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The Awakening of Dragons

Chapter Three

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by NomexGlove

Julie was not the only one to find them, though they staked patrols, trying to ensure that they caught their friends and family at a reasonable distance, so that they would not transform if they came near. It was not something that should have been entered into without consent, though the dragons also bore in mind that it was not something they could stop others from experiencing if it was truly what they wanted. They didn't know how far the magic stretched, especially when they had thought, before, that it only affected the caverns themselves, though that in itself was their downfall, at least for the first to slip into the magical influence of the caves.

Some distance out from the caves where she flew on patrol, hopefully far enough away, Arya tensed, eyes narrowed, her wings spread with the leathery, green membranes stretched out between the spines. Her antlers had become stronger, though it did not look like she had to shed them like deer, more horn-like in that regard, even though they spoke of a more cervine appearance. She flew her patrol with eagle eyes, scanning the rough landscape for any sign of movement. She'd supposed that anyone would be easy enough to spot though with the bright coats that people seemed to be wearing in fashion those days.

And it was the case.

There…

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Her heart leapt. It was her mother – oh! Trish! Her mother! Oh, she had found her, though she had never thought that she would scale a mountain to look for her! That was pretty much what she had had to do, though her mother had dyed her hair a platinum blonde whereas Arya had left her hair natural.

She didn't even look like her mother anymore. Arya's heart panged, but she could not draw herself up short from a dive, wanting to see her mother too badly, plunging into it all head over heels, losing the sense of herself. She had to be there, had to be with her mother – but she had to keep her away from the caverns too.

“Please! Don't run!"

She called out as she flared her wings, though the woman gasped and dropped to the ground, all the same, buffeted by the air from her passing, the dragoness grunting, scraping, claws raking over rock as she struggled to land. Oh, how she wanted to rush in, to throw herself into her mother's arms, though she was struck by the difference between them, how big she was, how small and frail and delicate her mother was in comparison. Whereas her mother had always been the strong one, she had to hold back, could no longer throw herself at her mother, a frustrated whine breaking her lips even as Arya clamped her jaws down against them.

Trish crawled up to her knees, hands held up, her light hair tugged free of her hood, lips parted.

“Arya? Was… Julie was telling the truth?"

Her mother had never been one for fantasies and daydreaming, though neither had Arya either, truly, being so career focused. So it was that the dragoness gave the biggest sob that a dragon could make, lungs shuddering, her head bowed as her mother clasped her to her chest. Just her face and head, of course, for there was only so much that Arya could do, the size difference between them so great, her mother just about coming up to her chest when Arya was standing tall. Jenson, however, was as large as a cottage, if his head was above the roof, though he would have filled the moderate, imagined cottage with his body too, if that had been the case.

“Mom…" She groaned out, trying not to cry, for the tear ducts of her face didn't know how to handle that. “I… I missed you so much."

She choked out the words, her mother holding her, pulling her scales in close, fingers running over her muzzle again and again, half in comfort and half in wonder. It must have been hard for her to come up against dragons who were as large as buildings, even if small buildings in the grand scheme of the world, their bodies functional with muscle, though their wingspans differed. It was difficult to see such a thing as Arya pressed her head down over her mother's shoulder, her mother wrapping her arms around as much of the dragoness' neck as she could. Even though her fingers could have just about touched on either side of the dragoness' neck, she fumbled too much to do so, stroking Arya's green scales softly.

“There, there… It's going to be okay, Arya… Everything's okay, I'm here now. But what have you gone and gotten yourself into this time?"

Arya gave a strangled sort of laugh, startled into mirth, though she could do nothing else with her mother's smile filling her vision, as blurry and as hazy as it was. The one thing she did have to do, however, was keep her mother from continuing to move nearer to the caverns, thankfully far enough away down in the lee of a rocky overhang for shelter while she darted back to get Brent, someone that could support her. Then more than ever, she needed the support of her sister dragons.

They weren't quick enough, while Arya and Brent were with Trish, to stop another from stumbling into the scope of the cave system, above ground. Alan scouted from the air and tried to mark it out, calculating distances roughly without her usual tools, but missed the man coming through, working his way along the line of trees with gritty, resolute determination.

With dark skin reminiscent of only one of their previous, human, forms, he could only be related to one of them, the spitting image of the man that Jenson had used to be. It may have been some months since he had been in touch with his father, tensions arising between them, but he had still been listed as the only emergency contact that his father could imagine, his son from his first marriage. Though he had been with Anniyah for many, many years, that marriage had ended quickly, in his early twenties, the relationship with his first wife, sadly, not strong enough to last. Whereas their split had been amicable, Darius had not taken it well over the years, the distance growing while his mother had primary custody of him.

