Thread: Awakening the Past (Atroxa & Kaybee)

Wild Dragons were long gone from these lands, long enough that for all of her eighteen years, Ciara would have never seen one, and her parents might only have seen them as children, or may even have been too young to remember when they stopped appearing. The dragon riders and their bonded beasts were still about for all that they would never venture out to a country village like this without good reason but they were a shadow of what they once were, and the legends of their exploits were just that, legends. Things that the modern order could never accomplish, though no one would ever say so to its face... How the egg came to be in that cave was thus a mystery to many. Wild Dragons cared for their eggs as any creature would their unborn children, and to abandon one would be a terrible neglect. Their eggs were resilient to be sure, stone-like shells protected the young, and even in the absence of a brooding warmth, the egg could go into a sort of stasis, the hatchling within growing slowly, gathering what nutrients it could from its surroundings. There were places even such an egg would not survive of course, but this cave was not one of them. With an abundance of growing mosses and flowing water from overhead, the growth was slow to be sure, but it grew and grew, decades or possibly even a century passing until the hatchling within could be awakened by the presence of one who could care for it, one it could bond to. It was told in legends that it was the equal capacity of both humans and dragons for reason that had led to the formation of the dragon riders when a human had stumbled across a dragon's egg only for the dragon within to hatch and impress upon them instead of their mother. Whether or not it was true that was how it had begun, as Ciara curled up around the egg, life began to imitate legend, and the dragon within began to stir... Ba-Bump, Ba-bump The heartbeat was first, causing the stone to pulsate gently as the little dragon's body began to stir. Consciousness followed slowly, quiet thought beginning to seep into a brain fogged by untold years of sleep. He felt not-mother outside and knew instinctively that she was no dragon, but with neither choice in the matter nor context to think of why he might not want to put himself into the care of a human, the dragon extended its neck, feeling its way through the lingering remnants of its amniotic fluid to the shell of its egg. A single sharp point on his snout, the dragon's eggtooth, sharper than the finest blade and made for that singular purpose of departure. The dragon twisted in the shell, aiming himself away from not-mother and lunging at the hard outer rim. A dragon could take a while to work itself from an egg, but while their lungs were better than a baby chicken's they were not infinite, and he knew, if he did not soon break free, he would eventually suffocate. He lunged again, the shell splintering under the force, slowly breaking outwards as he rammed it again, and again, and again. The egg rocked in Ciara's arms, a rhythm of jerking motions as its occupant struggled to escape, surely waking her if the pulsing heartbeat from within hadn't done so already. Quite suddenly the shell would burst outwards with a sharp crack like shearing stone, a bubble of clear fluid rising from the break, then another impact, and it would cave outwards, as reptilian head wormed its way out into the open air, followed by a pair of small clawed forelimbs as the rest of the shell -structural integrity quite compromised- began to splinter and break, falling apart as the little dragon clawed its way free. A small serpent uncoiled from the wreckage of egg, dull bronze scales shining faintly in the light from above. He was about four and a half feet long from tip to tail, though much of his mass was in his body and in two wet wings that he unfolded from his back, a triumphant screech resounding off the cavern walls as he celebrated his newfound freedom. By comparison to body and broad wings almost as long across as he was from tip to tail when fully extended his neck and tail were quite slender and serpentine, moving with the same sinuous grace as a snake, though the effect of slight menace was somewhat spoiled as he butted his head against Ciara's chest and looked up at her with golden eyes, a curious voice slithering into her mind as he instinctively transmitted thought to her. Hello! Do you know what my name is?