Katrina: Dragon Princess
Chapter 1: Time Of The Dragon
"Katrina, come get the nest ready for Jaquelene," her nest mother said, "her eggs are getting ready to hatch."
Katrina got up from her silken bed and brushed off her cashmere gown. Her hair, as golden as the rays of the sun, was coming out of her careful braids. Her mother would kill her for this. Ah, well, the queen's eggs were hatching, that was one of the biggest days of the year, when the golden egg hatched, and the babies made her choice of the riders. She was just old enough this year to be a choice for a rider. All girls and boys ages 18-21 were put around the eggs; and when the babies hatched, all the dragonets that were girls were put on one side with the young women, and the boys were put with the young men. She ran out, her silk slippers making almost no noise on the stone floors. She tried to do her braids while running, but they turned out a mess. She just let her hair swing out of the braids, running her hands through her hair, breaking the tangles. Her hair swung almost to the floor, the girls and women weren't allowed to cut their hair, and grew it out their whole life long.
The dragons were all crooning; they knew that the eggs were hatching. The sands that were in the hatching bowl were steaming hot, the dragons constantly breathing fire on it to heat up the eggs. She saw that most of the young men and women were standing where they had been taught. Her place in the circle was open, and her two best friends, Julia and Clarissa, were standing on either side of the spot. She went to Jaquelene, and comforted her; she was not yet ready to let the dragonets in the eggs go. Soon, there were cracks in the eggs and they were shaking. Then, as everybody was watching, the first egg cracked. It was a small brownish-black male dragon, one of the queen's daughter's eggs. Then, he waddled over to Jason, the strongest of the young men, and whimpered, then Jason yelled out, "His name is Larson!!!"
This was the first bonding; it was the most important, because then all the other eggs started to hatch. The next to hatch was a large orange egg, with a pattern like a dragon. Then, a larger, bronze dragon pecked its way out of the egg. It crawled over to another young male, and crooned its pleasure when it was fed meat. Then, the moment everyone had been waiting for, after all the other eggs had hatched, there were 3 males and 4 females left, eggs and people. The normal eggs hatched and Katrina was the only one left. She was afraid that she wasn't right for the dragon, the queen. Then, as she and everybody watched, the golden egg started shaking and cracking, and a small hole appeared. Then, a tiny head appeared, this female was going to be small, and crooned. Then, the tiny queen clawed her way out of the egg and her skin gleamed with the light of the sun. Everybody gasped; the young queen had a white moon on her back that was the sign of a great dragon. Nobody thought that this tiny dragon would amount to anything but being the mate of the large bronze dragon that had hatched second.
The queen crawled over to Katrina and she felt a pushing on her mind, like that of a pin on a board. She opened her mind to it and the tiny dragon projected the image of food onto her mind. She called for a bowl of meat and fed all of it to the queen. Then, the dragon pushed one word into her mind, Mariana, her name, the name of the first queen of the dragons. When I yelled out her name, everybody became very silent, because everybody knew that you can't lie about your dragon's name, and no other dragon had had that name. Normally, the tiny dragons picked names of other dragons that were living at the time. That way, the names stayed in rotation for a long time. This however, was a completely different situation. This name was never recycled; no young dragon ever picked this name since they knew it was of a dragon queen. Then, the other young dragons bowed down on their small knobby knees to bow down to a great queen. This was the beginning of a magical time when nobody was safe, except for the queen, and her rider.