everymeloveseveryyou | (no subject) (Reply)

Calthazar AU | Dragon (1.3k expanded intro)

↳ (based on this adorable post) Balthazar finds a baby dragon abandoned in the woods.

Imagine dragons that can shapeshift from late adolescence (age ~5 - 8 in people years), frequently with distinctive tells such as slit pupils or pointed ears.

Imagine Balthazar, schlepping it home in heavy rain to ye olde remote low fantasy village, stumbling and landing (cutting his hand, thank you very much) on what turns out to be a shattered dragon egg.

There is a newborn dragon nearby to boot (although not so much “born” as “violently hurled into the merciless jaws of life”), frozen and mostly drowned inside a hollow log full of rainwater.

Balthazar doesn’t realize until he gets home with the baby that if it does turn out to be 100% dead, he and his extremely flammable village might take the blame, fair or otherwise, but thankfully the baby revives once Balthazar has a nice fire going.

Unlike his sorry, soppy ass, it hops right in and hunkers down while Balthazar peels off his soaked clothes, trying to get all his parts warm at once. “You lucky little…”

After a few minutes, he even thinks the baby might be laughing at him. It starts mimicking his twisting in place, complete with breathy little huffs of frustration.

“Oh, come on now,” Balthazar grumbles. The baby seems to take pity on him, and huffs a teeny flame at Balthazar. Good intentions aside…

“Ah—fuck—ow ow OW!”

Then it begs for food.

“Hrmm… Maybe I didn’t think this through.” (Just maybe.) He has meat, it’s just…pickled. Preserved. And completely bloodless, of course. He tries feeding the baby little bits of everything he has around the house.

The good news is that dragons can eat just about anything, although Balthazar will have to provide raw meat and suchlike. For something so small that it can just loop itself around Balthazar’s neck, the baby has a voracious appetite and a clear preference for anything creamy or anything sweet.

Worse, it’s nosy and fast. If the baby wants to wind itself up Balthazar’s leg, around his shoulders, and go spiraling down his arm again for a mouthful of porridge, there’s not a damn thing Balthazar can do about it (except lock up his sugar bowl; that was an adventure).

After such feats of speed, though, it seems to just…collapse. Like a housecat, the baby seems to alternate bursts of high energy with much napping. Concerned for its health, Balthazar carefully drapes it over a poker and deposits it back in the fireplace for the night.

The rain doesn’t let up even a little until the next day, when Balthazar hurries to his neighbour Anna’s house to tell her all about his find.

“Wow!” She’s incredulous. “I’m leaving. You’re a fucking goner when the per shows up.”

“In this weather?”

“Balthazar.”

“No, listen! Even a dragon doesn’t chill to the bone that quickly! It must’ve been out there for quite some time. It’s probably abandoned, or, or it hatched from an egg that…was lost somehow?”

“‘Lost somehow,’ that gives me such confidence. You need to put it back. You found it in the forest, right? The adults are too big to go sniffing through a forest in the rain. As soon as the sun is out, they’ll be on your ass.” Anna sighs. “Even if it is abandoned, and you did raise it, it’ll just grow up one day and run off with your silverware, and you know it.”

“How dare you,” Balthazar sniffs. “Cassie would never.”

“You named it? …fine,” Anna sighs. “I’ll cut you a deal. As soon as the weather really clears, you put it back exactly where you found it. For one day. If it’s still there the next morning, you can take it back. …I’ll still say ‘I told you so’ when it robs you, though.”

Balthazar frowns, thinking it over. “…All right, I’ll do it. But first I have a favour to ask.”

He had gone back to the log to find as much of Cass’ egg as he could, and he tells her that the whole thing put together is hardly the usual size of a dragon egg.

“His scales are still soft and all. I’m just not sure Cassie hatched. I think the egg fell from somewhere, breaking his fall but also breaking him out. It must have washed away from its nest in the rain.”

“That seems…unlikely. No dragon with any common sense would nest anywhere near here. Still, your theory’s not unsound. What’s the favour?”

“Well, I mean, even the smallest dragon clutch has at least two eggs. Whether Cass washed away or was abandoned, it also seems unlikely he was alone. Would you…help me look?”

Anna agrees, but… “If you’re right, there’s a premie dragon - or more - that’s been alone out there, through a rainstorm, overnight. It, or they, might…”

“Not be alive, I know.”

They don’t find anything, which, on the one hand, means no other casualties, and they’re not going to argue with that.

On the other hand, it raises several questions. Balthazar’s best guess (only guess, really) from the available evidence is that Cass’ parent was a very young, possibly malnourished dragon that laid one or two undersized eggs and didn’t even have a place to settle and care for them.

Whether it tried to roost and lost the eggs or abandoned them is anyone’s guess. Balthazar supposes they’re about to find out.

As promised, the next day, at dawn, he gathers some food and all the eggshell pieces he found and makes a sort of nest of them inside the hollow log. Cass is too small to climb out of it, but he squats down happily in his shiny domain.

Balthazar sets up a small camp nearby, within earshot but out of sight.

It isn’t long before Cass starts calling for him.

Anna passes Balthazar a few times, looking haggard after hours of listening to Cass crying, then suddenly falling silent. He can only hope Cass just tired himself out.

In the afternoon, she sits with him for a meal, hoping to distract him with his earlier theory.

“Maybe his parent was an outcast?” Anna offers. “I mean, the mountains are full of dragons. For any dragon to just ignore that and lay eggs out here… Doesn’t make sense.”

“What if…” Balthazar wonders, rubbing his face tiredly, “what if that’s why he was abandoned? Maybe the parent thought he’d have a better life accepted by us than rejected by his own? Can other dragons smell an outcast?”

“I get why you’re asking, but…I doubt it,” Anna says, as nicely as she can. “How many humans actually care for dragons out of the goodness of their heart, and not because they want a dragon in their debt?”

“True enough, I suppose…” he sighs.

She comes back in the evening after work, by which time Cass’ intermittent wailing has attracted a small crowd.

Sure, no one really wants to hang around, but a couple people offer to help keep an eye out for predators in the darkness. Anna hauls a blanket into the “camp,” announcing with mock exasperation that fine, she’ll take the night watch so Balthazar can get some sleep.

“Do you think he understands what I’m trying to do? Do you think he’s calling his parents?” Balthazar wonders, rather desperately, before falling asleep.

Cass is still in his nest the next morning, looking small and frail and very, very tired, but he leaps up when Balthazar tries to hug him, already up his arm and wrapped around his neck, clinging.

“I’m so sorry…” Balthazar apologizes profusely, over and over, petting Cass through his clothes. Cass’ voice had given out the day before, but he “meep”s indignantly.

“You’re right,” Balthazar laughs softly, exhausted. “Let’s go home.”