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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:05:47 GMT -6
Now it was speaking in draconic and that was definitely not normal. The hatchling’s head came up in surprise, recognizing the body language that went intuitively along with the words. What was going on? Why was the bird speaking like a dragon? Sparrows didn’t speak like dragons, or like strange grey hunters. Sparrows didn’t usually speak at all!
“How?” And maybe it was too much curiosity and not enough survival instinct, but the hatchling did uncoil. It managed a tentative few steps in the bird’s direction, limbs stiff from disuse, nose sniffing at the bird to pick up anything unusual. “How bird talk like Kanagi?”
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:08:25 GMT -6
The sparrow smelled like nothing. Like air, like dust in some forgotten place. It dipped its head, looking a little coy. Or perhaps simply embarrassed. She didn’t like exposing herself without prior planning - it was hard to improvise, and even harder to get right. Another skip. But this was important to Kanagi. She resisted the urge to start over.
“I’m not a bird.” she answered him. “I’m something else. From a long way away. I’m…” She faltered a little, struggling. Another faint rumble from the tiercel. That seemed to steady her.
“I’m going to tell you what Kanagi says. And if you want, I’m tell him what you say.” She tipped her head, a faint note of teasing entering her voice. “You know he’s not very good with your language. You should probably help him, so he doesn’t sound so silly when he talks.”
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:09:24 GMT -6
Despite himself, the hatchling laughed a small peeping sound that would have been a rumble in a larger adult. The stubby spikes along the dragon’s spine flattened, relaxing from the stress that they had been risen in for days. If the bird being something other than a bird bothered him, it didn’t show, which meant it was probably unlikely.
“Kanagi’s words are silly,” he agreed before tentatively stepping a little closer. He got down, jaw resting on his front paws, and looked at the bird with wonder. “If no bird, then what?”
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:10:05 GMT -6
The bird regarded the hatchling quietly, almost beak to nose. She moved her wing in a stretch, joints pulling. In that moment, her proportions seemed to warp - the wings too long, the feathers bleeding together. Only for a moment. But she didn’t feel ready to try his shape yet. Not ready, and maybe not wise. It would only be crueler in the end, and she couldn’t hold the unfamiliar shape reliably.
“Azho,” she said simply. “Kanagi’s friend.”
The little bird leaned in closer and pecked lightly at the nub of the dragon’s nose.
“You’re Kanagi’s friend too. And he says to tell you that if you keep skipping your meals, you’re going to grow up as thin and bald looking as him.”
Behind the sparrow, Kanagi snorted in mock indignation, a huffing breath that blew the sparrow’s feathers in wild directions. Bits of down spiralled to the rock at the dragon’s feet.
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:10:20 GMT -6
The dragon’s gaze moved to where the remains of the last prey that Kanagi had brought still lay. He hadn’t touched it, but then, he didn’t really feel like eating. His stomach knotted at the thought, and he kept picturing the way that the dragon had looked, half-chewed.
Instead of answering he turned back to the bird, unbothered by her strange stretching and moving. “Can also be Ahz-Asz… Azho’s friend?” he asked tentatively.
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:11:33 GMT -6
[ Ahh, Hawk, ] the sparrow broke off, glancing over her wing. [ This feels... it feels cruel, leading him on like this. Are you sure this is - I mean - what will he do when we leave? ]
[ Survive, I hope, ] said Kanagi. But he had closed his eyes.
The sparrow turned back to the hatchling, the little eyes flickering over him for a long moment. “Yes. Of course you can.” she agreed, and seemed to nod to herself.
To the dragon, the words were Draconic, clear as day. But Kanagi heard them too, in the hunter’s speech, and he wasn’t sure who the words were meant for. The tiercel lowered himself to his belly, fixing the pup with one yellow eye. He uttered a low hoot, and the sparrow approximated his thoughts.
“But listen, hatchling. Kanagi and I are going to have to hunt soon. We’ll need to fly a long way, every day. And even though we’re going to come back, you can’t stay up here all the time we’re gone. There’s no water up here, and you’re too easy to see. Do you understand?”
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:11:59 GMT -6
The hatchling sank onto his haunches and turned his head stubbornly away, though there was a listlessness in his wings again. The happiness brought about by the talk about being friends subsided into a more melancholy mood.
“Tired,” he said finally, speaking into his shoulder. “And… lost. No aerie. No one. Just nothing. More tired after that, so sleep when tired. Not very thirsty anyway.”
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:13:09 GMT -6
The sparrow’s beak opened. Closed again. The skip was stronger this time, the feathered shape flickering like a candle flame before it steadied. She looked to Kanagi, flew to his crest to relay the words. This was more than she could manage, he understood. The effort to speak and keep a constant shape had already drained her enough. She would need time to think and process. The tiercel stepped forward, lowering his muzzle to the pup.
“He will stay here with you until our hunt,” said the sparrow, approximating. Her voice overlaid Kanagi’s voice as he spoke, oddly toneless. “When you leave these foothills, he will go with you, and that will not be no one. He is sorry he can’t speak with you better, but maybe you will teach him how. And he will teach you also - how to walk like the wind, and how to hunt when you are very small.” She turned her head as she spoke, focusing, not really present. “But you must move from the mountain soon. You should never sleep in the open.”
