crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch-cru-

I froze in my tracks, slightly crouched with one claw resting on the base of a tree. The crunching sounds also stopped a half-second later, the air around me only disturbed by the chatter of insects and songbirds. I started walking forwards again.

CRUNCH-

“HOW ARE YOU SO LOUD???”

Spinning around, I saw the dragon hatchling following me jump at my sudden telepathic outburst. Giving me a wide-eyed, innocent expression, he responded glumly.

“Sorry, sis. I’m doing my best…”

I glared with fake annoyance at my little brother. He looked, for all intents and purposes, like a mini-Rehm to my eyes. He had the same tint of red on his scales as our mother, and even though he was still shorter than the average human, I could already see the similarities in their reptilian faces. Well, maybe all dragons look like that. Wait, is that racist? I mean, technically I’m also one, and I’ve never seen any other dragons, uhh… Rubbing my eyes delicately with a claw, I addressed my little brother.

“Sorry, I guess it’s not your fault. It must be harder than it was for me.”

Like Rehm, and I suppose any normal dragon, my lil’ bro’s lower body and feet were massive, and not exactly meant for sneaking about the forest floor. While my own legs ended in scales and claws, they were at least proportional to my human body.

Feeling a bit guilty about giving my new sibling a hard time, I directed my frustration somewhere else.

“Honestly, it’s Mother’s fault for pushing all the work onto me to teach you this stuff, what kinda mom is she??”

“Uh, I’m uh, sure Mother has her reasons.”

The dragon hatchling nervously glanced around, as if she was listening in on the conversation. Which she might’ve been, for all I knew. Not that I was too worried. My brother, on the other hand… well Rehm had given him the same show as she’d done for me, topped off with a beautiful fireworks display 30 meters in length. I had thought it was amazing and a bit terrifying, but he’d taken it to heart a bit too much. As far as I could tell, my little brother was deathly afraid of our mom. Which could be considered fairly normal, I guess. To me… well a dragon is pretty intimidating, but I’d felt since hatching that Rehm wouldn’t seriously hurt me, no matter what.

Sighing, I patted my little brother on the head, to which he leaned forwards and hummed under his breath. He wasn’t scared of me considering I’d doted on him near constantly, trying to keep the image of my pure, adorable brother in my mind instead of the scene of him covered in blood and gore. I also had the sneaking suspicion that he was unafraid of me because he could control mana better and shoot fire further than I could after not even a week.

But today Rehm had told me to help him on his first hunt, so it was time to show my superiority. At the very least, I’m quieter than he is in the forest. And the only other thing I am better at…

Spreading my wings, I beat them a few times to lift gently into the air, entering a steady hover well below the lowest branches.

“Change of plans, you’ll never catch one of those deer making this much noise. There are some larger birds higher up, you can probably catch some of them.”

My little brother frantically unfurled his wings and started flapping, pushing off the forest floor with his legs. He could fly well enough already, but he still hunched over in the air, and occasionally lost his balance. Hah! I’m well past the gargoyle stage of flight, and now I have the grace of an angel! That Franz guy said something like that, bow down lil’ brother!!!

Ranting in my own mind, I communicated nothing to the dragon awkwardly flapping up to me. Rehm hadn’t said anything, but I thought it was for the best to keep silent about the humans around my brother. Unlike a normal dragon, I could speak out loud; and Rehm could speak telepathically with humans through magic if she needed to, but a newly born hatchling didn’t have enough practice or experience to be able to do that.

We drifted about, only the sound of our wings hitting the air betraying our presence. The trees in this section of the forest weren’t as close together, so we could both glide about fairly freely in the early autumn afternoon light. Keeping my eyes searching above, I eventually heard a specific bird caw and located what I’d been looking for: a massive nest of branches, leaves, twigs, and mud larger than either of us rested in the crook of several branches above us. Getting my brother’s attention, I pointed at it and saw his dark eyes change from playful to serious. He analyzed its perch, found the best way up, and tightened his back muscles. Releasing the tension built in the frames of his wings, with a single push he shot forward, body streamlined and practically touching the tree. I watched my little brother use one claw to rip through the side of the nest, tail flicking to direct his momentum as he descended upon the remainder of the nest.

From below it was hard to see, but from the frantic squaws I could hear and their short-lived nature it seemed like my brother had succeeded. Less than a minute after I’d noticed the nest my brother dropped loudly in front of where I’d landed, his eyes sparkling proudly. In each foreclaw was a massive bird, mottled brown feathers now stained red. The creatures, whose species I had lovingly named winged fucker, were the size of a well-fed dog with a massive wingspan to match; armed with talons as sharp as my claws. They seemed unnaturally big in my eyes, but from what I could tell the presence of a dragon residing nearby made most apex predators leave or die off long ago. These winged fuckers ended up being one of the remaining few at the top of the forest’s food chain. Well, most of the time.

Satisfied with his prey, my little brother tucked a bloody bird corpse under each arm and looked at me expectantly. Aside from my partial resignation of ever having a cute little sibling to look after, an odd memory bubbled up to the surface of my subconscious.

