I sense him before he even reaches me and places his hands on the cool surface of my shell. I can imagine astonishment filling his eyes at the sight of the orange hues of the exterior, colours of autumn all mixed together like a sea of leaves. He finds me attractive, that much I can tell, but his mind is still not open to me. He is a man, probably doesn't know a single thing about the ancient language and has no magical ability. The magic will find him though, when I finally hatch out of my restraints in which I have been imprisoned for countless years, just lying here in the middle of this forest waiting for someone to find me-preferably my rider. And now he has.
His hands trace the light yellow veins that run across my shell. He starts to pick me up, to carry me somewhere, but his head suddenly snaps to the side hearing what I can just make out to be heavy footfalls belonging to the Kings men, and probably Urgals. Of course I've never seen them or smelt them, just sensed their presence, and I once heard people who passed me speaking of them. They didn't notice me though, I was trapped under a huge pile of leaves but I think they sensed me. One even got of their horse- I think she was an elfin women, her mind was easier to detect but she slammed me out of it immediately then carried on.
The boy withdraws his touch and throws pine needles and dirt over my surface to camouflage me. He steps back and I hear the sharp ring of metal upon metal and frantically try to reach my rider, to hatch for him right now and try to rescue him. Only I'm so small I would be trampled on and I can't hatch that quickly, but I try anyway making myself rock frantically, trying to smash my shell against a rock, a tree root, but it doesn't work. Finally I keep still, hearing cries of pain and a dragging sound.
He has been captured.
My rider. Gone quicker than you could say Argetlam! He won't even be here when I hatch, and I am going to hatch. He will bear no silver palm, and unfortunately another person could if they were to touch me first. I don't even know how to find him or where he's gone but it will be my destiny, and I will not let another single soul touch me until I find him. No one else will ever bear the mark that links them to me and I swear to it in my mind and my heart.
The agony in my mind courses through the veins in my tiny body and threatens to crush my heart. They have taken the one person that could ever truly care away from me and now I am nothing but a dragon stuck in a stupid shell. I shouldn't be sitting here waiting for him to be tortured, murdered. Finally I decide to try and break free of my perfectly polished case as letting his situation cause me pain will only create less time for me to save him. I'll need to be small enough so that I won't attract attention and therefore won't be touched, which wouldn't be so much of a problem if a dragon could grow more slowly and if I knew where he was. But I don't.
Rocking, biting, clawing. I begin to break my way out of the confines of my shell, destroying the smooth coloured case until it caves in around me, leaving me standing beneath the moonlit sky surrounded by the cracked fragments of my egg. Despair fills my body at not being able to see my rider after hatching, not being able to see his eyes light up with joy at the prospect of finding and owning an almost extinct species. I quickly push away the thought and concentrate on something I want just as much as my rider- to be able to breathe in fresh air and to smell and hear everything around me. I draw in a deep breathe and the air is sweet. A breeze tickles my face and I stretch my thin wings allowing them to feel the coolness it offers. Looking around I notice a bed of snowy white wild flowers just a few trees away. I gingerly sniff them and am rewarded with a heavenly scent which I cannot describe as I have nothing to compare it to. The stems of the flowers grow tall and thick, so I decide to curl up in between them letting them conceal me from whatever lurks in the forest. Looking up at the stars I find peace and slowly begin to fall asleep after muttering another promise to find my rider so that we can watch the stars together someday.