Lindír at first did not know what to think about Biorra, besides that she was exceedingly beautiful. But that was enough to ameliorate his anxiety, and so he consented for Camreth to bring him forward to the rest of the family. There was a great deal of speech and introduction, mostly in the language that Yrsel had told him was the primary tongue of the dragons of Solseyja, but some in the language that he understood.
The primary topic was, of course, questioning Lindír about his past. He affirmed, again and again, that he had indeed been raised by humans, and had indeed never seen another dragon before his meeting Yrsel. More difficult was explaining the source of the patch of skin on his chest; even hearing the question relayed to him by Camreth felt like a barb. He could bring himself only to say that it was an inborn deformity. Lindír was infinitely grateful that Camreth, from that moment onward, was sure to always steer the conversation away from that particular topic.
There were many other questions asked. How had she survived alone, how far had she been, how had she survived without hoard nor lair, and so on and so forth. Lindír answered as best as she could, though some of the questions confused her greatly. And no matter how much she wished for it, Biorra was distinctly uninterested in questions. She merely listened and watched with a vision almost as keen and intent as that of her father.
Eventually, it was declared that the time for questioning was over. As the sun was going down, Camreth said, and there were still matters to be settled before nightfall, they would have to return home. Lindír was exhausted after so many days of travel and so many hours without landing. But curiosity drove him onward. Where could so many dragons find a home?
The answer was only a short distance away. As Lindír learned, Solseyja is but a hundred and twenty meadows across, meaning that to travel from one end to the other is a mere two hours on the wing, and even on foot may take as little as three or four days. From the headland where he met Camreth and the others to the dragonhome of the Eastern Solseyja colony was only half of that.
The dragonhome was the most beautiful thing that Lindír had ever seen. A row of five small mountain peaks formed an arc from south-west to north-east, ten meadows long, and it swarmed with dragons. Seven had seemed many to her; but as she flew in, Lindír saw at least a score if not more, dragons in a bewildering variety of colors, dragons spreading out their wings and taking in sunlight—just as she did!—dragons conversing animatedly upon hillsides, dragons wheeling lazily through the air and dragons play-fighting amidst rocky rubble.
Camreth gave a few quick instructions to his daughters, who promptly scattered, before indicating for Lindír to remain with him while they descended to the east of the high ridge. There lay a large plateau, barren of all plant life aside from some hardy lichens, ringed around by boulders whose placement Lindír soon realized must have been artificial. Lindír laid himself down, once more exhausted, while Camreth swelled his chest with breath, tilted back his head, and let loose a roaring call so loud that it echoed off of the stones and made Lindír’s chest vibrate with the strength of it.
Not long after was when the other dragons began to arrive. Some arrived in ones or twos, others arrived in handfuls, and all too quickly for Lindír’s tender nerves, the whole depression was full of dragons. They moved into position easily, as though each dragon’s position were preordained, and they reclined on their sides or sat on their haunches—again, in much the same way as Lindír habitually did—as though this gathering were boring and pedestrian.
“What is happening?” Lindír finally said, his nervousness getting the better of him. “What have you done?”
“Apologies,” said Camreth, shaking his head subtly, as though to dislodge something from it. “I’ve been lost in thought. Too busy thinking about you to think of you, if you follow my meaning. What I’ve done is call a… ‘council’, would be the best translation. At least one representative from every family will have a word about your joining the colony; and after that we will have to come to a conclusion about the matters of your living situation, and so on and so forth.”
Lindír suddenly looked upon the assemblage around him with new eyes. These dragons, so many strangers with unfamiliar scales, were here to decide if he would be allowed to join them or if he would be cast out to wander once more. There were so many eyes upon him. Lindír had been used to being the center of attention, of course, but always the center of attention to humans. They were so small, and he had grown calloused to their opinions. But the rejection of other dragons well and truly scared him.
Yrsel was one of the last to arrive, along with several of her relatives. At least, Lindír assumed they were her relatives. Certainly, they had similar scale colors to hers, and bore several other resemblances in horns and wing shape and other features. Camreth’s daughters and their husbands all sat together, with Ziorrin in the place of pride at the front.
“He is patriarch,” Camreth explained. “Each family has a patriarch and a matriarch, you see; and though the other members of the family have a vote, the patriarch and matriarch have a greater authority.”
Lindír hissed under her breath, allowing the information to percolate. “Are you sure that he is not matriarch? You do not strike me as much of a matriarch.”
At this Camreth appeared to choke on his own tongue, before breaking into a shrill, rattling laugh. Lindír had not been attempting to be funny. “No, I suppose not,” he finally said. “But I was speaking generally. The Sea-cliff family, in particular, has two patriarchs.”