Seeing a dragon like him, his shiny red scales, wings still raised and teeth bared slightly, I was reminded of an image, a scene I could tell was from my past life. It was… not a still image, but not as lifelike as the dragon standing in front of me. It moved like… like a book, pages turning on their own, a mirror reflecting reality. Ignoring the dragon growing impatient in front of me, I searched and searched and searched through my mind, trying to come up with an answer. All the explanations I could come up with were insufficient, incomplete. I knew for certain something crucial, some necessary piece of the puzzle was missing, and without it the whole thing would never make sense. As much as I tried, however, nothing came. Every line of thought led to a dead end, cut short. God dammit. Frustrating, ugh…

“... Sorry, come on, Let’s go back and show Mother. Good job.”

Accepting my apologetic head pat, we started the walk home, in no rush at all. At least until I saw a flash of gold through the trees. Turning on my heel, nearly colliding with the dragon and his prizes, I jumped past him and took flight.

“Hey, come on, don’t tell me you can’t fly carrying those things.”

“Sis, wait, can’t you carry one? It’s unfair..”

“Ah? You carry your own food, I’m not your personal servant!”

Leading him in a wide circle around a certain blonde human, when we were close enough to the den I told him to go the rest of the way by himself.

“I’m gonna hunt my own food, bro. You’re too loud to be dragging around with me. Tell Mother I will be back after.”

Twirling around with a nudge from my wings and tail, I flew away from a still somewhat confused dragon, breathing slightly hard from flying with extra weight. Making my way back to the pond where I had agreed to meet with Franz occasionally, I came to a screeching halt mid air, turned around for the hundredth time, and emerged above the treetops to fly as quickly as I could to the den.

Arriving quicker through the air than my brother on foot, I grabbed the green bundle from its place high in the old oak tree, squinted at a lounging Rehm, and flew back to the waiting human.

Landing, I threw on the dark green cloak, wrapping it around me as much as possible and walked into the clearing. Not bothering to step quietly, two heads turned to look at me. One with a crown of long blonde locks, the other with shorter chestnut brown hair.

Franz was lounging on the same rock as a few days prior, shoes off and toes touching the water’s surface. Next to him, I recognized the other young guard, Jean, sitting on the edge of the same rock, shoes still on and hand flirting with the hilt of his weapon. Upon noticing me, Franz gave a wave and Jean stood up.

“Hello”, I offered, taking a seat on a slightly comfier than average rock across the pond from them.

“Hello, Miss Mia, I apologize for intruding.” Jean gave a a small, stiff nod with a very serious expression, in contrast to Franz’s demeanor.

“Er, you don’t have to sshtand…”

Jean took a seat, posture formal. I guess this is better than last time with him? I guess he’s in the military, so maybe it’s normal, or something.

Reading my suspicious expression, Franz supplied an explanation. “Sorry about him, he a bit stressed, what with all this dragon business.”

“Sshorry about ..that?”

Jean flashed a dark look at Fraz before speaking, “Miss Mia, frankly speaking, only a few people in Draughton need to know about, well yourself and your mother. We’ve had to handle a few things since Franz found out.”

“And we’ve gotten a few lectures from the Captain, from both the second lieutenants, even from the Magister. It’s been a grand old time.”

Franz chuckled to himself, oblivious to any of the glares Jean was sending his way. Huh, well sorry to hear that, but it’s not my fault. And I’ve got something more important.

“Uh, well, good luck, I think. I have some..thing to ask about meeting here.”

Both guards simply responded with a questioning look, so I continued.

“If you come, can you wait by ..the edge of the foressht? Where all the cowsh are?”

“Huh? Why do you-”

“Of course, by all means. We passed the farm on the way here, and it shouldn’t be a problem.” His expression having become more pleasant, Jean placed a hand lightly on his subordinates arm. “And don’t worry about the farmers living there, you don’t have to hide from them.”

“Really? I took the marked cow the other day, hopefully ..the right one?”

Jean seemed to be a bit more at ease, if only a little, happy to carry on light conversation at the very least. Although Franz doesn’t seem as spritely as last time.

“Yes, you had the right one. The Millers let us know on our way here.”

“Ah, you know ..them? And they know about...”

I waved my hand in a vague motion, and saw the ghost of a genuine smile cross Jean’s face for the first time since the start of the conversation as he slapped an unhappy Franz on the back. “Yes yes, we’re acquainted.”

Well, that’s all I really needed to say… Giving a - hopefully - charming smile to the two, I decided to ignore the future prospect of talking about humans to my mother and just try to listen.

“Franzsh, lassht time you said people couldn’t sail around ..the mountainssh, I wassh wondering why not?”

Recovering as gracefully as he could and putting a cheerful expression on, Franz picked up where we had left off a few days before, and I shifted into a more comfortable position.

“Well, on the eastern coast of Esther is the Spiral Sea. I’ve only seen it once, but its called that because of the unpredictable currents that line the entire coast. Down here it’s bad enough to make it impossible to sail deep waters, but apparently the islanders living northeast of the Spine have figured out some way to do it. Hmm… as for the western coast, well, it’s pretty weird and I don’t really understand how much of it works, but I’ve heard adventurers tell stories…..”

I stayed silent save to ask a few questions or prompt an explanation, letting Franz recount things he’d heard, some sounding true enough and others the product of some stranger's wild imagination, with Jean cutting in every now and then to clarify something or tell Franz to not be such a fool. As far as distractions went, it was nice, and I didn’t mind at all listening about the places Franz had been to or the stories the guards passed around about my new and wondrous world.