The First Dragon

There weren't always dragons in the valley. In fact, there weren't any dragons anywhere at first; at least, nowhere humans had ever been. On the fateful day it all began so many years ago...

In a pine crate stuffed with dried moss and straw sits a large oblong shape. It is cradled securely because one man has sent it to another, believing it to be an egg. At first, it was an unusual rock Esmeric had found, roughly textured and dark, marbled over with shining golden veins. He found it up a mountain, in no particular place, not posed or nestled or looked after. And it was large, a size comparable to none of the eggs he had heard of. Of course, he wouldn’t think such a thing was an egg. Esmeric spent all his time with minerals and metals and digging through the dirt; he did not pay any mind to the creatures that scurry across it or the ones that live beneath it.

But his childhood friend, Aurelias, did. His friend liked all manner of wiggling thing, creatures oozing or skittering or lumbering about. He liked them with feathers and scales and a with dozen legs or none; he liked them if they ate plants or meat and if they ate anything or only one thing. Aurelias kept as many shelves of books about beasts as his friend about rocks and dirt. Thus, when the rock that was actually an egg felt warm to the touch, when its weight began to change, when the golden veins across it widened and increased, when no tool or method he tried had even scratched its surface, he sent it to his friend.

Aurelias received it with tremendous joy. An egg! The egg of a beast he had never seen before! That no one had seen before! At least, that no one had recorded seeing before. He was sure he had every bestiary available in the common tongue and even a handful in the less common languages; he would bet his life that he had a copy of every bestiary about the continent on which he and his friend lived. And so, he was naturally certain that this was the egg of a creature no one had seen before. A less exciting prospect, but still possible, was that when it hatched, he would find out that it was only the previously unknown beginning of a rare, but known, creature. Hopefully that isn’t the case. He hoped that the egg, which he kept a near incessant vigil over, would reveal something new.

From the moment he received it he began keeping notes. After weeks of watching it, he had amassed piles of sketches. He did them often, at the slightest sign of change. If one cared to place them all in order, they would have something like a flip book; they would see how the veins moved, how they broadened, when they converged and where. They would, in hundreds of carefully rendered images, see the passage of time. They would not see all that he did between the drawings. They would not see how he cleaned the egg, how he spoke encouragements to it, how he measured its temperature, how he weighed it to make sure it was developing properly. They would not see his care, but perhaps they would infer it.

***

The day the egg hatched should have been momentous; it should have been especially bright or dark or stormy or calm. Such an event was occurring, like the birth of a future king, but it was a completely normal day. By then the egg was almost entirely golden, a shining metallic lump on the observation table. He couldn’t move it anymore at its current weight. He had settled in for another day of watching and sketching beside it.

Then he heard a tearing sound, the egg had pipped! A little slit for breathing cut by the creature’s egg tooth. He jumped to his feet, standing over it. Likely, it would not fully emerge for hours to come, but he wanted a better look.

“Hello, little one,” he began, “I have been waiting to meet you.” He traced his hand gently over the sides of the egg to comfort the small life inside. The shell had become thinner and softer as more and more of it was replaced by gold over the past months, now he could even feel the muscles of the hatchling tense as it squirmed about inside the cavity.

It was another twelve hours later, on the cusp of the next sunrise, as the sharpest rays of light poured through the nearby window, that the creature finally emerged. He had not slept at all for fear that he would miss it, instead he spent the whole night beside it, humming beneath his breath to it and waiting. It was everything he hoped it would be. It was magnificent. It did not matter that its opalescent eyes were bulbous in its clunky square-jawed head, nor that both neck and tail seemed terribly long and stringy in proportion to its chunky body and four well developed legs. This was a beast that did not exist in any of his books, and to him it was absolutely beautiful. It even had small wrinkly wings that looked like elderly long boned hands in the way the semi-translucent veiny flesh stretched over the internal structures. It was scaled all over like a snake, in mottled browns, to match the forest floor he supposed.

It left its egg rather sedately for a newborn reptilian animal; it did not scramble away from him at all. Rather, it appeared as if it was assessing him. It bumbled its way over, not that he was very far, and tumbled into his arms covered in amniotic fluids. Then it began to croon, in a pleasing trill, the very tune he had hummed to the egg the past four months he had been caring for it. It recognized him! He knew then, with an expert’s intuition, that no creature would ever be as extraordinary as this one. Somehow, he felt himself weeping without an ounce of sadness within.

***

Seasons slipped away as Aurelias focused all his attention on the creature. He had to. Unsure about its physical needs, he couldn’t miss even a single change in its health. He took his best guess about food based on its reptilian traits and had taken to feeding it fish. Unlike reptiles however, it was warm-blooded, even the cold of winter hadn’t particularly bothered it. It had grown throughout the year from the size of a house cat to a shoulder height that now reached Aurelias’ knees. It had shed its skin several times as it grew, which he had laboriously swept up and carefully stored away in part for science and part for nostalgia. The number of jars he filled with the shed scales increased each time, as did the size of individual scales. He knew his new companion would likely never be so small again and could not bring himself to discard them.

The finest flakes from the first few sheds had dusted every corner of Aurelias’ home, as inexplicably sticky and transient as fine grains of sand. Anything the creature touched would be left speckled with tiny glossy flecks, and much time had been dedicated to cleaning up. Aurelias dusted and swept multiple times a day and still managed to collect a small pile each time. You and me both, he attempted to dislodge scales from inside his clothing as he watched the creature scratch its sides against his bed post. When the scales became heavier, they no longer stuck to things—and to him—as easily. Sometimes Aurelias missed them, those little persistent reminders of his companion.

