Dragonstone

Emerald Empire: Chapter 1

They are coming.

I can feel it in the air. The trembling trees with quaking roots that speak to me. A heavy feeling that lays on my spine, one I have come to trust.

I hunch down, making myself small. As if that were possible. I am veritably enormous, layered in scales and leathery skin. My tail swishes between trees easily as I crawl forward to the clearing. I hear their breathing, heavy and slow with anticipation.

Then they attack.

He leaps down from high branches onto my back and I rear my head back and roar to the sky. She comes up from a hole in the ground covered with leaves, leaping out and latching onto my front left leg. I shake violently and roll over, the two of them crawling on me like ants over their prey.

The first time a dragon laughs in front of a human it is a terrifying thing. These two are used to it.

"Got you!" She says, standing triumphantly on my chest with her arms on her hips. He stands beside her, quiet and more subdued.

"Indeed, tiny human. You have won." I lean my head back to show her my throat, a sign of love and respect in the dragon world. For I very much love these tiny humans. Children, they called them.

"He knew we were there." Boy says to his sister. I chuckle deep in my stomach, Boy was always the clever one. She is the courageous one. Together they are entirely too smart for their own good. Apart, they are easy to defeat. I have learned much in the ten years since I took them as my wards, my own.

She was eight years old, he was ten, when they came to me, brought by villagers who feared my wrath. A dragon making his home in their forest was something they feared, they could never have hoped to find the coin to pay a knight or mercenary to slay me. So I would remain here, in this comfortable home filled with food and water and shelter, all the things an Emerald dragon needs. I am not a greedy dragon like a Ruby, or a warmongering like an Onyx. I am not driven by magic like the Sapphires.

No, an Emerald dragon just wants a forest to call home.

And a home I have.

I roll over and the two of them leap clear, they have become strong these years. Taller. More agile. They have grown into capable young humans.

"How did you know?" Girl asks as we walk to our home. The one they built and the one I sleep near. Comfortable.

"I can hear your heartbeats." I grumble, taking slower, longer strides so they don't have to run to keep up. It makes me a ponderous sort of dragon, like one of the massive diamonds.

"That's cheating!" Boy cries out. I approximate a shrug with my shoulders, something I learned from them.

"That is my natural advantage. You have many of your own. This is not cheating, it is life."

"Another lesson imparted from the very wise dragon of the forest." Girl says. I swipe at her, far too slowly to ever have a chance to hit her. She expected it anyway. I laugh again, and so do they.

We have a good life here.

When I arrived the villagers came to me. They stank of fear and poverty and had brought two children with them. Two children who were stubborn, jaws set even if they didn't fully understand. The villagers fell to their knees and begged. If they offered up these two morsels, would I be sated?

What a disgusting thought. Humans are lean, stringy things. Barely any meat and what meat there is tastes of rot and hate and generally the color yellow. A cooked human tastes worse. Sickening, I would never eat one intentionally.