Chapter 3- Crystalia’s Power
"I thought it was." Crimsa chuckles, handing her and Crystalia's towels to her mate before taking to the sky.
Relid adjusts his grip on the towels and takes off, heading after his mate.
He returns home as his mate enters to the kitchen to feed her daughter once again, setting her down on the table and turning towards the fridge to retrieve food.
Suddenly, the edges of Crimsa's vision fill with a shifting, marbled blue and green veil, and she hears a strange feminine voice, "Mommy, I'm hungry." The voice says, her vision returning to normal as the voice fades. She turns quickly but only finds her mate standing in the entry and Crystalia looking strangely at her.
"Relid, I think Cristalia just spoke to me." She says tentatively.
"Impossible." He replies, "She's far too young to speak and I didn't hear anything myself; I got here just a minute or so after you did."
Crimsa blows him off, now certain her hatchling had spoken to her.
"Crystalia, sweetie." She says uncertainly.
The edges of her vision are once again obscured by the shifting, marbled blue and green veil and the sweet feminine voice speaks once again, "Yes, mother."
"Relid, say something to her... now." Crimsa commands.
"She ca..." Relid begins before Crimsa's pointed glare cuts off his words.
"Fine." He relents. "Sweetie, can you hear me?" he says dully, rolling his eyes.
A few seconds pass before he stands bolt upright, his eyes filled with shock and wide with fear.
"So..." Crimsa asks.
Relid nods to his mate, stricken wordless by what he just experienced.
"I told you so." Crimsa replies mockingly.
They feed Crystalia before putting her to bed and conversing quietly about their best course of action.
"What do we do?" Crimsa asks her mate worriedly.
"I really don't think any special measures need to be taken." Relid replies bluntly, not understanding his mate's worry.
"That's not normal." Crimsa whispers back, keeping quiet for Crystalia's sake.
"It's also not unheard of." Relid adds.
After a few more comments being passed between the mates, they decide to simply watch Crystalia closely.
...
The next morning goes like any other has, Crimsa wakes her sleeping mate, they feed Crystalia, and discuss what they plan to do.
"We need more spices." Relid remarks later that morning as his thoughts wonder to that evening's meal.
"Let's go get some then." Crimsa teases lightly.
"You know I hate shopping." Relid replies sourly.
"You're the one who brought it up."
"I was thinking out loud." Relid growls, half to himself.
"Let's just go, I've been itching to get Crystalia some clothes to wear in public." Crimsa bargains.
"Ugh, fine, we can go shopping." Relid relents, wandering in the general direction of their cave entrance.
He waits just outside the cave as his mate dresses, not understanding her obsession with wearing clothes. When Crimsa finally emerges from the cave, her front has on a specially made purple shirt that allows her full motion of her wings, and her hind end has on a white skirt that fits around her tail comfortably while still covering her. She smiles at him before they take flight, Crystalia once again riding on her mother's back.
When they arrive at the small market on the outskirts of a small town, they land gracefully abreast. Crimsa takes a few steps to balance out her extra momentum from carrying Crystalia, but she manages to stick the landing. Crystalia hops off of her mother's back in favor of walking beside her and the two head off to the far side of the market while Relid quickly finds the spices he needs and takes flight to look for Crimsa. It doesn't take long for her purple attire to reveal her location and he drops to about 10 meters above her left-rear flank, grinning. He sits there for about 5 minutes before landing quietly behind them and casually walking around to Crimsa's side.
"Hello!" He exclaims, looking and sounding as much like a crazed psychopath as he can muster.
Crimsa jumps, startled by the sudden sound and movement, but Crystalia doesn't flinch, instead chirping musically as her mother makes a fool of herself.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Crimsa growls at her mate.
"A lot of things." Relid replies cheekily.
Crimsa huffs but continues on, resuming her search for clothes small enough for Crystalia, finding a lot of shirts as well as a couple of skirts similar to her own, but in Crystalia's size, and taking flight, her mate by her side. As they return home with the sun looming directly overhead, they chat, laugh, and play like two hatchlings who've just figured out how to fly, oblivious to their forgetfulness.
