FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

_This story is self-contained and can be read alone. (2,387 Words) _

Terminology: A drake is a male dragon, a drakka is a female dragon, and drakken is the collective term for the species. The human equivalents would be man, woman, and humans. Drak is a gender neutral honorific, the combined equivalent to sir or ma'am.

"Hungry, hungry, hungry..." Jarzyl trotted into the kitchen and hopped up onto the counter top. The hatchling sniffed at various jars of food, looking from something delicious.

Following behind her was another dragon hatchling; her friend, Atlas. While Jarzyl had scales of a warm, friendly orange, Atlas's scales were coloured a deep, dark black. "Did you ask your father if you can have a snack?" he asked, jumping up onto the counter as well.

Jarzyl flicked her neck frill up and down. "Fortune favours the bold," she replied, which was currently her go-to excuse for whenever she ignored rules. Also it was close to dinnertime and her father would tell her to just wait for dinner, but Jarzyl didn't want to wait. She was hungry and wanted something to eat now.

Unfortunately, to the young hatchling's immeasurable disappointment, most of the jars and containers were filled with herbs, dried ingredients, and other things which weren't nice to eat. "What is all this stuff? Essence of chicken? Pickled tomatoes? Dried seaweed? It doesn't even sound like food. Who even likes to eat all that?" she grumbled.

Also on the counter top, Atlas trotted up beside her. "I like to eat seaweed," he commented.

Jarzyl pushed one jar over towards her friend. "Then you can eat this. But me? I want something better. Where's all the candy gone?" She swung open the lid of the household icebox and peered inside. Frost enchantments pricked her scales as she stuck her neck in and looked inside the chilled compartment. "There's got to be something... Oh, cherries! Yay. Do you want one?"

The orange-scaled hatchling grabbed a cherry with her jaws and plucked it off the stem. Transferring the small red fruit to her paw, she offered it to Atlas, but he shook his head. "No thanks, I'm not really hungry."

"Suit yourself." Jarzyl shrugged her wings, then she tossed the cherry in her mouth and bit down. To her shock, instead of a sweet explosion of juicy flavour, there was a horrible crunch and a sour taste filled her mouth. "Bllargh!" Jarzyl instantly spat out the half-chewed fruit onto the counter top. "It crunched! There was something hard in it! Blerrgh."

Atlas inched away, looking slightly repulsed by the minor mess she'd created. "You mean the seed?"

"Cherries have seeds?"

"Obviously. What else would cherry trees grow from?"

"But... but... yuck!" Jarzyl wiped her snout with the back of a paw. "Cherries aren't supposed to have seeds!"

"If you've ever eaten a cherry without a seed, it's because it was removed first."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense." Jarzyl stared at the half-chewed cherry, feeling betrayed. This cherry wasn't sweet at all--it was sour--and the unpleasant shock of biting into the seed had totally ruined the experience. She used her tail to sweep the half-chewed cherry off the counter top, and out of the kitchen window.

"That is littering. It is against the law, meaning that you are now a criminal," Atlas helpfully informed her. Jarzyl ignored her friend.

"What else, what else?" Pushing the lid of the icebox closed again, she kept searching and discovered a large bag of fried potato chips hidden behind some of the jars. "Oh, ho, ho! Yes! Here we go!"

Jarzyl dragged the bag out and put it down on the counter. She bit down on the top, trying to use her teeth to break open the air-filled bag, to no avail. "Nrrah. Come on, now! Who designs these things?"

"Need help?" Atlas asked.

"No, no! I got it." Jarzyl put down the bag of chips and tried a different approach. Extending her claws, she swung her forepaw and swiped the packaging--except that once her claws contacted the bag, they retracted back into her paws and left the bag completely unaffected.

Staring down at her forepaw, Jarzyl clenched her paw and tried again to extend her claws. They slid out as expected, but they didn't lock into the extended position like they were supposed to. She could feel the muscles in her digits straining, but her claws instantly retracted the moment she relaxed the muscles.

"Something wrong with your paw?" Atlas asked.

"No, it's just... sometimes my claws don't work. I don't know why." Jarzyl shook her paw and tried once again, but her claws refused to lock in position. She could physically strain her muscles to keep her claws extended, but that was very tiring and made her paw tremble. "See? They don't lock. I have to keep pushing otherwise they go back in. It's been happening for a few months now."

