A dragon whelp does not look like a creature meant to fly. Awkward and gangly, with wings still too small to bear their weight and paws too large to do much but trip over. In fact, a dragon whelp does not look overmuch like a dragon—not the sort of creature with the bulk of a house whose wings eclipse the sun and may rain down fire in scorching swaths.
Varya and her siblings were not that sort of dragon. Not yet, anyway. The six of them could barely even be called whelps, at least according to their father. Rorich claimed that they would all be known as hatchlings forever, with the way they behaved.
“Well, Da doesn’t know everything,” Valon proclaimed from his precarious perch atop a slanted pile of rocks. He fanned his wings; though they were still too small for proper flight, thanks to a recent growth spurt they were the largest pair in the clutch, and he was quite proud of the fact.
“Get down before you hurt yourself,” Fellfala grumbled without even bothering to raise her head from her forepaws where she was sunning herself just outside the den. Varya giggled and sprawled out beside her sister, playfully batting at her tail while Valon huffed and grumbled something about none of the rest of them knowing how to have any fun. Fellfala narrowed her eyes at Varya, then snapped her tail out in a quick, light strike to tap her nose.
“Hey!” Laughing, Varya got up onto all fours and lunged, smacking her thin forepaws down to trap the larger whelp’s tail and giving a mock-growl of triumph. Fellfalla growled back playfully and tugged her tail free before turning to pounce on her sister. She was careful not to pierce Vaya’s soft underbelly with her claws, but the slender little dragon still played to win. The two of them tussled back and forth over the rocks, rolling onto a softer, mossier area shaded by Valon’s makeshift tower. Their siblings hooted and whistled, all four of them dropping low into practice hunting crouches as their eyes tracked their movement intently.
“Her flank, Varya, her left flank!” Corr called, laughing.
Seeing the opening he’d pointed out, Varya ducked low under Fellfala’s belly—a move only she was still able to manage, since the rest of her siblings had staggered their way through their latest growth spurts—and wriggled her way out on the larger whelp’s left with two firm kicks to her ribs. Fellfala, who had left her side inadvertently vulnerable by flaring her immature wings to better keep her balance, yelped indignantly and spared a moment to glare at Corr before leaping to pin Varya again.
“Too slow!” the smallest whelp laughed, clambering halfway up the side of Valon’s rock pile and ducking into a shallow groove to avoid swiping paws.
“That’s cheating!” Lutsey giggled, shaking her head. “You’re the only one who can still fit in those cracks!”
“It’s not cheating,” Valon shot back, clearly quite pleased that Fellfala had been thwarted, even if he wasn’t the one to do the thwarting. “It’s using her natural gifts to her advantage.” He dropped his voice into a comically gruff imitation of their father, making Lutsey and Corr laugh harder while Fellfala rolled her eyes.
“I hate to say it, but he’s right, you know,” Sydrine piped up lazily. Though their eldest sister had been watching the play fight with mild interest, she’d kept herself closer to the entrance of the den than the others, which gave her a better vantage point to keep an eye on the other five young dragons. “If Da were here, he’d call that match for Varya.”
“It wasn’t a match,” Fellfala complained. “We’re just wrestling.”
Varya nodded her agreement, though she couldn’t deny there was a part of her that was quietly pleased with Sydrine’s assessment—it wasn’t often that she bested her siblings in their playful mock-battles. Especially since she hadn’t yet hit the same growth spurt that the rest of the clutch had.
“Aw, c’mon, Fala, just give her that one,” Valon taunted, leaning further over the edge of his perch. “You haven’t—”
Varya felt the rocks shift and went instinctively still, staring up at her brother. His eyes had widened, pupils rounding in surprise as the rock he was balanced on shifted, tilted, and then suddenly toppled sideways. All six whelps gave panicked squawks as he went tumbling down the far side of the rock pile, underdeveloped wings snapped out in a desperate attempt to slow the fall.
Varya threw herself down from her perch and landed half on Sydrine’s back as her sister made a mad rush for Valon along with Corr. Fellfala seemed frozen, and Lutsey was already wailing for their mother as Varya managed to get her paws under herself and scrambled to the edge of the rocky barrier around the den. She almost didn’t want to look, terrified that she’d see her brother sprawled broken and bleeding on the steep incline that led up to their cave.
Instead, she saw Valon clinging awkwardly to a scrubby tree just a few tail-lengths down the hillside, the few rocks that had come tumbling down with him scattered around its stubborn roots. He was staring up at them all with almost perfectly round eyes, his wings still flared out as though he was preparing for a standing take-off.
Varya felt her chest loosen as the fear slowly began to ebb. Valon was fine. Somehow.
The same realization washed through the entire clutch, tails drooping and scales resettling as they all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Then Valon grinned a dragon’s grin and proclaimed proudly, “I flew!”