They soon find something very amiss as their cave begins to appear over the horizon, and a shadowy figure disappears inside their cave. With one worried look exchanged between them, they both rocket forward, using all of their strength to continue forward before landing quietly just outside the cave's mouth. The mates enter slowly, making as little noise as possible, both readying a stunning spell as they scour the rooms in turn, soon convening at the entrance to the kitchen. They enter simultaneously, both covering the other's back. Crimsa gasps upon entry, as she sees a familiar figure collapsed on the kitchen table, sound asleep...
"Crystalia?" She exclaims exasperatedly, only now remembering that she hadn't picked up her hatchling at the market, leaving her daughter behind as she took flight.
Though the sight before her said otherwise, her hatchling was still back at the market. She almost faints but keeps hold long enough to splash herself with a glass of cold water, snapping her out of her panicked state.
Her peripheral vision is suddenly overtaken by a familiar shifting mass of color as a voice reaches her mind, "What took you so long?"
"Wh... Bu... How did you get back here?" Crimsa stutters, struggling to think clearly.
Her vision once again becomes obscured as her question is answered, "I wanted to, then I was."
Crimsa makes a quick mental note of this before turning to check on her mate, who, she now notices, had been worryingly quiet since they entered the kitchen; when she does so, she finds her mate unconscious on the floor. She runs over to him, a thousand things running through her head, though only one stuck: a restoring spell. She tries to remember the somatic gestures but finds herself too distraught to form clear thoughts, instead, each thought blurs into the next, creating a jumbled string of would-be ideas.
After what, to Crimsa, seems like an eternity, another being comes to her rescue, as a barely perceptible aura appears around her mate and he begins to stir. Turning back around, Crimsa sees the last thing any mother would expect, her hatchling was masterfully casting a relatively difficult spell with ease, her eyes and paw glowing with an unnaturally powerful arcane aura; as she completes the spell, the arcane glow vanishes.
"I got it." Crystalia tells her mother mentally, "He's okay, but I suggest you get over to him so he thinks you cast the spell."
Crimsa nods wordlessly and walks over to her mate, helping him up as he begins to regain motor control.
"What happened?" Crimsa asks worriedly.
"The spell backfired." Relid replies, "I stopped concentrating for one second and, bang, the spell backfires and knocks me clean out."
"Well, it was Crystalia that we saw enter the cave." Crimsa replies, helping her mate to their bed".
"How?" Relid asks, not knowing a better place to start.
"It's a long, probably complex story, that not even she knows all of." Crimsa says, hoping her mate understands.
"Fine, tell me what you know in the morning." Relid tells her blandly, wanting to get to sleep after what had just occurred.
Crimsa nods in both reply and in agreement as she lets her mate get comfortable; looking for Crystalia and finding, to her surprise, that she has already made herself comfortable in her nest. Crimsa covers her hatchling before climbing in bed herself and drifting off to sleep.
The next twelve years go without incident, Crystalia's powers lay silent, and her parents eventually become accustomed to speaking telepathically with their daughter. They decide quickly that Crystalia wouldn't need a preparatory schooling and keep her at home, allowing her to learn through her own experience.
As the sun rises the next morning, Crimsa wakes her mate, as always. Just like usual, he leaves to hunt for their morning meal. But, as Crystalia's eyes flutter open, the world seems to stop, she wanders around, noticing a lack of outside sound and movement; she taps her mother experimentally with her paw. As she does, a jolt of energy flow through her as time resumes. She attempts to look around, trying to figure out what happened to her, but soon realizes that she is not in control of her body; her vision begins to angle downwards as she quickly finds that she is watching through her mother's eyes. A tingle runs down Crystalia's spine as her vision fades from the edges and, as blackness fills her vision completely, she awakes with a start, finding herself still in her small nest. Soon feeling the comforting sensation of a claw running lightly up her spine and hearing the sound of her mother cooing her usual, "Morning sweetie."
"Morning mom." she replies, purring as her mother continues sliding a claw along her spine.