Before Lindír could ask any more questions, a black-scaled dragoness in the circle raised up her head and declared a few unfamiliar words in the common speech of Solseyja. All fell silent, aside from Camreth.
He turned to Yrsel and said, “Yrsel, my dear, do you mind joining us in the center? Lindír will need a translator.”
Yrsel hastened to the center of the circle, standing opposite of Camreth at Lindír’s other side. She was thankful for the protection, intentional or otherwise. And with both Yrsel and Camreth being unusually large specimens of dragonkind—Camreth in particular, it was now clear, being exceptionally large for a drakkar— Lindír was able to tuck her limbs under her torso and shrink down to the cold earth.
With Camreth speaking on her behalf and Yrsel summarizing the conversation into Lindír’s ear, the debate began. Camreth repeated once again the story of Lindír’s meeting with Yrsel, and the basic facts of her upbringing and life, so far as she had felt it necessary to relay them. Then it came time for questions. The matriarchs and patriarchs of the various families took the lead, and the questioning was different in character to that which he had experienced before, at the hands of the Sea-cliffs.
“Is she any good with languages?”
“I speak seven that I can think of, at least passably.”
“Is she sick? What’s happened to her scales there, in the center of her chest? I don’t care much for the idea of bringing a plague upon us, as much as that story tugs at the heartstrings.”
“My scales were like this when I was born. And if I am sick, it hasn’t slowed me down yet.”
“Has she made any enemies?”
That question was the first that gave Lindír much in the way of pause. The moment Yrsel repeated it to him, a half-dozen memories flashed behind his eyes. His parents, Razan, Ámnistr, the Under-Queen prophesying doom and damnation. “Yes. But none so determined as to pursue me. I will bring you no danger here.”
It went on in that way for some time. There were even a few occasions where the questioning broke into open debate, various factions arguing back and forth so quickly that Yrsel had no time to translate, leaving Lindír adrift in a sea of discourse. All he knew was that he was the topic of conversation.
The dragons of the circle questioned Lindír’s willingness to work, his ability to interact with other dragons, his physical fitness, his ability to speak the language. They reminded Camreth of the limits of the island’s food supply, the dwindling number of useful lairs which were not yet inhabited, the limited supply of hoard-goods. Camreth and Yrsel countered them point for point, telling them of how erudite Lindír was in the tongues he understood, how he had been able to hunt food for both himself and Yrsel with effortless ease. But the matriarchs and patriarchs seemed unswayed. These were old dragons, older even than Camreth, who Lindír could tell was of an age with Ámnistr. The scales of the matriarchs were worn and dull, their eyes brilliant with inner flame, and instead of Biorra’s grace or Camreth’s strength they moved with an absolute economy, falling utterly still when movement was unnecessary. Lindír knew, instinctively, that they would not be easily swayed.
When the time came for a vote, the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the council was lit only by the last fragments of sunset and the ambient flames of the assembled dragons. One dragon gathered up small pinkish stones from a pile, carved to fit a dragon’s palm, and handed them out to those present, aside from Camreth and Yrsel, who were assumed to be voting for Lindír’s inclusion. Then, at a word from the black-scaled matriarch, the dragons voted.
One by one, they approached the center of the circle and set down their stones in one of two piles, each marked by a circle and a rune carved into the dust with a claw. Lindír did not know which rune was which, and was too anxious to ask. It soon became clear that the vote was overwhelmingly one-sided: in one of the circles a substantial pile of votes formed, while the other contained only three loose stones.
It thus came as a mild shock to Lindír when, after the final vote was cast, Yrsel tilted her head up to the sky and let forth a screeching whoop of joy.
“I know you’re excited, Yrsel, but do try not to deafen our newest colony-member before she is even assigned a lair.”
Lindír, who had reflexively leapt away from Yrsel, back arched and wings spread to prepare for a fight, slowly relaxed. “The vote was in my favor?”
“Of course it was, were you not—” Camreth paused, blinking vacuously. "You cannot read the language, of course.”
“But… The whole debate, they would not stop questioning, asking why I even deserved to be here! It never let up, but I saw the matriarchs and patriarchs casting winning votes. You say they voted in my favor as well?”
“The elders can be rather overly thorough,” Yrsel said. “Never satisfied to let an argument rest until every avenue has been explored, regardless of what they think. I imagine they were on your side from rather early on.”
“What happens now?” Lindír said. Anxious anticipation flickered through his form, mixed with the joy of acceptance but muted by uncertainty.
“One of the families will have to volunteer to house you.” Camreth’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “Politically speaking, you have to belong to one of the families, even if not by blood. Only bonded adults can own a family on their own.”
