Dragon Mama - Growling Tears
Alright so, this is a first-timer for me. Haven't wrote in forever, this took a million years to finish (for real, 3 months, not just this tale but the next 3 portions i'm posting in different posts) and i'm not a native english speaker. Do please give feedback if you read, or don't if you're like me and rarely ever posts feedback.
Growling Tears
It was already deep into the night, dark as it would get. In a secluded room of the castle a faint glow could be seen from outside, there were candles lit inside. There, everything was illuminated by an almost ethereal blueish light, not dark enough to be hard to see but neither light enough to make everything clear, like an artificial twilight.
In that room sat two scholars. A man still in his young years, although long since past his teens. He evaluated ancient, almost-faded scrolls with care and separated them into different piles after carefully reading them, and then picking those up from the piles and reorganizing them again in the scroll shelf behind him. It was an almost mind-numbing work if it wasn't his favorite past-time, deciphering ancient draconic language. In fact in the entire world there was exactly one human capable of understanding it, and it was him. He looked up from the scroll he was reading, gently adjusting his glasses so he could make out the figure in front of him, her carefully shined dark blue scales giving the room's lighting a unique color, her wide wings and sharp, pointed features and savage appearance belied the dragon's true disposition, a scholar at heart and as mellow as it comes. He grinned slightly, it had always been a great pleasure to work at her side, one of the rare few dragons to remember their own ancient script.
And then he frowned slightly, he was not one to show his thoughts in his features so everything was ever so subtle, when he noticed that every scroll she read she carefully added to a single pile. That wasn't good, it was her "work later" pile, generally reserved for hard-to-decipher scrolls. He stared at her face, for a moment content to look at her eyes, naturally they'd be a light sea-blue color, but hers were slightly different, showing almost all colors of the rainbow. Something was amiss, and it was her glasses. Dragons were proud creatures, who were raised to be powerful and brutal like beasts, despite being as if not more intelligent than humans. That means that any physical disability generally meant death at an early age. The scholar in front of him, Hirya her name, was lucky enough to avoid that fate, her rainbow-hued eyes meant an actually troublesome disability, her twilight threshold, the difference of light that made a dragon switch from daysight to nightsight, was damaged, so to see at anything but perfect lighting or perfect darkness she needed a little human invention known as twilight glasses. Glasses that she was missing at the moment. Which meant that she was doing no work at all.
Samuel chuckled slightly, long ago Hirya stopped caring about the image she held in front of her fellow dragons, so she'd sport her glasses even out there in public, but not now. It could only mean one thing, she didn't want him to see her 'weakened' as it was. He turned back to look at his own scrolls, continuing his work for a while.
"Don't you need your glasses, Hirya?" he said with a gentle voice, not looking up. They'd often speak without doing so.
"Hardly, Samuel" she answered politely, he could feel a tinge of fear in her words "Light is akin to a full moon night, enough for me"
"That's a pity" he said grinning "You look so cute in glasses" she didn't show any reaction
It had been a week already, and she'd wear her glasses every day now. Which meant that work was flowing quickly, in fact far more quickly than before. While Samuel was pretty apt at reading draconic script, nobody could beat Hirya in that, she could pour through scroll as faster than a trained human would go through human script, although Samuel started noticing she suddenly started slowing down the rate at which she devoured scrolls. And her wings, she had them stretched just a bit more than normal, her tail staying still. A dragon's face wasn't as expressive as a human's, but that only meant their emotions showed through the rest of their body, and right now, he could see she was worried, a lot.
Samuel did not pry, however, when he realized she had been looking at the exact same part of the same scroll for the last hour, he gently picked one of the scrolls on her side of the table to read. Medical lore, dragons sure had it advanced, not nearly as much as humans but still. Whelp care, it was interesting, nowadays out of a nesting of seven or eight, what was normally laid, only one or two would survive as sibiling fought with sibiling for superiority and the parent's favor, but it seems like the ancient dragons cared for their young as deeply as humans do.
