Tell me, what shelters you? Do you lair away in some pocket of the peaks, nestled within caverns where the sky meets the earth? Do you carve a den within the woodlands or the wetlands, shrouded in the greenery you share with other wild things? Are you a more urbane wyrm, who claims a nest among the smaller, younger peoples who have built for themselves and their kin towns and villages and cities of wood and stone and steel? Were you raised from egg amid others of your kind, a clutch of beloved treasures greater than even the hoard that shone as tribute to the care and love that would be bestowed upon you? Were you born to a different mother, twice-hatched to become what you are today? Remember this.
There is warmth beneath you, beside you; sheltered by your frame, by your tail, by your wings. The little one trembles at your side, your love a second eggshell that protects them from the parts of the world they are not yet ready for. They have your colors, your mate's eyes, a curious spark of keen intellect all their own. They dance in the daylight, playing at pounces and crying out in glee whenever an errant breeze is caught in their grasp, lifted by wing or arcane art that whispers in their blood, though such reach is beyond their grasp. They sing by firelight, the tales you share with them when their mind drifts between waking and rest finding purchase in the tales they tell themselves. They learn of the world by experience and by the lessons you teach to them. They gaze upwards into the starlight on dark nights, tracing patterns in the glimmering canvas of shadows, clouds, and distant sparks.
Love them. Protect them. Give them the world that was never given to you. What is the shape of the truth you share with them? Is it one of love and hope, togetherness in dark times defeating all that would make the world more cruel than it must be? Is it one of faith and fortitude, a recognition of the cycles that grip our world and the harmonies by which all things have their day? Is it a truth of deeper things, of matter and mind and their endless configurations, that wonder may be born of the complexities in the simplest things, and new worlds dreamed from the stories which only exist when we spin the words ourselves? There is no single correct answer; all have their merits, and no hatchling is only taught one path.
For there is no single teacher - sire and dam are but two, and the world teaches its own classes. Curious eyes gaze upon the patterns and rhythms of the world, catalogues them, connects them, weaves a tapestry of thought and dream and meaning all their own. Guide their claws, give them symbols for the things they cannot name, share your meanings and accept that they can know things you might not. They are each their own wonderful being, their own bundle of stardust and love; it is a gift simply to share life with them, to act as guardian and guide for them. They will find their own names and their own truths, but you have lived a life of your own and can offer perspective they have yet to earn.
Remember, again, what shelters you. For when they venture beyond the warmth of the roost, they will know this to be their first home, too. Will they know the slopes of rocky cliffs, distant and detached from terrestrial life, with only wind and wit - and good fortune - to guide them? Show them your wings, your flight, what secrets of the sky they may inherit from you - give to them what you learned for yourself, and they will find their own grace in the swirling tides beyond us all. Will they know the midland wilds, where nature's children teem and all ways of life are apparent - and deadly - beneath the elder boughs? Show them your claws, your fangs, the gentleness that can be offered between your hunts - give to them what flora and fauna gave to you, and they will find a harmony of their own between what they sow and what they reap. Will they know the peoples who share this world with you, where knowledge and labor are collected and shared, where the harvest song shares space with the secrets of the stars - and the weights and measures which define them both? Show them your figures, show them your art and your craft - give to them the truths you have learned when gentle claws make a world where the breath of life is shared between fellows, and they will make the joy of creation part of their own stock and trade.
Tell me, one day, that you are proud of your kin. That your hatchlings, your progeny, have been loved and taught well. That they have found their paths and walked them fully, with eyes wide open for all that may awe or terrify.
Tell me, one day, that I can do the same, for all that I can never bear an egg of my own.