***
Of course, “flew” was a bit of an exaggeration. As their mother surmised when she came rushing out of the cave in answer to Lutsey’s calls, Valon had managed a sort of brief, controlled downward glide that had landed him in the tree instead of dashing him against the hillside along with the top of his rock pile. It was likely just as much due to the updrafts they got at their current altitude as it was anything else—and it was not an experiment that Fellal was interested in any of her whelps repeating.
“I’ve told you not to play up there,” she scolded as she scooped her eldest son back up onto the wide ledge before the den and set about checking him over for injury. Her own scales were puffed a little, revealing to her children just how worried she had been. “Valon, you could have been seriously hurt—or worse! What would your Da and I do if something happened to you?”
“Mam, I’m fine,” Valon complained as she pressed her nose along his spine.
“Through sheer dumb luck you’re fine,” their mother snapped, but the fire in her voice was tempered slightly by the quick preening she gave him, using her rough, barbed tongue to scrap around the edges of his scales and make sure they all laid flat against his flanks.
“Ma-am,” Valon whined, but Varya saw the way his wings relaxed closer to his back and his claws stopped flexing against the earth as Fellal fussed over him. He’d been scared. It wasn’t an emotion she often associated with her brother.
“Alright, alright,” Fellal acquiesced, drawing her head back so she could look down on the whole clutch. “That’s enough adventure for one day, I should think. Inside, all of you. Especially you, serrah.” The last was huffed at Lutsey, who she had to herd back away from the edge of the rocky ledge with her tail.
“I was just looking,” the tiny dragon protested, though she followed Fellal’s direction easily enough back into the den. “I mean, it doesn’t look that far to the tree, maybe—”
“Absolutely not,” Fellal snapped before she could finish. Varya winced. It wasn’t often that their mother used that tone; all six whelps quickly went quiet, realizing that this was not an argument they wanted to have.
Because of course, once they’d realized Valon was safe, the same thought had risen up in the back of all their minds:
Could I do that, too?
In the truly impressive way that children do—even dragon children—each and every one of them had quickly forgotten their initial panic on seeing their brother fall and instead began wondering what it must have felt like to almost fly.
If Fellal had not been so clearly distressed, Vaya thought that the rest of them might have actually tried it. As it was, their typically serene Mam was curled up in the front of the den, watching the skies anxiously while her tail twitched back and forth over the ground. Her scales still hadn’t fully settled.
For a moment, Varya considered that something else was bothering her; as scary as it had been when Valon fell, he was fine now. Surely a near-accident didn’t warrant this much worry.
She might have asked her, but she was distracted by Corr and Sydrine huddled close together suddenly breaking into just-a-little-too-loud whispers. She glanced over at them and cocked her head questioningly, and Sydrine fluttered one wing at her in a “come here” gesture. She crept over carefully, settling herself between her sister and Valon, who had curled up in his usual sleeping spot and remained uncharacteristically quiet since entering the den.
“You really okay?” she asked quietly as she wriggled her way in between the two dragons.
“M’fine,” Valon replied just as softly. “Just…thinking about it.”
“Falling?”
“Flying.” He rolled one eye back to look at her with a dragonish grin. Vaya grinned back.
“You didn’t really fly,” Fellfala pointed out, sniffing primly as she curled herself up against Corr opposite Sydrine and arranged her tail artfully over her forepaws. “You glided.”
“Still. It was…amazing.”
“It was terrifying,” Lutsey protested, crowding in on Valon’s other side and preening the scales around his neck fretfully. “I was so scared you were gonna be hurt, Val.”
Something about the big whelp softened a bit and he gave his sister a slow, affectionate blink. “Aw, y’know it’ll take more than that to make me worry.” He puffed his chest out and spread his wings so that one tented over Lutsey and the other over Varya. Both sisters snuggled in closer, giving each other relieved, understanding looks as they did.
“I can’t wait ‘til I can try,” Corr enthused--quietly, so Mam wouldn’t hear.
Despite Lutsey’s withering look, the rest of the clutch murmured their agreement. Varya nodded enthusiastically, already wriggling in place with excited energy. “Maybe once Da gets back, he’ll let us try gliding,” she offered up.
Her siblings went quiet, looking at her. She blinked. “What? You don’t think so?”
“No, it’s…I mean maybe, but..." Corr hedged, suddenly glancing away from her and shuffling his paws uncomfortably. “It’s just…”
Vayra frowned. “Just what?”
Sydrine cleared her throat quietly, lowering her head almost to the stone floor. “It’s just…Varya…you don’t have wings.”
Next Chapter: here
About the Creator
M. Darrow
Self-proclaimed Book Dragon working on creating her own hoard. With any luck, some folks might like a few of these odd little baubles enough to stick around and take a closer look. Mostly long-form speculative fiction, released as chapters.
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