Seven

Iza is breathless when she reaches the cavern. Her knee is bleeding, her dress torn from a careless fall in her rush to get to the egg – to the dragon. There is a stitch in her ribs and her heart is pounding a loud drumbeat and her head is swimming from the irrepressible urge to itchitchitch –

And Iza doesn't care.

She doesn't care at all.

Any discomfort is totally worth the bloom of sheer warmth in her chest. She is gasping, leaning hands on knees over the egg, which shivers in occasional movement that matches the creepy-crawl of phantom itch on her skin, and the only thing Iza truly feels is a fierce maternal sense.

This is her dragon.

She's going to meet her dragon. Finally. She doesn't know whether the tight clutch in her chest is from excitement or fear – both, maybe.

Iza catches her breath, then hovers in anxious anticipation over the egg. The shell has changed again, no longer touched by red from the coals beneath, but also not the drab stone-like gray it had been before, when she narrowly avoided killing it. Now, the shell is sooty and dark, fine black fissures etching across the surface like veins. It's hard to tell in the muted light of the cavern, but it looks like the shell is getting darker by the second. Maybe her eyes are playing tricks on her. Maybe she-

All at once, the constant horrific itch on her skin halts and the egg ceases to shiver. She has the oddest feeling of sheer determination – a will to survive – that she at once recognizes does not belong to her. And then there is a phantom twinge in her skull, right at her crown, that she belatedly realizes is synchronized with the gently curved horns suddenly sticking out from the top of the egg.

The dragon is cracking the egg from the inside. With its head. It would be comical if not for the breathtaking majesty of the moment – Iza instinctively knows that she is witnessing something very special, something sacred. Something no human has ever seen.

Iza moves to sit on her knees and watches her egg hatch.

The process is not smooth. There are stops and starts and vague feelings of confusion from the baby dragon as, piece by piece, the shell breaks off. It takes a long time before Iza catches sight of the very top of the dragon's head, tiny shells and a flattened bit of something between the horns covered in some kind of viscous fluid. The top of the head disappears, but is soon replaced by a narrow snout with delicate slanted nostrils that sniff at the outside air curiously. Then just as quickly, the snout is gone and another surge of determination is followed by the entire head breaking through the shell.

And then Iza is eye-to-eye with a baby dragon.

And what she sees makes her head spin.

Because she remembers the dragon's mother and the two glowing green eyes staring at her from the darkness of a shadow. When she thought about the baby dragon inside the egg, she always imagined that the dragon would also have those green eyes bright enough to illuminate the night.

Iza was wrong.

The baby dragon looks at her from the egg with large, wide eyes set at a tilt – one eye a rich sun-cast amber and the other a crystalline blue as bright as a bolt of lightning, each eye neatly bisected by a black slit of a pupil.

One amber eye and one blue eye.

Just like Iza.

And Iza hardly has time to process that because the baby dragon is looking up at her, kind of beseeching, and there is a sense of elation thoroughly mixed with befuddlement and a feeling of want that Iza recognized all too well.

"Your mother is gone," she tells the dragon, a twist in her stomach when the dragon lets out a keen of mourning. No creature should ever make a sound like that. Iza has a moment of misplaced guilt for the dragon being an orphan before she sets it aside. "But I am here. I have been helping you. I am sorry if I have not done a very good job…"

The forlorn feeling ebbs from the dragon, replaced by acceptance and a flicker of recognition. The dragon knows her. And the dragon is excited to truly meet her.

Iza watches with wide eyes as an infantile frustration overcomes the dragon and its eyes flare briefly and the shell around the dragon begins to simply crumble into a fine grain of sand. She doesn't understand how until she catches sight of the tiny claws at the fore of each of the dragon's limbs; the claws glow as bright as the iron in Wilhelm's forge, and Iza would bet anything that those claws are just as hot. But before she can begin worrying about how to contain a dragon who can disintegrate things, the claws fade into a shiny black and Iza abruptly finds herself with a lapful of warm baby dragon.

Her first thought is that, for such a small thing, the dragon is certainly very heavy. Strangely, the dragon is somehow heavier outside of its shell than inside and Iza cannot help releasing a breath as she registers the heft of the creature. The density is astounding, considering the fact that the baby dragon is only just larger than her entire hand if she stretches her fingers as far and wide as possible.

But it is Iza's next thought that makes her heart catch on a beat.

The baby dragon trusts her with an absolution that Iza has never known. The dragon adores Iza immediately and seems to instinctually know what Iza has been slow to acknowledge – they are bonded. They are meant for each other. They will live together and they will die together.

Is this how it is for dragons? Iza has no idea. She is very much in new territory uncharted by any other person. She could ask Alise, she supposes, but Alise would probably end up telling Iza what the dragon has already silently communicated.

