Singer Sailor Merchant Mage

Chapter 200: First impressions

“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”

Ursula K.Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

I rushed up through my tunnels. Having lost track of time in my lair, I found the Silversea family all at dinner. Namir and Lady Acacia, as usual, joined us as part of our growing house. It was not completely unheard of for me to be unable to find when I let time get away from me. With Nyx asleep, it was not immediately apparent why I had rushed to see them until I opened my palms to reveal the sleeping dragonling.

“She hatched.” My whispered words woke the sleeping dragonling. At least, I was assuming the dragonling was a she. I hadn’t noticed anything hanging below, but I supposed she had only just been born. Maybe it was too early to tell.

The tiny baby dragonling stood tall despite her miniature height, her black scales shimmering with a myriad of colours and the white constellation of stars scattered across her scales.

“A dragon! It’s a real dragon!” Lady Aleera exclaimed, her eyes wide with awe.

“A dragonling, Aleera.” Lady Acacia corrected. But I wasn’t bothered by the terminology. My face broke into a wide smile as I took in the sight of the magnificent creature. “We did it! The egg hatched, and I have a dragonling!” my enthusiasm matched my sisters.

Arawn, ever stoic, couldn’t help but crack a slight grin, his pride evident in his eyes. “Congratulations. You are now the proud owner of a dragonling,” he said, nodding approvingly. “What next?”

Together, the Silversea family surrounded me and my young dragonling, revelling in the momentous event that had unfolded before them.

As the dragon nuzzled against me, a sense of connection washed over me, along with a feeling of hunger. “Welcome to our family,” I said, “We will protect you, and you will be a part of our legacy.” I fed him a little more mana. “She’s fairly hungry.”

“For more than just mana. She will need real food to grow. But don’t get your hopes up. Dragonlings are notoriously difficult to grow.” Lady Acacia interrupted, offering a plate of small, carefully cut pieces of fish. It took seconds for the dragonling to devour them all.

The Silversea family all rushed to offer the dragonling more morsels, and the mythical creature was soon stumbling between plates, food drunk. She returned to me and my mana before falling asleep. It looked like we would have a new bedtime routine.

“Have you thought of a name?” Namir asked.

“I was thinking of naming her Nyx,” I replied. “She reminds me of the night sky,” I added, tracing the white specks that looked like a nighttime constellation covering her back and wings—marvelling at how warm her scales were beneath my fingers.

“A lovely name for a lovely specimen.” Lady Acacia graciously granted her approval.

“Nyx.” Whispered Aleera agreeing.

. . .

Lady Acacia had a book on dragonling care. There seemed to be one of each colour, like the compass kingdoms, azure, emerald, gold, amber, scarlet, fuchsia, violet, and sapphire, but also black and white. They respected no country’s borders but were found predominantly in the warmer southern kingdoms of Libbecio, Ostro and Scirroco.

Like the Royal Families, they were associated with what the compass kingdoms understood to be elements of water, wood, earth, metal, fire, lightning, air and ice. At the same time, the black dragonlings were associated with dark and white dragonlings with light. Nyx was already slightly unusual in the star-like markings that decorated her skin. But other than them, she seemed like a typical black dragonling.

Starting at the size of a closed fist, I could easily hold her sleeping body in the palms of my hands. She was remarkably light, and most of her weight could be accounted for by the food in her protruding stomach—easy prey for any higher levelled birds, beasts or monsters. The curious hatchling would have to be protected from anything that might swallow her whole.

Hatchlings were known for their insatiable appetite, and if they survived to reach their adult size, around the size of a large cat, they were a terror to the local rodent population. But also capable of holding their own against cats, dogs and birds of prey, happy to fight on the ground or in the air. If trained well, they could be used for hunting small game by lords and ladies alike. However, their sharp claws and prickly personalities meant that you needed a suitably thick saddle seat to prevent them from panicking the horses.

Over the next week or so, she soon became the most popular mascot of our clan, and with so many cousins to beg from, she never went hungry, although she always came back to me for my mana. Monster or mythic alike, I was tasty. She was so popular that we were seriously contemplating reworking our crest. A small black dragon on a white mountain represents our salt, in the blue sea representing our location and trading on a pearlescent background. I thought it would look quite good, but we were waiting to see how large she would get before attempting to capture her image.

. . .

At night, she would sleep at the head of my bed. I listened to her thoughts, but there was little more to discern besides hunger, excitement, recognition and satiation. After all she was still only an infant,t. She was afraid of nothing, which had caused a couple of close calls. Still, she always luckily survived with but a momentary annoyance of the inconvenience of having to move out of the way of something far larger than herself.

She would eat everything. She would swallow anything small enough to fit past her jaws, including, alarmingly, our precious pearls. We now had a door and a lock on the tunnel entrance to our cave, where we did our farming, selecting and seeding process of the pearls. Who would have thought that a pet would be the reason for us to have to institute security

She was still happy to gnaw on anything she could not swallow whole. Nothing was sacred, and I spent most of my time training her in an attempt to get her to stop. While I disagreed fundamentally with the opinion, I now understood how some unenlightened fools could consider dragonlings little more than rats with wings; she was that destructive.

Flight lessons, though, were going far better. Living in a mountain and able to demonstrate, we started our flight lessons attempting to glide down from the inner caldera towards the Elendil tree until she was able to glide back and forth between the ridgeline and the tree with me. Then we extended our flights to our inner isle of the lagoon.

Finally, making the trip to Wester Town.

We, or rather she, is now banned from venturing into Wester Town again by request of Seneschal Silvertongue, who, as well as acting as my Seneschal, is now officially the town mayor. It was not as if I had not paid for the products consumed, but I could understand why the townspeople were less than keen on a repeat of the flying calamity that she was to the local marketplace in the town square.

We noticed that the more mana the food she ate held, the longer she would last without hunting or rooting about for more. With our two vessels ready for sailing, they now patrolled between Wester Ponente, Wester Levante and Little Wester, stopping at the mana reef to fill up on fresh fish rich in mana. Feeding my hatchling was not their only purpose; shaking down their crews and shepherding some of the Neriad back along the way was also part of it.

The underwater excavation continued revealing more and more of the buried city while providing more volcanic rock for anything else we might care to construct, from expanding the city’s walls and building up the lagoon wall to a circular road around the inner lagoon. The Lagoon Road headed south from Wester Town to make travel to the entrance to the Lodestone quicker and easier to reinforce, but eventually, it would work its way around the whole lagoon.

Life and kingdom building seemed smooth sailing now that the envoys had left and the former Libeccian mercenary merchants had been dealt with. Even the indentured adventurers helped delve into the Lodestone or teach my cousins and me under the guidance of Lady Acacia.

The only real problem was the increased need for housing required to house our expanding population. Still, seeing as we owned most of the island, even that was another opportunity.

All in all, things were looking up.