The Trials and Tribulations of Breeding Dragons

The occasional lonely day is tough but imagine an eternity full of lonely days…Days spent in silence and isolation, long after everything you'd built and everyone you'd ever known and loved had passed into the annals of history. It would be unbearable, and if you could see it coming then you'd do anything…absolutely anything at all to avoid this becoming your future.

This is a slightly weird idea that just wouldn't get out of my head. It's turned out decidedly less peculiar than I thought it might and has a proper beginning, middle and end. Is definitely canon-divergent by the time it's finished.

Also, pronouns are hard work! For ease of my sanity, everyone who starts off as he/him will continue as he/him, regardless of what body they are wearing at the time. This will make sense as you progress through the story. There is a bona fide reason for it!

~#~ CHAPTER 1 ~#~

For the third time in as many nights, Neuvillette gave up all attempts at trying to sleep and clambered out of bed. While not needing anything like the amount of rest that a normal human did, he usually tried to have two or three hours, in the early hours of each morning. For the past three mornings, though, each time he'd drift off to sleep only to find himself experiencing lurid, peculiar and downright unsettling dreams.

On the two previous nights, he'd got up, had a long soak in the bath, gone back to bed and failed to sleep. This third night he simply got up and stalked around his suite of rooms for a while before wandering downstairs into the dark, cavernous halls on the lower levels of the Palais Mermonia. The quiet, stately building had been both his home and his office for hundreds of years and had never failed to calm him after even the most trying of days. He was discomforted, therefore, to find that, on this particular night, he wasn't settling, even after waking several laps of the quiet building.

Despite being barefoot and dressed only in the comfortable set of house clothes that he usually slept in, Neuvillette pushed open one of the side doors of the Palais and stepped out into the street. Silently he padded through the empty streets of Fontaine, with no particular destination in mind and eventually ended up on one of the high walkways looking out over the water towards Elynas. He stood there for a long while, breathing in the crisp night air while his long white hair flowed behind him, buffeted by the soft, sea breeze.

Eventually he cast his eyes further out across Fontaine and frowned slightly. There was a scent on the air that he didn't recognise. It was faint and distant but something definitely different to normal.

With the frown still on his face, Neuvillette made his way towards the aquabus station. Even though Fontaine was quiet and still, with no one except Neuvillette wandering the streets, he still found the door to the station being pushed open as he approached.

"My dear, sweet Aeval, whatever are you doing up?" he asked softly. "It is very late and you cannot surely be expecting travellers at this hour."

The little melusine simply blinked at him and smiled. "But of course I was, monsieur, we were expecting you. We were expecting you last night too but when you did not arrive I knew that you would be here this night. You are heading for the harbour, yes?"

"You were expecting me last night?" Neuvillette shook his head in confusion. "And yes, I would like to visit the harbour, if it is not too much trouble. I…"

…want to investigate the new scent on the breeze," Aeval finished the sentence for him. "I believe that would be wise. It is new to Fontaine, but it is old. Very old. It is…confusing and while we do not believe it to be a danger please, monsieur, take care when you approach it."

Neuvillette nodded gently. "I will," he promised. "Oh, Everallin, you are also up?"

"Of course I am," the second melusine replied. "We were…"

"Expecting me," Neuvillette answered with a light-hearted grumble. "So I've heard. Well, thank you both, it seems you knew to expect me before I myself knew that I was coming out tonight."

The melusines gave each other a knowing glance, which Neuvillette failed to understand, and then fussed around getting the aquabus up and running. It only took a couple of minutes and then they were underway, travelling slowly towards the harbour.

~#~

The scent remained faint but slowly became stronger the nearer the aquabus got to the harbour. Neuvillette found himself becoming unusually fidgety as the bus slowly cruised down the Clementine Line towards Romaritime Harbor and looked down at himself with a frown as he noticed his incomplete state of dress and complete lack of footwear. It was just as well, he thought, that the occupants of Fontaine rarely stepped outside after dark, it simply would not do for them to see the Chief Justice in such a state of undress.

The aquabus eventually reached the end of the line near the harbour and came to a gentle stop. "As smooth as ever, Aeval," Neuvillette patted the little melusine on her shoulder. "Thank you. Both of you. I am sorry to have disturbed your sleep."

