Najma could hardly contain himself, bouncing in place as his eyes darted around to land excitedly on the dark walls of the branching cave system that contained his room, and those of all the other younglings. These dark caves and tunnels had been his entire world for so long, but today would end that.
This would be his first time outside the nursery.
He was apparently still far too young for this, though he by no means felt it, so he wouldn't be allowed out for very long, but he would still be able to leave the cramped space for the first time in his life. What would he find out there? Surely it must be something spectacular... the intrigue surrounding the outside world had sunk its claws into him and reeled him all the way into its grasp.
Would it be terribly bright outside? Enough to fry his eyes out? maybe...
The only light that he'd ever known had come from moss that grew on the ground and part way up the walls. It only gave out a faint, green-tinged light, but it was still light nonetheless. He'd never seen anything else, but he'd heard the elders talking of how different it was on the outside, and how much they missed it. Surely if they missed it, then it wouldn't be dangerous enough to fry anyone's eyes out.
He didn't blame them for missing the outside, either. He'd already explored every nook and cranny that he could get away with exploring, and he now missed the outside world before he'd ever even set foot there. He could tell that none of the others his age were as anxious as he was to leave the dark caves. It was all they had known and they were perfectly content with that, but he could feel the outside world on the edge of his mind, pulling him with a constant insistence that he couldn't let himself forget.
He always felt that tug on the back of his mind, telling him that there was a whole world that he hadn't seen yet.
It was part of the great consciousness he'd heard the elders talking about, even though he knew very well that they didn't like him to eavesdrop. He couldn't help it. He'd learned so many things, and hadn't gotten in any real trouble for it. It was because they couldn't keep their thoughts quiet that he knew what he would be when he was grown, and he also knew they were shocked that he did. He was under the impression that everyone should know.
And all of them just might figure it out after the old nurses let him out nearly months before he should be allowed. They would all know and he'd revel in it.
He now sat impatiently, his tail swishing back and forth over the floor, in the middle of a large, circular room with a craggy, domed roof draped in glowing mosses. This was the central hub of the nursery, and every other tunnel and chamber eventually led back to it, if only with a bit of walking.
The tunnels typically went for about ten to twenty feet off of the main room, and then ended in a bubble of space, just large enough for a mother and her young to nest until they were old enough to go out. Sometimes, though, the tunnel would be too small to live in comfortably; these ones were utilized as storage. Others still had been reclaimed by the darkness that had existed before the nursery had moved in. These were supposed to be off limits, and he'd explored every single one...
But Najma didn't allow himself to think about the tunnels for much longer. His heart seemed to vibrate with the tickling sensation that had filled his body at the thought of finally getting outside. An unnatural heat spread through his muzzle, making his teeth ache.
He realized suddenly that he was clenching his jaw tightly. He released the pressure and took an even breath in through his nose.
Then there was the faintest huff of breath from his mother, which was clearly meant to be taken as a release. He took off running, his stubby claws instinctively unsheathing to pierce into the moss in order to give him purchase on the flat stone.
The rapid clicking that resulted from his claws striking the stone beneath the moss gave him a bubbling sense of satisfaction, and he pushed his short legs faster and faster, so quickly now that his limbs seemed to take control away from him.
However, he didn't get very far before a tuft of especially thick moss tripped him, and he went sprawling over to the cave wall.
"Be careful!" He heard the words from his mother through a shroud of embarrassment.
She was back towards the nursery a ways, so she couldn't have seen, at the very least; only heard it. She hadn't been moving as fast, but, had she wanted, she could have overtaken him in a second. The thought made his wings shake out behind him. He didn't like being so small. One day he'd be bigger than all of them, he was sure. The stock was good—exceptional—even... whatever that meant. He'd heard the words murmured in the shadows by the elders.
"I will be!" he called back, pushing himself up. He knew his mother must have sensed the insincerity in the words. She could know his thoughts, after all. At least for now.
That was another thing that frustrated him to no end: he was still too young to communicate silently with the others, even though they could read what he was saying to the silent web so very easily. He wasn't even sure what he was saying. What stayed as a thought in his head where it belonged, and what did they hear?
He paused for a second before he took off running again, and he could barely just make out the whisperings of silent talking going on above his head. They were nothing more than faint breezes of conversation, so he could only understand one or two words among the millions.
When he got older, he would be able to do that, and easily. But as it was, he was stuck talking with clumsy sounds.
He thought back to when his mother explained it to him, only a few nights previous.
The silent talk wasn't actually speaking in any way, at all. It was more of a mutual telepathic field. The big words swam around in his head and he latched onto them, recalling each word almost perfectly. If someone chose to, they could broadcast their thoughts to anyone and everyone, or keep them private and secluded between just themselves and another. With so many conversations going on around the entire planet, his mother warned that he'd he overwhelmed at first. But he'd learn to hone his hearing so that only what he wanted to hear would get through to him.
He could feel the silent, but ever-present hum of everyone on what had to be the entire planet. At times, he thought he could make out a whole sentence at a time, but then it was gone, like the faint breaths of winds that sometimes traveled through the deep tunnels.
He shook his head and began trotting forward again. He couldn't start thinking about stuff like that. That was for when he grew up. He had heard talk that he shouldn't even hear of the telepathy what little he did...
