Back in March, I opened Predict Morphology to look up colors and saw the girl on the left as the random scry. I instantly fell in love, decided to create her, and embarked on a months-long breeding project... that finally ended today! So please welcome Anticipatiens, who has been an Anticipation in the Annex's local Loop for a long time now, and is finally physically present. :> Including her masculine reflection Impatiens, because this project gave me four male dragons in the exact colors I wanted before it finally gave me a girl. XD She, in both her forms, is much-beloved of the Annex's auraboa colony, and they are thrilled to finally be able to express that materially to her!
This is @aromantic-eight's fault, but anyway, Shantipur and Lampang have adopted some children. :>
---
Meade is an imperial, just like Mom.
Mom laughs when she says that, and tells her, "No, love, you're a nocturne," but that isn't going to stop Meade. She copies everything Mom does faithfully, trying to walk just like her, sit just like her, laugh just like her, speak in her deep musical tones. The last one is the hardest, but Meade tries anyway, even if it always comes out a growl. It makes Mom laugh, at least. Making Mom laugh makes her feel warm deep down.
She imitates Mom when she hunts, too, trailing behind her and coming slamming down on tiny insects the way Mom slams down on full-sized deer. It's difficult, but Meade is getting better--has to get better, and quickly. Mom is so much slower weaker than she was even a month ago, when Meade just hatched. Right now she needs Meade's help just to feed herself and Meade, and soon her egg is going to hatch, and Meade will have to help feed all three of them.
"A few more days," Mom whispers that night, huddled under a glowing mushroom in what she calls the Wispwillow Grove, where she's made a shelter for herself and Meade and the egg. She's curled around the two of them, Meade and the egg, and is stroking the egg's surface very carefully with one talon. "A few more days and they'll hatch. You'll hunt for them, won't you, Meade? And you'll teach them how, the way I'm teaching you?"
"Of course," Meade tells her. "I'll hunt for you both!"
Mom makes a soft noise and closes her eyes, then leans down to rest the whiskery underside of her jaw against the top of Meade's head. Her scales are thin and almost powdery, bits of them coming off whenever they rub against Meade's, and the thin grey hair scattered along her jowls breaks off easily too. A bit of it falls into Meade's mouth and she has to puff it out. Mom rests her head there a moment longer, then moves to curl more closely around them, one broad wing spreading out over them both, and she's asleep just like that.
Eventually Meade sleeps, too.
---
When she wakes up, Mom is gone. Meade rushes out from amid the mushrooms in a burst of indignation. Mom can't go hunting without her! She flaps frantically, unable yet to leap into the air with the grace Mom does, but with enough flapping and hopping she manages to make it up and go gliding from the top of one mushroom to another. There, in the distance, there's a bulk among the mushrooms, spread out long like Mom flopped on top of a deer. As Meade glides closer, though, she doesn't get up to pick up the deer and toss it into one of the baskets she straps to her flanks when she hunts.
She's not wearing the baskets at all, Meade realizes as she draws close. And she's still not standing up.
She doesn't even twitch when Meade lands on her back. Meade pokes her, tries to shake her head, pulls on her mane and feathers, shouts in her ear, but no matter how frantic and loud she gets, Mom doesn't stir. She just lies there, eyes open and unfocused, not even breathing, completely still. Meade isn't sure how long she shouts and screams before she runs out of breath and has to lie on Mom's shoulders panting and trying not to cry.
Meade isn't stupid. Deer go this still when Mom lands on them, and insects when Meade squashes them, although Mom doesn't look squashed. She's dead, like food is dead. But she shouldn't be! Mom isn't food! No one's squashed her! How can she be dead?
The egg is what breaks through Meade's tears. It's almost noon now, the murky gloom above growing to that odd half-brightness that she only knows is from the sun because of the one time Mom had carried her up above the murk. She isn't hungry--she feels sick--but the egg is going to be so hungry when it hatches. Mom could have brought a whole deer, just like she had for Meade, but now Mom can't feed it when it's born. Meade is going to have to stock up.