Today was fish day, the largest fishing vessel in the town always brought in its catch for the week to the Sunday morning market. The other locals supplied enough for the town, but not enough to feed the immense appetite of the juvenile. They had complained about him purchasing all the fish enough times that he eventually made a direct deal with a vessel at the wharf to bring him 150 pounds a week. He was even considering increasing his order size recently, as he had caught the precocious creature eyeing his koi pond more than once after mealtimes. He wondered how it wasn’t the size of a horse already.

His trek through the market was as hectic as ever, people crossing this way and that, crowded together between pop-up stalls selling every kind of wares. Smells inundated his nose, demanding his focus, vying with the glimmering he saw from the corner of his eyes. He almost stopped at the stall he knew sold books from all over and in numerous languages, but he had business to attend to. If he didn’t return soon, he could not guarantee the survival of his black and white koi fish.

For all the offerings he initially made to the… He wasn’t sure what to call it yet. It had only shown a preference for fish and the occasional crab. Cooked or raw, it didn’t eat anything else. Which made him wonder why the egg was up on the side of a mountain. Was it even supposed to be there? He didn’t know.

The wharf was always the familiar smell of salty water, fish, and unwashed men. By no means pleasantly scented, but he paid it no mind. Burly men moved crates along the docks, hefting them with ropes, while smaller scrawnier men darted around them occasionally or maybe they were boys? attending to other errands. Seagulls were perched on briny posts, waiting for a chance to steal from the hauls they knew were coming in, screeching at one another sporadically. His own steps thumped lightly against the wood planks of the docks as he made his way to the Faithless Maiden and her captain, Morison.

“Gooday captain, did the sea treat you well?”

“Aye, well if it isn’t the young researcher,” he greeted back. “Here for the usual?”

“Yes, 150 pounds as always, although I was hoping to increase my order to 200 pounds going forward.”

“200 pounds?!” he bellowed incredulously. “One of these days you ought to show this old man what exactly you’re feedin’ so many fish to. I may have been joking before, but have you actually taken in a bear?” He wiped sun induced sweat from his brow, dragging his arm across the bangs of his gray-streaked hair.

Aurelias chuckled. “Something like that. I’ll tell you when I know.” The captain eyed him.

“Next time then.” As he accepted the payment for the order.

“Next time,” Aurelias promised. His order would be delivered in half an hour by one of the crewmates. For now, he had to return home. He had a feeling his fish weren’t fine after all.

***

Five years later, the Dragon, as he had finally decided to call it, was roughly the size of his house. He was delighted to find that its wings were capable of true flight, and not just gliding as he had originally suspected. However, it now ate substantially more than he could provide for it, so it hunted for its own meals now. Additionally, it was no longer mottled brown; it shined brightly in the sun; every bit as golden as the egg it had hatched from. Although, its scales were not actually made of gold the way the shell was, or so his friend had told him when he had sent samples for analysis.

Aurelias had also given in to naming the dragon. Originally, he hadn’t wanted to get too attached, thinking he would undoubtably have to release it and thus probably never see it again. After the second year went by, he decided to call it Neap, after the lowest tide, for the number of fish it ate would surely deplete the sea. Neap had grown into its proportions, looking far more graceful and less like a dough-rope a child had throttled into what they thought a cat looked like. The people of the town also knew about Neap. Captain Morison had been shocked to meet the ‘bear’ for the first time, but he hadn’t refused Neap’s unique headbutt greeting.

Neap also still trilled out the tune, often right along with Aurelias, in the quiet peaceful moments at the end of a day. Although Neap’s body no longer fit inside houses built for humans, Aurelias had replaced a wall in each room with a window large enough for Neap to stick its head in. Even so, they had taken to spending more time together outside, where he could watch the golden dragon gliding through the open sky. Occasionally, Neap followed Aurelias when he was doing field work or running errands. Aurelias was worried at first, but Neap had proven more than capable of maneuvering between trees and structures alike without toppling them. It was a serpentine elegance that Neap had not possessed as a hatchling but was a very appreciated development; Aurelias had no desire to rebuild his bookshelves…again.

Some days Neap disappeared into the horizon and didn’t return for weeks. The first time it happened he thought Neap wouldn’t come back. He couldn’t bring himself to eat as much as he should have that month, or to focus on his work. When Neap came back, he thought he was hallucinating until Neap had pressed its large thick skull down on his head, knocking him into the mud. Neap had returned at the end of the rainy season that year, a few weeks before the anniversary of Neap’s arrival in Aurelias’ life. He slept on his porch that night, despite the rain; whispering thank you, thank you, thank you in his heart, keeping Neap’s head tucked against his body and pressing his own against Neap’s brow. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but Neap didn’t seem to mind.

He still wasn’t sure where Neap went whenever it left, nor was he sure why Neap sometimes went away, but it was always for month long stints when it happened. One of these days he would go with; he packed up a bag and left it by the door, prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. For today, they sat together and watched the sunset, but tomorrow? Who knows?

And then Neap brought home an egg that looked suspiciously like the one it had hatched from, and he understood two things. Neap was probably female, and she had probably been off looking for a mate. Then a third realization, he was almost forty, and his home would soon have another dragon roaming about. He would need help.

“And that’s the story of how I, Yun, was hired as the first assistant to the first dragon guardian, Aurelias, of the first dragon, Neap. The end.”

“What? You can’t just end it like that!?”

“Sure I can, see, I just did.”