The young dragon stirred for a moment as feeling in his body returned. For what felt like an eternity, he felt trapped in his own body, a strange force leeching his energy, making it hard to move or even think, until eventually, it got so bad he couldn’t help but pass out.

But it had suddenly disappeared, and his body tingled as his nerves woke back up. The energy ran from his out to the rest of his body through his bloodstream. He took a quick, hard breath out and stretched, exacerbating the tingling sensation in his extremities. He opened his eyes and shook his head, standing up. His vision was blurry after what felt like days of neglect, and he squinted, trying to get a better picture of his location. He rubbed his eyes, freeing chunks of crust and clearing his vision a bit. He blinked hard a few times, before something moving caught his attention. He turned his head towards the source of the movement and squinted.

He saw a pair of big, silver eyes staring back at him.

He stumbled back, tripping over the thing’s crossed legs. He pulled himself up as quickly as possible, cowering back, tail between his legs. He stared up at the beast, frozen with a mix of emotions he wasn’t old enough to understand yet.

It looked like a human! He hated humans! They were the reason he could never leave the cave! They took him from his family! He wanted nothing more than to strike this one down with all the lightning he could muster from his body, but could only shiver and whine.

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s just me! You’re safe; I’m here. That creature can’t get you anymore.” The thing in a language the young dragon did not understand.

However, quite confusingly, the words soothed him. Eyeing down the figure again, he felt a spark of recognition in his mind. It was like how he recognized all of those human objects, even though he’d never heard of them before. Except, this time, distinct memories played in his head. He remembered her name, and her coaxing him out of a tree with a strangely delicious piece of meat, and when she protected him from the human she’d just rescued him from. He even remembered showing off to her when he learned how to fly.

Wait. he knew how to fly? He’d been practicing for half his life and could barely muster a glide before!

This brief moment of confusion gave Lasair the opportunity to scoop him up from the ground and squeeze him in a hug just a bit too tight for his small body. The situation felt… familiar to him.

“I’m so glad you’re safe! When you left me that day I thought I’d never see you again! And when I saw you in my dream, I was worried you were hurt, or in a coma or something!”

Not understanding a single one of her frantic words, the young dragon just croaked. It was hard to breathe in his position, and Lasair seemed to realize it. Holding him from under his front legs, she looked into his eyes.

“You never should’ve run off with Parker! How could he let this happen to you?!”

Still not understanding a single word of what she’d said, he just stared back at her. He was still debating in his own mind whether to stay with this familiar figure or book it. Although at first he had been terrified, he found himself now to be calmed by her presence. He felt safe around her.

What came next really sealed the deal, though.

Lasair put him down, reached into her pack, and pulled out a hunk of meat on the bone. The scent was nearly intoxicating to him. He stared ravenously at it, leaping up to snatch it from her hands. He was starving. It felt like he hadn’t eaten in days! It dawned on him he had no idea how long he’d been asleep, and he very well may not have.

Lasair was not used to such behavior from her little friend, but came to the same conclusion. She watched as he tore through the meat, pulling every last shred from the bone.

“Alright, that’s enough,” she said, taking the bone from his claws.

“You can have that later as a treat. You’ve eaten enough already!”

She promptly wrapped the bone back into its previous packaging and placed it into her pack.

The young dragon reached for the bone as she pulled it away from him, climbing over to her bag to take it back, stopping before he crawled in. Something in the back of his mind told him that wouldn’t be a good idea.

Lasair plucked him from her bag and pushed him to the side. She then closed her bag before standing up, offering down her arm for the young dragon to climb up.

While his gut told him that would be both safe and easy, he wasn’t sure he could trust it. It worked differently now, off of strange memories he didn’t, well, remember. He still wanted to follow her since that food was rather delicious, but he didn’t fully trust her yet. He looked at her hand with an understanding of the gesture, and turned his head.

“You still don’t want to? Alright. But stay close. We have no idea if that human is following us.”

She looked into his eyes, and like always, they lacked any sign of understanding a single word of what she’d just said.

She cursed Parker silently for rubbing his strange habit off on her, and started her way back to her village. There was still a good half of the day left, and there was no reason to spend it doing anything but returning home.

Once night fell, Lasair was happy to remember she was no longer in a hurry, and could actually set up camp at a reasonable hour. The hike so far had been void of any strange and exciting events, so she reasoned that the human had not followed them. She also reasoned that whatever he was, that thing wasn’t human. She’d heard of humans making force walls, but those were invisible. And last she checked, humans hadn’t teleported any buildings into and out of the forest during any of their scuffles. If they could do that, uniting the clans would not be her father’s most important issue right now.

