If the banescales were eradicated because of their ferocity in battle, is that perhaps why the Flamecaller made coatls? They are so much softer than her first children. They speak in song and give gifts to share their affection. The encyclopedia describes them as âan agreeable lotâ who give gifts to âplacate enemies and competitors.â
After the loss of the banescales, was the Flamecallerâs heart so broken that she made children who would not prompt such extreme retaliation?
In a time of birth and sorrow, the blazing heart of the world lay dormant and cold
her children never called her cold, and the fact that they never called her cold was hidden behind ruffled-feather smiles and soft huffs of forgebreath laughter. she was the flamecaller, mistress of the forge, maker of the beating veins beneath the earth. in no way could one call her cold.Â
when a coatl had tired eyes and singed drooping feathertips, their companions would hum their condolences. âyou canât fly too close to the sun,â theyâd admonish. âwe are made of fire, but that just means we can be smothered all the more easily.â the coatl nods, and puts away the smoldering molten remnants of whatever project had brought their motherâs attention, usually for good.
sometimes, they fight back.
âi donât understand!â he screams at her, his primaries flaring up in a challenging display. âthere is no reason we should be at the mercy of the kindness of othersâwhat if kindness isnât an option? talona would slaughter us all, we shouldnât have to be forced to rely on anyone but ourselves for our safety!â his voice, so accustomed to singing and warbling, cracks and tears at the harsh violence of his shouting. the flamecaller stares at him, not impassively, but her expression does not change.
it takes her so much effort for that singular expression that she cannot even begin to form words. she hopes that the delay in her response reads as a dignified, deific pause, and that her tight throat loosens in the echoes of the dormant cave.
âi did not make you to make me machinations of war,â she says. âleave the mirrors and the wildclaws to their games of bloodshed and battle. you were not built for the fields of war, and i shall not allow an attempt against your nature.â
âi donât understand!â he screams again. âyou didnât make us to fight, but we might have to! what will happen if the armies march on us here and slaughter us, smash our eggs with the corpses of ourselves? what will you say to our broken, helpless bodies then?â
she is somewhere else, then. not in a cramped forgeworks, but upon her molten throne, her sobs clawing out her chest like a horde of daggers shredding her heart. she feels each and every child of her hubris die, first one by one, then in a great flood, and then there is a horrific, terrible silenceânot one of a lack of bloodshed, but of an absence of any blood to be shed. she keens, and wails, and she swears to herself then and there: she would not make machinations of war again. not even if the very warden himself were to march upon her throne.Â
and when her tears stop flowing, and when her throat no longer aches with crying, she makes the first of the coatls from the droplets of molten magma that fell from her, and she sings into them all her hopes, her dreams, her prayers.
you will be kind. you will be soft. you will sing songs of love. youâŠwill be loved.Â
you must be loved.
The mistake she made was believing that her love would be enough. Her first children were made from her teeth and scales, made to withstand the fires of war. They were made for others to fear and respect, with talons, spines, and tempers.Â
(Truly, their motherâs children.)
She loved them, and that love blinded her. She knew there was danger, that the flames would lick at their wings and scorch their scales, that claws and magic would hurt them, but she thought them invincible. She never thought they would all die.
(All of them.)
(Not even one left for her to love.)
So her second children are kind. They are soft. They sing songs of love, and they are loved by her, and by others, made with the fire of her tears, made so she would never again feel the awful absence of them. They may wish to be stronger; they may wish to spill blood to protect themselves. They may be her children, with tempers that burn even her. But they will never spark the same desperate hatred that drove her first children extinct. They were made to fill a void, yes, but they were made different so she would never have that void again.
Sheâs selfish, she thinks. She would rather they suffer injury from lack of claws than hatred for possessing them. Itâs for their good, she tells herself, again and again, even as some spit at her: they wish they were like her first children, wish they werenât at the mercy of others. She understands, truly. They wish they werenât what she made them, but as long as they live, there is no way she can regret that.
(After all, her first children never expected mercy, and when the time cameâŠ)
Time passes, and her second children grow out of her firstsâ shadows. They forget, and while it hurts, it is good for them to forget. They donât need to compare themselves to warriors of the past. They are her children, and they are different. They wish for claws, and scales, but they donât know the pain of what they wish for. They are loved. Itâs enough.
She feels a flicker, and for a moment she thinks sheâs living a dream. She loves her second children, but sometimes she wishes her first are still there: still full of fire, roaring their war songs and striving to please her. Sometimes she can imagine that her hubris didnât kill them; sometimes, she fashions fantasies in which they returned home by the skin of their teeth, beaten and broken but alive.
(She was different, before she lost them. She was more arrogant. She likes to think she isnât, now.)
But her eyes are open. But the flicker doesnât fade. She feels it, and she considers it, and there are tears falling again as she realizes what its slow, tentative growth means, when she dares to fan the flames of hope and discovers her wishes are answered.
Not all of them. It wasnât all of them, so long ago.
(Her first children never expected mercy, and when the time came, they were still given it.)