“I’m sure that the Mountain-fires can take you,” Yrsel said immediately. Then she turned and raised her voice in the direction of her relatives in the circle. “Mother! I propose we take Lindír in! I’m quite fond of her, and I think you’ll like her too.”
The dragoness who responded was very nearly Yrsel’s twin, from scale color to size; were it not for her age showing in her scales, Lindír would have thought them sisters instead of mother and daughter. She rose from a reclining posture, looking Lindír up and down with her keen gaze.
“Why are you speaking that bastard human tongue to me, Yrsel?”
“So that Lindír can understand what I’m saying, mother.” Yrsel paused, huffing to herself. “If you don’t want her lairing with us, say so, and I shall take your word as law. But really, I do think that it would do her and us both good if she joined the family.”
At that point, another dragon rose from the ground, a drakkar, also visibly a relative of Yrsel’s. He was long and thin, and his claws were polished to a razor point, his flax-yellow scales banded with stripes of black, red, and orange, and his four horns curling forward like a demonic ram’s. Without prompting, he slithered forward, interposing himself between Yrsel and her mother without ever actually blocking anybody’s view.
“I think you shall find, Yrsel, that we do not have any free lairs remaining on our mountain,” he said. “As much as taking in a stray might appeal to your charitable sensibilities, it is simply beyond our capabilities at the moment.”
Yrsel glared at the drakkar as though he were an interloper and not a relative, her tail twitching in a way that made Lindír fear the onset of violence. “Ulkred,” she said sweetly, “your concern for the resources of the Mountain-fire family is touching. But I distinctly remember there being two suitable lairs on our part of the mountain. Given that you refused to dirty your hands clearing out the bat infestation from the cave under Aviteon’s lair, you may have forgotten its existence. But I assure you that I have not.”
Ulkred bared his teeth for a moment, but remained silent.
“If Ulkred has no more objections, then I address Mother again: will you allow Lindír to live in our territory?”
The elder dragoness went still, a thin membrane sliding lazily across her eyes. “You feel very fondly for this dragoness, my daughter?”
“If you had even a few days to get to know her as well as I do, you would feel fondly toward her as well,” Yrsel said. “For all that she is a stray through and through, she is still a good dragoness. And I do think that being given a lair would be… of benefit to her.”
Yrsel’s mother sat a while in contemplation. With electric anticipation, Lindír waited for her response. To him, it felt as though this were the deciding moment, and that if she declined then all would be lost, despite the presence of some seven other potential foster families. He glanced briefly at the others present, attempting to read their intentions.
Yrsel seemed about to burst. Camreth was silent and quiet, his eyes narrowed contemplatively. Ulkred was in a half-crouch, upset about something, though Lindír could not imagine what.
“If that is what you think, then I shall trust your judgement,” said Yrsel’s mother. “But she gets the crack below Aviteon’s lair, not the good cave. I’m saving that one for if I decide to lay again.”
Yrsel immediately made quite a shrill noise, and before Lindír had even finished flinching away from her, she blundered directly into him, tucking her head against the side of his neck in a way entirely too familiar for his comfort. Lindír seized up, caught between the urge to bite and claw and burn and the recognition that this was, in fact, a joyous movement. Yrsel, thankfully, recognized this discomfort, and retreated after but a brief couple of seconds.
“Apologies, Lindír, I know you are not one for physical contact. Now, come, I still remember the place well, and can lead you there. I imagine you are quite tired from everything which has happened today?”
“Yes,” said Lindír. “Very tired. I’ll be glad to have a place to sleep.”
“Then simply follow me.”
It was a short flight, scarcely more than a single long glide, to the mountain Yrsel’s family called home. Lindír’s lair was a crack in the rock, small and secluded, with only a tiny expanse of flat ground between its exit and a steep drop down the mountainside. Yrsel landed there, Lindír following close behind.
“As this is your lair, I won’t enter it unless you ask,” Yrsel explained. “None may, unless you consent to it. A lair is… well, it’s what makes a dragon a dragon, in some ways. None who live here would ever violate the sanctity of such a place.”
Lindír weathered the implied insult that he had not been a dragon without a lair. Instead he merely gave Yrsel a curt bow and said, “Thank you,” in the native tongue of the dragons of Solseyja.
Yrsel bowed back, before promptly flying off. Lindír was left alone to slink into the darkest, furthest corner of his new lair, curl up around himself, and drift off to sleep.
...
