready to push down as it took to actually flap the wing down just once.

And lastly, to generate as much downward force as possible on any single downstroke. This, I simply measured by how long it took for my wings to travel the distance of my full range of motion. It was obvious that I wasn’t ready to fly yet, because the most I could do by the time I was interrupted was to lift myself just enough for my front claws to leave the ground. Even then, I still stumbled slightly, as one wing would catch just a tiny bit more air.

It was in one such stumble, that I misstepped with one of my hind legs and was sent onto my ass. I released an involuntary, instinctual chirp, then another as I heard something that sounded distinctly like laughter, despite the fact it was a mix between a click and a chirp.

Startled, I looked in the direction of the sound. The kobold that had been teaching me yesterday was in the entrance of the alcove, with unmistakable mirth in his eyes.

I embarrassment, I let out a low growl, then slinked off to lie around my ‘bed’, deeply hoping dragons couldn’t blush. At least the guy had the decency to stop giggling at my performance. What use is it to make a note to myself if the thing keeping close track of that doesn’t periodically remind me of those things? Honestly, this thing doesn’t seem to be good for anything but keeping time.

In my training, I had completely lost track of both the time, and forgotten to pay attention to my surroundings. I didn’t know how long the little shit had been watching me, but it must have been at least a few minutes. I distinctly remembered the light changing, but that somehow hadn’t registered in my mind.

He made a short string of sounds, then waited for a response from me. I sighed internally, then pushed my embarrassment aside and lifted my head. Red nodded towards where the basket I had noted earlier was and repeated the same string of sounds.

I think I remember that one. It’s either in reference to food, or meat specifically, I think. That had been one of the words he’d had me repeat the most on our first lesson. Most times closely followed by what I still assumed to be the word for either their species, or their tribe.

He was still waiting for something, so I repeated the sounds as well as I could. He seemed satisfied, but repeated the sounds again, this time with some sort of difference in the chirp that made up the second half of the word. The gesture he made was akin to taking a bit out of something. Is that the word for eating, then? Makes sense with how similar the words are.

I did my best to replicate the sounds again, this time Red shook his head and repeated both words again, gesturing first to the basket, then miming eating something. Apparently, the difference is subtle but important.

We continued on like this, for the rest of the lesson. Red would revisit something we went over yesterday, then expand upon those words in some way. Today, he didn’t try to teach me any sort of concept that wasn’t easy to represent in some way, either through miming it, pointing at it, or making a simplistic drawing on the wall or ground.

All in all, I felt like I now knew the words for anything I could see within my little home. For half the time he was with me for the day, he simply repeated a gesture he did earlier, the corrected me when I gave the wrong word.

A whopping 8 hours after he arrived, Red left once more. By then, I think we were both mentally exhausted. I had started making more and more mistakes, and he had less and less patience. I couldn’t say I didn’t regret literally snapping at him when he raised his voice a bit too much, scaring him into silence for half a minute.

I showed a bit of regret in my bearing afterwards, but that had signaled the end of the session, after which I decided to finally eat my fill of what had been brought to my while I slept. It wasn’t quite as tasty, likely still from the same goat from over a day ago, but it was definitely still edible, and still nothing had been done to it to preserve it for longer.

While eating, I noticed, for the first time, an urge I hadn’t thought about yet. An urge any living thing would eventually have to deal with. One of two, anyway. It must have been due to dragons having a slow metabolism that it took over 30 hours to present itself, but I had to urinate.

Well, shit. What’s the accepted thing to do in this situation? I don’t think there’s any toilets, let alone running water down here, and I don’t want to piss anywhere close to my bed. I can’t glide down to the floor yet, as I wouldn’t be able to come back in here, where my treasure is. Not until I can legitimately fly.

The only option left would be to piss out of the entrance to my home, which seems like a dick move towards the Red, forcing him to climb past my urine every day. Let alone if someone happens to be down there when I do it. I’m not exactly a fan of water sports.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

In the absence of a better alternative, however, that's what I did. I made sure no kobold was in the splash zone, then positioned my parallel to the ledge, lifted my back left leg, and let go.

When the sound of it splashing against the ground reached me, I stopped, startled that it was so loud. Five seconds later, the sound stopped again, but it’s echo continued for another three. Welp, not like that. Instead, I went over to the edge of one wall, the one further from the village, and released against that.

It was a lot quieter, but I had to stop a few more times to find an angle where there wasn’t as much splashed back at me. Through all of this, I never stopped feeling embarrassed at the feeling, which was so very different and weird without a penis.

I briefly thought about what I’d do when number 2 made itself apparent, but decided to burn that bridge once I got to it.

After I was done, I did my best to forget any of that had even happened, then continued my wing exercises.this time, I made sure to always look in the direction of the entrance, as I didn’t want a repeat of this morning. Or whatever the time of day was back then.

I wonder what the surface is like. Is it anything like I’m used to from earth? Or is the surface uninhabitable? While asking myself these questions, I worked on the same areas as earlier. I felt like I was getting closer to achieving my goal and making faster progress as time went on, but I was still a long ways away from liftoff.

A few hours later, I decided it was time to sleep again. I didn’t know what sort of sleep schedule a regular dragon had, so I decided to uphold one befitting a human. That being about 16 hours awake and 8 hours asleep, or one third of my time spent asleep. I’ll adjust how long I stay awake base on how long I sleep, I guess. I hadn’t noted how long I had slept last time, so I did now.