The distance could be enough for a young, growing boy who did not see his father as much as his mother, but the relationship had not repaired itself in adulthood either. Jenson had tried, but everything came off as superficial, almost materialistic, for what was he to do other than to try to spend time with his son? But if he tried to take him on a holiday, it came off as trying to buy his affection, even simply taking him out for dinner so that they could sit down and talk, just the two of them. They had always needed to be doing something, so that they did not merely sit there and dwell, and hiking, for a time, had made things a little easier between them.

Darius muttered under his breath, lips pressed together, a line of tension more prominent on one side of his jaw than the other. He shouldn't have come, shouldn't have said anything to that woman, but if he was going to say goodbye to his father, having the location was one way to do it. A necklace, a simple washer with metal stamping on a leather cord, was tucked away in his pocket, his offering to whatever deity had his father in their hold, the afterlife that Darius still believed was possible. It was just the morality of the world that he lived in that he doubted.

He rubbed the back of his neck curiously. Was it rougher there? No… No, that was ridiculous.

He pressed on, straining as dark fell, though he could not pay attention to the flicker of unease in the pit of his stomach. He had his camping gear and his father had prepared him well for sleeping out in the open, the elements not worrying him, at least now that the worst grip of winter was over. The temperature would be chilled, even if it did not drop below freezing, though he had everything prepared, his sleeping bag lined with insulation, the metal foil type crinkly but enough to keep him warm. He'd sleep in his clothes.

Or so he thought, tucked away from the wind in a cave that he found, alone with his thoughts, having eaten a cold dinner without lighting a fire. He was not to know that the sweeping entrance to what looked like a well-trodden cave system was not how the dragons there had originally found everything to be, but how they had made it, tucking himself right down into the edges of where the magic happened.

Darius grunted, slumbering unsoundly, though the changes in his body were not enough for him to wake. He'd always been a deep sleeper, though there was perhaps something in the magic of the transformation too that had him still and silent, even as he pushed, softly, through his sleeping back, his limbs growing larger, stronger, no longer feeling the cold at all.

He wouldn't feel the cold ever again, not as something warm and heated curled and spat in his chest, the fire that had always been there but needed a dragon's body to burst through the fabric of the man he had once been, becoming something more. Only then could the fire of his breath be truly seen, burning up from the inside out, a swathe of heat unlike any other.

It was not what Darius would have chosen, his scales covering him, grunting and groaning even in his exceptionally deep sleep. Alan would give him a little comfort, later, in the use of the magic, how it had surely rendered him softly and gently asleep, all to make sure that the dragon suffered no worry through their transformation. Unlike the others, his scales dipped to pure silver with black stripes running over his back, the points of which curved around his barrel as if they were mimicking his ribcage. Dangerous plate scales like those of a Stegosaurus, from his old picture books as a child, liked his back, jutting up roughly so that his spine was protected, from the back of his head to where they tapered off, lessening in size, down the length of his tail.

His jaw was like that of his father's, chunky and blocky, powerful oozing from him, though it came quietly, as if it was there the whole time, merely residing under the surface. Darius, of course, knew none of that, not even with his ridged horns appearing, his scales noticeably devoid of what the others had gained: the single spine at the back of their heads that denoted that they had borne a clutch.

Deep in slumber, a club-like appendage rounding out from his tail tip, Darius grunted and groaned, twitching as if he was having a nightmare. Though it was not that bad, would not be that bad, not even with all the changes that were to come as he rested there, a newly formed, newly re-born dragon, complete with bat-like wings that were more leathery at the base than the others, the muscle that connected them to his back stronger, more obvious.

The coming of dawn did not wake him, but someone else had business in the caverns that could not be put off any longer than she was willing to.

Alan stumbled to a halt the next morning, rocking back on her hindquarters and practically sitting on her tail. Her jaw dropped in a way that would have been comical if not for the severity of the situation, stuttering and stumbling, the normally studious and well-put-together dragoness suddenly at a loss for words. Cautiously, she stretched her head out, taking in the new dragon, sleeping there in a pile of shredded fabric, telling the tale of what had happened.

“Oh, feathers…"

She didn't like to swear, though it might have been the appropriate time for swearing, another dragon sleeping before her, though the dragon smelled different, a little like Julie, a human smell, but not like Julie at the same time. Probably because she was a dragon, though Alan could not shake that there was something familiar about the dragon's scent too, as if they were known to her.

Alan dithered back and forth for a moment, tail wriggling, but she could not hold off from waking the dragon, as much as she didn't want to bring them to the harsh reality of the waking world, all that their life had become.

“Er… Excuse me." She prodded the dragon with a claw, wincing. “You've got to wake up now… But slowly, please… There's a lot you need to see."