Awoken just after dawn by vibrant nightmares of walking trees and flaming human corpses, Lindír set about measuring the full extent of what was now his inviolable domain. It was not large, as lairs went. Along the shorter axis it was not quite long enough that he could stand perpendicular to the walls without having to tuck in his tail, and something like thrice that in terms of depth. Its floor had a slight upward slope as it went into the mountain, but grew more cramped as it went, until he could not stand at the very back of the cavern without bowing his head.
The last time Lindír had had a proper home, one with fixed bounds and an entrance, had been under the Red Citadel. This cave was not quite twice the size of that cell. There was a moment where the old panic and hatred arose in Lindír’s chest, and he prepared to rail against the dragons who had put him there. But he calmed himself, for there were two key differences between his old cell and this cave.
The first was that it was truly his. He owned it, and he controlled its access. The second was that the cave mouth was and forever would be open; he could leave whenever he wished.
So the first thing Lindír did that morning was to memorize every corner of that cave, her lair, her home. She traced out its walls, rubbed her flank against the ceiling, pawed at the rocky floor until she found the best place for sleeping. Lindír wanted to know everything about it, to understand the stones as well as she understood herself. She measured its length in paces again and again, and found the places where the mouth of the cave was still lit by the rising sun. She even found the best place for scratching, a patch of rough stone low on one wall, and rubbed her cheek against it until the whole cave smelled like dust.
It came as a small shock when Camreth appeared just before the entrance of the cave and asked for permission to enter. Lindír, of course, granted it. Camreth looked just as he had when last they’d met, with one exception: a leather bag, about the size of his palm with fingers outstretched, suspended from ropes about Camreth’s neck.
“Hello,” Lindír said. “What are you doing here?”
“Giving you a gift,” he said. “You have no hoard, so it is traditional that each dragon in the colony share a small portion of their own hoard with you, to get you started. Usually we do this with whelps who’ve just left their parents’ lair, but the principle is the same. Now where have you been sleeping?”
“Near the back, in the flat portion where the ceiling gets low,” Lindír said. He was still in shock, almost disbelieving Camreth’s story about the gift. But, as the patriarch moved past him, Lindír stood aside and watched.
Camreth proceeded to Lindír’s sleeping spot and swiftly inverted the material of the bag, causing its contents to spill forth onto the stones. Most of it was an eclectic mix, coins in gold and silver alloy, small aquamarines and amethysts worn smooth by abrasion against Camreth’s scales. There was, also, a strange pot helm with rings for the eyes, made from a solid plate of unidentifiable golden metal.
“Is that a helmet? Why give me a helmet?” It was a stupid question, the very definition of looking a gift horse in the mouth, but Lindír said it before thinking.
“That would be a very, very long story, Lindír, and I don’t want to waste your time,” Camreth said softly. His eyes were suddenly thick with nostalgia. “Suffice it to say that there was a time before I came to Solseyja, a time when I lived far to the east of here. I took this helmet from the corpse of a great Wittish warlord because I thought it would make my hoard look good, and because it’s made of a Nisken-wrought alloy which does not rust. Now, mine and Ziorrin’s hoard is so magnificent that it will look good even without the helmet, so I thought you could use it.”
Lindír was struck dumb. That, to him, seemed like a tremendously, impossibly generous act, an act of utter selflessness coming from a near-total stranger. The best he could do was to stammer out the same thanks he had given to Yrsel the night before.
“It is one of the duties of us colony members. If a new hatchling is born, you will be expected to do the same,” Camreth said, putting the pouch right-side-out again and tying it shut with his claws, resting on his wings in order to free both hands for the act. “I do hope you weren’t expecting too much privacy on your first day. There’ll be about threescore more dragons coming with gifts of their own.”
Even as Camreth flew away, another dragon was arriving, with more treasure carried in a similar leather pouch to Camreth’s. Lindír spent the rest of that day receiving guests. Some of them she recognized as members of Camreth’s family, or from the council, while others were strangers. Most of them did not even speak any of the languages she knew, and so could only give their names and nod while they went to deposit their gifts on Lindír’s bed.
Most of them gave Lindír the same sort of loose wealth as Camreth. Gold and silver coinage was apparently in abundance on Solseyja, most of it of the same minting, with a drakkar’s head on one side and an anvil on the other. There were also gems to be given, nearly all of them the same sort, aquamarines and amethysts, only semi-precious but nonetheless polished to a fine shine.
Some, especially the elders, arrived with more odd gifts. One gave Lindír a large white stone which had been intended to be carved into the shape of an ox’s skull, had the artist not given up halfway. The black dragoness who had been in charge of the meeting dumped onto the pile a score of gold rings with diamonds in them. Another gave him a bronze statue of a human woman, one-third scale. He wasn’t sure, but Lindír had the oddest feeling that, with her unclothed form captured in the middle of a dance, that the figure was meant to be provocative.
