["The creation of life is precious. To many, they only think of the birth of a child or an animal, but plants and their growth progress is something greater than most realize. Even the plants that we eat have to go through their own cycles. I urge all readers to go and take a look at the plant closest to you, and maybe you'll realize something you haven't seen before."
- Farmer to Farmer A book on farming]
Aster
I looked in awe at the hatchling as it fell out of the egg, no bigger than one of a bird but with a longer tail.
Her pale blue scales and the slight bit of the dark purple underbelly visible were still coated in the slime from the egg, but she was beautiful. The squeak she let out sounded demanding and authoritative as she looked around the tiny room, but as her eyes landed on me, I didn’t know what to do.
Then she leaped at me, her front limbs outstretched, squealing. Instinctively, I reached out to catch her. I couldn't let her fall. The thought of her landing on the ground made me almost panic.
She clung onto one of my arms like a bur wrapping around it, her claws digging into my arm but not piercing my skin. The hatchling started to make her way up my arm. As she moved almost like a snake making loops around my arm, she kept squeaking, almost rantingly so. A thrumming sensation started to build in my head as she got closer to my neck; it was the mark. Scaling up my arm and onto my shoulder, I could feel them as easily as I could feel my own.
Her emotions, the excitement, the joy, and the anger? Was she upset?
She pushed her head into my neck against the collar where the mark sat. Rubbing against it, she made a rumbling noise as she sat, her tail wrapping around the back side of my arm. Her head pushed into me, her scales smooth and refreshingly cool, the breath from her nose the first cold I’d felt since I’d found the egg.
Then, a pair of words came through, past the emotions that ran through the bond. The voice was high-pitched and childlike.
“My bond”
I looked at the hatchling, utterly dumbfounded. Not even an hour out of the egg, and she had spoken not verbally but mentally through the bond. Slowly, hesitantly, I reached up with my hand and ran it down the hatchlings back. The rumbling grew before it stopped, and the hatchling looked up at me. Her eyes were a light purple that seemed to hold thousands of tiny crystals reflecting the light.
Slowly, with effort and using the skill Bond Speech, I tried to speak back through the bond.
“Our Bond,” I confirmed, still running my fingers over her back. It was rough, like speaking after a long silence. The words felt slightly off and stilted.
She let out a chirp of affirmation before her head perked up and her tongue flicked out. I looked up to see Mother set down a bowl full of meat.
The hatchling only paused for a moment, her head looking from me to the bowl, asking a question without saying anything.
Holding my arm out towards the bowl in invitation, she needed no other motivation. She raced back down, then hopped off my arm onto the table and dove on top of the meat, devouring it.
Six bowls of meat, all of them filled to the brim, were taken to the hatchling before she started to slow down. I don’t know how many times over she ate her body weight, but I couldn’t tell where it was going.
“More?” The hatchling asked, and all I could do was oblige her.
It was eleven bowls of meat before she stopped. It was sudden, but halfway through, she just stopped eating, turning around and moving into my lap before she fell asleep, her tiny wings shifting slightly.
I looked over to Kulni, who had been bringing over the meat. I was lost for words.
“She’s going to grow quite fast. The meat she's eating is getting turned into mana to increase the speed of her growth. Most magical beasts are similar at birth.” Kulni sat in the chair across from us and popped a piece of the meat left in the bowl into her mouth after speaking, looking off for a moment before looking at the dragon.
“She was speaking already, through the bond,” I said, keeping my voice low. I didn’t want to risk waking the hatchling, even if they felt dead asleep through the bond.
Kulni nodded. “You have a skill related to it, and she probably does as well. It will most likely be a few months before she can speak with anyone else, though. She patted her hand on her lap as she stood. “I have things that need to be done for the pack. I’ll be with them tonight and tomorrow. Ask Sandath if you need me or come into the cave, but I figure you’ll have it handled."
I bobbed my head in understanding. I would have enjoyed the help, but I didn’t need it. To my knowledge, she had set me up with everything I needed, mainly meat. She had spent the entire day in the house, and the pack did need their mother. It would be selfish to want her to stay, even if I did. With an awkward hug to avoid squishing the hatchling, she left.
Looking out the door behind her as she closed it and then moving my gaze to the window, it was with surprise I saw snow falling in the blackness outside. It seemed winter had fully started with me inside, and the time until I left the forest somehow felt closer. I picked up the book next to me that had managed to stay out of the way and settled myself in. I was tired. The sleep during the advancement, if you could call it that, hadn’t felt like natural sleep. So I would take the time to relax. Brushing my hand down the hatchlings back, I continued where I had left off.
I knew I had fallen asleep because I was woken up by the sound of chirping right in my ear. Startled, I opened my eyes to be met with the purple ones of the hatchlings less than an inch from mine. I looked over at the hatchling, who was now off of my lap and on my shoulder again, and noticed that she had now reached the top of my head when sitting. The small dragon had grown at least half a foot in size! Rubbing my eyes, I looked outside, but it was still dark and snowing, so not long had passed. Kulni had been serious when she said the hatchling would grow fast.
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“Hungry, want food,” She declared, letting out another chirp.
I stood up slowly, and she dug her claws into my shirt to keep balance. Moving to the meat table, instead of grabbing the bowl, I decided that bringing the problem to the solution instead of the other way around would be better. In this case, the hatchling to the meat would be my solution. The dragon squeaked excitedly as I lifted her up and set her on the table. She was faster than any wolf I’d ever seen as she ate, but Mother had prepared well, and there was plenty.
