Wistala couldn’t think of many, unless being a nuisance counted as a merit. Mother changed his mood by praising him for siring two males—the skulking copper counted, as he seemed to be surviving on his own somewhere in the cavern. As Wistala understood it, all the males fought after their hatching until one became the champion of the nest. She and her sister were afterthoughts.
Auron finished his gorge and then, hearing the copper at the base of the egg shelf, jumped down to chase him off.
Perhaps Mother read her mind. She brought her head close to Father’s, began to clean him behind his griff, the armored fans that descended from his horn-crest.
“Oh, of course,” Father said. With that he disappeared into the darkness beyond the moss light. When he returned, he had a bulge in the side of his cheek.
“Here you are—”
You can do better than that! Wistala overread Mother think. “—my little treasures,” Father continued, a little lamely. He dropped some things before them that rattled as they fell. “Gems for my gems.”
They glittered enticingly. They were stones of a dozen different colors, cut and polished to catch light and throw it back broken into dozens of pieces. Jizara squealed in delight. Wistala thought them marvelous, and she joined her sister in placing them into colorful spiral patterns.
Father sagged with weariness, his smell no longer sharp and strange but a comforting shield between them and the forbidding shadows of the cavern. She would grant the Gray Vex that much: he plunged into the darkness readily enough, despite his lack of protective scales.
She and Jizara encircled the dazzle their father called gems, lying snout to tail-tip to form an unbroken wall of hatchling between jealous world and hoard. As they nodded off, Mother sang:
Daughter, daughter, shining bright
Precious jewel within mine sight
Oh, if I could soar with thee
As you seek your destiny.
To see with you the caves and skies
Vistas grand beneath your eyes
Taking wing to horizons new
Let us wonder who waits for you.
A dragon bright?
A dragon dark?
Victor of duels with battle mark?
A dragon strong?
A dragon keen?
Singer of honors and triumphs seen?
Red, Gold, Bronze, and Blue
To your lord you shall be true,
Copper, Silver, Black, and White,
Who will win your mating flight?
For in your hearts our future rests
To see our line with hatchlings blessed
And for those who threaten clutch of flame,