It's hard to squash bugs when her eyes are all blurry and her breath hitching from crying, but Meade does her best. As evening encroaches, she has a double armful of insects to take back. This is the right time of day to catch even more, usually, but they're oddly sparse--in fact, everything is, the faeries hiding away in mushrooms, the small animals vanished into the loam of the floor, an eerie silence filling the grove instead of insect buzzing and nightbirds' songs. Shivering a little, Meade creeps back home.
The egg is still where Meade left it, in a little hollow under the mushroom. Meade digs a hole next to it to hide her bugs, then curls herself around it as best as she can. Mom said it had to be kept warm.
---
Late as it grows, Meade can't sleep. She's mostly crying silently now, and tearlessly, completely dehydrated but unwilling to let go of the egg to find water. The eerie silence continues until what feels like deep into the night. Then there's a distant crashing off in the direction Mom went, like something very large stomping on mushrooms. It pauses, and there's loud cracking and something almost like slurping, and, after a long moment, a roar.
Then the crashing starts to approach, sounding even heavier as it breaks mushroom-stems, coming Meade's way. Mom never stomped on any but the smallest, but Meade sits up anyway, hopeful.
Dragons aren't food. Mom isn't food. Maybe that means that dragons--that Mom--don't die like food does. Maybe Mom is coming back!
It's a different imperial's head, icy eyes blazing, that lowers itself down first beneath the mushroom to sniff at Meade. She rears back, wings flared defensively around the egg. Then another, more familiar head leans in to join the first. It is Mom. Two more imperial heads pop in around the edges of the first two. Meade bursts into hysterical giggling from sheer, joyous relief.
"Mom! Who are these dragons? Are they your friends?"
"Who?" the biggest imperial rumbles, in a hoarse, croaking voice, like he's just as thirsty as Meade.
"Aw, fuck," a completely different voices hisses from somewhere above the mushroom, and then, "Hold on, kid!"
Something long, thin, and rope-like comes whipping down between the imperials' moving heads, slams into Meade, wraps around her, and then sails sideways out from under the mushroom, away from Mom and her friends. Meade shrieks and wriggles, but the noodly dragon has too good a grip. As it carries her off, she can see Mom better--except it's not just Mom. Mom's neck vanishes into the shoulders of a dragon who has some of Mom's eel-like patterning, on that side, but also has spots, and bars, and some kind of veining over the skin, matching the other three heads. They're all fused together, one dragon instead of four. Meade gapes in shock as she and the dragon wrapped around her land heavily under a distant mushroom.
"Mom-"
"Shut up, kid!" The dragon wraps another length of themselves around her muzzle, tiny claws and wings clamping down. "That's not your mom anymore," they hiss into her ear, "that's an emperor."
But it's still Mom. Meade can see her still, lifting her head, looking around, her whiskers quivering. That she's more than one dragon now doesn't keep her from being Meade's Mom.
She can't say that. She can't tell the dragon about the egg. She can only watch, bound and helpless, as a dozen armored dragons descend upon Mom. Two guardians and a ridgeback hold her down, wildclaws and mirrors slash and bite, and pearlcatchers circle in the sky above flinging magic and shouting encouragement as they bloodily butcher her mother, just like she was still dead, just like she was a deer, just like she was nothing but food. Meade wriggles and sobs and can do absolutely nothing to stop them as they tear Mom to shreds.
Later, when they finish, the spiral wrapped around her unwraps themselves. "Okay, kid-"
Meade shrieks and tears back towards Mom. One of the guardians is still on the ground, on top of- on top of part of her, blood and viscera spattering their scales. She goes at them teeth-first, claws slashing, and they turn around and swat her with a huge paw. It knocks Meade backward; she rolls, bouncing against several rocks, and when she comes to a stop she's too winded to move or even shout.
"Careful! She's just a kid," the spiral scolds them. "She doesn't know any better. She thought that thing was her mom."