Sitting back on his haunches, Atlas raised his forepaw to compare--his claws slid out of his paw smoothly, and it clearly took him no effort to keep them fully extended. "That doesn't look normal. Maybe you should ask your mother about it," he suggested. Jarzyl's mother was a healer who worked in the city's medical centre.

"No, it's not anything serious." Jarzyl had never bothered to mention this to her parents, and now it seemed odd to bring it up out of nowhere, given that she'd been living with the issue for months. She made a couple of batting swipes at the bag of chips, but her claws kept retracting and she couldn't inflict any damage. "Hmf," she grunted, annoyed.

The hatchling decided to change tactics. Pushing the bag flat down on the table, she reared up on her hindlegs and slammed both forelegs down on the air-filled bag. It compressed slightly under her weight, but still remained resolutely sealed.

Atlas raised his paw, showing off his fully extended claws. "You want help with that?"

"No, I can handle it," Jarzyl insisted. She repeatedly tried rearing up on her hindlegs and slamming down with her forepaws, but this seemed to have no effect on the bag. She and Atlas still weren't very big--even at age eight, both hatchlings had only just begun to hit the fledgling growth spurt. Jarzyl was just barely larger than Atlas, but both of them were merely a fifth the size of a fully grown dragon.

"I will not be defeated by a stupid bag." Opting to change tactics again, Jarzyl turned around and tried to smack her tail down on the bag. She let out a fearsome growl to accompany this attack, but it soundly more like a childish purr. "Grrrh!"

Atlas watched her, silently judging with his big dark eyes. Jarzyl felt her neck frill drooping in embarrassment as her friend stared at her.

Losing her patience altogether, the orange-scaled hatchling leapt up onto the bulging bag and repeatedly jumped up and down with all four paws. "Stupid! Open up! Come on, come on!" Despite her best efforts, the bag was unaffected. The potato chips inside could be heard rustling around, but there wasn't even a single crunch--the bag just had too much air for them to take any damage.

"Why? Why can't life be easy? Whyyy...?" Facing utter defeat, Jarzyl flopped down limp onto the potato chips bag. It made for a good pillow. "I'm going to starve to death..." she moaned.

"That seems unlikely," Atlas said. "Here, let me help you with that." He walked over and extended his claws, but Jarzyl shook her head and jumped back to her feet.

"No, no! I can do this! I am capable! Let me try one last thing." Leaning back on her hindlegs, Jarzyl jumped up onto the shelf that ran high over the kitchen counter. With the claws on all four paws not extending properly, she had no grip and almost slipped off the shelf before managing to regain her balance with a flutter of her wings. She continued climbing up the shelves until she was standing on the highest shelf, near the ceiling. Turning around, she gazed down upon her mortal nemesis--the large bag of potato chips, which was mocking her with its brightly coloured logo and inanimate smugness. "Yeah, this'll work."

Atlas sat down next to the bag. "I don't think this will work. Are you actually trying to dive-bomb a bag of chips?"

"Yes! And it _will_work! Behold my diving assault!"

"Isn't it _much_easier if I just use my claws?" Atlas pointed out, which was true, but also boring and therefore unacceptable.

"Don't be boring. Watch this!" Jarzyl raised her neck frill and let out a fearsome battle cry. "Haaaaaah...!" Then she threw herself off the shelf, aiming so that her fall would conclude with a crash landing directly on the big air-filled bag of chips.

Much to her surprise, it actually worked. Jarzyl's fall was perfectly cushioned, and the force of impact made the bag of chips blow open with a loud bang.

Potato chip shrapnel pelted Atlas, making the hatchling jump backwards in shock. He stumbled off the edge of the kitchen counter, and Jarzyl reacted by leaping towards her friend to try and grab him. She managed to get his tail in her mouth, but instead their combined momentum (and the lack of grip from her claws) meant that they both went tumbling off the counter top.

The two hatchlings crashed onto the tiled kitchen floor, with legs, wings, and tails all tangled up. Jarzyl groaned. "Oh...! Are you...? Are you alright?"

Atlas's eyes were closed. He stayed completely silent and limp for a few seconds, then Jarzyl her him sigh. "Huuuh. You are going to get us both killed one day."

"Well if I do, it'll be while doing something fun." Jarzyl untangled their limbs and hopped back to her feet. She rolled Atlas back upright and pulled him up by his wing. They both smelled like salt and cooking oil now.

Right at that moment, Jarzyl's father came walking into the kitchen. The drake stopped at the doorway and just stared at his daughter and her friend--the two young hatchlings covered in various fragments of potato chips.