Darius woke moderately, though it was fortunate that they did not yet know how to use their new body, for the lunge of his jaws and the frenzied snap did not connect with Alan, not as she skittered back. The dragoness hopped and cursed in another language (maybe that made it better?) but Darius fought and fought to struggle upright, flashing a maw full of fangs, teeth shining with saliva. Although Alan had never felt scared of any of the other dragons, that felt like it was about to change with the silver dragon who had transformed without even knowing. But maybe their rage was understandable.

“Now – look!" Alan snapped, cracking her tail like a whip for good measure as Darius staggered, half upright but not really doing much of a job of it as they slumped into the rock wall. “You've got to calm down! It's happened to all of us too, no one is hurt, everyone is alive: you are fine. You are a dragon, but you are fine. Can you be calm?"

Darius eyed up the even-sized dragon, Alan struck by how large they were even then. Darius was close to the same size as Alan, even though Alan had had much longer to grow. However, the dragon was still smaller than Alan and, as times progressed, would forever remain smaller than the other dragonesses. The dragoness met Darius' eyes levelly.

“Now… Will you talk?" She prodded, trying to get Darius to do more than hurl themselves about and growl. “Who are you here for? What is your name?"

Darius blinked at her, though he could not help being frenzied, fear roiling through him. What the hell had happened to him while he'd been asleep? Why was his body so different? And what was a literal dragon saying to him about him being a dragon?

It didn't make sense, nothing made sense, a low, pained growl rolling from his lips. Darius clenched his jaw, settling his stance, the club-like tip of his tail swinging back and forth. In terms of self-defence and if he had been a little more present in his mind, Darius would have quite liked that. It was a useful weapon, one that would serve him well, while not weighing his tail down all that much.

“My…" Darius grunted, trying out a voice that rasped more harshly, more guttural than expected. “Ergh… I came to see where my father passed. But he's not dead then, if this was all real… Jenson. His name's Jenson. You know him?"

Alan nodded. She did not see how hard it was for Darius to say his father's name, putting it down to nerves, the dragon's anger and upset at being transformed without any knowledge or consent understandable to her at least. She could not have imagined how she would have felt if she had simply woken up one day and found that she had become a dragon. Out of them as dragonesses, Sandra probably had it the worst, for the fear of her transformation, so many months ago, had been the first out of them all with Brent following a close second behind.

“Yes, they're out hunting at the moment, probably doing some foraging too, they'll be out all day but back tonight. What's your name?"

Darius lifted a foot, testing their balance, grinding his teeth together. It was better than when they had thrashed awake, heaving and panting with lungs that didn't understand how to work themselves efficiently. It was not quite right, not right at all, but focusing on something made the upset of conflicting emotions that they could not quite untangle easier to deal with.

“Darius."

“All right, so, Darius, that's a good name," Alan said, though it was a pretence at a conversation at best. “So, everything's okay, your father will be back soon. You must have been his emergency contact, I guess, if Julie spoke to you… If you calm down, I'll try to show you how to walk like this, at least… Heavens, did you transform while you were asleep."

Darius had to swallow a whine that did not feel at all natural on his lips. His sides quaked and he shook, not knowing how to step, how to walk, even how to move. For him, it was fortunate that he had someone there to show him, now that his initial shock and rather understandable rage had cooled, yet it had left him feeling as lost as he had when he'd been a young boy, his father moving out to live somewhere else.

He could understand, logically, why something had happened even if his mind refused to understand it emotionally.

Maybe, in time, with his father, all would come to light. But it would be some of the most difficult conversations of his life as he sat down with Jenson, the larger, older dragoness folding a wing around him. Conversations that would end up in a blur with shards of clarity within.

There was history there. History that went far, far beyond being startled into becoming a dragon, his chest tightening and heaving with worry, stress, even genuine upset too, though Darius had learned to keep that pressed down, buried deep. Relationships were not that easy to bear for them and the time that he had thought was going to be spent saying goodbye to his father was instead going to be an extended visit.

Darius pulled away from Jenson's wing with distrust in his eyes, jaws locked against the past. No, never again. It was not Jenson's fault, not really, but it was hard to consider the blame of a child when it was laid so bare and so raw against the lines of the past. Some things got locked in too deeply to cut free. Yet there was no closure in death for Darius, only the opening of the discussion, talking to come.

Not immediately, however.

In the end, he sat with his father, quietly, watching the water flow by. No words were needed, not yet, but they would come in time. As it was, they could sit and watch and wait and observe the passage of time, as they had on those little hiking trips they had taken once upon a time, not so long ago.

Times might have changed, but they would have plenty of times, now that Darius was a dragon, to come to a gentler kind of reconciliation with one another.