🍫 (🍭)Once Upon a Time... | DreamDragon84's Short Story Book

A Salty Situation

Conch observed the egg in the tidepool.

It's kelp-green surface had small swirls of mint and teal. The dragonet inside seemed very close to hatching as flashes of cyan looked to be piercing the egg it was encased in.

The Seawing watched this with interest. 

'My very first son,' Conch thought, 'And he's about to hatch!'

She continued to oversee the egg inside the small tidepool, sometimes tearing her gaze away from her son to observe other creatures dwelling in the water puddles, such as hermit crabs, sea urchins, and anemones.

Until finally, a sound unlike the normal sounds of the sea was heard, with a crack in the eggshell to show for it. Conch's eyes darted around before finally staring at the egg.

Another crack. Light tapping. More flashes. Curious talons poking a hole. Small beam of cyan light. Groans. More cracks. A squeak. And finally, with a final heave and tumble, the newly born dragonet fell out of their egg and into the tidepool.

Its vibrant kelp-green scales immediately stood out from the blue landscape, with dark teal wings adding to the contrast. The dragonet bubbled and burbled excitedly as it flailed their webbed talons to move around the saltwater. Its gills kicked in semi-consciously and their bioluminescent cyan scales lit up with happiness.

The Seawing mother watched the bumbling dragonet. Anticipation and excitement embedded every scale as Conch was overcome with joy at the sight of her son. After a few minutes she scooped the dragonet into her talons. She used her webbed claws to tickle his, and smiled as the dragonet giggled.

Though...something seemed off about him. Their scales didn't seem as slimy, and he wasn't making as much noise anymore. Plus his head swiveled from side to side at random intervals, which was sometimes accompanied by the opening of his jaw.

Conch saw this as a bit strange, but she hasn't been around dragonets since she was one herself. (though, as she reflected on this while watching the dragonet's behavior, she thought that it would've been useful to know what was considered normal when dealing with dragonets.) Because of this, the mother thought that what was going on was not completely out of the norm, albeit a bit unordinary.

The Seawing mother kept this in mind as she carried the dragonet out of the tidepool and onto a shore. The salty waves lapped against the dragonet's scales, and he chirped happily.

Conch took this as her assumption was right. After all, she knew that Seawings do best in water, and could faintly recall that Seawings could go insane if not in the ocean for a while. Perhaps that what was happening. As she thought about it, she realized that her actions to not have the dragonet hatch in the open sea and instead in a small tidepool was probably not the best option. So she sought to correct her behavior, and let the dragonet loose in the open saltwater (making sure she could keep an eye on him, of course).

To help show the dragonet how swimming is done, Conch dove into the water a few seconds after her son and paddled towards him with her webbed talons.

Her son took the sea as a new medium he could easily maneuver through. Though that wasn't necessarily the case, the mother enjoyed watching him trying to flap his wings to move, and accidentally swallowed some water through an open mouth before closing his jaw tightly. Erratic flashes of cyan scales displayed some emotions, but Conch tried not to think about what the dragonet was saying in Aquatic ("ahh watermelons!"; "lookie here at my bloody brain"; "why are you running"; "momma help"; "feel dry"; "pigs go yum-yum"). The mother couldn't do much to help him here except give more comforting messages with her own blinking pink scales.

Soon though...there were changes in his behavior. The flashes were brighter, less often. His wings stopped moving, instead folded in towards his body. The strong Seawing tail was the only thing moving and stopping the dragonet from sinking (not like he would go far, as the two dragons weren't but a few yards away from the shore). Everything else...had gone limp.

Conch didn't see this immediately, but one turn to the side changed her entire demeanor. Joy turned to panic, and the last thing her son saw before her eyes closed were cornflower scales rushing towards them and pink scales flashing bright messages of worry, unease, and distress. She held her son close to her chest as she used her back talons, tail, and even her wings to propel herself out of the water and into the open air.

A crisp breeze bit into her scales, further tearing away at the mother's emotions, and Conch felt hopelessly lost as she hovered a few yards above the salty sea level, clutching her dragonet tightly.

She hoped, wished, wanted the slightest notion; of steely determination, a will to change her son's fate, better the situation, save a life. But...as she looked down at her limp son, she wondered what the point was to this. If her son wasn't alive, couldn't live in the salty sea, what could she do? Did anything else matter?

Not really. But what could she do about it?

The blue Seawing could only hold her basically-dead son and hover in the air with her wings, flapping them every few seconds so as not to fall into the salty water.

She stayed there for who-knows-how-long, the sadness too much for her to act.

Then...

A drop.

Barely noticeable.

Pitter patter.

Darker water.

Blackness overhead

Splashes.

Ripples.

The droplets hitting her scales added to her desperation as the rain began to pour. Conch flew back to the island where her dragonet hatched and placed him in the sand. The grains didn't stick to his dry scales, and the mother let the rain fall on her son as she curled up next to him in melancholy.

Conch shifted uncomfortably at the rain. While she wasn't a fan of many little droplets hitting her scales and much preferred to be fully submerged in an element, she kept her eyes on her son and didn't really care about the uncomfortableness of this situation. The sadness was just too great a load to care.