Jarzyl blinked at her father. "I... I... Nothing. We were doing nothing," she said, instantly pre-emptively answering the obvious question. "I mean, uh, we were trying to, uh... The bag didn't want to open, so we were forced to use a different tactic."

"We?" Atlas asked.

"We," Jarzyl confirmed.

Her father walked over and used his nose to nudge the potato chip bag, which had now emptied out most of its contents onto the floor, table, and the two hatchlings. "First--you aren't supposed to be snacking so close to dinnertime. Second--you've now created a mess on the floor. Third--you see here where it says, 'claw here to open'? Wouldn't that have been far, _far_easier than somehow exploding the bag open?"

Jarzyl felt Atlas nudge her side. "Maybe you should tell him about your claws not working," he whispered.

"My claws do work. Mostly. Sometimes," Jarzyl whispered back. She didn't want to tell her father that something might be wrong with her paws, but then again this was probably a good way to get him to overlook the mess they'd created on the kitchen floor.

"What was that you said?" asked her father.

Jarzyl clenched her paws, feeling her claws extend out but then instantly retract when she relaxed her muscles. It was a nervous habit she'd picked up lately. "Uh... I can't. My claws don't work. See?" She raised her paw to try and demonstrate. This time only one of her claws locked in position, while the others all snapped back into a retracted position. "I have to keep trying to keep the claws extended, otherwise they slide back in."

Her father walked over and took her paw in his--no matter how many times friends and family members remarked about how big she was getting, Jarzyl still felt small when compared with actual adult drakken. "I've heard of that sort of thing happening before. When did it start?" asked her father. His movements were gentle but firm as he held Jarzyl's paw.

"Uh, last year?" Jarzyl replied.

Her father's neck frill perked up. "Last year?! And you didn't tell us before?"

"It didn't seem serious. It used to be a sometimes thing, but now it happens more often."

"Does it hurt?"

"No. It's not a big deal. It doesn't really affect me most of the time," Jarzyl said.

Her father nodded, and he released Jarzyl's paw. "Alright, we'll ask your mother about it when she gets back from work. In the meantime, you need to clean up this mess."

Left with little choice, Jarzyl started using her tail to sweep all the spilled potato chips together into a pile. Looking resigned, Atlas went to help her.

Jarzyl could feel the muscles in her paw trembling and twitching, acting without her command. In another scenario this loss of control might have been terrifying, but she never felt safer then when surrounded by her parents. Sparks of magic were flashing across her scales as her mother channelled her healing affinity, probing the inner workings of Jarzyl's paw. Atlas had gone home a few hours ago, but now Jarzyl's mother had returned home and was now checking to see what was wrong with Jarzyl's claws. Her father was sitting on her other side, watching closely.

"So this is why you finally stopped scratching up your bedsheets," muttered Jarzyl's father.

"No! Well, maybe..." Jarzyl replied. Running her claws through her bedsheets was a bad habit she'd had since young. She was supposed to only use a special mat which was designed for dragons to sharpen their claws, but her bedsheets were softer and it just felt nice to feel the cloth against her paws. Of course, this was a rather destructive (and therefore expensive) bad habit, which had been serendipitously ended because her claws had stopped working properly.

"One problem replaces another. Claw locking failure is actually a reasonably common occurrence amongst hatchlings just entering the pre-fledging growth spurt," explained her mother. Her paw was clutching Jarzyl's, as she used her magic to probe her daughter's paw. "There's a particular set of muscles which need to contract precisely to lock your claws in the extended position, and they are the most sensitive to an electrolyte deficiency."

"Is that serious?" asked Jarzyl's father.

"At this stage, not yet. But left alone, this sort of atrophy could eventually lead to ingrown claws or difficulty getting enough traction for a takeoff jump, which might affect Jarzyl's flight form when she fledges. Fortunately, the solution is straightforward since the root cause is likely to be inadequate nutrition. Once we get Jarzyl eating properly, her claws should regain normal function."

Jarzyl felt the combined gaze of both her parents. "Uh... what?" asked the hatchling.

"Less sugary or fatty foods, and more proper meat and vegetables," ordered her mother.

"You're now on a diet, so no more fried potato chips. Don't worry, we'll all eat healthy too," her father said.

Jarzyl let out a long sigh. "Huuuuh. But... but after all that trouble, I didn't even get to eat the chips! Why can't life be easy?"

END