The lake was just as Lily remembered it, a deep abyss of distant lights and moving shadows. There were far fewer fish in the area, few enough that while she and Beryl could feed themselves, she wouldn't have wanted to try and feed an entire pack. The service the sea dragons offered in shepherding and cultivating fish was not some superfluous thing offered for no reason; she could easily envision a dozen dragons fishing these waters bare in no time at all.
But it was enough for her and Beryl, more than enough, and after yet another long stretch without any food at all, 'enough' was a wonderful change of pace. They ate, they slept, and then they ate again, recovering from the deprivation.
Recovering, and maybe avoiding the inevitable. Lily knew she was; she could have brought it up a dozen times between waking and lazing about by the shoreline like she was doing now, but she didn't want to. There was a reason they hadn't discussed what they were going to do now, despite spending moon-cycles travelling to this very place. It had been easier to ignore it.
"We need to talk," Beryl began, sitting beside the shoreline and staring out into the water. His tail waved slowly, signalling that while he was solemn, he was not unhappy. Maybe a little anxious about how she was going to take what he wanted to say.
Lily, on the other paw, felt far more conflicted about what she wanted, let alone about what she thought he was going to say. "I'll walk, you talk," she requested, standing and walking back into the cave, away from the water.
Beryl turned his back to the water to look at her. "Okay," he said dubiously. "You know where we are."
"In a cave with a bunch of white flowers," she said simply, glancing around. The flowers were clumped up everywhere, in stands of ten or fifteen, growing out of the ground, especially around the walls of the cave. "By the lake."
"With a way that presumably leads back to where the pack settled," Beryl said seriously, not following the lead of her mostly lighthearted reply at all. "There are some things that need to happen if we're going to get to the surface without searching for another way around or up."
"That search would be long, potentially dangerous, and there's no guarantee we will find another way," Lily agreed. In a way, she was glad they had only one path to take. It made deciding how to take that path the only major decision, not whether to take it at all.
She pawed at a patch of flowers growing out of the wall at chest-height, brushing by it as she walked aimlessly. "And we are pretty sure your family will have long since left by now."
"Ember said they would be going back above soon, or something to that effect," Beryl rumbled. "It has been more than half a season-cycle since he said that. So yes, I'm assuming they have left. We want to follow them."
"Which means going through the cave my former pack has claimed," Lily said deliberately. "That is the most important thing. Getting through."
"Do you really feel that way?" Beryl asked, squinting at her as if he could not see her clearly. He could, of course, she was right in front of him, but she suspected her motivations were not nearly so clear and obvious.
"How do I feel?" she asked aloud, pausing in her aimless roaming to look at him. "There are apologies I would like to give. People I would like to speak with, at least one last time. If it was as simple as flying in, making a few promises to the right people, and being allowed to say my goodbyes, I would be all for doing that, no matter how awkward."
"It won't be that easy," Beryl reminded her.
"I made the pack what it is now," she huffed. "I know that." And she knew how Holly and her sisters would be treating the memory of the alpha they had replaced. Lily had done the same to Claw, and as far as her former pack was concerned, she was the next closest thing to him. It was not even entirely undeserved.
"They will not let me talk," she admitted, ignoring how that made her feel. It was true; she had built herself up around talking and convincing, and her former people would remember that. They wouldn't believe her assurances, and had no reason to tolerate her. "They won't let me into their territory if they know I'm coming. So yes, getting through is our highest priority. I probably won't be able to say anything to anyone anyway."
"We do not know that for sure," Beryl said. "But it's… good to know that you understand that much."
"Because you were not looking forward to convincing me that storming in and taking back my place by clever manipulation was a bad idea?" she asked, tossing in an amused snort that did not at all reflect how she really felt. Inside, she was cold and unhappy, but not because she couldn't do that.
"It was more that I did not look forward to convincing you that sneaking around and trying to talk to your friends without anyone else knowing would be a bad idea," he admitted. "But what I was really going to try and get at is that we shouldn't go right now."
"What? Why?" That, she had not expected. "We can fly there, I can fly through while camouflaged. If I fly over you and you fly close to the ceiling, they will not see my back. Then, once we are through, you can go back and tell them about Considera. Waiting will not make that any easier."
"That is a plan," Beryl agreed, shifting his paws around restlessly. It looked for a moment like he was going to get up and walk over to her, but he didn't actually move. "But it is not a very flexible one. I was thinking that I should go, alone, and see what is happening there. Then I could come back and we could plan something for real, without ever risking that you will be noticed."
Lily padded over to him and settled down on top of a patch of flowers, crushing them with her stomach as she lay opposite him. She felt the need to stare into his eyes, to make sure he was serious. "You want to leave me here, fly out there, fly back here, then fly back there with me?" she asked incredulously. "When I could just come with you but hang back when we get there?"