"Likely the most recent addition was. We'll take her with us," a pearlcatcher says, landing beside Meade.
"What about the egg?" asks the ridgeback, who has their long nose tucked under the remains of the mushroom to lift it up.
"We don't," the pearlcatcher says sharply, "foster imperials. Leave it."
But she's an imperial, Meade thinks, and that's the last thought she has before the pearlcatcher breathes out sickly-sweet in her face.
---
It's past noon the next day when Meade wakes up, and they're at the very edge of the Grove, nearly at the edge of the murk. Meade can see the shape of the sun dimly through the sparse darkness overhead. She's been wrapped in soft cloth and set on top of an even softer cushion of it. A few of the dragons who killed Mom are about, talking quietly, several of them asleep. Right next to her is the ridgeback--napping. Its bulk is partially hiding Meade from the rest.
Good, because Meade isn't going to stay with dragons who butchered Mom like she was food. She keeps her head down and wriggles, very slowly, out of the fabric in the direction where she'll be fully hidden by the ridgeback. Then she crawls over the ground towards a thick patch of mushrooms, slow and inching, like a grub. The whole way to the edge of the mushroom thicket, she shakes and trembles, too overwhelmed even to cry. Terror chokes her throat when one of the pearlcatchers takes to the air, and she lies flat against the ground, pretending to be mold.
Fortunately, they fly in the other direction. Meade breathes again, and keeps crawling, going on through the mushrooms until the camp is thoroughly out of sight. Even then, when she stands, she doesn't try to get in the air, just stays low and runs.
The egg is still there. So is- so are the scattered parts of Mom.
It's colder here, in the murk. It must be, because Meade is shivering. She goes to wrap herself around the egg. There's parts of Mom strewn around it, mixed in with the squashed mushroom. Insects buzz around them, but Meade can't bring herself to try and kill any to add to her stash. She'll find something else to feed the egg when it hatches. She'll find… something that's not meat. Meade is never eating meat again.
---
She's not sure how long she huddles there, wrapped around the egg, terrified that the dragons who killed Mom will come back. She sees a pearlcatcher flying a few times overhead, but they're a different pearlcatcher, she thinks. The third time they come, they have two ridgebacks with them, and the trio fly low over the murk, looking around like they're examining Mom's shattered body. Meade tucks her head over the top of the egg and tries very hard to look like mold again.
The pearlcatcher and the ridgebacks leave. Hours later, as it's close to night again, two other dragons come circling down. Meade's heart catches in her throat at the familiar profiles: long bodies, whiskered faces, feathered wings….
They land well away from her. The darker one, with pale green scales and brown wings and mane, takes off a wooden mask and passes it over to the paler one, with nearly-white scales and painted red wings. Then he crouches low and stretches his head forward. Just like Mom, when Meade had just hatched. Meade chokes on a sob.
"Child," he says, his voice low and soft. "We heard what has happened to that egg's mother, and we are sorry. We came to see if it needed tending."
"I'm taking care of it," Meade tells him, hearing her voice crack and unable to keep back another sob.
"And you're doing very well. But we would like to help. The dragons here say you were helping its mother-"
"She was my Mom too!"
"Oh," he says, softly, and then, nodding, "then you were helping your mother. Helping each other is important. We want to help you."
Meade wrapps her wings even more tightly around the egg, gripping it tight. She wants to say no. She wants them to go away. How can she trust any other dragon, when she's seen strange dragons butcher Mom?
But these are imperials, like Mom was. And the egg is almost cool to the touch. Meade isn't nearly as big or strong or warm as Mom; she might not be able to take care of it right. She certainly can't protect it, if those butchering dragons come back.
"You'll keep everyone else from hurting them once they hatch, right? No one will butcher them like Mom?"
"We will," he says, and the paler one adds, fiercely and with her teeth showing, "We will never let that happen."
