[fill] A Generation Later
Game: Pre-Game Sacred Stones (FE8)
Characters: Myrrh, Morva
Word Count: 2,055
Prompt: FE8 - Myrrh, Morva - playtime in the Darkling Woods (gen, fluff)
Summary: A human generation has passed since the Demon King was sealed and Morva has his talons full with a recently awakened hatchling.
Warning: Some mentions of blood and gore when it comes to Myrrh's feeding
She wants nothing but food. Morva knows he shouldn't be surprised but he is. She screams and shrieks and chirps and cries for food, and it is all that he can do to keep her tiny yellow belly full. At least she is coming into her scales at last and no longer looks like some kind of abominable pink worm in among the deer guts he hunts down for her.
A month on and suddenly he can see her wings. They are sad stubby little things but the stolen ox drops from his jaws in amazement, and he is treated to the most pleased burble of delight at the bloody offering. Myrrh clambers all over her meal, scrabbling frantically at tough hide and worrying it with soft needles of hatchling teeth. And those terribly proportioned vestigial wings whir like a set of dueling hummingbirds.
Movra sits back on his haunches, bowled over by the fact his horrible responsibility is the most adorable dragon under the sun, and she will never be capable of doing anything wrong.
Then she falls down the broken side of the ox, bloody and cheeping piteously. Morva hurries to shove her back atop her conquest with his nose. Instead of ascending the carcas, though, she runs up his muzzle and nestles among his horns, cooing innocently, as though she had never put her left hind foot anywhere near his right eye. Morva finds himself laughing helplessly, brought low to the ground by a tiny dragonette. He takes advantage of soft bird-like snores, and falls asleep himself, exhausted. Why did no one warn him that hatchlings were exhausting?
The ox lasts two days. Morva starts hunting again while Myrrh smears herself with entrails. She still has a haunch and head to eat if he can't find anything before sunset. At sunrise he comes back with a horse. No one will miss it. Surely, no one can miss it.
The next couple of weeks seal the fate of all the deer in the woods. It will be hard—He knows it will be hard—for the humans near by, but he needs the food. He spears the last buck, far too young and succulent and he should have let it go to make more deer, but the does were all gone and what could he do at this rate? He needs sleep. If Myrrh isn't demanding food, she climbs all over him, or bite his tail or plays her marvelous adorable exhausting games of hide and seek. One day she'll start trying to fly and he won't be able to save her is she doesn't have something to eat now.
A branch snaps. Morva turns in shock, jaws dripping red. Has he been feasting on Myrrh's food? The mess of bones and guts spread over his forelegs suggests—Right, branch. Branch, human.
“So, this is what happened?” she is older now. Much older, in the way humans measured things. The hair is not yet streaked in white, but a decade? Maybe two? She would be gone soon, only a husk.
Something smells too good. Morva sniffs the air. The human cocks her head, and then slings down the dead sheep she has been carrying on her shoulders. “Great One.”
He knows her name. He knows—that sheep smells so good. How many months? Years? He hasn't been hungry in so long.
“Great One!” She repeats again, her eyes flashing. “You must grace me with your human form. You must.”
He breathes in, part of his mind going wild and delighting in the scent of fresh sheep. He loves mutton. He would—oh there was a mutton stew that Latona made him eat and he had asked for seconds, it had been so good. Why can he remember Latona's name, but not his most faithful—right he should be changing. He can change. It is a matter of—that food smells so—distractions. The physical world is one giant distraction.
He settles down on bloody grass, which is bloody from the death that just gave him life, and will let his daughter live long enough to see stars dance in the sky with all of her eager wonder. He concentrates on that, finding those stars in the stone he keeps in his heart, until, finally, he is standing small, and insignificant in grass surrounded by blood. He blinks at Kuya. Yes, her name is Kuya. But—she had died. He remembered that moment with a stinging clarity, having watched skin wrinkle, wither, and fall away into shocking old age. “You are not Nada Kuya.”
“No, Great One. You speak of my grandmother,” the woman looks at him shrewdly, and he realizes that his hands and mouth all speak of his sloppy awful meal. “There have been terrifying stories in the realms of men, Great One. They say a demon dragon haunts the high northern mountains, the demon king returned, to steal livestock and people.”
“Just livestock,” he mutters, but shame is crawling up his insides.
“You don't look well,” observes the granddaughter of the person who taught him the cost of death bare years before Fomortiis took Lagdou. She sits down beside the sheep she brought. “As a human, I mean. Perhaps this is how all Great Dragons look, but I would ask: have you been sleeping?”
“Not often,” Myrrh had awoken almost thirteeth years ago, still young and playful, too young for what passed for childhood among dragons. “I have responsibilities, and—a person to feed. It keeps me busy.”
The human draws an astonished breath, proving that she is as thoughtful as her grandmother at least. “You mean—you are not the last dragon, Great One?”