"This place is much nicer than sitting on a ledge out in the middle of nowhere would be," he said reasonably. "And there are people here for you to talk to. And…" He grimaced but continued speaking anyway. "It would mean you are not tempted to go do something while I am busy."
"You do not want me sitting within an easy flight's distance of the pack, just in case I get antsy?" she asked, feeling vaguely insulted. "I can sit still!"
"It is more about avoiding potential problems than me actually thinking you will do something stupid," he said, looking her in the eye. "And the thing is, if I show up and say that I left you behind, what do you think Cara will want to do? Because I have a good guess, and I think I know her well enough to know."
"She would… Oh." She hadn't thought about that, and now that he mentioned it… "She would probably have her people search the whole cave and everywhere within a short flight, just in case I followed you back or something else nefarious." She would be looking for a fight, and suspicious on top of that. Lily's own reputation would make everyone just as suspicious of Beryl himself.
"And they would be right to do so, because they very well might find you if you came with me," he said. "So there is also that."
"You going alone would make it a lot easier for them to trust you, because you would not be worried about me being found or causing trouble and proving you a liar," Lily huffed. "Okay, fine. I see the merit in that. What do you want to do while you are there?" If she could not go herself, she would make sure he was doing the right things when he did.
And if she was secretly relieved there were good reasons not to go near her former pack just yet, well, that was just the part of her that wanted to hide in the shadows and remain ignorant of how her friends probably thought of her now. She wasn't going to let that part of herself influence her decisions.
"I would first find out when my family left, and see if they left any messages for me," he said promptly. "Then, I would go tell several different people about Considera, and make sure word of her spread through the pack, just to be safe. Then I would probably have to go talk to Holly or whoever is in charge."
"It will be Holly unless she is still sick," Lily said quietly. Either sick… or dead. Which would be entirely her fault, if so.
"Not your fault," Beryl huffed.
"It is, though," she retorted. "Sort of. Mine and the fault of me being sick at the time. What else would you be doing there?"
"I would tell them some of what we've done out here," he said, accepting her unspoken request to move on from that particular topic. "Not all of it, not that you can fly or that we are mates, but some."
"They might smell it on you," she warned.
"I'll…" He shook his head. "Actually, yes, you are right. Maybe I will tell them that. But not that you can fly now."
"If they know, they will be looking for me in the sky," she agreed. "Keep that secret." If she had to sneak through their territory, it would be a lot easier if they thought she was still stuck on the ground.
"Yes." He shook out his wings and stood, twisting his body back and forth. She heard a faint popping, likely of a pleasantly cracking back. She stood with him. "I'll feel them out about how they feel about you, check with some other people I know to get some second opinions, then head back here. A day or two, at most."
"You could also bring some messages for me?" she asked. "Short ones?"
"Of course," he said vehemently. "It is not right that it probably is not safe for you to say your piece in person, but there is nothing stopping me from passing it along."
"Then I am okay with this plan," she conceded, stepping forward to nuzzle his neck. "You go find out what the situation is. I will stay here and play with flowers."
"Your part of this sounds more fun than mine," Beryl purred, rubbing his face on her forehead. "I don't think I will be gone long… Maybe half a moon-cycle? Did anyone ever tell you how far this place is from the cavern?"
"No, or if they did I have long since forgotten it," Lily admitted. "But you are not leaving just this moment?"
"No, definitely not," he assured her. "I need to hear your messages, we should probably figure out exactly what my story is going to be… Also, we need to seek out those little dragons and make sure you're really welcome here for as long as needed," he explained to the back of her neck, still nuzzling her as he was. "And we can ask them if there are any dangers around here. They talk about getting eaten, so maybe other dragons come here for that. We need to know."
Of course. She should have thought of that. "Anything else?" she murmured hopefully.
"Telling you that I'm coming back," he replied. "Over and over again, as many times as necessary and then some, until you're sick of hearing it and want me to go just to get some peace and quiet."
"I know you are." She didn't doubt he would return. Her main issue with him leaving was that she was not and could not go with him, not that she feared he would be gone for good.
"I'll still say it. But first let's make sure I'll know where to come back to," he suggested, pulling away from her. She resisted the urge to grab him and pull him back into an embrace, or potentially more. She was more than willing to take her mind off of his imminent departure for a short time, and if he wanted to do that by talking to tiny dragons instead of cuddling, she could do the same.
They walked out into one of the smaller, most bug-dense caverns, passing under a few low stone arches and turning several corners. Lily still found this particular complex of caves to be almost uncomfortably dense and closely-packed, but it certainly made things easy to get to.