So that explained what was having her worried, Samuel knew Hirya was a mother already, and different from most dragons wherein the patriarch raises the whelps, she raised them herself. "Thinking about your kids, Hirya?"
And then Hirya started rumbling a low, somewhat sad growl. Her wings shook lightly, slightly more than the rest of her body, she lowered her head to lay it on the table as the growling became deeper. Dragons didn't have tears to cry, this is what they did instead "Hirya?"
"Why couldn't I have been born in this era?" she just lay still there as she spoke "A few decades later, under the rule of the new Dragon King? Why'd I have to be raised like a cruel beast..." her cry became louder "No... Why did I have to believe I had to raise my own children like that... Why couldn't I be as brave as the new king and change the world, my own way... Why..."
Samuel stood up, going around the table and holding her gently as well as he could, she was somewhere between two or three times his size still "It wasn't your failt, Iry... It's the only truth you knew, your world was cruel back then"
"Voltaro..." Samuel was silent, hearing "He... Eleria, I had brought them all food, I knew it was far more than enough for all seven... But Eleria, she wanted it all. I- I could have interrupted, taught them to share but... 'they have to be strong', I thought..." she felt the comfort of Samuel's soft arms, softness was something she was greatly fond of "Voltaro was hungry, too hungry, had to eat, so he challenged his sister it... Voltaro's breath, he was the first one to develop it. He... When he bit Eleria's neck I just... Couldn't bear looking anymore, I had to look away... When I looked again, the she was... Wasn't... And Voltaro, poor whelp, after that he... didn't even eat the food he had fought for her just went to a corner, and cried, for a day, he did..."
Hirya had her eyes closed, the memories were painful but, sharing them for the first time, it felt easier somehow to remember "Granno, he... He had always been innocent, so innocent. His sibilings, they'd gained their hunter senses so much earlier than he did. It was horrible he... He and Forio were just playing, just... Just playing. None of his sibilings could ever get angry at Granno... And that day they started... Play-fighting. I saw it start... I saw it get dangerous... I saw them get too into it I- I saw when Granno tackled his brother, held his neck and just... Kept going and... It just... Snapped... H-he... He hadn't ever spoken again, since that day. Hadn't opened his mouth since then, for nothing... Weren't for his innate... Innate power, he'd be gone too, of hunger"
"Lumina... M-my only girl. My little whelps they... Why, if I've always lived on my own... Why'd I have to teach them what I've been taught, that a patriarch's to form a harem... My little girl, when... Aros was growing fast... I've been teaching them what I knew, even if I did not believe in it... He did what he would clearly do... He started to impose on her... But I had always been there. My little Lumina... That night, it was the only thing I could see, I don't even know how it happened, these accursed eyes... I all I could see were her pure white, light-giving scales... Tainted red, with Aros's... Aros's..."
Samuel had no idea her children had been raised in the traditional manner, at least not that far. He was holding her like he'd a lover, awkward as it'd be, as she cried on his shoulder. He surely had no idea what her pain was like, but he did know that it must have been horrible, he knew all the kindness in her heart and could in no way picture her letting anything of that happen. Even though curiosity hit him, knowing what happened with the fourth, because she mentioned 'the seven of them' and he knew that only three were alive, wasn't something he wanted to ask. But she would speak regardless "Eratho... T-there was... Eratho he... He..." she couldn't speak any longer, and her cry became the loudest, he looked behind him when he saw something move and saw her staring at her own claws, winced, and muttered in her ear "I don't want to know, Iry... I don't..."
They did no work that day, or night. It took Samuel much exercise of his speech skills to convince her to go home and rest. It was true, he wanted to be there to help her get through the bad memories, but there was only one way to get through them, and he was going to help her that way.
The next day, when Hirya arrived at work in the morning, she was still shaken, but figured the more she buried her snout on scrolls the faster she'd forget everything. And was surprised, Samuel had arrived early, and had a backpack and a saddle ready "S-Samuel?"
He simply grinned "Come on, Hirya. Isn't it about time we go visit your kids?"