"There is no need monsieur," Aeval replied with a small bow as Neuvillette clambered off the boat. "Please remain safe and we will be here when you return. Whenever that will be."

Neuvillette frowned slightly as he watched the aquabus begin its return trip back to the station without him. He was beginning to get the distinct impression that the melusines knew more about where he was going and why than he did himself and he didn't know how to take that. He shook himself and turned to pad across the concourse in the direction of the water. He made his way down to the edge of the harbour where chiselled stone and water met and spent several minutes simply standing there, staring out across the water, with his hands hanging loosely by his sides, breathing in the scent on the wind.

Eventually he turned, looked around to check there was still no one around, and then dived gracefully into the water.

~#~

When Neuvillette walked out of the water on the other side of the harbour, he was stepping onto Sumerian soil. He dug his toes deeply into the soft sand as he waved a hand over himself and pulled the water from both his clothes and his hair until everything was dry.

The scent was much more pronounced on this side of the water and Neuvillette let out a full body shudder as he sniffed gently to ascertain the direction it was coming from.

He followed the edge of the cliff to the right, away from the harbour and its associated signs of human habitation and soon realised that he was shaking. He stopped and leant against the cliff face for a moment, with his hand pressed against his suddenly churning stomach. He took several deep breaths through his mouth and, eventually, pushed himself off the cliff to continue walking.

The further he walked, the more under the weather he felt. He didn't feel unwell as such, more like off kilter, out of balance or just generally 'off' in as none-descript a way as it was possible to be. He eventually rounded a curve in the cliff and, with a sigh of relief, realised that he had found the source of the scent. A small, deep cave, only slightly taller than Neuvillette himself, scarred the cliff face roughly three feet up from the sandy beach and, as he peered tentatively inside, Neuvillette could see a soft orange glow from somewhere deep within. His nose was filled with a much more concentrated variant of the scent he'd been following and as he stood there a hot flush ran through him, from the soles of his feet, out the top of his head, to the end of the blue tendrils in his hair and back again. The heat pulsed with every beat of his heart and gathered in his stomach before moving downwards and settling into his groin area.

Neuvillette glanced across at the sea, seriously debating launching himself in and swimming back across to the safety of Fontaine. However, he realised that if he did that then there was a possibility that he'd spend the next who-knew-how-long unable to sleep and unaware of the truth behind the scent which, apparently, only himself and the melusines were aware of.

The heat in his nether regions was beginning to have a biological reaction and Neuvillette whined softly at the sensation. Whatever was in the cave, he needed to put a stop to it and soon. Then he could swim home, curl up in his comfy bed and catch up on his missed sleep.

~#~

As Neuvillette stepped into the cave, the scent he'd been following became thicker to the point of being almost overpowering. It filled his lungs with dense, cloying sweetness and he found himself shaking again as he fought against the unbearable heat running through him.

He forced himself to continue onwards until he rounded a bend in the tunnel-like cave when he came to an abrupt halt. A thin, sinewy black dragon was pacing near the end of the cave and, even in the dim orange light of the cave, Neuvillette could see that it was shaking, much the same as himself. Roughly eight foot long, with almost six foot of tail trailing behind it, the dragon walked in tight circles and, as Neuvillette watched, it broke off the circling and threw itself into a large divot in the ground. It rolled and scratched itself in the soft sand in the dip and then clambered out and began circling again, but in the opposite direction.

Neuvillette stood there for a long moment, unsure of exactly what he should do. The dragon appeared to be completely oblivious to his presence, but it was clearly generating the scent trail that he'd followed out of Fontaine. Whether this was an invitation, a threat or an accidental fluke of nature, Neuvillette was unsure. What he was certain of though, was that it was causing reactions in him that he'd kept buried his entire life. It had become second nature to keep his draconic side well and truly in check at all times but, standing in the cave, surrounded by that heavy, almost-sticky scent, he found his control beginning to slip.

Neuvillette pressed his hand firmly against his stomach, attempting to stave off the unbearable pressure building up below the waistline of his trousers. A quiet whine escaped from his throat and, despite it being barely audible, the dragon heard it and froze. The long, tapered tail thrashed from side to side for a moment as the dragon slowly turned its gaze towards him and then pounced.