"Whatever keeps these bugs right here and nowhere else, I'm grateful," Beryl said, summing up his feelings on the subject of the many flying insects in the general area.
Lily glanced back at the way they had come, and how absolutely nothing appeared to be stopping a horde of gnats from descending on them out by the shore. "I am too," she agreed, shuddering at the thought.
"And so are we," a tiny voice agreed. One of the small, flying creatures buzzed right up to them and landed on Beryl's head, right above his nostrils, clutching to the small scales there. "Do not kill them, please. We eat them."
"Which is why you live here?" Lily guessed, looking around. "You say we, but I don't see any others like you."
"Safety first, most of us are hiding," the little dragon buzzed. "And yes, the bugs are our food, which makes this place perfect for us. Almost, anyway."
"And other dragons eat you?" Lily asked. She seemed to be in charge of talking simply because Beryl probably feared dislodging his current resident if he moved or spoke too loudly. The amount of care he was taking was downright adorable, in a way.
"Yes. Stay as long as you like!" The little dragon nodded its tiny head. "They eat us, but you are big enough to maybe eat them, and they do not like to talk to big dragons."
"We're not going to eat anyone," Lily objected. She really felt that should go without saying, but she supposed they needed it clarified… Though that did make her wonder who else had come through this area in the past. Or maybe it was just this rival pack they were talking about that gave them the idea that everyone was out to eat everyone else if they were big enough to get away with it.
"Do not tell them that, and you can stay," the tiny dragon immediately proposed. "Just you being here keeps us safer."
"Well, I do need to stay for a while," Lily mused, pretending to consider the offer, though she had already accepted it in her mind as it fit her needs perfectly. "Do these other little dragons come around often?"
"Usually, yes, but they will smell and hear you here," the tiny dragon replied. "They might try to convince you they are not worth bothering with, but if you tell them you are safe they will try and eat us, so do not."
"I'll say nothing of the sort to them," Lily agreed. "I guess I can stay." She was becoming more and more amused by the little dragon so obliviously stopping Beryl from speaking. "And you may feel free to rest on my mate's face as long as you like."
Beryl cast her a mock-betrayed look as the little dragon hummed thoughtfully. "Is he going to stay still for a while? He is warm and would make a good sleeping place."
"No, probably not," Lily decided, feeling Beryl had been the butt of this particular unintended joke long enough.
"Stay as long as you want," the little dragon buzzed before flying off, snagging a few bugs on his – Lily thought the tiny dragon was a male – way out into another part of the cavern, slipping under a tiny arch in the stone Lily didn't think she could fit two paws into, let alone pass under herself.
"Very funny," Beryl rumbled, shaking his head and snorting several times. "That tiny dragon has a huge voice if he chooses to use it. His entire body vibrates when he talks."
"Are you sure it's a he?" Lily asked curiously. "Is there a way to tell?" That seemed to be a recurring problem for her when meeting new dragons, and she wasn't sure whether she was just ignorant, or if it was actually confusing.
"I am not sure," Beryl rumbled, "I just assumed so, given he imitated my voice. I think if that one was a female, they would have imitated you and asked me the same questions. So it makes sense. Maybe the males can only do loud deep voices, and the females only loud high-pitched voices."
"Or the other way around, we don't know," Lily reminded him. That was fairly good reasoning… She would have to ask, just to be sure, but it seemed like Beryl was probably right.
"No, we don't." Beryl lowered his voice to a quiet, secretive hum. "What will you say if these other small dragons come around?"
"They apparently fear being eaten just like these ones, but given they eat eggs and other dragons for sport, I would say I'll drive them off with no sympathy," Lily said.
"Would?" Beryl asked.
"There are two sides to every story." Her own transgressions against her pack came to mind. It was possible the little dragon they had happened to meet first was not telling the truth, or the whole truth. "Besides, I'll not make enemies if I can avoid it. Leave me to my own devices, and you might come back to find a little more peace in this part of the world." That might be a fun little side-project to fill her time. She was so big as to be untouchable for those little dragons, and she had to assume it would be mostly the same for their predators, so there was little to no personal danger involved.
"I look forward to it." Beryl took a long look around. "Nobody else here now, though. Come on, I want to spend some quality time with you before I go tomorrow. Not mating," he added, seeing her anticipation, "not until the end of today. Just time together."
"Which is different from what we have been doing for the past moon-cycles how, exactly?" She purred to ensure he heard the unspoken continuation signalling her willingness to do so despite the somewhat disparaging words.
"Now, we'll know it's the last day we have together for a short while," he answered seriously. "That makes it precious."
She wasn't about to argue that.
O-O-O-O-O
The remainder of the day passed between blinks, or so it felt. And then no sooner did Lily lie down to sleep next to Beryl, worn out and content, that she woke so quickly and so seamlessly that she actually had to ask him to be sure she had slept at all.
