I woke up early, before the second moon had risen, and looked outside my small porthole window. It looked like it was going to be a bright night out, and I was undoubtedly excited. I loved nights like this, when it was bright and you could see miles on end. I found it fun to go exploring during them.
As excited as I was for the upcoming night, I did not have enough motivation to get out of my hammock. It was soft, made from some sort of wool, and it was noticeably cooler on the floor. I ended up staring at the ceiling for ten, fifteen, maybe thirty minutes. It was a wonderful way to procrastinate.
Finally, I decided that enough was enough, and that I had to get out of bed one night or another if I was going to do anything before the suns rose. Rolling off my hammock and landing on silent feet, I slipped down the stairs and out the back door unnoticed. My family did not like when I went out for the entire night, preferring it when I stayed in my room and studied. They said that it was safer, and if I did not, a dragon was going to come eat me or some sort.
I did not care. And even though they meant it as a threat, I thought it might interest me to see a dragon up close. Or a Bird. Like a Pink Crested Finch. I loved the birds of my planet; we had the fullest skies of any planet in our archipelago. Between our giant insects - dragonflies, butterflies and moths - the bat-like species - mainly bats and dragons - and my favourite, our hundreds of thousands of varieties of beautifully coloured birds clothed in the most extravagant patterns out there. They are the most colourful of skies.
My love of birds had led me to go exploring in the vast jungles outside my parents’ estate. I had been running off during the night for several seasons now, and whenever my family, mainly my parents, asked, I was studying in nature for a change of pace… even though I never brought my books with me.
During my trips I had made a cute and cosy tree-cottage. I built it out of logs that I had cut in half and laid down in the canopy of a strong beech tree, making a sturdy home despite its strange positioning in the air.
It was truly amazing, although it was incredibly difficult to engineer. I spent hours trying to figure out a way to keep it elevated. I really wanted it to be a tree-cottage, not a cottage next to trees.
Nearby to my tree-cottage, maybe a five-minute walk, there was a huge sweetberry patch with a stream running next to it. There I could get some snacks and water for when I was working on various projects. It delighted me to have such a pleasant set up; it was amazing.
Other than that, it was really lonely there all by myself. My current mission was to find something, hopefully a bird of sorts, to make me company. Maybe I could train it too.
Maybe a mountain goer would be fun. I had heard that they were taller than the tallest tree and it could fly me around the planet. Or maybe a little blue song bird who could sing songs and sit on my shoulder as I walked through the trees.
Suddenly, and inconveniently, I realised that I had spaced out during my walk to my tree-cottage. I discovered this small inconvenience in two ways. First, I was nearing the strawberry patch, meaning I had overshot and was off course in the beginning. The second reason that was brought to my attention was by my world flipping over itself, and my falling face first on the mossy ground. I shot up, startled. I looked around to see if I could identify what I had tripped on. At first glance, I saw nothing, but when I stopped looking for a branch and started looking for a rock or a root, I saw a strange-looking rock.
It appeared to be a large, light grey river stone. The only difference was that it looked like black scorch marks dancing around its top and bottom, like it had been sitting in a fire. However, there were no signs of a fire anywhere in the vicinity, and even though the closest water source was a ways off, it was too far for it to be easy to move the large stone.
Both confused and curious, I stepped closer, hoping to figure out how it got there or what it was, as it definitely was not a river stone. I circled it and tried to think of how it could have got there.
It must have arrived during the day, as I had been to my fort not twelve hours ago, meaning whoever left it there must have done so during the blazing hours of day, which I thought unlikely.
I stood there, staring for several minutes, before I decided I would not figure it out soon. I kneeled down next to it and I gently brushed my fingertips across its surface. It was not as smooth as it had looked to be, nor was it perfectly round. Instead, it was slightly textured. The strangest thing, however, was that it was cold to the touch, similar to how I was told snow felt like.
Taking everything into account, the most astonishing thing was most definitely its size. It was a similar size to a large tree stump, and river stones could not get that big. They should break off into hundreds of pieces, not stay large and smooth.
All of a sudden the river stone-like thing quivered. Surprised, I pulled my hand back and almost fell over in shock. I stared at the river stone thing. It had stopped moving, for now. I ran through the list of things I knew about it to see if I could figure out what it was.
One; it was big. Two; it was egg-ish. Three; it was cold. Really cold.
I sat glaring at it for a moment, before deciding that the best course of action would be to take it back with me to my cottage. This way it would be safe from harm, and I could watch it.
Slowly creeping towards it, I went to gently pick it up, wincing as the cold bit my hand.
It was a curious thing that river stone was. I remember it feeling colder once I picked it up, like the stone knew that someone was going to move it from its resting place. It was only good fortune that it was near to my cottage. If it was any farther than that, I would have been worried about frost-bite.
I had speed-walked the remaining five minutes back to my beech tree, and quickly climbed the branches to the first landing. When I was there, I decided it would be best to leave the rock there for the time being and address my freezing arms. I climbed up the rope ladder to the second story, the one with the house on it, and walked inside. I took a deep breath.
In my cottage I had comfy cushions scattered everywhere, and some had some of the softest blankets that I knew to exist draped over them. Messily. It was not a very tidy area.
