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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:22:23 GMT -6
The tiercel was firm, but not unkind. He fluffed a smile at the plaintive look, relating well enough. And though he nudged the pup forward to do his own excavating, he explained to him as they worked down the slope, using the foreign Draconic as best he could.
“Animal - stupid. Eat one food. Always is eat one. When not one, die.” He gave a disapproving snort. “Stupid.”
Leaning over, he nudged the pup back from its latest attempt, showing it how to clear supporting gravel away from the sides of the rock and dislodge it naturally - a much easier and safer method for one without the strength or weight for brute force.
“Hunter - ” he continued, “smart. Change. Where are you is always new food. Always is think - where is? Watch animal in water. Watch animal in ground. They show. All the time, new food. Best hunter is watch.”
As they moved, he guided them with subtle but consistent prompts. The tiercel only ever allowed them to move downhill, and then only a little to this side or that. As they turned over rocks, they loosened the slope, and every now and then a shower of debris would go tumbling downhill. He kept them to this cleared path, nudging the pup with talon or tail when it started to stray. In this way, they were never in danger from above - the main direction any Icarim worried about. Once, however, he let the rule drop. Kanagi stopped the pup with a sudden chuff. He was staring at a small jutting rock some distance away with a predatory intensity.
“Look,” he said. “Smell.”
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:23:46 GMT -6
The hatchling paused to follow the adult’s gaze. He’d been so busy lifting, clearing, and eating that he hadn’t noticed anything strange on the wind, and it wasn’t until Kanagi’s prompt that he scented it in a deep lungful of breath.
“Squirrel,” the hatchling said hungrily. Now that was a better meal than a bunch of bugs. The youngling got down into a crouch, claws shifting over the loose dirt. It was poor form, the sort of thing hatchlings played with rather than an actual hunter’s ability. “Catch squirrel?” he said hopefully. “New food so good to catch.”
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:24:41 GMT -6
The tiercel gave an assenting chuff, but he nudged the pup out of his crouch and made no move to stalk it himself.
“Is catch now,” he said. “Look.”
The tiercel made, if anything, an excess of noise as he padded toward the spot. He deliberately vented enough aether so that his talons clicked and crunched over the rocks. As he stopped by the spot and glanced for the pup to follow, he could hear the heartbeat of the little animal as it trembled and cowered deeper into its hiding place.
Kanagi nudged the pup uphill as it neared, positioning it just above the squirrel’s hiding place. Then he made a strange gesture. The tiercel reared to his hind legs, all four foretalons braced. Then he mimed slamming them to earth. Kanagi looked at the pup intently. Repeated the gesture.
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:24:56 GMT -6
The hatchling tipped it's head at Kanagi for a second, hesitating, then seemed to realize what the tiercel was trying to get him to do. The little dragon reared up on his hind legs and used his flat bottomed tail to brace himself upright with a surprising show of balance.
When he was stretched good and tall he swung down with as much strength as he could manage, crushing the stone into the space the squirrel was hiding. The poor thing had no idea what hit it, and the dragon was immediately digging into the loosened rock, scoop-like front claws easily pushing aside rock and grit. He soon had the squirrel out of the ground and between his jaws.
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:27:01 GMT -6
The tiercel crooned his approval. But he did no more foraging for the pup after that. Flying a little way uphill, he settled himself on a slab of rock, resting in the Icarim manner - drifting, his talons anchoring him to earth. Warmed by the sunlight on his back, preening dirt from his talons and shaking rock dust from his mane, he watched the pup do its own hunting as the sun climbed.
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:27:14 GMT -6
He foraged for a couple of hours by himself, content beneath the watchful eye of an adult. Such was the trust of the young, and it didn’t matter that Kanagi was not a dragon, because in the hatchling’s mind they were already family.
The hunting was touch and go. In the beginning, he was too clumsy to get the rocks out without partially squishing his dinner, or throwing them down the hill in a spray of accidental debris. But as the shadows shortened and more cocoons were unearthed the hatchling grew steadier, better able to turn over food without losing half of it.
Eventually, Kanagi came down from his perch to hunt squirrels for himself, although it looked to the hatchling like he was just having fun bopping them, because every once and a while one would dart away. The dragon gave chase, and it became a tumbling mad dash down the rocky slope for survival.
Most times, the dragon trotted proudly back up with a squirrel in his mouth.
“Kanagi,” he said eventually, having worked his way toward where the tiercel was eating. He sidled up near Kanagi, one eye on the last carcass of the squirrels the elder had hunted, and the other on the Icarim. “From before. ‘Best hunter is watch.’ Should be ‘Good hunter watches’.”
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:28:10 GMT -6
One yellow eye tipped downward to regard the pup. Kanagi shifted the squirrel in his jaws and considered this information.
“Good hunter watches,” he repeated. Then he lowered his head and snorted a playful breath at the pup, the squirrel’s hindquarters swinging tantalizingly from his jaws. “Best hunter watches you.”
He lifted his head just as the pup lunged, moving the morsel almost but not quite out of reach. For a moment, they stood in a frozen game of tug of war - the pup dangling from one half of the squirrel, the tiercel looking amusedly down at him over the other. Then the abused carcass reached its limit. The tail tore off completely, and the dragon fell back to earth, the fluffy scraps of it clutched between his jaws.
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:28:26 GMT -6
The hatchling rolled in a flail of legs and limbs until it was on all fours again, tail swinging through the stones and clearing a swath of them. Mission failure. The dragon spat out fluff and pawed the tufts from his tongue.
