He knew that she was scared of what happened to their parents happening to him, but she didn’t need to be so… motherly. He tried not to let it show, but Zairyn was missing their parents a lot more than he ever thought he would. He missed Mom’s scent, the specific feel of the heat of her flames working the forge the family had for metalworking. He missed Da’s callused fingers petting his even rougher scales, the sound of his snores that could wake even the dead. He missed his sister too, most of all. Which he personally thought was strange, since she was the only one he had left. But he missed her anyway. Her smile, her laugh, the time she used to spend with him playing out in the fields.

So her acting like Mom was just another reminder of all those who were gone.

‘Ah, damn,’ he thought, wiping away the moisture he just noticed was accumulating on his face with a clawed paw. ‘I almost made it a whole week without crying.’

In a somewhat pathetic attempt to forget about his tears, he shuffled to the large ironforge. Taking a large breath and holding it in his belly, just like his mother taught him to, he let the air reach scalding temperatures before he lit a spark in his abdomen, letting the boiling air push his fire out of his body and into the forge to light it.

Dragonfire is what made their works so beautiful, letting the metal reach unbelievable temperatures, and the magick from their fire giving the products a strange and glorious finish, unattainable any other way. Once lit, he reached to the towering pile of scrap metal nearby and grabbed a medium-sized piece of bronze. Well, medium for him. This piece would likely be used as a roof for any other Human dwelling.

Zairyn, using both paws, roughly slid the metal into the flames and waited till it glowed a brilliant orange-white. Carefully lifting it out, this time only by his claws, he quickly dragged it to the gravel pit on the other side of the forge. Dropping the metal onto the gravel and hearing it hiss as it rapidly cooled, he worked quickly to use the underside of his tail and hammer out the metal into a long, thin sheet.

Once the metal was too cool to further work, he brought it back to the forge, and repeated the process several times, folding and hammering out the metal until he decided it was enough. Finally throwing it into the fire one more time, he prepared a mold for the metal: a sword blade. Once hot enough he placed the bronze in the mold and used the tips of his tail and claws to carefully but quickly push the metal into the mold.

This sword, once it had a guard and handle, would likely not be used for fighting, but more for decoration. Some rich landowner or arrogant knight who had probably never even been to a real battle would buy it and say that it was a reward for some outrageous deed or a declaration of their wealth. Either way, it would be a beautiful sword; beautiful and useless.

Working the metal must have taken longer than he expected, because when Zairyn looked back towards the entrance of the cave, he saw his sister standing there, a blank look on her face, watching him craft the sword. She had dropped the basket of food she bought at the village that day.

“You looked like Mom,” she whispered finally.

They both let out a quiet breath at this, remembering how their mother would also make metalworks in her dragon form.

“I’m uh, I’m not quite as big as her though y’know,” Zairyn said softly.

“I know, but you have the same colorings. Pretty, pretty amber on scales that glowed like embers. Amber and ember…” Katelynn sniffled a little and walked up to her kid brother, reaching up then to pet his front leg.

“Hmm,” was all Zairyn said. He sniffed too, and moved to grab his sister in both of his paws. He lifted her up to his face and licked her cheeks in an affectionate motion.

“Lynn?” he whispered, as he put her down and curled up around her smaller form.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t leave me too. Please?”

Hearing her brother’s words Lynn sucked in a breath. Grabbing his face, she hugged his snout and finally started crying.

“Never,” she insisted, “I would never leave you Zair.”

“Okay.” Zairyn, seeing his sister’s tears, broke down as well. “Okay.”