Iza and the dragon are family.

No.

No, not the dragon…

Iza frowns, her brows furrowed as she stares down at the creature sitting happily in her lap, long tail slowly waving back and forth as the dragon looks up at her – big, two-colored eyes meeting her own with an intelligence that would be alarming if Iza were not currently falling into a whirlwind within her own mind. There is a roaring in her ears, like a rush of wind, and for a brief moment Iza feels as though she is looking at herself – pale and dismayed and two-colored –

And then there is a tinkling, silvery sound between hear ears – a sound that is not a sound.

Iza knows it is the dragon. Talking to her in her mind.

Eko, it says.

Iza opens her mouth, maybe to point out that eko is not a word and that Iza most definitely does not understand dragon language – but her teeth clank together as she realizes that she apparently can understand dragon language.

Because Eko is a name.

Eko is the dragon's name.

And Eko is female.

In the space of a breath, Iza suddenly knows as much about Eko as Eko knows about her. Things that Eko is instinctively aware of are now pieces of information that Iza will keep safeguarded.

Eko is a rare darkfrill, a breed of dragon with scales as pitch black as a moonless night and with abilities that are unique to each dragon. Eko has already shown an ability with her claws that is both exciting and worrisome, although Eko is rather ambivalent to what her feet can do. Eko does not know why she has named herself Eko – but this is perhaps because she is still so very young and unlearned, because Iza as an abrupt, nearly prophetic insight to the dragon's naming. Gooseflesh rises on her skin when the idea pops into her head that Eko is called Eko because of an innate ability to echo.

Iza does not know what that means. She cannot wrap her head around it. And anyway, the notion is quickly swallowed up by other knowledge, such as the fact that Eko needs meat and fruit and that she will sleep better in a fire and that she will only be able to achieve flight at night until she is older and – and so much more that Iza grows dizzy from it.

"Odin," Iza says, a low oath. "All-Father, why me?"

Her lament is met with silence and an inquisitive look from Eko.

"Do dragons pray to the Gods?" Iza wonders.

Eko tilts her head. There is a sense of confusion blooming in Iza's mind and she figures she has her answer. Dragons do not know the Gods. Or at least, this dragon does not. Not yet, anyway. She will inevitably learn, given that she is now linked to Iza's every thought on a level that might have been intrusive if not for how very comforting it is.

She sighs, staring at the dragon that is staring at her.

It is not only their eyes that are so similar. Iza also has pitch-dark hair, so utterly black that when it is wet, it seems to reflect all the colors around it. Eko's scales are similar, a subtle iridescence that gleams like a rainbow even in near-darkness.

Iza draws her finger over the frilled crest resting between Eko's tiny twin horns, following the frill as it traces over Eko's spine, growing thinner and thinner until it reaches her long, slender tail, where the frill grows in volume and rests in gentle folds. Iza figures the folds must spread during flight and help in balance. Eko also has two frills beneath her chin, on either side of her neck, that also seem capable of being flexed.

Iza is taken by the smooth quality of Eko's scales, both hard like granite and as soft as fresh-spun wool at the same time. She thought they might have felt oily or wet, but they are dry, layered over each other to lay flat. Some scales, like the ones around Eko's eyes and wings, are impossibly small, while the scales over her belly are larger and tougher. And just like her frills, the wings folded tightly against Eko's back are almost leathery. Iza tramps down the urge to explore the wings more thoroughly since she has the sense that they are very sensitive and still developing at the moment. Eko will not be ready for flight for some time.

Which means that the entirety of her well being is now Iza's responsibility.

Iza bites her lip, amused when Eko seems to try and mimic the action, though all the dragon does is end up flicking a dark violet forked tongue at Iza a few times before seeming to give up.

Something in Iza relaxes at the sheer innocence of the creature she now calls her own.

"Well, Eko," she says after a moment, smiling softly at the dragon. "Welcome to the world."

Eko lets loose a trilling happy sound at that and Iza's smile widens.

For that moment, it does not matter that Iza has no clue where she will hide the dragon or how she will protect the dragon or how she will even manage to take care of a dragon that requires constant attention as it cannot fend for itself.

All that matters is that Iza has Eko and that Eko has Iza.

The rest will sort itself out. The Norns will see to it.

A/N: Eko is probably really cute, but since I can't draw dragons, I hope her description is good enough to do her justice. She's so small, but she's going to be so big and awesome and cool. Dragons!

Anyway, sorry about the delay in update. Real life has been - well, the internship is ending, a got a freelance writing job that takes up a lot of time, had to a crisis and then another crisis and it's just been gah. So. The updates will probably be pretty slow for a while. There just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day, you know?

As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.

~Rae