I took the moment she was eating to identify her.
[Name: Unnamed ]
[Grade: 0 (2 Years, 1 Month until unlock)]
[Level: 1][Titles: Bonded]
[Mana: 748/220]
[Stamina: 120/215]
[Race Class: Frost Dragon]
[Second Race Class: Unclassed]
I was lost for a moment on why I could see so much of her sheet before I understood that it was the bond giving me the ability. There were still parts of the sheet I couldn't see, but what I could see was enough to know how a dragon could get so powerful. Two race classes. The most significant difference between a second class and a race class was the alterations a race class could make to the body; they were just more powerful, and she had two.
Her mana was through the roof, but as I watched her sheet, I noticed how it went down at rapid progress and then shot back up as she chowed down another piece of meat. It was her eating the food, as Mother had said.
She didn't even get through a fourth of the remaining meat before she was ready to sleep again, and we went back to the couch. I hummed gently as I lay down, lost in thought at the dragon on my chest, chirped softly, and fell back asleep.
The routine of getting up, feeding the dragon, and then returning to sleep continued until dawn. Over half of the meat was gone by then, and the hatchling had grown more. She was the size of a rabbit at that point, and decided that my neck was the perfect sleeping place for the moment wrapping around it, not that I minded.
The scales were cold, not overly so, and were soothing to be close to. Throughout the night, both of us had also managed to figure out the bond a bit more. Her sentences had increased to five-word requests for food and to be held. At the same time, I started to get a firmer grasp of her emotions going through my mind. It was hard to keep focused and read when, every moment, a new emotion filled your thoughts. The dragon was full of curiosity, that was for sure.
It was late into the morning when she finally slowed down on her eating, and we managed to get a decent amount of sleep. I had taken the pause to get the other books and put them into the storage ring.
I had switched books to a more entertaining story about an elf who had decided he wanted to visit the stars. Something that was impossible, but it made for a good tale, and rereading it was fun. I was reading out loud to the dragon, who seemed to understand at least some of the story.
When she perked up from her doze, and her head rose from my chest, I tilted my head at her, confused. She chirped before mentally speaking.
“Read it again!” She sounded excited.
I paused halfway through the sentence, looking up from the book, then mentally shrugged, went up a paragraph, and started rereading it.
“When ready to try to begin his trip, Ninder had many obstacles he had to overcome, but he found his biggest obstacle was not the distance to the stars but the cold between him and his obstacle. It is known that the higher you get, the colder the air becomes. Ninder named the point where nothing was strong enough to combat this cold the Umbra-.”
The hatchling chirped again, and I stopped.
“Umbra!” She declared the tail wiping from side to side.
“Umbra?” I echoed her out loud, “What about the Umbra?”
She chirped and smacked her head into my chest. “No! Umbra! I am Umbra! The coldest!” She declared this with another head smash, taking the air out of my lungs.
I smiled and gave her a grin as I understood. “You’re Umbra? Is that what you want to be called?”
The hatchling, Umbra nodded furiously. So it was that at the grand age of one day old, Umbra decided her name.
The following week went similarly to the previous day, with a constant schedule of her eating and then sleeping after only a tiny bit of activity. The only change was in books, her growth, and having to get more food from the wolves, which Umbra intensely disliked because I had to leave for a short few minutes and did not take her. I wouldn't say I liked leaving her inside either, but I didn’t want to take the chance of taking her outside yet.
Kulni did come home, checking in to make sure everything was fine, but had left for the cave again the next day. The week turned into two, and she had grown to be the size of a smaller tree fox when Umbra had enough of being inside. She refused to take no for an answer, and with resignation and her emotions in my mind, I took her outside.
The snow that had fallen was only a few inches deep, but Umbra thoroughly enjoyed it, exploring everything and watching the wolves with curiosity as they went about their lives. Most of them were in the cave at the moment to avoid the snow. Umbra always stayed close and never left eyesight, constantly looking around to make sure she could see me, but the outside did wonders to work up her appetite even more, so it became a daily thing to go out with her every day but never too far.
Two weeks later.
Stretching, I yawned in my bead and attempted to roll over only to be met by a wall of blue scales and faceplant into them
“It’s probably time to get up,” I complained, poking the scale wall and then rubbing my nose. All I received was a snort as a wing covered the top half of my body. Rolling my eyes, I slid out of bed and looked down at the lump of scales. Almost the month now since her hatching, she was over half my height and as big as any wolf pup. Her blue scales had darkened to a deep blue, but her underbelly scales had stayed the same pale purple. I looked out my window at the already blue sky. “If you don’t get up, we’ll have to go hunting later,” I said, making myself sound remorseful.
One of the purple eyes opened to glare at me. “I can feel your emotions.” She said, her voice grumpy.
“Then you know that I can feel yours. Let's go before the hunting party scares off all the creatures in the inner forest.” I said, placing my hands on my hips.
She was grown enough, according to Kulni, to hunt and therefore gain levels. I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to do so, either. So we started to go out further and practice hunting in the inner forest. We had only started last week, but Umbra was already level nine.
A rumble came from the dragon, but she started to move. I knew she was actually excited to be able to hunt, and catching her own prey was a joy for her, but she liked to pretend it was boring for a dragon to have to hunt. Looking around the room, I started to get ready myself.