I do not own anything from the Hobbit or any of Tolkien's works. I am making no profit. Now that that is out of the way...welcome! This is the side story I promised to go with Glorfindel's reaction from my other story, Here There Be Dragons. I did my best to make sure that everything matches in a consistent fashion, but if anybody sees a spot where the information is contradictory I'd appreciate a heads up so I can fix it. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy!
The first thing she saw when she broke out of the confining shell that had been her home for over a year was a beautiful blue face, with beautiful golden eyes. Not that she had anything to compare it to. Or that she knew what the colors were called. Really, all she knew was that to her that face was her whole world.
The face made strange, happy sounds at her and drew closer to touch her own. She was delighted! When her tummy got her attention shortly after that, the face retreated, only to come back shortly with small pieces of truly delicious food.
When her small stomach was as full as she could get it, she cuddled into the warm side of the large creature that had greeted her into this world. As a rough tongue started to rasp across her tiny scales, she opened her tiny jaws to show her sharp little teeth in a delicate yawn, then drifted off in perfect contentment. All was right with her world.
As time went on, she spent a great deal of time eating and sleeping. When she was awake more often, she started to explore the world around her, always under the watchful eye of her great mother. Her world was full of stone walls and rocks.
As she started to go farther, she discovered several passages in her underground home. Most led to nothing much interesting, but one she found led to lots of piles of shiny play things! As she was easily distracted in this room, this is where her mother started to leave her when she had to go out to hunt.
As the days went on, her mother started to look a little anxious. She didn't like that, and often acted up a bit to make her rumble with pleasing laughter.
One morning, she woke to the sound of wind shrieking somewhere nearby.
Not that she knew it was the sound of wind. All she knew was that there was a horrible rushing noise she'd never heard before. Her mother had jolted up from her sleeping place and pulled her under her wing, then turned to the forbidden place she sometimes came and went through that the little dragon was never allowed near.
Shortly after that, there was a huge shadow as something large came in. She felt her mother tense, and she peeked at the newcomer. He was so large, and so dark, with scary eyes. He made noises at her mother, who made noises back then reluctantly closed her wing and pushed her into the space between her mother and the dark newcomer.
He lowered his huge and intimidating head, and she shivered as she stared into his red eyes. She didn't know why her mother wanted her to let him look at her, but she didn't like it. As he looked her over, he gave a pleased snort, then promptly ignored her and made more noises at her mother.
Her mother dipped her head, and made some quiet noises back. He gave one last pleased snort, then backed himself out of their home. He was too large to come in fully, or to turn around.
As soon as he was gone, she dashed for the safety of her mother and shivered in the curve of her side as she made soothing noises. She didn't know who that was, but she didn't like him. She didn't know why exactly, but she had a very bad feeling about him.
As the years and decades passed slowly, she grew. As she grew, her mother taught her. She learned to hunt, to fly, to clean herself and to keep her cave clean, and eventually to speak as her mother did. She learned her mother's name was Ashreth, and that the scary black dragon that came by every decade or so was her father, Ancalogon.
She also discovered that her name was Alassiel, given to her for the joy that she gave her mother. Her father snorted every time he heard it, and was rather vocal about her mother's sentimentality and 'elvish tendencies' whatever those were. Not something good, apparently.
However, as he wasn't around often and still gave her the wiggins, she mostly tried to avoid thinking about him. Which meant than any opinions he had weren't very important to her. Her mother loved her and had chosen her name, so she would wear it proudly. (When he wasn't around...she wasn't stupid enough to challenge him.)
She delighted in the time spent with her mother. As time went on, her mother also taught her to speak as many languages as her mother new. What her mother called Draconian, and Black Speech, and two different elf languages, and entish...well she tried to teach her entish, but it was so involved and long and boring that she just really couldn't focus on it and her mother didn't push her too much.
When she was sure she had learned everything there could possibly be to know about languages, her mother shocked her by teaching her the most interesting lesson yet...how to change her form. It was difficult, and trying. She kept putting things where they weren't supposed to be at first, like wings on a deer, but she started to get it eventually.
She just had to learn to trust the instinct of what she was doing. As long as she focused on what she wanted to be, and not on what she was , the transformation took care of itself. It only took three years. She was sooo glad when her mother declared that lesson over.
Of course, that wasn't the end of it, oh no. After she'd mastered that, her mother took a small, two legged form with glorious golden hair and told her to do the same. From there, she taught her to read and write all the languages she'd been taught to speak. She also taught her the appropriate ways to create maps, and showed her several that she had created herself or liberated off of travelers.
She was getting very good at creating them herself, though she wished she could go further than the few miles she was allowed to go. Her mother was insistent, however. Apparently there were a great deal of hostile creatures out there, and her mother didn't want her anywhere near them until she was bigger. (She privately thought that her mother wouldn't let her out there, until she was as big as her father...if that was even possible!)
Eventually things changed once again, as they always seem to do. Ancalagon came with orders from their Master that her mother was to take up her duties again. She was large enough, he said, to fend for herself most of the time. He gave her an assessing gaze, and declared that she might even be able to take up duties herself in a few decades.
This seemed to make her mother rather uncomfortable. She wasn't sure what her father's duties were, and her mother refused to tell her about her own declaring her too young. As her mother was so often gone now, she found herself rather bored.
She decided to put her lessons to use, since she was still forbidden to travel too far, and so she spent a great deal of time turning her mother's golden treasure into thin sheets and turning them into a book of maps, a history of her life and all the information she could think of on draconian life and traditions, and finally one of languages. This took several years, until she was once again at loose ends.
During the few times her mother was there (coming home smelling of horrible things and blood and death) she convinced her mother to add what she could to the maps and the books. Mostly Ashreth just wrote on the parchment Alassiel had made for her rough drafts and Alassiel did the time consuming part of transferring the information to the golden pages.
So the information of where the other Dragons lived, and the boundaries of the other Races lands were eventually included. At this point her mother realized she hadn't really given her daughter much information on the other races, or their history, or even the history of the dragons themselves!
In typical arrogance, she decided to start with their history, for were they not the greatest of the Races? Unfortunately, she was not often there, so the lessons were often very quick. She did share the history of the Dragons, and started into the history of Arda as a whole, but she hadn't gotten to the other races by the time her daughter actually needed it...which led to a rather startling circumstance.