Hey guys, new chapter up yay! I have another chapter already edited and ready to post but I'm gonna wait until Monday. Kay, hope you enjoy.
Chime chirruped sadly from her vantage point high in the eaves. Below, her humans spoke in whispers, not even glancing up at her. Not that she was much to look at, nowadays. Chime let out an annoyed little hiss as she tried, for the umpteenth time, to scrape off the illusion masking her true form.
"Leave it alone, Chime." Mistress' tone booked no argument- Chime sulkily settled back into her illusion even though she longed to disobey. Being seen as a crow was too far beneath her dignity.
Huffing, the glass dragon went to the open window and took off into the noon sunshine. She wheeled around the open window for a minute, one ear cocked to see if Mistress or any of her hatch-mates would call her back in. When she heard nothing, Chime took to the skies. It had been far too long since she'd had a decent flight, confined as she'd been inside the shabby human dwelling for the past two moons.
Far too long since she'd had a decent meal as well.
Gold shavings from the Fire Woman's palm were too full of foreign magic for her to really digest them properly and for some reason neither the Green One nor the Thread Lady had brought her real food for a long time. Chime's belly churned and she naturally began scanning the winding city streets for the glitter and flash of her favorite meals.
There!
Chime darted in low, snagging a small nugget of silver off of a jeweler's cart display. Ignoring the yells of the shopkeeper and the laughter of those who'd spotted her little stunt, Chime quickly gobbled down the little piece. She let out a dainty little burp as the lightning in her blood naturally broke down and destroyed the protective anti-theft spells that had layered her meal. Delicious.
For the rest of the afternoon, she hunted for whatever scraps she could get her claws on, which was pitifully little. By the time dusk rolled around, she'd only managed to eat two little bits of gold and a single pearl which, in her opinion, was not enough to sustain her. It was a far sight better than the copper and tin she'd been fed by Mistress lately. Not that she was ungrateful, Chime preened nervously, almost nervously. She knew that Mistress protected her from others gifted the silver fire that curled around their hearts but a spoiled little dragon could only take so much before she had to eat some real food.
Chime alighted on a nearby gable and looked down at the roiling human crowd with dismay. With the dusk, the smiths, jewelers, merchants, and anyone who might have had something for Chime to eat were packing up. Her belly gave another complaint, reminding her that she hadn't eaten nearly enough for her to be considered full. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the setting sun casting a rosy glow on the familiar stone of a large human dwelling. She cocked her head at the far away Palace; hadn't the man Mistress called Duke lived in such a place? Chime licked her chops in remembrance of the feasts the large human male had brought for her every time he visited his kin the Thread Lady. Thoughts of the wealth of food potentially hidden away from her, hoarded by humans, made Chime's beady glass eyes narrow before she leapt off the roof and winged away into the rapidly descending night.
It was full night by the time Daine managed to finish her duties at the stables and excuse herself to bed. She was too tired to hike the innumerable palace stairs to her and Numair's rooms and instead shifted into a small starling and flew to their high window.
"Gods, Numair," Daine groaned as her feet touched down in their living room. "I hope Sarra is as tired as I am, else I might beg you to spell her asleep."
She blinked, looking around the empty room with a raised eyebrow. Daine knew that at this time of night, nothing short of a national emergency could keep Numair from his comfortable overstuffed chair in the corner of the den.
"Numair?" Daine called, prowling through their rooms, looking for her missing husband. She poked her head into the darkened nursery and noted the sleeping form of her daughter with some relief before softly shutting the door behind her. At least he had managed to get her to bed, whatever else he was doing now.
Eventually, she found him. He was of course, in his workroom. She could sense his power just behind the door, flaring as he tried to puzzle out some magical object. Her brief flare of worry instantly dissipated. Numair, as he was wont to do, had simply become caught up in some experiment or another. She knew she shouldn't bother him when he was working (he offered the same courtesy to her, after all) but sometimes Numair would forget that he had to eat.