She motioned Sparky to stop, and he did. It would be much easier to set up a camp for the night not that she had him here to set up the fire. She helped by collecting some logs she thought were too large for him to carry, along with some dry twigs and grass to start the fire. She cleared the area and gave the young dragon an expectant look.

He stood there, confused as to what she was trying to communicate. She had been carrying around large chunks of dead trees, suddenly dropped them in a relatively empty area of the woods, and started staring at him. This orc was strange. Well, he was pretty sure he was strange. He didn’t really have a frame of reference for that kind of thing.

“Come on Sparky, do your thing. I got the materials, now you make that no-smoke fire!”

He didn’t understand her words, but he did know one thing. She’d called him Sparky. For some reason that stuck out to him, and he did not like that. He let out an involuntary growl and huffed at her, turning away and plopping down on the ground.

“What are you mad about? You did this before, and I didn’t even ask you then.”

Lasair rooted around in her bag and pulled out the bone she’d taken from him earlier. His nose twitched as the smell entered his nose, and he perked up when he turned and saw it. He leaped up, snatching the bone and surprising Lasair.

“Alright… Or you can just take it. Fine. That’s fine. I’ll set up camp. Not like I just saved you or anything.”

Lasair cleared the land, set up camp, and started the fire, all while the young dragon sat there, watching, gnawing on his bone. Once they both finished their respective tasks, he walked towards the fire, feeling its warmth. While he’d heard of fire before, through stories his mother told him of other types of dragons, he’d never actually touched it before. The warmth felt nice, and he found himself walking closer and closer, until he had fully entered the flame.

Lasair always liked watching him interact with their campfires, turning around until he found a comfortable spot atop the piled logs, through some magic or means she did not understand not only tolerating the heat, but enjoying it. He looked around once he was situated, and caught Lasair by the eye, returning her gaze with a glare.

She quickly laid down inside her sleeping bag, turning away from the fire. She didn’t normally like having it so large, especially while trying to sleep, but she could stomach the discomfort if her little buddy had been trapped inside that cage for who knows how long.

Lasair was awoken by the feeling of claws poking at her side. She rolled away, nowhere near ready to get up yet. All the exertion of her journey on the way had finally caught up with her, and with no more looming threats, she thought she could get at least a day of sleeping in.

The young dragon, however, had other plans. When poking didn’t work, he started groaning. When that didn’t work either, he started shocking.

After the shock, Lasair had no choice but to get up. It didn’t really hurt at all, only slightly stronger than a shock from a door handle in winter, but it was still enough to jolt her awake.

“Ow, hey, okay, I get it. There’s no need for that…” She muttered, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

The young dragon meandered his way towards her bag, undid the latch, and flipped it open, pointing inside. He knew that was where she’d gotten the food from the day before, and he wanted more!

Despite the language barrier, Lasair understood his plea. She was kind of hungry too. Not enough to actually get up and prepare anything, but if she was already making something for him, she might as well get something for herself too. She reached into her bag and grabbed a cut of meat wrapped in wax paper, unrolling it and handing it to Sparky. He scarfed down half with a speed that bewildered Lasair, before dropping the rest of the eviscerated meat. It seemed his hunger had been satiated. For herself, she pulled out some dried fruit to chew on as she packed up camp.

The return trip took much longer than Lasair expected. They would walk, Sparky would run off chasing something, or get tired, or a number of other things that slowed them down, it would get dark, and she would set up camp alone. It didn’t bother her much, since she wasn’t really looking forwards to getting back home. She didn’t want to know the punishment she’d get this time.

It didn’t really matter, though. It had been naive of her to run away the first time. She knew better now than to do it again. That’s why when she finally made it home, she was ready to face the consequences.

From the political side, she was praised for her success. She had, after all, collected three out of four of the rings. However, once her father left his chieftain face aside, he was furious. She’d directly gone against his word, and snuck out while grounded She was placed under a non-legal house arrest, although her father could have forced that issue if he’d really cared to. All in all, it wasn’t so bad, since her “house” was essentially the village hall. Anxieties aside, the punishment was about as much as she’d expected.

What she didn’t expect, though, was for Ciethel to bust into the dining room the day after her return.

“Lasair, you need to follow me, right now.”

“Cm mn. I juft started eeding” she mumbled out, her speech muffled by the food she was oh-so-ceremoniously stuffing into her face, She chewed up her food and swallowed it.

“Besides. I’m not supposed to leave the hall.” She said much more clearly this time.

“I know, but a human just appeared in the middle of the village! He… He says he needs to talk to you!”