I grabbed a few blankets for myself and a few books. The blanket I had was my magenta one, it was my favourite. The books I liked more, though. One was about rocks, and the other about the flying species that dwelled in every corner. There had been stories the previous year about kids finding bird eggs on the ground, and I was crossing my fingers that the rock was an egg, not a rock.
I climbed back down the ladder and set the books down next to the rock. I wrapped the magenta blanket around my shoulders and almost sat down too, before remembering my tea.
I sighed and climbed back up the shaky rope ladder to find my teapot. When I did, and it did not take long, I filled it with water, and started the little fireplace to boil it. It was my tradition to make tea when I got into my house, and I had started it when I had finished building it. It was a sign of it being my home, not just a random building out in the jungle. I grabbed a random tea bag, a sugar cube, and my ceramic cup. The water was almost at a boil, and I poured it then instead of waiting for it to come to a boil.
I had finished with the tea, and scanned the room to see if there was anything else I needed. I decided I had everything and went back to the landing to sit with the egg.
I set the tea next to the curio; I was curious if it would cool the tea down at all. If so, it would be nice to have some iced tea.
Once I had settled on the wooden planks, I turned back to the rock. It shocked me to see cracks running down one side. I sat quietly, watching to see if it was moving at all.
It was acting similar to a nest of Yellow Puffs that had hatched in the birch tree next door to me. The birds had lined the nest up with my window perfectly, allowing me to observe them closely all throughout the beginning of their life right until they moved out. It had been the highlight of my winter.
It was like the river stone thing was an egg, not a rock. I pulled the book on the planet’s more common species out from under the one about rocks. I hoped to see that someone had featured the egg in it. Before I started reading, I grabbed my tea from next to it. It was cold. Iced tea it was. I took a sip of the chilled drink and flipped through the book, trying to match the physical egg to an illustrated one in the book.
Eventually I got to the end of the book, and I had found nothing.
By this point, it was clear that I was going to need to wait for it to hatch, then find a book particular to birds or bat species. Hopefully not a bug though, it would be a scary one if it was. Although, if it turned out to be a bug, I could definitely get a good scare out of mother. She hated creepy crawlies.
After a while of waiting, the egg had several more cracks running up and down its sides. I sat there a while more, just waiting. I ended up seeing a bird fly by; it looked like one of the Yellow Puffs that had lived next door.
I went to sit on the edge of the landing, dangling my feet above the ground. It had never crossed my mind of what would happen if I fell, though if I did, it would be quite the fall. Six meters was not a fun height to fall from.
Out of the blue, an ugly cracking sound shattered my quiet train of thought. I slowly looked behind me to see a sparkly white-ish blue dragon inspecting me.
Its scales were almost white, but had just the faintest dusting of blue on them. Long and twisting horns sprouted from just above petite ears. It had large, oversized wings that were splayed awkwardly in a pile around it. The wings were beautiful. Its arms were the same white dusted blue that its body was, but the webbing was a royal azure blue that matched its eyes. Oh, its eyes. It had stunning black eyes with royal azure blue irises that narrowed in on me as I scrutinised the beast.
It shook its head in my direction, as if rolling its eyes, then turned to survey its surroundings. Well, it tried. While turning, it tried to fold its wings, but failed miserably and fell over itself.
I could not believe that this was happening to me.
While watching the dragon look around, I tried to think of some names for it. It was a frost dragon, so I thought that something to do with the cold would be good. Frostbite or Winter or Chilly, maybe Frost, Arctic or Icicle. They were all suitable names. I decided I should get to know it before I decided anything for sure.
If I could even keep it. Most dislike dragons, but hopefully I could convince people to let me keep it. Then again, I did not plan on bringing it home. Ever.
The dragon turned back and looked at me. It blinked. Then yawned and curled up in a disaster of wings and legs and arms.
~A Few Months Later~
“Summer.” I shouted. She looked up, unamused by my volume.
“What.” Her voice was sharp and clear, high pitched and smooth. She was enchanting to listen to.
“I found you in a book.”
“What do you mean?” In comparison, my voice was quiet and soft, undemanding and timid. Maybe that is why I enjoy listening to her. She was totally different.
“Really now.” She was being satire now.
“Yeah, come look.”
I showed her the book I was holding. It read;
Blue Glazed Winter
The Blue Glazed Winter is a frost dragon that lives in high mountain areas, normally cold areas. Similar to the classic dragon model, it breathes a fiery like smoke. Unlike the classic dragon model, however, this smoke has microscopic ice particles and is deathly cold. Upon landing on objects, or people, the ice particles grow exponentially.
When bonded, these dragons will become warmer towards their bond, and will do anything to keep them safe.
These dragons are incredibly rare, and we know little else about them.
I smiled. If Summer was a bird, I would have known all this off the top of my head. I had little interest in dragons until recently, though. Before Summer hatched, I knew everything there was to know about the birds. I had read and memorised every page in that section. But I had never looked at the dragon section. I thought it was uninteresting and a waste of my time.
Now though, I had spent months trying to find an entry that talked about a dragon, anything like Summer. I had read more about dragons in the past few months than I had read about birds, which is saying something.
I looked over at Summer. She disliked reading and was not very good at it because of the little time she put into it. She preferred hunting and flying around, and so while I was at my family’s estate library looking for books on dragons, she was munching on buggy snacks and looking for little treasures to give me when I came to see her.
As long as nobody found out that I had a dragon, Summer and I were going to have a fun time together.
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