Requiem of the Fallen: Dragon Child

Getting to Know One Another

I awoke with the smell of fire in my nostrils.

The young one was in human form now, curling up next to me to conserve energy and for warmth. It was actually female, despite the cropped black hair. Her soft, fragile skin was almost as bronzed as mine, meaning that these two might have traveled with each other for more than a few decades. There was no way she could survive the first twenty years without some form of guidance. I gently nudged her awake, and wondered where her brother went.

As if summoned from my thoughts, his dragon form bridged the horizon, carrying meat in his massive jaws. He was larger than myself, as appropriate for his age, and his scales were an iridescent fire-red.

The male landed on the clearing with experienced finesse; it was narrow enough landing space without my own bulk, and he did not rest all of his weight on all at once on the ground, lessening the boom of air that erupted in the frozen grass. I covered the child -even though she was impervious to cold, such a blast would chill her dangerously - and delicately sniffed at the large moose he brought us.

It was a clean kill; a broken neck was more likely to preserve the warm blood and innards longer. After it met my approval, I allowed the young one to creep forward. She looked at us both uncomprehendingly, seeming to expect one of us to Shift and butcher it the mundane way.

I looked at her brother shrewdly. The first thing he could've taught her was how things went once you learned how to Shift. Pushing the young one aside, I put my muzzle down and tore at the carcass, sating my hunger as quickly as possible. Once I was done, I slunk off onto a sunny snowbank and began to lick my self clean. The red Draigana got the message, catching his half-sister's eye as he bent down and took his share. The young one looked mildly queasy as she realized what she had to do, then seemed to gather herself and Shifted into her dragon form and set to eating the raw meat.

She looked slightly like her much larger senior, her scales a sunset orange. Her teeth were already razor-sharp from birth, but the young one was not very used to it by the way she kept on taking off chunks too big for her to swallow.

The red male turned to me. "She's a fast learner," he told me, "Megaera will catch up in no time."

"You better hope so. We should not be wasting so much time here; better if you had stowed it somewhere near water, so she could have an informal lesson on flight on top of it. Tell her to get ready in 30 minutes."And I abruptly launched myself into the air.

My armor-like scales caught the sun and reflected off of them as I flapped effortlessly to find a good place to rest briefly once the young one got tired. Being new to this, she would get tired much more quickly.

****Megaera's POV****

Leon watched the other dragon soar out into the sky, a strange look in his eyes.

She was beautiful; that is, if the way she seemed to be much more slender despite being almost his equal in size was an indication of feminity. Her scales were an icy white, seeming to blend into the snow-laden sides of the mountain's valley clearing. If it weren't for the sunlight glinting off her body as she flew, I or anyone else might've never noticed her.

My brother had long given up on decieving me after almost twenty-five years of traveling together, but even I did not know what he was thinking as he turned back, waiting for me to finish my food. Honestly, I thought it a little disgusting to be eating my food raw, but I dared not complain.

The white dragon soon came back just after I swallowed my last mouthful, landing precisely on the same outcropping as she had sunned herself earlier. Seeing that she still had some flecks of blood on some of her scales (it seemed that she and my brother shared the same views on utter perfection in their outward appearance as dragons), she began to fastidiously lick them clean as I nearly groaned from being full. I craned my neck over to my stomach, seeing individual pieces of moose sticking out against my body. My head crashed back to the front.

Leon was still discreetly watching the other dragon, seeming unsure about how to approach her. I lazily poked my snout at him, jerking it at her in the international signal to 'get it over with'. My brother huffed at me; he was nervous!

I huffed back. My answer was simple enough to frustrate him. He slightly growled at me, trying not to catch her attention as he did so. She suddenly perked her head up, spoke to him in that strange language I sometimes heard my brother speak when we encountered others like us, then shook herself and stood expectantly.

My brother gently nudged me up, coming to stand as close to her as she would allow him to. She decided the limit when he was close enough to rub his neck against her own, and irritatingly snorted at me. It was done so delicately, I thought as I went to his other side.

Together, we leaped into the air. Maybe this would be fun.