Nasitrlan Day

The fourth rounded moon after the third cycle of winter, a signal etched against the black of night surrounded by the gleam of speckled twinkles. A signal that would pronounce the day of holy celebration. The day the first dragon entered the earthly universe: Nasitrlan Day.

Ethreel, it would be known in the traditional tongue, Dragonean, for humble beginnings and first stars’ light. The lonely serpent cracked from the shallow ground of the Red Mist Forest. A gift from the All Mother.

The life of the single-celestial bred species would be one of turbulence. Born into a world shrouded with beings other than its own.

The convolution of man would further impede the expansion of the growing dragon horde. Tempered with the festering need for power and control, their inevitable entanglement would only lead to a hasty misunderstanding.

The lot of humankind wished to control the dragons for themselves. Pets to be tamed, sacred garments and trinkets to be harvested by the poached sky beasts. Battle accessories to be adorned on the plains of fire and desolation. Spilling blood of their own kind for trivial disputes that beckoned no violence of the sort.

The dragon’s brood grew and they wisent to the devilish ferocity of man.

“They would be their own doom.” exclaimed the elder. “We must not dwell in the affairs of the wrecked lest we be wrecked ourselves.”

And so that it was. Men tore themselves to oblivion. Trading their most precious resource, that of a shared unity for extinction.

The Era of men ended, the hidden dragons would thrive in whatever was left, for no man would exist and peace would reign, no man would exist until one day decades later. On one holy day, the birth of the first dragon, Nasitran day.

Jargon the bold known by common tongue. Would take to pre-lights dusk to travel into the Red Mist forest, a trip he’d like to take alone. A scant period of reflection amongst the falling leaves, a humble reminder of where he began.

The wondrous holiday always coincided with first harvest fall. The iridescent life force of all things would pump from the ground and bleed upward, snaking through the veins of the Willoway trees with a calming bioluminescent glow of a sapphire and lavender. The neon stream would string its way to the vegetation, a large overbearing bush of blossoms that smoldered with the same radiance as the terra blood that preceded it. The leaves would fall and dim as they swayed to the ground, landing in a thinly light pile, blanketing the soft earth with a calmly lit presence.

Jargon’s tranquility was broken by a most peculiar sound. A squeak, as almost muttered by a mouse. He took to the origin of the sound and shuttered into a scurry when he laid his eye upon the source. Set to fly away in an act of avoidance before calmly noting the lack of threat with his well-educated instincts.

A man, a tiny man, he thought to himself. It had to be. He’d seen such things gnarled in the story flames of the elders. Only they were much taller, and the acts perpetrated in the dancing flames were ones of tyranny and brute evil. Very unlike the being before him. No bigger than his front fang, and more feeble than a sapling. He watched the tiny man curl and squish a bright violet leaf in his minuscule claws, captivated solely by its existence.

Jargon dipped his monstrous head to garner a fairer sight. The width of Jargon’s smile shaded out all views beyond the boy's gaze. The tiny man struck by Jargon’s mighty presence did nothing but stare with unblinking eyes like that of a dear, pooling deep with strained tears. He reached out his claw. Pudgy and round it was. He lay it flat against Jargon’s snout. The meager interaction gave rise to the tiny man’s mouth. Jargon let out an enormous huff, through flared nostrils big enough for the boy to crawl through. The wind gust harshly causing the luminous foliage to billow, along with the boy’s golden-wheat curls. The laughter that ensued from the infant man would lift a beastly giant’s heart.

Time sprung forth and winter cycles forged on. The tiny man was no longer tiny. He had grown. Stout and stoic, with a face lined like a statue covered in the moss of the same golden vibrance as his mane.

Jargon took to the boy as a figure of elderly guardian. Teaching him the ways of the world, and all its transcendence. All things sustained by unity. What we give, we receive, that is the way of the dragon.

Stowed away in the caves of the Undred mountainside so as to not to be spotted by the wandering eyes of Jargon’s flock. Harboring the species of man an existence only born to threaten the frailty of peace would certainly mean death.

Here is where they would survive. Here is where they flourished.

Life is full of untold wonders, Jargon thought, while gazing into the blackness of the sky, dotted with a meager amount of shimmer. Who knew caring for something would unearth such boundless love? Despite their history, he saw no discourse in his self-proclaimed cub. He saw only but a reflection of Jargon himself. Perhaps the philosophy is true of all sorts. What we give, we receive.

Fire drawn from Jargon’s breath now separated the two.

Nulucean stared at the flicker of auburn cast upon his discoverers’ paunchy scaled side, pulsing shadows of the barren trees on his colorful hide.

“The worldly ceiling seems infertile this night. No stars to show on its cosmic plane.”

Nulucean knew of its significance. Stars were the purity of the universe. It burns it’s essence in all things. We start as the brightest glow, only to be diminished by our actions. We return. Emitting the rays of a life lived, the purer our existence, the brighter the glow. ‘It was said that on the night of your ancestor’s fall; the night shone nothing but emptiness.’ The stars are our being, in its clearest form.

This is how he would receive his name, Nulucean, by standard tongue meant new light.

The Underd range was ghostly quiet most nights enough to note the differences in intrusion. Still prying eyes prevailed.

Scuraosta, a bony pike horn, darker than twice burned charcoal, had caught sight of the pair through needled trees. Hastily, he reported to the elders.

Summoned before the trio of patriarchs in the dragon temple, a hollow dent in a foreboding mountain.

“Is it true jargon? Do you harbor the species of man?” Boomed the bearded one in the middle.

“I do.” Jargon’s head hung low, his breath swept the dust from the floor as he spoke.

“Do you wish to doom us all?” the thin wispy one hissed.

The fat round one only grumbled in agreement.

Jargon indignantly lifted his muzzle, striking the eyeline of the triumphant three.

“The man will not only live, he will thrive. I’ve taught him to do so in my absence. If you’d heal your blindness to your own philosophy you’d see, eradicating the divinity of life instead of upholding its virtue will only see you destroy all you hold dear. Nulucean.” his name echoed from the backdrop of the mountain.,“is as we are, one with the universe. He shines like us all.”

Jargons knew his rally was frivolous. Only a cry meant to be etched in time, a moment in the greater history of dragons and man. He was set to be executed.

Strung to iron pillars, his wings splayed out, stretching to their entirety. A crimson-scaled dragon climbed the stairs of the sacrificial pyramid.

“Through decided unlawfulness of fostering the dreaded species of man, Jargon the bold, son of Vecco the masterful, you are sentenced to death via the old laws. May the All God see you amongst the constellations.”

With one swift move, the calloused red dragon clamped his teeth around the sacred scale and gnarled till he set it free.

Jargon would not growl, he would not roar in pain. Defiant in his last moments, his colors began to fade. The strings of aqua blue and violet swirled amongst his serpent body, draining and peeling back to reveal only pale lifelessness. In his dying whimper, he cast his eyes to the horizon.

In a crevasse deep in the woodlands atop a gigantic stone, he saw him. The boy, his boy. Nulucean. Deeply seeded in his eyes were pools of water, tears set to be free. The breeze picked up the falling tears, and they twirled in the trailing winds with an indistinguishable twinkle. They speckled like the stars above. In his last and final moments before he faded, he knew he made the right decision on that fateful Nasitrlan day.