It's quiet...
Too quiet.
Slowly rising from the log I fell asleep on and moving towards the entrance I winced at the noise every joint made as I moved. It echoed like thunder in the silence.
Looking out the entrance fully prepared to melt anything nearby my thought process paused briefly.
The rain had stopped.
Further down the valley the rain continued with its roof of clouds but directly overhead the clouds had broken up enough to show that it still wasn't quite dawn although the sky was lightening.
A day without rain, I started to think they didn't exist! Although the clear sky makes something painfully obvious...
That it's definitely not a time to be awake.
Turning and shuffling back into my lair I settled down into my bed this time and instantly dropped back to sleep.
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Waking up a second time for the day with actual light coming through the entrance this time I can say with certainty that I hate rain. It dyes the world grey and leaves sound muffled while making everything wet.
As a human being wet is a cold and uncomfortable affair, for a dragon it just makes everything slippery meaning I need to dig my claws in for grip which is just annoying.
Poking my head out of the entrance and looking at the sky I can see it's full of light grey clouds scattered down the valley and open horizon the other direction. I can almost feel the moisture vanishing!
Now that I'm in actual sunlight again all feels right in the world...
Except I'm hungry and thirsty... guess it's chewy nut and distilled water for breakfast! Since it's not raining anymore I can eat outside where there's light and stuff to look at besides a stone wall.
Grabbing my bowl and some nuts I lie outside my lairs entrance and watch the forest and skies.
It's rather nice eating in the light for once. Huh? There are birds in the forest? Good to know, guess they were roosting or something when it was raining. They were probably an easy meal for the puff martens considering the size comparison. They do look like regular birds after all, although they are mostly green and brown. Camouflage perhaps?
Does grey work as camouflage? Maybe against stone? I'm lighter grey than the stone of the mountain but maybe I can pass as being a weird pile of boulders?
Oooh? That's a pretty looking one! Bright blue like the logo! A~nd it's clutching another bird...
That's another predator. Probably doesn't camouflage well against rainclouds if I have to guess. I only managed to spot it against the trees after all.
I wonder if there's anything wandering the trees now the rain has gone? I didn't see the expected squirrels but they could be in there somewhere? Since I'm mostly established now with running water and a relatively reliable food source maybe I should just take it easy for today? I'll just take a look around and relax since it seems like a nice day. The sun's only... a quarter of the way up? I wonder how long the days are? I don't feel like counting all day... Maybe I can make a sundial? I just need to put something long and straight in the ground for that right? Something to work out later.
These nuts are a good breakfast substitute! Maybe I can get some honey if there are any bees in the forest? I should be fine with being stung considering I'm a living mix of scale and plate mail...
Now my armour idea seems doubly important. If someone targets me for materials I can put them through hell! Who expects a dragon to wear armour!?
I am the brave knight Sir Robin! Prepare to die dragon!
And then I'll come out of the depths of my enormous lair wearing the heaviest and thickest armour possible and flick his sword in half!
Then he will have stories of how he ran away with leaking armour and have songs sung everywhere he goes!
I'm getting ahead of myself again...
Draconic laughter is rather menacing! or goofy if you ignore how scary a laughing firebreathing reptile is... At least I have a smile to inspire terror? I need toothpaste or something...
Do dragons need toothpaste?
Heading over to my makeshift distillery setup and boiling myself a drink I can't help but dismiss the idea as rather stupid since I'm now semi regularly breathing fire hot enough to melt stone. If those temperatures don't damage your teeth a bit of plaque shouldn't either! Although...
Dragging my tongue along my teeth and finding the gaps tempts me to try and make toothpaste anyways... it can't hurt at least... hopefully missing teeth is common for dragons...
Augh... this water tastes more and more disgusting the more I drink it. It's like half of everything satisfying in water just left. The stream coming out of the cave is almost tempting at this point!
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
It actually does feel like a good idea to drink? Weird...
Whatever it's time for a walk! Hopefully I can find a long bear to follow. I'm really curious what something that large is eating. Maybe if it's a plant I can grow it? A little garden would be nice. I should collect some plants to try and grow outside my entrance until I can get started on actual gardens.
Maybe the entrance can be in a garden? It would look really nice! A mausoleum style entrance in a mountain garden... That's a nice little revision to the plans. Having a temple style entrance carved straight into the mountainside would have been fairly drab... unless I added plants...
Let's just add a garden before I make the entrance pretty. I don't even have the entrance hall finished yet! It's just an even hollow with pillars currently! What do I work on first... the entrance hall will take a while and the garden needs to grow...
Seed a garden first and then start the entrance hall, take the stone quarried out of the entrance hall and make bricks to build the entrance with.
It's a basic plan but it should work well enough for now. I just need to find some plants to start with.
Hopefully there are some useful or nice looking plants growing that I missed. It wasn't the brightest with the constant rain.