The next morning, she gave him her messages. To Crystal, to Pina, to Root, and to anyone who asked him about her. They all felt hollow, no matter how carefully she worded them, empty apologies that would not make any difference because she wouldn't be there to give them herself. She hid how she felt, and she was pretty sure she succeeded because Beryl did not seem to notice anything was amiss.
Then he was gone, with many farewells and oaths to return no matter what, made more for his own comfort than hers, as she knew he would return no matter what came between them. That was just who he was.
She watched until he was out of sight, then turned her back on the lake with a huff. It was going to be boring without him; he had only been gone for a few moments and she already could feel it. Thankfully, she had a lot of different things she could do to pass the time over the coming days.
O-O-O-O-O
Lily nosed at a mossy gap in the stone wall in front of her, smelling the musty scents beyond and twisting to get a look inside. It led to nowhere, just a dark nook with more moss, but it was interesting nonetheless.
The caves around the one with white flowers and an opening to the lake – the cave she had claimed for herself for the time being – were small, in every sense of the word. They were all interconnected, to the point where it was unclear whether she was in a complex of individual caves, or just one with a lot of pillars and narrow places, but no single cave was big enough to feel entirely comfortable.
The ceilings were low. The walls were close together, and lined with wrinkles and cracks and little holes too small for her to put a paw into. The smell of plants – and in some places, the buzzing of bugs – only reminded her of how enclosed everything was.
She ducked under a low archway and encountered a new nook in the wall, barely big enough for her to stand in without bumping her head. A dozen flies assaulted her face, and she quickly pulled out again.
Exploring lost a lot of its shine when she felt so trapped… She much preferred looking out at the endless lake. There was a certain appeal to small places, easily defensible nooks and crannies, but not that much of one.
O-O-O-O-O
"Is that so," the tiny dragon said shortly, buzzing restlessly around a white flower in endless circles. "Why are you telling me about this?"
Lily resisted the urge to growl in annoyance. "You are not much of a conversationalist, are you?" she asked. She had hoped to get an interesting discussion going, telling him about some of the things she had seen, but she might as well be talking to a rock.
"You talk very, very slowly," he said seriously. "And loudly. It is not fun, trying to imitate you for too long for no good reason."
"No good reason," she muttered. "Never mind, then." The tiny dragons were many things, but personable apparently was not one of them. Then again, she didn't know what she had expected; as far as she could tell, they never left this little complex of caves. It was not as if they would have many interesting stories to tell her, even if the only one who talked to her felt like talking.
O-O-O-O-O
Lily patted her paw on a chunk of moss pulled from a wall that wouldn't miss it.
The moss stubbornly refused to submit to her whims.
She pat harder, then gave up on subtlety and stood on it with all her weight until it was flat with the rest. It lined up with the rest of the comfortable padding she had put down in place of dirt and ticklish blades of grass…
She would have done more, but the dirt of the cavern floor apparently only went down about a paw's height before giving way to stone. As it was, she had to settle for making a comfortable sleeping spot by replacing the ground, not digging herself a nice hole and padding that.
Sleeping among the flowers, in full view of the underground lake, was a little too out in the open for her tastes. Now that she did not have Beryl sleeping by her side, anyway. A hole would have been a good compromise, but she would settle for making a little nest out of the softest things she could find. It felt like a good thing to do.
O-O-O-O-O
Lily sat on her new nest of torn-up moss and pondered her choices out of sheer boredom.
There was something distinctively wrong about her still being here, in this cave, not going back. Something wrong about not making amends in any way other than staying away.
It was the practical choice, the prudent choice; if there was anything else to be done, it would come after Beryl returned with intelligence on the state of the pack, but that did not stop her from rethinking her choice long after it had been made. She was hiding behind him, in a sense, and if he said it was too dangerous, she was planning to leave without ever even trying to make amends beyond some second-paw platitudes.
She didn't know how she felt about the pack anymore, or how she felt about Holly and her sisters, or any of it. Time, and actually, genuinely moving on, had put distance between her and the rest of her life, and it was all distant. That was good for some things, but bad for others, and actually seeing them again would bring it back to being real… But she wasn't going to see anyone, not yet, so it still felt false.
Maybe it was wrong to have that distance. Maybe it meant she hadn't learned anything, though she felt she had. Or maybe it meant there was something wrong with her, to so easily – if moon-cycles of coping and trying to move forward were 'easy' in any sense of the word – move on.
Or maybe she was overthinking things. Because that had never hurt her in the past, and was clearly a good thing to do now, when she had nothing but time and nobody to pull her out of a bad path of thought.
She rose, shaking herself vigorously, and decided to go fishing. Then she would be full and tired...