Yrsel arrived about midday, chattering and gossiping at full speed. She had two gifts: a small pile of the same coins and gems, and a huge silver ring set with an emerald as large as Lindír’s eyelid.
“It used to be a giant’s ring, or at least that’s what the dragoness who gave it to me said,” Yrsel explained in her rapid fashion. “I used to wear it, but I haven’t done that in a long time because it doesn’t match my scales. I thought you might want it, and I think it matches you well.”
Lindír had taken the jewel and was eyeing it as though it might lunge for him at any moment. “You… wear it? How?”
“Surely you’ve seen dragonesses with jewelry on? You put it on your claw, or on a horn, depending on the size.” Yrsel’s gaze drifted up to just above Lindír’s eyes. “It’s very… feminine. I don’t know if that’s something that you would want, but it would be an option.”
“No, no,” said Lindír. “I think I will try it.”
After Yrsel was gone, Lindír attempted to put the ring on one of her horns. This proved a difficult endeavor, one which led to her writhing about on the floor nearly tied into a knot as she struggled to get the ring and her horns into the same place at the same time. It was only just in time for the next round of gifts that she was able to secure it in place and return to her feet.
By evening, Lindír had a small pile of treasures scattered across her bed. It was a paltry thing compared to her size, and especially compared to the mounds of treasure said to have belonged to the great dragons of old. But it was a good scattering, and it was hers. She was nearly ready to lay herself down upon it and attempt sleep in the traditionally draconic way when one final visitor asked for permission to enter.
Lindír could not have denied Biorra if he’d wished to. The great blue dragoness slipped into Lindír’s lair, wings tucked daintily against her sides, powerful limbs walking forward with weightless ease. Lindír could suddenly feel his heart throb, he could feel his whole body throb, and he became painfully, agonizingly aware of the slight scent of dust and meat and electricity which rose like a morning mist from Biorra’s scales. He rose, not even aware of the way in which he puffed out his chest and swayed his tail, and approached her a step.
“Biorra,” he said. “I didn’t expect you this late.”
She stared back at him, her yellow eyes looking him up and down with an expression of faint shock. “By the stars,” she muttered. “You really are a stray.”
“What?”
“Never mind it. I must apologize, Lindír, for my lateness. I’ve spent all day fretting and fretting about what gift to give you. Indecisiveness is my curse.”
“No,” said Lindír, before forgetting how to speak entirely. Where thoughts about words were supposed to be was instead an uncomfortable awareness, awareness of the flaw in his scales and the ring on his horn, awareness of the tension in his wings and just how damned obvious it should have been that he was female, awareness of the warmth of Biorra’s breath and the exact positioning of her four ground limbs.
“No?”
“No need to apologize,” said Lindír. “I do not know if it would be somehow impolite, but I would have noticed no difference if you had delivered your gift tomorrow morning.”
Biorra nodded, a simple movement which sent a thrill through Lindír’s chest. “Regardless, I spent all day trying to think of what gift I could give that none else could. I settled on this.”
It was only then that Lindír realized that Biorra had been holding something under her wing, a grey stone slab easily an arm long. She moved to the hoard, in the process coming so close to Lindír that his heart nearly stopped there and then. When Biorra had set down the slab, it was with the other face up, revealing it to have been carved with a sentence’s worth of runes.
“I had a bit of a fad for calligraphy,” Biorra explained. “I know you can’t read the runes yet, but someday I am sure you will. It says, roughly: ‘A dragon turns wing over wing, and the sun shines on their scales not half so bright as their flame.’”
“I see,” said Lindír. “You are much too kind.”
“It isn’t much,” Biorra said with a titter. “I have a score more in my lair. But nobody else could gift you such a thing, so it feels appropriate.”
“Indeed,” said Lindír. “I’ll be sure to cherish it.”
“Goodbye,” said Biorra. She turned swiftly, and left without another word. Lindír watched her go, utterly speechless, and did not dare to avert his eyes until she flew out of the arc of view of his lair entrance.
Lindír still dreamed, that night. He even still had nightmares. But sleeping atop a loose scattering of coins and jewels, surrounded by statues and slabs and helms, Lindír had the most peaceful night of sleep he’d had in years. Any doubt that he’d had about living with his own kind was gone. He also dreamed about Biorra.
In before the Under Queen somehow sinks the entire landmass into the ocean because their luck is just that bad.
Okay that would actually be pretty f*cking funny if I did that though. Just not even disguising the fact that life hates this poor dragon.
Was she inclined to call him a stray by his ragged appearance or his uncultured movements may I ask?