TCF: Dragons are Great!

Family Ties(1)

When Rok awoke later in the day he sighed in relief at how much better his body felt. He had really needed the extra rest. Rok had reverted into his dragon form after calming the baby dragon in hopes that releasing the polymorph would help in regaining his energy. At first the young dragon had needed to be calmed back down all over again, not knowing what to make of the sudden size and shape shift, but luckily he'd quickly accepted the change and settled down.

Rok turned his head, sensing that although Eruhaben had left the room at some point that the baby dragon was still here and awake. He was surprised that the little one wasn't still clinging to him, given how unwilling he'd been earlier, but it was good to see some desire for independence no matter how small.

The black dragon hadn't gone far and was instead playing with some of the magical tools Rok had been given when he was younger but hadn't felt the need to throw out. Rok watched in amusement as the tiny creature reached a hesitant paw out towards what appeared to be a see through orb. Likely able to tell that it wasn't just some pointless bauble, the baby dragon pushed some of his mana into it, before gasping in surprise as it projected the image of a night's sky onto the ceiling.

Ah, he'd found the star orb, something Eruhaben had given Rok to learn the varying shapes and names of the constellations in this world. Rok would never admit it out loud, but he'd found a lot of comfort in that orb when he was younger. It was strange living in a place with no windows or natural lighting, and even if said windows existed they lived on the top of a mountain, all he'd see is snow.

"Do you like the stars?" Rok asked, seeing as how the dragon hadn't noticed he was awake. "I can tell you their names, if you like?"

The black dragon immediately let go of the orb, the display falling, as his full attention shifted to the boy still resting on his bed.

"Rok!" the dragon called, zipping over without a thought. Rok braced for impact and still couldn't help but release a small breath as the tiny form hit his own. "Rok, awake!"

"A new word already, huh?" Something told him Eruhaben was behind the learning of that one. Rok didn't bother brushing the two week old off of him, accepting that the young one would need time to adjust first. Surely he'd become less clingy as time went on. "You're very smart."

Blue eyes glimmered as he praised the child, and without any prompting at all the black dragon snuggled his head into Rok's neck. If he was going to deal with a clinging baby he might want to polymorph back into a human. It would be much easier to carry him around that way. But that would mean extending his energy, and Rok wasn't sure he wanted to do too much this soon. He felt better, but he was still rather tired.

So, polymorph decidedly not going to happen, Rok instead nudged the black dragon onto his back, being careful to leave room for him to fly. As long as he didn't flap his wings too hard it shouldn't be a problem, the dragon was much smaller in comparison to him. Eruhaben and he would have to quickly catch the baby dragon up on all of his missed meals, as he doubted the Stans took care of his nutrition properly. Proper care had never been their intent.

The barrier was still up, but fell at Rok's touch. Eruhaben had probably been waiting for him to decide to come out on his own and didn't want Cale or Choi Han to interrupt.

What he found in the main living space was not quite what he expected.

Instead of a terrified pair of humans or an annoyed, overprotective dragon father; He found the three actually speaking with one another. Choi Han was telling them a story about Rok, specifically about one of the times Rok had somehow found a nest of monsters in the Forest of Darkness during training. Neither Eruhaben or Cale seemed surprised by this, as if they had been taking turns speaking on Rok's history of ending up in bad situations.