And her first day alone would be over.
Only her first day.
That did not bode well for her chances of surviving the remainder of Beryl's absence. Only a single day in, and she had already exhausted all of the obvious things to keep her attention. Hopefully, something interesting would happen of its own accord soon.
O-O-O-O-O
Usually, the cave was nearly silent, the water quietly at the stone loud in comparison. The bugs buzzed off in the distance, and occasionally something would splash out in the depths, but that tended to be it so long as Lily or one of the tiny dragons was not talking. There were no rowdy fledglings screeching in the distance, or loud rivers roaring below, or cold winds howling among pillars of stone.
Lily still found herself sleeping uneasily, more so now that Beryl was gone. Something pulled at her, some hidden knowledge or worry her mind did not let her comprehend fully… or, as it most likely was, just paranoia. In any case, it usually was not enough to stop her from sleeping, just to make her feel like she was always missing something.
Then, a pawful of days into her time alone, an ear-rending screech of terror shattered the silence and her eardrums in one fell swoop, breaking her out of a muddled, mostly benign dream.
She bolted upright, frantically clearing her eyes of the gunk of sleep by blinking rapidly. There were dozens of tiny green blurs all around her, all crying out in fear, making smaller versions of the sound that had woken her.
"Hide us!" one lone voice screeched, giving her an idea of what they actually hoped to accomplish by swarming around her.
"Calm down," Lily requested groggily, lifting a wing as she did. "Under here, if you must–"
The entire swarm, which she had been given no chance to count, dived under her wing. She could feel them clutching to her side by her wing-shoulder, their tiny talons firmly gripping the thin, barely protruding edges of her scales. Once they were all there and she could hear no more buzzing that accompanied flight, she lowered her wing, keeping it up just enough to not crush them against herself. "Now what is this?" she demanded, unable to be angry in the face of such mindless terror. She had a very good idea what the problem was.
"We are being hunted," a high-pitched voice whined, only slightly muffled by the wing between them. "Scare them off! Please. You said you would."
"I'm on it," Lily assured them all. Despite the urgency of the situation, she did wonder whether only one of them could speak; she had only ever heard the one voice. "If you want to hide somewhere else," she belatedly added, thinking of walking into a fight with a whole colony of tiny dragons hiding under her wing…
There was no response, which she took to mean they very much did not intend to abandon their current hiding places. She would just have to make do; they had said the ones hunting them were also small, so it probably wouldn't be much of a fight.
Lily stood and walked out into the main, central part of the cavern, ducking under the archway and making sure not to disturb her many passengers. She felt like some lumbering creature of bulk, the only large one among a pack of miniscule creatures. It was an illusion, they were the ones of improper size, but she lacked any tangible point of reference to prove that; this cavern layout contributed to making her feel oversized, what with many passages and areas feeling tight and restricted, with low ceilings or small arches instead of full-sized tunnels.
In the main bug-occupied cavern, flying around in search of their absent prey, were four dragons of a kind Lily did not know, but had seen before. They were akin to the dragon she had met at the end of her venture into what had turned out to be a dead end, along with two large rock-like dragons. These were all a dark purple in color, but otherwise the same. The same small, angular bodies, unwieldy single-finned tails, and large brown horns that branched a little like some of the prey she and Beryl had hunted up above. The horns were their most prominent feature, and the only thing that distinguished them from what she imagined 'Terrible Terrors' looked like, from Beryl's descriptions – and didn't that say a lot about how ridiculous No-scaled-not-prey were, to name such innocuous creatures so grandly.
For all that she was currently musing about stupid naming schemes, she must have looked quite fearsome to them. All four dropped to the ground and hid under the nearest patch of flowers the moment they noticed her, shrieking in terror very much like the even tinier dragons they had driven to Lily only moments before, only louder.
"What is this?" Lily asked calmly, hiding her disdain. All thoughts of an alternative point of view had left her upon seeing the very real, unfaked reaction the smallest dragons had to this intrusion. If there was an alternative explanation, it was very unlikely to be a good one.
"We are sorry for disturbing you," one of them cried out.
"Yes, but what are you doing?" She would let them dig a pit for themselves; there was no way for them to know what was under her wing. She just hoped the smallest dragons would not grow impatient and ruin her way of handling this.
"Getting food," another replied, creeping out into the open. "We can wait until you are not sleeping, if that is how we disturbed you?"
"What kind of food? I only see bugs in here," Lily remarked, flicking her ears at a particularly large specimen that was buzzing around by her neck. She was glad fish stuck to the water; having flying food everywhere in the air would be more annoying than convenient. At least birds fled at the first hint of a dragon's presence.
"They hide well, but there are other things than bugs," the same dragon replied. "Annoying little pests who screech like nothing else. Good eating, though."
