The Mysterious Visitor (and other short stories)

The First Dragons (C)

"Grandma, tell the one about the wicked men and the first dragons." Kaiden begged.

Grandma smiled. Although she told many stories, she loved the ones with lessons at the end the most. "In the early days, when men first discovered that they could bond with and tame dragons, a group of powerful, greedy men decided that they wanted all the dragons to themselves. They marched through the surrounding towns and villages. They took all of the eggs that had been found and--"

"Even the ones that had already warmed under the touch of someone's hand!" Kaiden interjected.

Grandma smiled patiently. "Yes, even those. The men gathered these eggs together and hatched them. But because the eggs were stolen eggs, the dragons that hatched were broken. They cried out in sorrow as they emerged from their eggs. Their cries summoned the wild and free dragons who lived in the mountains. Hundreds of wild, ancient dragons swarmed the city. They slaughtered the wicked men and burned their grand houses to the ground."

"What happened to the baby dragons?" Kaiden asked, even though he knew the answer.

"After watching their brethren rain down havoc and destruction upon the entire city for many weeks, the baby dragons laid down and died. Their hearts were broken, for their eggs hadn't warmed to the touch of the humans that hatched them." Grandma paused and lowered her head solemnly, and even though Kaiden knew what came next, this time he didn't dare interject.

"New laws were passed, forbidding anyone from taking an egg from someone who has warmed it. A memorial was built, that we may never forget the death and destruction that greed and wickedness brings." Grandma leaned back, her story complete.

"Grandma?" Kaiden asked, "Do you think someday, I could own a dragon?" He knew the answer to this question as well, but he liked it best when Grandma answered it. The truth was, there weren't any dragons on the Gaelan Islands. At least, not the intelligent sort from Grandma's stories. Those only lived on the mainland, and the only living dragon there that Kaiden knew of was the King's dragon, gifted to him by some foreign emissaries. The large lizards who pulled the heavy carts to market and the wyvern who flew the merchants and their wares from island to island were tamed by warming their plain grey eggs, but they were little more than beasts and, as far as Kaiden was concerned, one might as well buy a cow or a lamb.

Grandma didn't say any of this, however. She smiled down at him. "Any lucky soul who finds a dragon egg and is accepted by it can have their own dragon."