“Kanagi should eat bugs,” the dragon whined and gave the Icarim the saddest little stare. But it was all play, and he couldn’t stop himself tilting his head. He unconsciously made the movement for smiling the way an Icarim did, but without the mane to fluff, he just looked silly.
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:28:48 GMT -6
The tiercel ate what was left of his squirrel with the utmost dignity, ignoring the hatchling’s begging. Even so, the hawk-like eyes glinted laughter as he swallowed the morsel down.
“Bugs for bug,” he answered when he was done, and angled an eye down at the pup as though he were examining something very small.
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:29:08 GMT -6
The hatchling shot up indignantly, wings fluffed and ruffled. “No bug!” the dragon protested, offended, chest and cheeks puffed. Four clawed feet stamped the earth. “Kanagi is… is… slug. Big fat slug.”
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:29:30 GMT -6
The pup’s insults were interrupted by a webbed foot, which enfolded the tiny head and shoulders as the tiercel pretended to accidentally step on him.
“Chak,” Kanagi said lightly - an Icarim onomatopoeia for stepping on something small and crunchy - and examined his toes in mock surprise, observing the imaginary remains.
“Bug squash.”
Laying his head sideways against the ground, mane fluffed to nearly twice its normal size, the tiercel reached out again, bopping the dragon about the head and shoulders in a series of gentle pats.
“Chak, chak, chak.”
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:29:54 GMT -6
The bombardment of gentle chaks had the hatchling yelping in protest. He batted away Kanagi’s foot with one of his own on the last swing and rose up on his back legs, forelegs raised. He had every intention of playfully ‘stomping’ on Kanagi the way he’d been stomping on squirrels, but a sound in the distance made him stop dead.
It was a dragon’s call. The echoing sound carried over the woods and up the mountainside, resonating in the hatchling’s bones. He dropped his front feet to his sides and stood up straight on his back legs, tail holding him, nose up and into the wind like a meerkat.
The sound came again. An adult’s call, a mother to her hatchlings. It wasn’t his mother, but maybe… maybe… Was someone - was someone still...
Blue eyes widened. The hatchling sucked in a breath to call back.
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:31:11 GMT -6
Jaws clamped over his muzzle, pinning it shut.
[ Quiet, ] said the queen, and it was not her usual smiling tone, but a short snarl, so low and rumbling that it shook his very bones.
That was one of his clearest memories: sunlight, puppy games, and suddenly that snarl, or a pinprick of teeth. And whatever they were doing, the pups would crouch down in the grass for fear of they knew not what. For fear of Mother’s voice. Because after that she would go away, and the pups would lie there in silence. He’d been too young to understand the danger. He couldn’t know that, during the last storm, his mother had gone to the towns again and killed the men that lived there. He wouldn’t understand until he was much older that other men had come looking, armed with their bolts and swords and doomed for all their weapons, and that this was the meaning of “quiet.” The pups only learned to associate the word with loneliness, and boredom, and a vague sense that they’d done something wrong. But after awhile Mother would come back again - back with stories and laughter and fresh meat - and their uncertain crime was forgotten.
Kanagi thought of Takair as he held the dragon’s muzzle. But he was not his mother, and this was not the same. The dragon’s pup had lived in a full aerie, protected by a pack for nearly all of his life. He wasn’t used to suspicion - had never needed silence to save his life. Kanagi couldn’t risk the sound.
“Quiet,” he repeated, in draconic this time, and released the dragon’s muzzle. Every note in that word rasped of danger. He was ready at the smallest peep to clamp the pup’s mouth again. Kanagi looked to the woods, his pupils narrowed, his muscles tense with suspicion, listening. He rumbled to the pup.
“No call back. Bad sound. I look.” He swung his head toward the pup, all the humor gone from his eyes. “Stay.”
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Post by Sharei on Mar 14, 2019 12:31:27 GMT -6
“But-”
The hatchling ducked down when Kanagi made to silence him again. Tucked his nose under one paw. Blue eyes looked up at the tiercel with confusion and hurt. Why was a dragon’s sound a bad sound?
The mother dragon called again, the same series of short barks that echoed and echoed. The hatchling quivered with the need to answer, and to reach out again to someone from his own kind. A survivor.
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Post by MP on Mar 14, 2019 12:32:12 GMT -6
Kanagi turned his head toward the sound, eyes wide, nostrils flaring as he scented. His crests were raised to their full height, alert for any changes in air pressure. But there was no ozone scent, no shadow, nothing to go with the sound. And why would a dragon call to her young from the ground instead of flying to them? Why call from the trees, like an ambush predator? The tone was too regular. Too perfect.
“Not dragon,” he said, sure of it now. Then repeating himself, more sternly, “Stay.”
And the tiercel kicked off in flight. He was gone a long while, for all his urgency. The grey predator was very old and very cautious, approaching through the cloud banks where his coloring was a camouflage. He circled, he scented, he found the shapes through the canopy. They made their call again. He examined every tool, every weapon, every man while they stood there. His pupils narrowed as he watched. When he was confident in their course, Kanagi turned and flew back to the pup as fast as his vents would carry him. He was relieved it had stayed where it was.
“Come,” he said, landing in a skid of gravel. His voice was softer now, but with the same note of command.
He led them around rather than toward the sound, sometimes walking, sometimes spyhopping above the canopy. At length they came to a dense thicket overlooking a steep slope. The call came again. He led the pup to the deepest underbrush where a gnarled tree pushed twin trunks up from the center. Here he nudged the pup to a crouch.
“Quiet,” he said, nodding toward the ravine. “Look.”
And in a rush of wind he was gone, riding high above to watch from where his coloring would give nothing away.
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