Right now, he just had to get outside. One step at a time, and eventually he'd be able to do anything.
It took longer than he'd expected to reach the entrance of the tunnels, and when he finally did get there, he was out of breath, and his legs hurt. He'd never walked that much in his entire life.
How far is it, really? he mused silently.
He almost regretted not letting his mother help him the rest of the way. She had, after all, offered. But he had done it all himself, a thought that made his chest puff out ever-so-slightly with a tingling pride. Maybe he'd even be able to make it all the way back without her.
The light that streamed into the entrance was bright—so bright, in fact, that he could see nothing beyond the stone archway that stood less than a body-length away from him. The shafts of daylight were a color strikingly like the icy blue of his mother's eyes, though he imagined this color was somewhat rounder.
He didn't want to allow himself to get nervous as he stood there, so without a second thought, he rushed into the outside world.
His eyes stung for a second in the white-washed brightness of everything that he saw. He had never been in any light but that of the moss on the floors of the nursery. It almost hurt his head to keep his eyes open, and he feared for just a second that his eyes really would burn right out of their sockets.
But he refused to give in to the temptation to shy away and retreat into the nursery, and because of that, his eyes adjusted quickly.
And when he finally was able to see, his eyes stretched even wider, until he was sure they would simply go flying from his head.
The sky was huge! It stretched in every direction, so different from the low-hanging stone ceilings of the nursery, that he almost thought it was a dream, or just his imagination. Would he be able to touch it, when he could fly?
There was something like moss growing along the ground in every direction, but it wasn't nearly as soft. It felt strange between his claws. About twenty feet away, however, the strange blade-y moss ended, and huge arrow-y plants of shifting red and black stretched high into the sky. Everything was so different... just as he'd known it would be.
His mother informed him that the moss on the ground was called grass. It was a dusky grey color, while the newer growth near the tops of the sprouting tufts more like a dusky black.
He looked up at the larger plants surrounding the little clearing, then back at her with a question forming on his tongue.
"Trees." His mother rendered useless the question he hadn't asked.
The trees had thick central stems—called trunks—that were the midnight black of his mother's, and his own, scales. They were impossibly tall, and they had thick, leafy branches that rustled softly in a breeze that wasn't close enough to the ground for Najma so feel. The leaves on these trees were red. He tried his very best to store every tiny bit of information and never let it go...
The color of the leaves struck him especially hard.
He had only seen his father twice, but he still remembered clearly the red color of his eyes, like a slash of fire entering into the peaceful little nursery, deep red, but also with a touch of golden orange around the slit-shaped iris. Most of the leaves were this color, but some of them were the far deeper, more evil color of blood.
He shivered when he remembered blood. Another youngling had been playing nearby, but had climbed too high up the cave wall to get down.
Najma had rushed off to find someone bigger to help her down as soon as the cries of help had started, but by the time he'd returned, the young female had fallen. She was lying there, limply, on the ground. A dark stain of that sinister red had spread through the moss beneath her. The shudder that rocketed through him was enough to send him sprawling to his stomach.
The memory was not quite as easy to be rid of as he would like, and the image darkened the back of his mind for a moment before he managed to shake it loose. He would have to get used to darker things, and lighter things, if he was to live as he had been born to.
The blue light slanted through the bloody leaves, casting an almost purple sheen on the forest floor. But the grass didn't grow under the trees. There was just clumpy, moist dirt. Rich, rich brown, carrying its own faint traces of the blood red from all the rotted pieces of the spiky leaves that had fallen.
All of these colors, only previously exposed to him by the rich tones presented in the eyes of the visitors, or the elders, or the new younglings that came to be in the dark recesses of the nursery. These were the things he'd heard in whispers of thought, and in stories of the outside. He was finally here.
Through the grass, he could just make out the faintest imprint of a trail which led off into the trees, getting harder and harder to trace as it faded away through the trunks.
For the first time, he took a real, proper breath in. He'd been so focused on looking at everything at once that he'd very nearly forgotten to breathe. Almost instantly, he smelled so many different things, that he began to get dizzy.
He smelled the rich scent of the forest, which he sometimes caught whiffs of when the breezes blew through the tunnels, but it was much stronger out in the open; by far the most overpowering scent. He smelled a harsh, metal tang, something entirely new to him and clinging like a bur to the edges of the forest-smell. The warm, musky scent of small animals burrowing under the ground. A damp smell that he knew was dirt, but didn't smell anything like the dry, loamy stuff in the nursery. There was another smell underlying these sharper ones. It was warm and familiar, like the smell of home. It was the smell other people; his kin.
Could it be possible that he was smelling the city that he'd overheard bits of conversation about? So many of them, all living in such a small place; like a huge version of the nursery, spread over miles and miles. A city—he tried to imagine the stone buildings, the nests made in the tops of trees...
His nose turned him towards the scent, and his leg lifted to take the first step to get there.
But before he could so much as take that one, hesitant step, his mother's vast paw flashed out to sweep him back into the darkness of the nursery, huddling him away before he could get ahead of himself. His mostly deaf mind missed completely the spark of apprehension alight in her mind, the almost-fear she held in light of the visions that had foretold exactly what seemed to be coming true.