The next time I awoke, I somehow understood that I was twelve years old. My parents were jewelers, taking gemstones and precious metals and turning them into necklaces, pendants, rings, accessories and adornments. My father made small sculptures from gold and silver and other metals I didn’t know.

We lived a nomadic life, wandering from city to city, plying our wares in open markets, bazaars, from place to place. Always struggling to make a living despite the value of our skills. Always struggling to stay out from under the gaze of the Nero, Veridian, and the Vermillion.

Part of the reason was that we kept doing business with the Azure. Of all the Dragonflights, the Azure were the most ... human. An Azure would pay what was promised... reluctantly, but they’d pay. If they were arrogant, condescending, rude, caustic, abusive, and insulting, they at least wouldn’t kill without reason.

The Nero and the Vermillion would simply murder and take whatever they wanted; they seemed to delight and thrive on violence and death. The Veridian... well, nobody talked about them. Nobody. The Nero and Vermillion were whispered about, muttered in low tones, but nobody, absolutely nobody mentioned the Veridian.

But if you were tolerant enough to put up with the asshole attitudes of the Azure... you could do business with them. Sometimes. When they decided it was in their best interests to approach you.

Another shocker; Halleza wasn’t a he, rather he was a she, and for some reason she was intensely interested in me. Not in any particularly romantic way, but because, bizarrely enough, I demanded we share back when we were playing with toys.

Also because I hit her.

I want to say that these two events are intensely interconnected with each other, and I want to carefully explain why these things are connected together.

First, there isn’t a single person anywhere in the world that would ever, under any circumstances, raise their hand against the Dragonflights.

Any Dragonflight.

For any reason.

They might look... mostly human, but they weren’t. The Dragons were gone, lost to myth and legend, but their progeny the Dragonflights still ruled with an adamantine fist, and no one, and I mean absolutely no one, would ever entertain the idea of raising their fist- ever- to one of them.

But I did. It didn’t matter that I was a stupid five year old at the time, I had struck a member of the Azure Dragonflight.

It seemed Halleza wanted to know under what circumstances I would hit her again. Somewhere between the time I had awakened when I was five and now, I had discovered what she was, and I lived in utter terror of what I had done, so I’d never done it again... but still, she was intensely curious.

And for the last bit- dragons don’t share. Never. Not one bit. Not in the slightest.

The Azure will pay for things. Begrudgingly, and they always demand and threaten and harass and do everything in their power- which is quite a bit- to lower the price as much as possible, but they will ultimately pay for the things that they buy.

They’ll complain, they’ll threaten to kill your family, burn your house down with everyone in it, destroy your store, slaughter everyone you care about in front of you... but if you stand your ground... and if you don’t mind getting price-gouged... they’ll pay. Begrudgingly. Reluctantly.

The other Dragonflights simply assume that everything belongs to them and that they don’t have to pay for anything, respect anything, or ask for anything. The Vermillion, the Nero, the Veridian, if they want, they take. They don’t ask, they demand.

And as for your life, well, your value is nothing. Less than nothing, because you’re not of the Dragonflight.

Anyway, Halleza was intensely interested in me because I had demanded that we share our toys. Such a thing had never happened- and when it happened to her, we’d had fun together.

The dragonflights are all driven by an intense greed. They need everything to be theirs. And, as I said before, most of them believe that everything is already theirs, they need just hold out their hand and claim it.

The Azure are a little different- Everything doesn’t belong to them, only the best things are worthy of being owned by them. They don’t care about anything else.

“Human.” Halleza never greeted me by name.

I looked up from my work; I was carving ivory for a sceptre, a rod about two feet long, that would eventually belong to a particularly wealthy merchant lord.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I looked up at her, and carefully set my tools to the side. Each tool was worth more than my life, those tools were what my family used to put food on the table.

Halleza was pretty. Well, if a twelve-year-old girl was considered pretty, she would be considered pretty. She had the chubbiness of a girl on the edge of puberty, but the subtle curves of a girl that would eventually become a woman. If you lined her up with all the other girls that were her age, she would be the prettiest out of all of them... except for the horns. And her teeth. And the wings. And the tail. And her weird pupils. And-

Well, you get the idea.