He is not. The Demon King had been so pleased to destroy Lagdou, to turn it into a den of monsters, to take the sacred land and lay waste to it. The darkness that crawled from the ruins of his hatching space twisted and deformed his happy memories of the bright sun hot world. He, young, feckless, flight mad and totally unready to be anything more than the spoiled son of the city had lost everything. Everything, but one sleeping hatchling left to her centuries of growth slumber in her parent's nursing chamber. No, he is not alone. He is not the last dragon.
She might have to be, in centuries time, when he grows as old and feeble as a human. But he is not the last dragon, and he will keep her from knowing the pain of loss for as long as possible. “There is a hatch—a baby dragon.”
The human nods, looking thoughtful. “We are a small village, you know. We only exist because of the grace of your kind, allowing us to repell the invades. But just because we are small does not mean that we do not know of small things. Are dragon babies loud, hungry things that make a lot of mess?”
He stares at her. “How—”
“Most babies are,” she smiles, and indicates the sheep. “Great Dragon, we are forever in your debt. You saved humanity from the Demon King, and you guard him still. Our village will see to it that our sheep are sent to you. You, in turn, must use the time you would normally use to hunt to sleep and see to the baby.”
“I would need one about every two days, and,” Morva falters. “This state could last for years.”
“Do not worry. We will see to it, somehow. If we are very diligent,” the human leans forward human curiosity and mischief alight in her eyes, “may we meet this new dragon, eventually?”
He is doubtful. The heady excitement of a human's fast paced, inquisitive life pulls at him, and to expose Myrrh to humanity when she is so young will only lead the human part of her to sorrow, while the demonic body that is her birthright will live on for far too long. But, at the same time, when he was young and the world was new and brilliant in his eyes—her immortality is no more significant than this woman's mortality to the vast universe that continued on for both of them.
“When she is old enough to change, honored granddaughter of my friend, we shall see.”
He changes, to bring the offerings to the deep woods and the lair. The human waves as he flies away. Why are they always so like that?
With time, he washes himself. He washes Myrrh. She hates being dunked into streams willy-nilly but it is important that she is not an animal. He begins to teach her the old games. The running water will keep her safe from revenants, when he hunts the monsters in the dark tangled shadows. The baels will cower from even her weak puffs of flame.
She teaches him that the dawn light will make a dew covered dragonette sparkle as she cavorts through clearings and mysterious trails. She teaches him that young dragons do not, in fact, need to be saved from their own test flights. She teaches him that he needs to transform more often in front of her, so she can imitate the action, and learn that human forms do not, in fact have tails and can, indeed, balance with out them. Even when she figures out tails, she can't seem to retract her wings. Or maybe she is too proud of them. There are several months when she just can't get the hang of kneecaps. He's fairly certain it's kneecaps that are tripping her up. Human knees are such a bother.
Also, she has a tendency to ruin her human clothes. He has stopped being embarrassed by asking for new dresses. He even hesitantly follows his new guide to humanity into the village one night. He hadn't really thought of the time, or weak human eyes, the night time just seemed more convenient as he recalled that humans had to be busy during the day in order to feed themselves. He is reminded that no matter how many turnings of the world he lives through, he will never know everything, because shocked elder humans in night dress would not have been his first choice in barganing partners, if he had known that would be the result of the nighttime visit. But he has a dress worn by a beloved and dearly missed daughter in his possession, and it's bright red, which he likes, as it matches his personal taste in colors, but is so much brighter and alive.
He thanks the granddaughter of his friend with a bow at the village gate that leaves her stuttering that dragons should not bow to her. He smiles as he glides away. She does not yet see the white strands in her hair, but he does, and that much warrants respect. He needs to make sure Myrrh is presentable before this human dies.
Miracle of miracles, Myrrh likes her latest dress so much that it only loses one sleeve to a grasping tree branch, and causes her to run back to him, crying over the tattered lost. He gives her a honeycomb, and makes her leave the dress with him when she transforms. With nervous fingers of someone who has not ever had to consider the beauty of a garment when repairing it before, he gets his sewing kit and takes off the second sleeve. He will have to go to the village again to get more red thread.
That evening, Myrrh proudly displays his work. He takes her through the woods, impressed by the way she ducks and avoids brambles. With the sun sinking low on the horizon, they reach a high cliff and look down. “That is Caer Pelyn,” Morva tells his daughter, as she stares down.
“Car Pellin,” her wings flap experimentally.
“No. We will go there tomorrow,” Morva says, censorious, scooping her up before she can try to jump off the cliff.
Myrrh seems to find the name of the village interesting on her human tongue. “Caer Pallen,” she murmurs into his robe. “Caer. Caer. Lair. Home? Da home?”
“No,” Morva hoisted her a little higher on his hip. “But it is a place I treasure as much as your lair, and I will protect, as though it is your home.”
“Home,” Myrrh agreed.