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:13:21 GMT -6
The hatchling’s head lowered. He felt like he was being scolded by two people at once, and that made him doubly guilty. A paw scuffed at the ground.
“Go where?” he asked finally. While it made him feel a little better that Kanagi would stay with him, there was still the problem of not having a direction. “Nowhere to go.”
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:15:52 GMT -6
The two tipped their heads at him - a synchronized, contrasting gesture. Kanagi’s head tipping one way, Azho’s the other.
“My people have no aeries,” the sparrow repeated. “We wander all our lives, following the hunt. I cannot teach you where. But I will teach you - we will teach you - ” the sparrow added, “where to find your prey. And how to tell which place is good, and which is bad to rest in. You will go where it pleases you. Only, do not go south again. Our prey is there, and it is not safe for you.”
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:16:08 GMT -6
Wander forever? With no home, no aerie, and nowhere to return to? Following… the hunt? His young mind couldn’t picture such a nomadic lifestyle. It wasn’t natural to a storm dragon, who were normally locally territorial and did not roam outside the range they were born in. Wandering forever sounded… scary. And lonely.
But Kanagi would be with him, and Azho, so perhaps not so lonely. The hatchling stood up and tilted its head to look up at the two of them.They were not dragons. They had not been born of a clan and didn’t understand aeries, but they were with him now. Kanagi had said safe. He was safe with them. He liked and trusted them. If Kanagi and Azho said so, then maybe it wasn’t so bad to go where it pleased them.
“... O-Okay. Okay.”
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:18:06 GMT -6
True to his word, Kanagi was still there the next morning. He sat beside the dragon and watched the green sparrow’s shape winging off into the distance.
“Azho good hunter,” he told it. “Long eye. Many tooth.”
But he himself didn’t leave the dragon, not even to hunt. By now, the pup had been fasting for days, and he could hear its stomach rumbling. He preened its scales clean of the rock dust and debris - “good for hunt,” he said - and now and then he considered the distance - the woods, the shining back of the river. But he showed no inclination to fly.
“Come,” he said at last, when the pup’s stomach next rumbled.
And he flowed to his feet, padding weightlessly away across the slope. It was neither the woods nor the river, but a wide scree that the tiercel chose for their first hunting. The wind blew over the rocks with a lonely sound, and the area seemed quite lifeless.
“Come,” Kanagi insisted. “Look.”
He pawed at a slab of rock, then closed his talons fully over it and upended it in a shower of dirt.
“This,” he said, still holding the slab so the pup could see beneath.
The underside was crusted with debris - clumps of dirt and half ground pebbles, mostly. At first it all looked alike. But when the tiercel snorted the dust away, some of the stuff remained. Fixed to the rock face or nestled in the exposed earth were the dark little shapes of cocoons. It was easy to know when to look for them, with these Earth cycles. And the tiercel knew - though they weren’t his favorite - that these would be filling and rich with protein. An especially good source after a hard winter.
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:18:36 GMT -6
The hatchling snorted dust and shook his head to free it of the scent of deeper earth. Then he peered into the exposed space, turning his head to get a better look at the cocoons and squirming things writhing away from the light. He sniffed them, then pulled his head back with a grunt of disgust.
But Kanagi kept looking at him, and his stomach rumbled insistently to remind him that he hadn’t eaten in some time. The hatchling looked at the shapes again with the sort of queasy unease of the young about to refuse food.
“Bugs,” he said morosely.
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:19:38 GMT -6
Kanagi gave a low snort and poked the pup in its sunken stomach with his nose.
“Bug,” he said, and patiently held the rock.
There was something moving over the dragon’s shoulder, a long way down the slope. The tiercel tipped his eye at it, fluffing in wry amusement.
“Later, no more bug,” he said, flicking his tail at the distant shape. “She eat.”
The she-bear was certainly wasting no time. Thin from her hibernation, awakened early, she was picking through the rocks at an impressive rate, burying her nose in the spoils with evident relish. If her cubs looked less interested, it seemed from ignorance rather than pickiness. They gamboled about at her feet, confident in their mother’s providing.
For a moment, the two adults appraised each other. The she bear rose onto her hind legs, swaying as she looked at them. In another moment, she thought better of her chances and ambled away with her cubs scampering at her heels.
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:21:02 GMT -6
The hatchling watched all this with the eye of someone confident in the protections of an adult, but he was not willing to get anywhere near the she-bear and her cubs. Maybe when he was bigger and less soft, but not before.
“No more bugs,” he agreed, turning his gaze away from the bear and back to the bounty that Kanagi had unearthed. The hatchling hunched its shoulders and made the dragon equivalent of a groan, but then he leaned in and picked at the cocoons with one claw. The first taste was the hardest, but once he’d managed to convince himself to eat them it was easier.
The hatchling cleaned out the spot that Kanagi had unearthed after a few minutes of daintily picking over it with teeth and claws. When he was done he gave the Icarim a look, quite plaintively, that said they would never be a favorite.
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