Meade lets out a long, deep breath. She's shaking, and tired, and so thirsty her tongue wants to stick to the top of her mouth, and so sad it feels like her entire chest has been hollowed out and filled with the murk overhead. She nods, slowly. "Okay."
The dragons wrap up the egg and strap it to the darker one's chest, and then tuck Meade into the sling on top of it. She curls up around it again as they lift off, feeling the heat radiating from the massive body above her, so familiar, so strange. She presses the underside of her jaw against the egg the same way Mom used to press hers against the top of Meade's head.
"It's okay," she whispers to the egg. "They're imperials too. They'll take care of us, just like Mom did. Even when…" She thinks of what the spiral who'd bound her had called Mom's brief second life. "Even once we become an emperor."
Sometimes you accidentally make yourself so sad by exalting dragons you loved for lair space that you quit a game for, uuuuuh, seven years. And then when you come back you're still sad enough about it not to want to focus too closely on that clan lore.
So you start a hibernal den for your older dragons, that you definitely don't want to exalt but feel sad when you play with anymore, and then you start a branch clan to adopt new dragons into. >>
---
In the end, it's over far more swiftly than Shantipur thinks her mother ever imagined. The old core of Calabar's inner circle is strong; they descend upon what her mother had thought would be the final battle and tear the fighters apart. Her mother is bleeding in a dozen places, her grin turning to twisted fury at her foiled plans. Lampang's mother, her eternal enemy, submits with far more grace. A half-dozen ridgebacks are pinning their mates, her father, Lampang's father, in place.
Calabar, experienced clan-head that she is, is wise enough not to kill her mother. There will be no emperors born on this bloodied ground.
"We have been digging a den beneath the Beacon for hibernation, for those of us who are not ready to pass to the Lightweaver, but know that it is time for the next generation to take their rightful place," Calabar declares, her voice rolling over the clearing. "All these four will retire there, with the rest of us who are ready to settle and sleep until we are awoken in the Lightweaver's service."
Shantipur looks to Lampang, who is watching in distress, tail swishing behind him, raising one foot and then another and clawing at the ground as he sets them down. Several remaining ridgebacks are wtching him warily. Several remaining guardians are watching her. Pruzhany is hovering close to both of them, and only a few would know that it's a protective hover, not a watchful one. Perhaps if she wasn't, they'd already be pinned beneath unyielding weight and claws as well.
"My mother started it," Shantipur shouts. "My father will follow her into any evil, so I understand his sentence. But why must Lampang's parents be condemned, too?"
"It is not a sentence," says Calabar, who, Shantipur knows, has always secretly been fond of her mother, for all her wicked ways. Calabar has a respect for dragons of the Wyrmwound that Shantipur herself, seeing her mother's cruelty, struggles to understand. "It is an honor to rest in anticipation of the Lightweaver's call. I go myself; it is not a punishment."
"No," Lampang's mother says wearily. "It is not a punishment. It is the best ending. I have trained others to tend to the gardens and the wilds alike. We will go."
Lampang's father shifts his weight deliberately, his own tail twitching only once. Once all eyes are upon him, he nods.
"Maybe," Mbaiki says, in the echoing, hollow voice she's borne since the Lightweaver sent her back from exaltation to serve the clan anew, "these two should rest beneath the ground as well."
Cartagena shoulders her way to the front, absurdly small and fluffy amidst all the larger, sharp-scaled dragons who had joined the fray. She raises her sweet voice high. "No. If they would consider it a punishment, then it would be cruel. I will keep them under my wing. Mother, give us a chance to heal the hurts that their parents' battle has left upon them."
"Very well," Calabar says. "You will be clan-head in my absence, and so that decision is yours."
It should feel like mercy. Shantipur isn't sure why this kindness fills her with such rage. An impulse of her mother's, she decides, and tucks it firmly away. She looks to Lampang, less restless now, and lets the fond affection that she always feels at the sight of him fill her instead.
