Dimmadreki's Quest Chapter 29

Dimmadreki and Myrkrid had chosen to go west as they explored this huge new continent. They had no idea what they'd find there; they didn't know how far away the western coast was, or whether it was infested with humans, or anything at all. But somewhere on this land mass, the last Monster was enslaving and eating other dragons, and they had to find her and put a final end to her reign of terror. So the Night Furies had split up; Tannlaus and Næturvon had gone east, and Dimmadreki and Myrkrid went west.

They overflew more desert, and they overflew scrubland; they passed over rocks and they passed over rivers. After four days, they came to the sea. "Which way do we turn?" Myrkrid asked.

"To the south, all I see is jungle," Dimmadreki noted, "but I think I see some mountains to the north. Mountains are good places for dragons' nests. We'll go north and check those out. That will take a day or two, so we'll still have a couple of days to explore the jungle before we have to turn back."

They'd made about half a day's progress toward the mountains when Myrkrid exclaimed, "We have to turn back. Now."

"What's the matter?" he asked nervously.

"Do you remember that mating flight we took a few months ago?"

"Of course I do," he smiled, and then turned dead-serious. "You mean... it's time?"

"We need to find a safe place with warm water, and I mean today," she said urgently. She put a wing over and reversed their course; he followed.

They separated by about a mile so they could search more ground faster. Again, it was Myrkrid who shot a small firebolt to get Dimmadreki's attention. She gestured with a wing toward a slow-moving river far below them. They spiraled down to a bend in that river.

The shore was muddy; it took them half an hour to find a place where the ground would support their weight without sinking in up to their bellies. Then they had to saturate the area with firebolts to scare the crocodiles away. Dimmadreki remained on croc-control duty while Myrkrid chose the perfect place to lie down and rest.

"It will probably be sometime tonight," she told him.

"This feels so strange," Dimmadreki answered. "When I think of laying eggs, I think of a crowded island with wall-to-wall dragons. We're all by ourselves out here."

"I've never laid an egg in such an isolated place before, either," she nodded. "There aren't any dragons around to see the egg, or make a fuss over the hatchling, or anything. It's too quiet." She paused. "You never told me about humans and their birthing rituals. Would a human woman be surrounded by others of her kind when she gave birth?"

"Not a chance," he answered. "When a Viking woman goes into labor, everyone has to leave the house except the midwife, and maybe one female relative. No one else is allowed in until after the baby is born."

"Not even the father?" Myrkrid was shocked. "That sounds cruel! How is he supposed to bond with his newborn?"

"Most Viking men don't bond with their children at any age," Dimmadreki answered sadly. "To them, babies are a woman's job until they're old enough to work and learn a trade."

"Like your father?" she asked, trying not to be unkind.

"Yeah, a lot like him." Dimmadreki looked away. "One of the things about being a dragon that means the most to me is that I can be close to my own children, and no one thinks there's anything wrong with that."

"If you hadn't been close to them,I would have had something to say about it," she said firmly. "Luckily for you, you took to fatherhood as naturally as you took to being a dragon." They lay on the dry ground, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the veldt, and waited for nature to take its course.

It was well after midnight when Myrkrid stood up and asked Dimmadreki to step away. Five minutes later, she swung her tail aside. The black egg was nearly invisible in the darkness.

"Just one this time," she said softly.

"One is plenty," he smiled, then turned serious. A large predatory bird of some kind was circling them. He roared a warning, and when the bird didn't take the hint, he blew it out of the sky with a well-aimed firebolt.

"You're very protective of our eggs," she said approvingly.

"I learned from the master," he agreed. Charred feathers drifted down all around them.

They didn't say much for the rest of the night. They just watched their egg. Black Night Fury eggs weren't a novelty to either of them; Myrkrid had laid nine that Dimmadreki knew of, and he had helped make four of those. But it was still a source of never-ending wonder to both of them.

For the next three days, they slipped into the pattern that was familiar to them – taking turns watching the egg while the other hunted for fish at night, and sleeping during the day with their bodies wrapped around that precious egg. This river, like the one they'd just left, didn't have many worthwhile fish in it, so they flew out to sea to do their fishing; it took hours to finish one fishing trip. Another aspect of their egg-laying pattern was probably unique to their own relationship; whoever did the fishing brought back one or two good ones for the dragon who stayed behind. They'd done this before, but they'd always been surrounded by other dragons who were also watching eggs. Now, it was just the two of them. It was almost like a second honeymoon, except dragons didn't take honeymoons.

At last, as the sun rose on the fourth day, the egg began rocking. Myrkrid wasted no time in picking it up and dropping it in the river. Then they watched and waited. Dimmadreki could guess what his mate was thinking – will this one go unhatched like the last one? – and he wrapped a comforting wing around her as they watched the spot where the egg lay. The water in this river wasn't as warm as the water in the lagoon at their favorite egg-hatching island; it took six long minutes before the muted blast and the burst of bubbles told them that their efforts were not in vain. Then the tiny girl dragon's head broke the surface, and they both let out the breaths they'd been holding.

"What shall we call her?" Myrkrid asked later, after he'd fed their new daughter and she'd fallen asleep.

He just gazed at his sleeping daughter for a few seconds. "Her name is Norðurljós," he decided.

"Northern Lights," she repeated. "Do we want to name her after something that lights up the whole sky? We're supposed to be invisible at night, remember?"

"We're naming her after the most beautiful thing in the night sky," he replied.

"When you put it that way, Norðurljós is a perfect name for her," Myrkrid agreed. "But now we have a problem. Our time is up; we were supposed to turn back to meet Tannlaus and Næturvon yesterday. Now we're going to have to stay here for another two weeks or so, until Norðurljós can fly. What are we going to do?"

