It was a dark and stormy night... No, not really. It was actually high noon on a bright and sunny day. Chryssta was wandering through the woods, looking for the mythical tiger-fox, a type of kitsune that is all white with black stripes. It was legend to grant three wishes, or an immortal lifetime of love and loyalty.
She never did find the kitsune. She found a sink hole instead; a sink hole that dropped her into an underground cavern about 20-feet below the surface. Fortunately, her fall was broken by a thick bed of moss and ferns.
Sitting up, she looked around at the cave she landed in, her eyes lingering over the beautiful stalactites and the stalagmites. The cavern gave off a soothing bluish green glow, which lit everything up and allowed her to see the rounded objects covering the floor.
"They are the last of our kind." A deep, gruff, yet gentle voice said softly from behind her. Jumping up and spinning around, she sought out the owner of the voice, but couldn't find him right off. "We have lived for thousands of years below the surface of the earth. We have been dying for almost as long." A small draconic creature with a snake body and a pair of wings that functioned as arms slithered out from the shadows. He was old and withered, clearly on the verge of dying himself. "Please, take them to a better home; a home where they will thrive and prosper."
Chryssta scanned the room again. There were many eggs there, hundreds of them. "I can't handle this many by myself."
Flapping weakly, the old dracon fluttered up to a small plateau where he could look at her a little closer. "At one time, our kind was well integrated with your kind in the world. We were kept as pets, familiars, and friends. Then man grew distant from us, and began to fear our kind and our ways. They began to hunt us for food. They would steal our eggs and wait for them to hatch, expecting them to be the same as the other. None of us is the same. We have similarities, but no two of us are alike in more than a few ways. Any few of us may look exactly alike in body structure, but none of us is alike in attitude or colorization."
Chryssta felt sorry for the draconic creature, but wasn't sure what to say. "If man hunted you, why do you want me to take the eggs now?"
The old dracon saw her point even as she made it, but he merely shrugged weakly in reply. "We have been in hiding since the early days of the Egyptian empires. By our counts, that was nearly two thousand years ago. In that time, the elders have heard great rumblings and even ventured out to see the world changing before their eyes. But none have trusted man again. We vowed the day that one of the surface dwellers dropped from the world above into our cavern, that it would be time to venture out into the world and become a part of it once again."
Ever the active imagination, Chryssta could easily picture the history the old dracon laid out before her. Though despite that, she couldn't think of anything better to say than what she did. "And you want me to take care of all these eggs??? I'm just one person. I live alone. I don't even have a cat. How can I take care of these eggs by myself??"
The old dracon smiled the soft smile of a creature who knows his time is almost over. "Give them good homes. Send them into the world to live with people that will love them. Each is unique. Some might look the same, but none are the same."
Chryssta bends over and picks up one of the brightly colored eggs. "All of these will hatch into a creature that is different from the other? I'm going to need help with this." Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew her cell phone and called her two best friends: Byter and Samt03. Telling them to meet her in the 'haunted forest', she left the old dracon for the moment and took a hidden path back to the surface.
It took a bit of convincing to get her friends to follow her into the cavern; she was a known trickster after all. They knew this was no trick when the hundreds of eggs caught the reflecting light just right, and created the most beautiful array of colors ever seen by the human eye. As a team, the three of them carted the eggs out of the hole and to the bed of Chryssta's pickup, securing them in tightly so they wouldn't break en-route to her house in 3 Barton Town 001471.
It took about four trips to remove all the eggs. When they returned to the cave just after dusk to retrieve the old dracon, who insisted to be left for last, they found him gazing into a sheer blue stone rock face. "I was born in the dark. You have shown me the light I never got to see until today. For this, I thank you, and pass along the knowledge of our ancestors. My kind is what you would call "genderless". Behind this wall, you will find the equipment of the ancient ones, used for the reproduction methods to help our kind continue in this world. It has been unused for about twenty years, as that is how long ago the last of the elders to die, leaving me alone with all the un-hatched young."
"So, behind this wall, is the stuff that will let these creatures have baby eggs?" Byter asked, speaking to the dracon for the first time.
"Yes. You should take this equipment and use it when two fully grown eggs request young. All you need from either parent is a blood sample; the machine will handle the rest." The old dracon coughed a few times, barely regaining his breath, while the three friends watched unable to help him. "It is my time to fly to the heavens beyond this world. I have told you what I know. Please, find good homes for them. Help them to grow." The dracon wheezed a few times, and then lay down, unable to regain his breath.
He died right then, smiling at the knowledge that his kind will live on. From the surface of the plateau, small green, blue, and yellow lights appeared, surrounding the dead dracon’s body. With a small starburst of color, the dots of light swirled around, touching everything in the cavern, a warm sensation that stays with everything. Despite the somber mood, the three friends couldn’t help but feel somewhat happy. It was a bittersweet feeling, but one that lingered.
"Hey, how do we get the equipment stuff out of the wall?" Byter asked, spoiling the somber mood that had settled over the cavern. All three of them looked at the solid rock wall that hid the breeding equipment from sight.
~*~*~*~*~
A day or so later, Chryssta asked Byter to watch the eggs while she went back to the cavern to look at the wall hiding the breeding equipment. “This wall must be about three feet thick… I wonder how I’ll get to the other side…” While she pondered the situation, her foot bumped against something that wobbled away from the plateau the old dracon died upon. “What’s this? An egg…? I thought we got all the eggs…” Even as she held the egg in her hands, it started to wobble back and forth, a crack appearing down one side. The egg she had never seen before was hatching before her. Putting it down on the natural table before her, she watched the egg shatter to reveal an odd looking creature with wings wrapped around it, and an odd four-tipped-tail appendage coming from behind it. “What is that?” She demanded, pointing at the creature. It had the same colorization as the old dracon who died in the very place where the egg hatched, except that this creature was a few shades lighter.
The thing was wobbling around, using the odd tail to move, and the wings to balance itself, but not even then could it move very far. Picking up the thing, Chryssta could feel the connection that she made with it, and she could feel it probing weakly at the edges of her thoughts.
This must be the fabled connection that is mentioned in fantasy novels. She thought, watching the winged thing with the odd tail. It seemed to want to snuggle as close to her as possible. It didn’t have eyes of any kind, nor did it have ears that she could see, but she knew it sensed what was happening around it.
While keeping the creature close, and speaking softly to it, Chryssta examines the wall holding the oddly advanced arcane technology. She must have been closer than she thought when the critter in her arms touched it with a single wingtip, causing the wall to turn transparent.
Stepping back in surprise, Chryssta looked down at the critter in her arms, wonder clear on her face. This little critter could open the wall that held the breeding equipment. “Amazing… Wait, this means that the adults can breed with whom they wish now.” She was looking over the equipment, trying to figure out how to work it all. Maybe if the old Dracon were still alive, then he could tell her how to run the system and make more of his kind.
Pulling out her cell with one hand, she calls Byter and tells him the good news.
“Tell me more about the connection with the critter?” Byter asked from the other end of the phone. From the tone of his voice, she could tell that he was rather freaked by the idea of one of the critters reading his thoughts. “Is it painful?”
“No, not at all. Well, there was a small zap when I touched the critter after it’d hatched, but it didn’t hurt in the slightest. It was more tingly then anything else. And the thoughts aren’t intrusive; it’s just like having comforting arms around you. It’s hard to explain.” While she was talking on the phone, she was looking down at the critter in her arms, trying to think up a name to give him. It was while she was searching for a name that one brushed against the edges of her mind.
Dracon. I am Dracon.
To be continued…