---
Lampang knows that he should be grateful for Cartagena's kindness to him and Shantipur. She accepts without question that they wish to lair together, instead of apart, and gives them a new place far from where their parents dwelled. When others scoff, or at least express doubt, that they can truly coexist so comfortably, the new clan-head defends them.
But he's restless still. Mbaiki's spirit roams as she sleeps, still following Calabar's will, and he wakes often to a light shining in their cave, the glowing ghost of her staring down in silent judgement. Some of their clanmates follow Cartagena's lead, but more watch them with suspicion. To them, Shantipur is a child of disaster, heir to Ranaghat's cruel manipulations and all the pain she has caused, and Lampang is the traitor by her side.
Yirol delights at their pairing, and that, he thinks, is the most telling of all.
Of course they all expect him to fall in line with Shantipur. Kandukur had behind Ranaghat; his own father seemed, to most eyes, to do the same, though he knows better. And he's heard the tales of his mother's last mate. He just wishes that more than a handful could trust her repudiation of her parents and take her as her own dragon. He wishes that she hadn't had to repudiate her parents at all.
"They should treat you better," he tells her, pacing back and forth in her lair. "What have you done to them?"
"Existed in my mother's image." Shantipur shrugs. She's always taken this matter better than he has.
Lampang growls low in his throat. "I don't like it. I would challenge them, if you would let me, but- it wouldn't help, would it?"
"No. It wouldn't help."
He growls again and throws himself down, digging his claws into the soft layer of rugs and furs that Shantipur had lined the floor of their den with after he'd been scolded for tearing up the ancient bricks beneath. "I hate this."
"It sucks," a cheerful, crowing voice agrees, a shadow briefly covering them both as a form larger than either of them, wings spread wide, lands at the doorway and blocks out the sun. Then Pruzhany folds her wings and steps inside. "Do you know how many people I've had to promise to sit on you if you finally go mad? Cartagena says to give everyone time, but I don't know if we'll still be around by the time some of those grudges fade."
"My mother earned it. But I have to admit, I don't like paying for it."
"I wish we could just leave," Lampang says, suddenly, impulsively, but the moment he says it he's filled with eagerness for the notion. "Why should we stay and keep trying to prove ourselves? Why can't we just go where no one knows our parents?"
"Calabar won't trust that we aren't leaving to go carry out mother's plans of making another glorious emperor."
"And Mbaiki will drag you back and force you into the hibernal den, willing or no," Pruzhany agrees, still strangely cheerful. She tilts her head to one side. "Which is why it has to be a secret!"
---
"Lieksa," Pruzhany says, sidling up to the clan trader. "You have connections, don't you?"
"No," Lieksa says, eyeing her judgmentally.
---
"Algiers! Tunis! Sallee!" Pruzhany calls, sidling up to the clan's much less official traders. "You have connections, don't you?"
Tunis grins, and both fae, clinging to his wings, put their fins forward. "What are you looking to find?"
"A ticket out of here, for three."
"We can do that," Algiers says instantly, and Sallee adds, "Where for?"
"Oh, anywhere that isn't here. Preferably without Mbaiki picking up any clues."
Tunis grins wider. "We do love a challenge, don't we, ladies?"
---
("You could come," Shantipur says to Damask and Oryol. "I know it isn't easy for you, either."
"I won't run," Damask tells her, with all the hard conviction that both her parents are known for, and that's that.
She doesn't ask where they're going. She doesn't need to know. She's never going to go herself.)
---
"But where did they go?" Mbaiki demands, much later, staring down both of Calabar's children.
"I don't know," Cartagena says, her voice soft. "Tell Mother I'm sorry. I had hoped…."
"Hoping doesn't fix anything," Damask says, her voice harsh, and turns and walks away.
Cartagena looks sadly after her, and Mbaiki shakes her head. She'd told Calabar that her daughter was too soft. It's why her spirit is still here, still on guard, even though her true charge is hidden and hibernating now with her body and her mate. She'll find those children and either drag them back, or, if it's necessary, destroy any emperor they've made of themselves where it stands.