Crystalia hops off of her comfortable bed and stretches, yawning as she finishes; her mother then leads her over to the small chest of clothes she had recently bought. Crimsa traces a set of arcane sigils carved into the cave wall and, with an arcane flash, a wall appears in the entrance of the cave, blocking sight from the outside but still allowing the inhabitants to see out. Opening the chest, Crimsa pulls out a small dress and shirt and hands them to Crystalia, who puts them on quickly
The two chat mentally for somewhere around an hour before Relid returns, tracing the arcane sigil on the outside wall just as Crimsa had done when she closed it; the wall vanishing with another arcane flash as he drops three freshly killed deer on the floor just inside the entrance. Crimsa fetches one for Crystalia and one for herself while Relid dines on his. Crimsa begins eating hers and, before long Crystalia downs hers like she hadn't eaten in weeks.
"Hey mom, I'm gonna go explore the forest." Crystalia says suddenly after finishing her deer.
"Okay," Crimsa responds, "just be back before dark."
Crystalia nods, wordlessly acknowledging her mother before running to the cave entrance and, to the shock of both her parents, taking flight with ease. Crimsa looks worriedly at her mate.
"What are we going to do with her?"
"What do you mean?" Relid asks, confused by Crimsa's sudden comment.
"I mean with school." Crimsa replies, "She is obviously far more advanced than the majority of dragons her age; she can already teleport at will."
"I don't think we need to do anything special, she still needs to learn the basics of spell casting and she can't control her magic."
"I wish I could say I agree there, but I know better. I still remember when she explained to me how she teleported as, 'I wanted to, then I was'. She has control over a good bit of her magic." Crimsa tells her mate solemnly.
"Even with that, she still could blow a hole in the roof with quite a few spells, so if she can't control her temper for even one second, we could be out a home."
"I agree there, but the kind of low-level magic they teach anymore is going to bore her out of her mind in minutes." Crimsa reasons.
"We can deal with that when it becomes a problem." Relid states firmly.
"Okay, we can try that." Crimsa replies, happy with the agreement they had reached.
Crystalia finds herself next to yet another abandoned campsite with still more trash left out; concentrating once again on the vision of a clear campsite and garbage in a pile near one of the various directional signs that line the area around the perimeter of the forest, she channels arcane energy from around herself before a bright arcane flash quickly tidies up the campsite, sending the garbage to her ever-growing garbage pile near the edge of the forest and scattering the remnants of the fire pit back into the surrounding terrain.
Crystalia watches the spectacle for what seems to be the thousandth time as the sun begins to set and she begins to wonder just how exactly she plans to get home; suddenly realizing she is lost in a massive forest and freaking out slightly. Another realization soon hits her, this one snapping her out of her panicked state: she got home by wanting to be home. She begins to concentrate once more, this time on being home; nothing happens. Crystalia begins to cry from a deep feeling of helplessness; laying down on the ground, she feels as the cold ground begins to warm slightly before icing over with a bright ball of arcane light. Looking around, Crystalia finds the trees, grass, and everything else in a small area to be covered in a thick sheet of ice. As awe fades back into loneliness over the next hour, Crystalia slowly begins to feel nauseous and lays back down on the ice-covered ground; returning to her visualization of home, once again attempting to appear at home by sheer will. This time, she feels her body warming up and the ice below her begins to melt as another arcane flash signals her departure. Crystalia opens her eyes and finds herself home.
"Where have you been?" Crimsa demands, having been worrying about her hatchling for one long hour, pacing to and fro around her cave.
"I've been trying to get home.Crystalia tells her mother mentally.
"I've been so worried sweetie, why didn't you just walk home?"
"I couldn't, I got lost and couldn't fly through the thick tree cover." Crystalia replies.
"Why didn't you teleport home sooner?"
"I tried, I accidentally froze part of the forest before I was able to get home." Crystalia says.
"I guess that is something you couldn't control..." Crimsa sighs, thankful that her hatchling was home.
They settle on the floor next to each other and fall sound asleep cuddled together, as
mother and daughter.