"Screech? Do they talk?" she asked innocently.
"They do, but it does not mean much with such small minds doing the talking," the little hunter said dismissively. She might have made herself sound too innocent, for him to so quickly lose his fear. "Look, if you do not mind, we are hungry."
"Maybe I do mind," Lily growled. "Where I come from eating anything that talks, no matter what you think of them, is wrong. Do you not have other sources of food?"
"You are stupid," the little dragon growled. "Judge us once you are one of us, and not before. Let us do what we do. You will regret it otherwise."
"Is that a threat?" Lily was bemused by that, and by how quickly they had forgotten where the balance of power was between her and them. "Are you even capable of carrying out a threat against someone like me?"
"Not you personally," the dragon growled, his high-pitched voice dropping to something sinister for a moment. "But I can smell a better target coming soon. Stay out of this, or you will regret it."
Lily was no longer in the mood to talk civilly. She crouched down and bared her teeth at them. "Large threats from a tiny dragon," she said darkly, letting a hint of derision color her growl. "Little creature, I have faced down far worse than you and lived to tell the tale, and those who know me could tell you exactly what kind of dragon you are getting on your bad side. You will regret it if you cross me." Forget the physical side of things, she was a bad enemy for anyone to make. These dragons didn't know that yet.
"You will regret it more," the small dragon hissed. Its companions were slinking away, and Lily did nothing to stop them. She could only stop them by killing them or pinning them down, and that wasn't an option… yet.
"We will feed here, or wherever the pests nest," the little dragon promised. "Do not interfere next time."
"Do not come here next time, and we will have no problems," Lily countered.
"Oh, we will have problems," the little dragon promised, before following its fellows out.
Lily didn't like that at all. She had managed to make enemies that she suspected were vindictive, if nothing else. They might actually be able to pull off some mischief if underestimated… and that one had come up with a pretty specific, if somehow also vague, threat.
On the other paw, 'mischief' was likely the upper limit of the harm they could do, so long as she was careful, so she wasn't too worried.
After a few moments of absolutely nothing happening, the dragons under Lily's wing began to stir, to carefully drop away from her, fly up into the open, and spread out across the cavern. They went to little hollows and gaps in the rock in twos and threes, buzzing fast to get there and then slowly away again, back into the air in the center of the cavern.
"Thank you," the one who spoke for them said gravely, his high-pitched voice somehow conveying his seriousness well enough that she noticed. "They did not get many of our eggs this time, and none of us."
"I am surprised they got any eggs, it did not take long for me to get here," Lily replied, feeling just a little guilty about not reacting quicker.
"They have very, very good noses for eggs," was the solemn answer. "We have to spread ours across this whole cavern so that they do not locate one single place and utterly destroy it. Some are more hidden than others, so it is luck and skill that keep our future young safe. What I am saying is that it was unavoidable."
"Not while I'm here," she hummed. "I cannot stay forever, but I will do my best to ensure they do not come back."
"They threaten you too… somehow," the little dragon buzzed uncertainly. "I do not know how. They cannot hurt you unless they find you asleep. I will set some of us to always watch over you while you sleep. We cannot defend, but we can certainly wake you up."
"That would be good." This was probably their alpha, or however they did things. The equivalent, which was why this particular dragon was the one who spoke to her. What she had originally assumed was fear or at least nerves now seemed to her to be a privilege or responsibility of rank. It made more sense than there only being one dragon in the entire pack who could talk.
"They come at any time they like, and from any direction," the tiny dragon replied. "There are many ways here, and most are too small for you."
Lily nodded. She had thought as much, but it was good to get confirmation from those who lived here. "I cannot stay in this spot specifically, your food would drive me mad," she warned. She was already annoyed by the bugs that seemed to consider her eyes, ears, and nose interesting new places to explore. If she slept here, she might wake to find herself half-eaten by insects, assuming she could sleep at all with the constant assaults.
"Where you are is good, it is directly adjacent to here." The tiny dragon buzzed up and down in the air, happy with that. "You go on long flights, but other than that you are always around."
"Yes, but how did you know that?" She had a sneaking suspicion, but she wanted confirmation.
"We watch you," the tiny dragon replied, unashamed. "At all times. For safety and for entertainment. But you were more interesting when the other dragon was here, so mostly for safety these cycles."
Lily inhaled, held her breath for a moment, then let it out with a loud sigh. She decided she didn't want to think about what they had probably watched. It was over and done with, and she would just request actual privacy if she and Beryl wanted to do that anywhere around here in the future.
Something tickled at the back of her mind, a sensation she was coming to recognize as the sign of an incoming revelation. She closed her eyes and focused on the feeling, trying in vain to force it immediately.