Entering the treeline the dappled sunlight really sets a peaceful atmosphere, that and the light mist evaporating from the forest floor. Speaking of the forest floor...
Are those mushrooms? Yep! Brown mushrooms with green speckled caps... They are very hard to spot among the layers of wet needles and roots, especially with the mist layer. I'm going to collect some later... if they do make me trip balls or give me gut rot I want to be heading towards my lair instead of away.
That's something to grow at least. Hopefully there's more to find than just these.
Looking around at the trees and up at the canopy I can see the bark has been worn down on some of the trees. I'm guessing that the long bears used them to scratch. There's a few pine nuts lying around so I'm assuming that the pests got pestered.
Maybe they eat mushrooms? It doesn't explain the claws but it's a possibility.
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And we have birds on the ground! Picking off worms and small bugs left right and centre! It's funny watching them hop around and bob like they're at a concert.
Whoa, that's a big... worm? It's got legs on the front though... mutant centipede? I'd blast it with fire if the small crowd of birds didn't have it handled.
There's a... I'm not even sure what that is... It's like eighty percent mouth and the rest is legs...
And that is a... It's just legs.
The fact the birds are just casually picking up thousands of creepy crawlers off the ground makes the forest floor rather disgusting to walk on. I can't feel or see anything through the mist and needles but there's got to be something there... who knows how many layers of decaying plants there are under my feet... this is rather revolting.
Did something just cross my foot...? Ye~ah...
NOPE!
Later birds! Enjoy your feast! I'm going to go wash off the layers of nightmare fuel...
EUGH!!!
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One dip in the potentially deadly stream later and I'm almost satisfied that there's nothing left on my legs or stuck between my claws... let's just stick to the mossy riverbank for now. I can't see any mosquitoes or anything so I should be fine from insects for now.
I wonder...
Spitting a tiny amount of flame into the water was probably the biggest mistake I'd made all day.
The water started to boil near instantly and the flame started spreading across the bubbling water surface instantly.
Yeah. The flame spread on water.
Fuck.
Trying to put it out with water by splashing it just made it spread faster and since it was flowing downstream there was no way of isolating it or blocking it. As it started sticking to the plants coating the banks and lighting them up the only thing I could do was coat the fire with mud and hope. Being smothered in wet dirt seemed to stop it spreading further and put out the fire not fuelled by my trademark dragon napalm but any of the original fire that got covered started to dry the dirt into a hard coating. It still stopped the spread but it left hard shells coating the area that looked like brown alien eggs from all the bubbling fuel. A couple burst but tossing more mud on top did the trick.
Following the dirt downstream and repeating the process constantly was mentally exhausting due to the repetition and potential danger if I missed any.
Coating the last spot with mud I ran up and down the banking and tossed more mud on any spots that looked suspect.
Note to self. NEVER SET WATER ON FIRE!
Lying on the banking and watching the dirt clouded water drift past I took a moment to relax. That is until I heard a quiet crunch above my head and saw a few drops of blood hit the opposite bank.
Looking up I saw the blood smothered fluff of a puff marten staring down at me as it chewed on a tree pest. Noticing I was watching it the marten tilted its head at me.
*Chirup*
Dinner and a show huh?
Embarrassed that my ordeal was watched most likely in its entirety I quickly left the stream and headed back into the forest.
Bugs be damned.
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Slowing down my walking pace and crouching behind a tree I watched the long bear wander along with small green birds pecking away at its fur. The fact that they took off with red beaks occasionally was rather disturbing. Forget vampire bats, here we observe vampire birds.
It doesn't seem to bother the bear that much and not every peck seems to draw blood. They seem to be eating small things off its back and leaving when they draw blood. I can see another long bear scratching its back against a tree off to my right much to the birds displeasure.
Hmm? They're grouping up? Did they spot me or something? Drawing back slightly seems rather pointless when they approach a rather large tree even by this forests standards. What are they doing?
The next moment both of the long bears started gouging and tearing into the tree at the same time, not digging deep but tearing off as much bark as possible. The pest response was near instant with the bears being pelted with gradually increasing amounts of nuts. As I started wondering about the chances of concussions and death by bludgeoning the bears ran in separate directions with the pests swiftly following. From the sounds off to my right I'm assuming that one is repeating the process. The bear that ran left has come back to the original tree that is haemorrhaging sap to start drinking without being bothered whatsoever. Maybe it's a diversion? Clever! But when will the other get to eat? As that thought crossed my mind the bear started tearing more bark off of the tree, obviously making itself a target. As the pests started bombarding it again the bear ran left again. I'm assuming the other bear is going to stop by soon.
There it is, guess this is how they feed themselves... I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping they collected honey or something. Maybe they might have hunted unicorn deer or ate tuborous plants that looked like tree roots...
Oh well. At least my curiosity has been sated. I'll leave them to their meal.
I wonder how sap tastes?