“Halleza.” A greeted with a smile. “I haven’t seen you in a year.”

She frowned at me, and even her frown was pretty.

“What are you doing, human?” She asked.

“Engraving work.” I replied.

She stalked across the room- my family lived and worked in a series of interconnected tents- and sat down across the low table from me.

“Give it to me.” She pointed at the rod I had just set down.

Oh boy. If I gave it to her, I’d never see it again. If I said no, she’d demand it from me and there would be a long, mostly shouted fight over who it belonged to.

I had to deflect.

“I’m not finished with it.” I replied.

“I don’t care.” She stated stubbornly. “I want to see it. Give it to me now.”

Time for something different. Let’s appeal to her Azure tendencies.

“This isn’t worth your attention, yet. Let me finish working on it, and when it’s finished, I’ll show it to you.”

Her eyes narrowed at that, and then she bit her lip. “Share it with me.” She replied, and held out her hand.

Ah shit.

I handed it to her.

Her nails made clicking noises against the ivory as she turned it around and scrutinized it from every angle.

“It looks ...boring.” She decided with a frown, and passed it back.

“Well, like I said at the beginning- it’s not finished.” I replied defensively. I pointed out several spots. “There’s going to be some mythril rings here and here, there’s going to be an adamantine gem setting on this end, the ivory will be carved, of course-” I explained, but she cut me off.

“What gem?” She asked.

I shrugged. “I’ve got no clue. I wasn’t given one, yet.”

“What carvings?” She demanded.

“I dunno. I’m shaping it right now so I can get the mythril rings onto it.” I replied.

She frowned at me again. Her silk robes rustled as her tail flicked about behind her.

“It looks boring.” She repeated.

I didn’t know what it was that she wanted from me.

“Show me the design.” She demanded.

I pulled out several sheets of paper- paper was expensive, but since we worked with gems and gold and rare metals we could afford a bit- and passed over the sketches.

She frowned over them.

She pointed at the ends. “Two mythril rings at each end, and a ring of sapphire between them.” She picked up a pen and drew what she envisioned. A mythril ring, a ring carved from sapphire, and a second mythril ring, with the adamantine setting holding a sapphire roughly the size of a baby’s fist.

There was no way that we- my family, that is- could afford something like that.

“That would be something spectacular to see.” I replied. “I don’t have the sapphire to do it, but I would love to try, at least.”

Angry thunderheads filled her brow. “You won’t make it?!” She demanded hotly.

I set the rod down. “I didn’t say that-”

“Then make it for me!” She yelled, slamming her hands down on the table. “I said that I want it, and that means you have to make it!”

“Oh no, you don’t get to pull that shit with me!” I shouted back, slamming my own hands down and the table and shoving my face into hers. “I didn’t say that I won’t, I said that I can’t!”

She recoiled a little bit, but I could see that she didn’t much like being on the defensive, and her anger was building again.

I held up one of the more delicate tools she’d damaged when she’d slapped the table; it was now mangled beyond use. Those of the Dragonflight were inhumanly strong, because they were inhuman.

“If I don’t have the tools to make what you want, I can’t make it!” I yelled, shaking the broken scraper under her nose. “If I don’t have the materials to make what you want, I can’t make it!” I shouted at her. “And since you broke one of my tools, I can’t do anything now!”

The curtain-doors that separated my room from the others rustled. Was it my parents? Was it Halleza’s mother, Ceriza?

“I-” Halleza began, but sat back on her heels. I knew she wouldn’t apologize. The concept of apology didn’t exist in the Dragonflights. They never did anything wrong, so apologies weren’t necessary.

But her wings drooped, and she fidgeted a little. Maybe she was feeling remorseful. Or, maybe, like the rumors said, she was being incredibly manipulative. Azures were rumored to be crafty, that they had to learn it because the Nero and the Crimson were so strong that the weaker Azures had to make up for it in guile.

She reached into her robes and brought out a mangled piece of adamantine and a sapphire the size of a grown man’s fist.

“Here.” She mumbled and got up and left.

Everything went dark again.