Nothing. That kind of thing was a hint, not an answer, and she didn't even know the question, so there was no figuring it out. She would have to wait until it came to her on its own.
"I think that is everything?" she yawned.
"Yes, it is." The tiny dragon buzzed away from her, flying off toward the nearest wall. "We are sorry for waking you," he said as he left.
"I would have been more sorry to not have been woken," she replied firmly. "Do not forget those to watch over me as I sleep." She did not want to die to some sneaky little dragon slitting her throat while she lay helpless. For that matter, she had no way of knowing whether the same might happen to Beryl, travelling alone as he was… even though that was ridiculously unlikely since nobody wanted him dead. She still wanted him back.
On the bright side, boredom did not seem likely to be a problem in the immediate future. Once again, she had enemies and people to protect. This time, at the very least, it was both an easy problem, and a temporary assignment.
O-O-O-O-O
Days passed without incident. Lily got used to having five tiny guards at all times. They were as unobtrusive as could be, hiding so well that she almost never even saw them. One sometimes rode on her ear or back if they felt like it, but otherwise they were invisible. That was simple strategy; no reason to give the enemy any forewarning that there were guards on her.
The enemy, however, didn't seem to be coming yet. Lily would have expected a probing assault within three days, one made just to test her resolve and methods. But maybe they had been bluffing, and were nowhere near as bold as the one who had spoken to her made them seem.
Or, maybe the one to threaten her had been out of line, not just in boldness but in intention. There was probably a pack of those dragons out there somewhere, and it was entirely possible the leaders of that pack were wiser than the one that had threatened her, and had no interest in following through for reason of good sense.
Lily didn't believe that, though. It was paranoia that kept her wary, but she embraced a small bit of that paranoia, feeling it appropriate. Small dangers could have large consequences if she laughed and ignored them.
Embracing even a small amount of paranoia did have side effects. She felt more tired most of the time, and voluntarily cut her flights short. The several days after running into those other little dragons was one of odd lethargy and increased appetite, which she glumly attributed to having nothing to do but wait and eat. She spent more and more time fishing, getting picky about what she kept and what she threw back for no real reason.
That selectiveness might have been a mistake, one that came back to bite her sooner rather than later.
Lily leaned over a pretty patch of white flowers growing up from a small depression in the ground, bright and perky, and threw up all over them. Of the dozen flowers, only two survived the onslaught, and they weren't looking quite so pretty and pure with half-digested fish heads sitting at the base of their stems.
She felt the urge to make some stupid, quippy comment to the flowers – Beryl would have, he liked to poke fun at the oddest things sometimes – but her stomach was aching too much for her to bother. Instead, she glared balefully at the fish bits she had thrown up. One of those was responsible for the way she felt like she had swallowed a rock, even now, and if she had her way she would never eat any unfamiliar fish again. It was either the long one or the weird one with no eyes that had made her sick – not that she could tell them apart now.
She turned away from the ruined flowers as her stomach panged fiercely, twinging lower down. It was empty now, but it still hurt… It had been hurting all day, though she had thought at first that it was just bad gas or something else relatively benign. Now she knew better, but she didn't know what else to do.
"Do you have any long, three-stemmed vines growing around here?" she asked her ever-present watchers. None of them talked – at least, not to her – but they had a way of answering simple questions.
Two bulbous little dragons zipped out into the air in front of her and flew from side to side, shaking themselves dejectedly with the simple signal Lily had worked out to mean 'no'.
"Of course not," she muttered, rolling onto her side in the middle of another, larger flower patch. These flowers were worthless, as far as she could tell, and she hadn't seen any plants of value in her small explorations of the nearby area. All of which meant she wasn't getting anything to soothe her stomach or dull the stabbing pain that was tormenting her.
She wasn't particularly worried, though. Pained, annoyed at herself for picking exotic fish that turned out to be bad for her, but not worried. Food poisoning was, if she remembered Pyre's lessons right, very rarely fatal or serious. So long as it was just discomfort, she could sleep it off. It was the plants that were often dangerous, or the creatures with bright warning colors. She had eaten neither of those.
A splash echoed from off in the distance, out in the dark, star-studded depths of the lake. "Laugh all you want, I'm going to keep eating fish," she called out to it.
Her midsection – it wasn't quite her stomach anymore, something slightly lower down, which was a bit odd – panged again, and she pushed her wing against the ground, unsatisfied with lying on her side. She felt trapped, constrained, restless…
That wasn't right, and as another jolt of insistent discomfort ripped through her lower body, she knew something was wrong beyond a simple case of food poisoning. She rolled onto her stomach – which made it worse, harder to ignore – then forced herself up, to stand, and her paws carried her to her soft and comfortable little nest.