Daine knocked on the thick wooden door softly. "Numair? Can I come in?" In answer, the door unlocked. Pushing it open, Daine peeked her head in. "I was just wondering if you'd eaten- by the Goddess!"
Numair and Kitten looked innocently from where they were seated at his worktable, as if there was nothing strange about feeding bits of precious gems to - Abandoning the doorway, Daine picked her way through Numair's clutter until she reached the duo. "Is that a dragon? Made from glass?"
"It appears so, yes." Numair said, stroking the creature from the top of her head down the length of her serpentine neck. The little dragon hissed in pleasure, arching into the mage's touch. "Though she's not a real dragon, at least, not like Kitten here." He gave the flesh and blood reptile a reassuring little pat.
"Are you sure it's safe to touch?" Daine asked, giving the glass dragon a skeptical look.
"Safe enough, as long as you don't insult her." Numair said cheerfully.
"Her?" Daine said with raised brows. It was usually her that gave sexless magical objects genders, not her precise husband.
Numair shrugged and gave her a crooked smile. "She's much too vain to be male."
Daine snorted, reaching out with a hesitant hand to give the dragon a scratch behind the clear ridges on her head. "So, what is she? An Immortal maybe?" Daine doubted it. The little dragon's screeches and croons didn't translate to speech even when she reached out with her magic, which lent the Wild Mage to believe that the glass dragon was mage made.
"Perhaps. I can definitely sense a human hand- maybe some sort of magical construct." The black robe sat back in his chair, yawning a little as he stretched. "Well, it's definitely not any sort of magic I recognize." He said, chuckling a little at Daine's look of surprise. "I don't know everything, magelet."
"Near enough." Daine grinned. "I'm more surprised to hear you admit it."
"Anyway," Numair said, giving his wife a mock glare. "I never specialized in the type of magic needed to make this kind of magical creature. There are entire departments in magical universities dedicated to this kind of thing- and even then, I don't think they could've created our little friend here."
"What're you saying then?" Daine asked. "She was made by accident?"
"Most likely." Numair said. He pointed to the glass, which shifted and moved like real skin. "I can see remnants of household charms, good-luck spells, safety wards, all run of the mill magic that people use day to day. However," he squinted, feeding another sprinkle of gold dust to the little dragon to distract her. "what's really fascinating is that she seems to have actual lightning running through her veins."
"So you're saying some sort of lightning mage is running around doing workings without so much as a protective circle to keep out scraps?"
"Out here, mages that have a Gift attuned to the making or unmaking of things are rare." Numair said. "The captains of the great merchant marines that go beyond the Roof of the World say that, in the East, mages who work their power through their hands can do things that mages restricted to spells and enchantments could never even dream of."
"Do you think maybe someone's got their hands on one of these special mages?" Daine asked heavily. The last thing Tortall needed was another war right on the heels of the last one; she didn't think she could stand another few years of flying around and spying on the enemy for weeks at a time without rest. She had little Sarra to think about now too.
"Hopefully not." Numair said, his mind straying in the same direction as her own. "We have our hands full with the Immortals as it is- you know how they've been recently." The Stormwing population in particular had become almost unmanageable- the steady source of food from the Scanran War had caused them to breed. "We'll both need to keep our eyes open, but there's not much we can do about it. There's hope that whoever she belongs to is keeping a low profile- she had a rather layered illusion hiding her true appearance."
With a wave of his hand, the little glass dragon shimmered into a crow, like one of the thousands that flew above the city of Corus. She let out a little caw and flew to the window, ruffling imaginary feathers. With one last haughty look backwards, the creature dropped out of sight out into the dark.
"She didn't like that." Numair noted with some amusement.
Kitten let out a forlorn little whistle. Daine looked down, smiling a little as the little dragon turned a sad shade of blue. "It's alright Kitten. Knowing Numair, he's probably put a tracking spell on your little friend." She looked to Numair for confirmation. At his nod, she looked down at Kitten again. "See? You'll see your friend again."
"Probably sooner than you think." Numair agreed, his eyes tracking the small black speck out the window until it totally disappeared from his sight.