Age: 1 day 14 hours 14 minutes 28 seconds

Huh, neat. I can call up individual entries. Adding an entry for ‘Last noted age’ in my statistics, I made myself comfortable around my bed and closed my eyes. It wasn’t long until sleep took me.

When I came to again, Red was already waiting there, bowing. It took me a few minutes to fully wake up, as my little pile of rocks was just too comfortable for what it was.

As I stretched myself as best I could from my curled up position, Red said a few words I didn’t remember having heard yet. I started to repeat after him, but was interrupted by a small yawn. I ignored his giggle, which he quickly curbed, then started to sound off what I presumed to be some sort of greeting again. I wonder what he’s going to try to teach me today. Probably another step up from yesterday, going into ever more complex things. Or maybe he’ll try grammar today?

A few minutes into the lessons, I remembered that I had wanted to check how long I had slept. Apparently, it had been about 12 hours and 30 minutes, minus however long it would have taken me to fall asleep. I then noted down my current age again and continued paying attention to Red.

This session started out the same as the last, with him going over what we had done before and then going into deeper meanings. The small drawings he had to make on the walls and floor with his claws were getting ever more vague, departing from objects and going into creatures, then basic concepts, spanning the breadth and depth of what one might encounter out in the caves, as well as what I assumed were parts of the daily lives of kobolds.

If nothing else, at least my grasp of the sounds involved in this language was improving massively. By now, flowing growls into chirps was almost natural, despite only having done so for less than two days. That wasn’t to say that I didn’t make progress on understanding the words, but I was never that good at remembering new vocabs.

By the time another 8 hours had gone, we were going over the same sets of words for what felt like the 100th time. I think this is the time to stop, before we are at each other’s throats again. I wanted to say ‘leave’ but couldn’t recall the word for it. Instead, I pointed one of my claws at the series of images he had used to describe the concept.

Red understood what I wanted and wearily supplied the word. I nodded, repeated “Leave.” and motioned my head towards the entrance. He nodded, said a sentence of which I only recognized a word that sounded similar to ‘eyes’ and left. I could only guess at the meaning, but it was probably some sort of Parting wish, which I diligently tried to replicate.

Not very successfully, seeing how he cracked up at whatever I said, but at least I tried.

After that last exchange, Red left me to my own devices once more. There hadn’t been another offering of food, but I also didn’t feel hungry yet, so I went back to exercising again.

I could definitely feel that my wings were getting stronger, and I’d like to think my technique was getting better, but it felt like today’s progress towards flying was less than yesterday’s. I exercised for a few more hours, then just relaxed for a while.

My little alcove was starting to look like some sort of art school with all these little drawings on the walls and floor. One might even mistake it for a mural of some kind.

During the next few hours, I relaxed around my little bed and dozed off once or twice.

I was brought back to wakefulness when another kobold showed up with another small basket. This one didn’t glow with mana, just like Red and a few others I had seen so far.

This one was a light shade of orange under the yellow light of his crystal. He had already put down the basket when I had come to, and was already on the way out when I tried to ask if it had brought food. I didn’t know how to pose such a question with proper grammar, or even how to inflect my tone to make it sound like a question, so I just sounded out the word for ‘food’ as Red had taught me.

The kobold exclaimed something in obvious startelement and whipped around to face me. I repeated myself and nodded towards the basket, to which he hesitatingly nodded. “Leave.” I said after nodding in understanding.

Now wide awake again, I got up and stretched once more. I think I could get used to this service, if I could actually converse with anyone. Also, being able to leave would be just wonderful. Let’s see if they are still giving me the same fare, though.

I approached the basket and, after a quick look inside, I could tell it was something else this time. The smell was nearly the same, likely from the fact that most blood would naturally smell very similar, but there was an unfamiliar smell underneath that. The shape of the meat was the same scraps as the goat’s flesh had been, likely scavenged from one group or another out in the tunnels.

Currently, i was a bit peckish at best, so I ate just a few mouthfuls to get a taste. I was a bit stunned by how different it was without really being better or worse than the goat’s meat. Welp, back to exercising now. The quicker I get some sort of flying down, the sooner I can leave again.

A few hours later, Red showed up again. He likely wanted to get me speaking the language just as quickly as I was wanting to learn flying, which, after this latest round of exercising, seemed to be getting closer. My wings were strong enough now, that I actually had to be careful not to propel myself into the walls or ceiling. I could only do a downward stroke like that a few times before they were too tired to even slightly lift me, but I was getting there.

Language, however, was still a few weeks away, with the current pace.

I had to cut this language session short after just a few hours, however, as I could feel tiredness sapping at my concentration. By then, I had been up for over 23 hours, albeit with a nap or two in the middle, and told Red to leave again. He had indeed been working in a tiny bit of grammar into the usual vocabulary and pronunciation lessons.

I ate the rest of today’s meal offering, then curled up around my bed once again. Is it just my imagination, or has this thing grown smaller since I piled it up? I know that when I made it, I could just reach the middle of my tail when I curled around the pile at half its height. Now, curled around that same height, I almost reached the base of my Tail with my snout. That’d make me like, 10 centimeters longer? If my proportions stayed the same, that would make me around 2-3 centimeters taller. I guess that’s from all the meat I’ve been eating. Huh, the envy of every woman, not having to watch how much you eat because you just grow in all directions equally.

I continued musing about all the ways in which this body was better than my old one as I quickly fell asleep, at just over three days old.