Her mind was racing as she moved, as another wave of pain moved through her. There might have been something in the stomachs of the fish she ate, or maybe the little predators had managed to poison her somehow. Or it could be the air itself, sickening when inhaled too often, though that idea was just random speculation with absolutely no evidence to back it up.
She inhaled deeply through her nostrils, catching the acrid scent of her own vomit from nearby, but mostly the clean, watery smell of the depths and the perfume of the flowers and moss. Her own scent too, so strong she could smell herself and the lingering traces of Beryl. The latter was a little comforting, though she would much rather have had him here, now, not just a reminder of his existence.
She was in pain. She was afflicted with something. But think as she might, she didn't know what. When she thought of possible plant-based ailments, everything that came to mind was supposed to be either less painful than what she was experiencing, or more. Or it would have a side-effect, like being completely unable to stop vomiting, or smelling nothing but ash no matter what was under her nose. She wasn't injured, she wasn't prone to any sort of long-lasting disease, she had been healthy and active for moon-cycles prior to now…
But the thought of healthy activities led her to thinking about what she had been doing recently, before Beryl left. Another pang from her lower stomach and hindquarters all but forced her thoughts to one specific thing.
Her first reaction to the idea that she might have an egg was denial, plain and simple. That wasn't possible, and it made no sense even so, because she would have noticed something… But there sometimes wasn't anything to notice, not really. An increased appetite, decreased energy, lethargy, mood swings, maybe, all of which she had either had or wouldn't have noticed.
Even if it made sense, it didn't because she was barren. She couldn't have eggs, that was known. She had made it so by using a plant, eating far too much of one and nearly dying of it.
Another ripple of mingled pain and discomfort forced her to rethink that particular assumption; she felt the urge to crouch and lower her hindquarters, and she remembered seeing Crystal do much the same way back when she had an egg to lay.
It was happening, even if it shouldn't. She stared out at the flowery cavern, not caring in the slightest about what she could see.
She remembered that day better than most. It was a day of sorrow and grief and rash actions, of her eating a plant that would keep her from having eggs, and then eating more and more. Which was dangerous…
But nobody had ever told her that eating too much would make her barren; she had simply done so and then reasoned that it made sense without any actual proof. She had proceeded to continue to eat individual leaves of the same bush, as a gesture of luck, or defiance depending on who she was pretending it was stymying at the time. With Claw, later with Beryl… She always had other reasons, of course, she hadn't thought they were necessary. But doing it like that meant that she hadn't tested her supposed immunity.
She crouched, feeling on the verge of something. Her body hurt, but she was doing her best to ignore that. Her claws dug into the moss below her, her muscles quaked, and she glared out at nothing, holding in all but the occasional pained grunt.
She was so stupid, and she knew it now. To assume something and then never think about it again for more than five season-cycles, to fret over it without ever knowing for sure… It was almost funny, how angry she suddenly was at herself for making that mistake, as compared to what was happening right now, what she was desperately trying to get done and forget–
A sharp pinch deep within her made her yelp, and then something was moving and she was moving mostly without thinking about it, and she panted and bit into her own gums. She felt stretched in worst possible way, and it was only getting more severe with every passing moment.
Then it was over, switching from pain to sore emptiness in a matter of heartbeats. She gradually fell to the side, moving with slow, twitchy movements, every part of herself tender and unwilling to put too much weight or pressure on anything.
She lay still for a time, stunned by the sudden stress that had come for her without nearly enough warning. She had not properly appreciated how seemingly sudden it was as a process; now she knew, and she knew enough to feel even worse for Crystal, for back then. That was not a process she would wish to surprise anyone with, however worth the effort it might be.
Worth the effort… The idea rolled around in her head for a while, as she lacked the will to do anything with it. There was something warm and solid partially under her leg, unharmed by her halting, fatigued collapse, but she couldn't think about it. Not when it was an impossible thing she had expected to never have. She had woken up this very morning under the assumption that nothing was going to happen, or if it did that it would be an attack or Beryl's return. This was entirely outside of her expectations.
She slowly craned her neck down, twisting herself to see what had landed under her. It took some moving, but she caught sight of white and grey. Of a familiar texture, shape, and size.
An egg, whole and intact and warm, lay under her leg. Her egg.
Author's Note: In case anyone was wondering, this was planned… not from the start, maybe, but from the time I'd finished plotting the first draft. I could have gone either way with the 'Lily makes herself barren' idea, and there were benefits to both paths beyond her trying to do so, so way back then I looked up the real-life consequences of overdosing on birth control and let reality choose for me. Lily never actually did anything permanent to herself (and most of those symptoms she experienced in the aftermath of attempting it are the real symptoms of such a thing). But what she believed mattered far more than what had actually happened.