To make up for the fact that I don't have much to say today, I present you with a bit of a story that may or may not go anywhere. I began this tale for my senior project and re-imagined it a bit to fit into the "Tarot Stories" series. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this snippet of a dragon story.
Scales hissed across the stone floor. Initaveske strode slowly, deliberately, toward the mouth of her cave, her long, white tail dragging on the ground behind her. Her milky eyes fixed on the oval of sunlight that was the entrance to her little home, despite the fact that she had not seen in hundreds of years. Even by dracenian standards, she was old. Ancient, even.
And this would be her last day.
She reached the tepid warmth of the mountain sunlight and turned instinctively to the right. Just outside the cave entrance perched a small ledge, only large enough for a clutch of three dracenian eggs. All three were as snow-white as the old dracen beside them, each one shuddering at its own pace as the hatchling inside struggled to free itself.
Initaveske pressed her warm, scaly nose to the nearest of the eggs, feeling her offspring’s heartbeat through her nostrils. This one would be strong. Good. Her last clutch would not fail her. She puffed a breath of hot air onto the egg and moved onto the next one, gently rolling it over to feel the heartbeat of this second hatchling. A quick, hard thrumming. Another leader.
She had to crane her neck over the makeshift nest to reach the last of the eggs. Her nose gently turned it over and over, searching for a sign of life. Finally, she felt it: a soft, fluttering heartbeat, irregular and gentle. She snorted in surprise, jerking her head back. The great wings on her back twitched, shedding a few snowy feathers down into the canyon. In all her fifty broods, she had never encountered a hatchling with a heartbeat like that. Irregular hatchlings existed, of course, but her bloodline had never produced anything except the strongest. Those with weaker hearts in the egg generally became a traitor, an exile, a disgrace. Very few managed to remain within the clan.
She could end it now, before it hatched, and save her line the humiliation. Push the egg out of the nest; let it plummet to the canyon floor as so many others had done. It would be the honorable thing to do. But the rhythm had been so fragile, so delicate. In her heart, she knew fragility was not a thing any dracen could possess if he wished to live, but she had grown sentimental in her own age. Delicacy was so rare that it was beautiful.
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