"If you're comfortable watching her by yourself, I can fly back, collect our daughter and our friend, and bring them back here," he thought out loud.

"If you do that, who will feed Norðurljós? And me, for that matter?" his mate retorted. "I can fast for a few days, but she'll need multiple feedings every day for her first two weeks. I can't fly off and leave her! This land is full of predators who would like nothing better than..." She didn't finish her thought.

He nodded slowly. "Well, then I guess all we can do is hope that Tannlaus and Næturvon won't panic when we're late to our rendezvous, but will stay where they are until we catch up with them. Myrkrid, I'm not looking for a fight or anything, but didn't you know your due date was getting close when we started this part of our mission?"

She shook her head. "For some reason, I thought I had more time. I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I got caught up in the excitement of finishing your quest... I don't know. Do you think we can finish the quest with a brand-new baby dragon tagging along?"

"We may have to put Næturvon on baby-watching duty, and take out the Monster with just the three adults," he said. "I know our oldest daughter is going to hate that, but unless I think of something else, that may be how we have to do the job. I know one thing – we are not turning back! We're too close to our goal, and besides, I'm not sure our new daughter could survive crossing that desert while she's this small. Once she's a few months old, she can make it with help, but not now."

"That's true," Myrkrid agreed. "So we'll wait two weeks until Norðurljós can fly, return to our rendezvous point and get our family back together, and then resume hunting the Monster?"

"Yes, unless the other two have already found that Monster," Dimmadreki said. "If they got lucky and found her, we can finish this thing up and be home before springtime." Then he had a thought. "Hey, why couldn't Norðurljós ride on my back? Or yours? We could head back to our rendezvous point tomorrow if we did that."

Myrkrid thought about that. "Once she can glide, that might work. If we took off with her today, she'd either fall off or try to fly away, and she'd take a nasty tumble before one of us caught her. She has to be able to hold herself up in the air before we try that move. That still leaves us stuck here for over a week."

"Then I guess we're stuck here for a week," he nodded. "It's not such a bad place, is it?"

"For crocodiles, it's not bad," she said offhandedly. "For dragons… it could be better. We need rocky spaces to lie on, with overhead cover so we aren't so easy to see. I feel defenseless out here, with nothing but low hills on one side of me and the river on the other side. And we're lying on dirt, not on rocks. This is no dragon's lair."

"It's what we've got, so we'll make it work," Dimmadreki answered.

As the days went by, they realized another drawback to this place. There weren't any other dragons around to do any talking, so the only way Norðurljós could learn to speak was by listening to her parents. That meant they had to talk almost constantly. Myrkrid wasn't like some females who could chatter endlessly about nothing, and Dimmadreki had never been the talkative type, so it was a strain on both of them. But they managed to make it work. The proof came on the seventh day when Norðurljós said her first complete sentence: "I want fly like you!"

Her initial gliding lessons were a hybrid of Myrkrid's preferences and Dimmadreki's lessons to Mánarskuggi. He lifted her up on his head to give her some height, but his mate gave the actual instructions. Norðurljós caught on fast, like most dragons (and all Night Furies). Turning and banking came naturally to her, but when she tried to do a loop without enough airspeed, she plummeted, and Dimmadreki had to scramble so he could catch her with his wing. She slid to the ground, grinned, and peeped, "Again!"

"Another day or two like this, and we can try letting her ride one of us," Myrkrid said.

"You can't keep a Night Fury down," he agreed. Their tiny daughter continued to learn quickly. Two days later, she climbed onto her father's back, gripped two of his back spines with her legs, and said, "I ready! Fly! Now!"

"I guess the newest Night Fury is giving the orders," Dimmadreki said, with a wink to his mate.

"Shouldn't she ride on her mother's back?" Myrkrid said, with a touch of irritation.

"You're the lifeguard," Dimmadreki answered. "If she falls off, or tries to fly and can't do it, you'll be the one to catch her."

"I guess that makes sense," she nodded. He took a running start instead of a bounding leap so he didn't dislodge his daughter, flapped hard, and rose into the air. Myrkrid followed close behind him, ready to lunge in case Norðurljós did something that would require a rescue. But the sensations of flying like an adult had her entranced; she held on tightly and thrilled to the wind in her face, even though her father kept his airspeed down to less than half his normal rate. After circling once to make sure their newest hatchling wouldn't fall off, they set a course for their rendezvous point. It had taken them two days to get this far; it took them three days to return, because they had to fly so slowly. They weren't surprised when they saw Tannlaus and Næturvon circling at high altitude, looking for them. Tannlaus' irritation at waiting so long for his friends faded when he spotted the tiny Night Fury riding on Dimmadreki's back.

"So that's what took you so long!" he exclaimed. "We were getting very worried about you two."

"Due to circumstances beyond our control, we were slightly delayed," Dimmadreki said as they landed. "But we made it, finally. Næturvon, say 'hello' to your little sister Norðurljós."

"Uhh, hello," Næturvon said hesitantly. "Are you going to be a brat like your brother?"

"Big sister?" peeped the newest Night Fury.

"Big sister," Myrkrid assured her. "Now I have to catch some fish for your supper, little one." As the others gathered around to check out the newest Night Fury, she bounded into the air and followed the river in search of fish that a baby dragon could eat.

o

A/N
I believe a fairly correct pronunciation of "Norðurljós" would be "Nor-thurl-yōss," with a hard "th" as in "the." I suspect that the correct Icelandic pronunciation would put the "l" at the start of the last syllable, instead of at the end of the middle syllable, but that's not so easy for English-speakers to say.