Chương 8: Water is Life

The horse screamed again. It was not the startled whinny Aurelia had heard in the past when Orion entered the barn too quickly. This was a full-throated declaration that something had gone terribly wrong with the natural order of the world. Considering the creature occupying the opposite side of the barn, Aurelia could hardly blame him. Shale sat amid the remains of what had been their winter stores, his broad stone-colored head tilted toward the horse with mild curiosity.

He had been small enough to carry beneath one arm when they left him a couple hours before. Now his back rose nearly level with Aurelia's shoulders even while seated, and his thick body filled most of the open space between the stalls. The Burrowback Drake's shovel-like foreclaws rested primly together. His tail struck the floor again in greeting. The rafters shuddered, and the horse answered with another scream.

"Shale," Orion said, his voice dangerously calm.

"Stop moving your tail." Shale froze. Roy stood in the barn doorway with both hands braced against the frame, staring at the drake as though every dream he had ever entertained had arrived at once and was currently threatening to knock the building down.

"He grew," Roy breathed. Orion slowly turned his head.

"Yes, Roy."

"Considerably."

"I noticed."

"Do you think the growth was delayed from the hatching? Or perhaps Burrowbacks begin small so they can escape the egg, and then—""Roy." Roy's grin widened.

"You asked me to become more observant." Aurelia might have laughed if Orion had not looked ready to throw him into the snow. Shale lowered himself onto his belly, either obeying Orion's command or deciding the conversation no longer concerned him. His body had the compact heaviness of a boulder despite its new size. Overlapping scales formed natural ridges down his shoulders and spine, and clumps of dirt still clung between them from the burrow he had dug beneath the barn floor.

For a moment, Aurelia could only stare. The world had been widening around them ever since Kindle hatched. First the Weave, then their Classes, then skills that could bend wood and space. Now a creature larger than their horse had grown inside their barn over the course of a few hours, and Roy looked as delighted as if this were merely another page from one of his books coming to life. Aurelia was amazed. She was also beginning to understand why Orion appeared ill.

The wreckage surrounding Shale had not come from his growth alone. Half the stacked firewood along the rear wall had vanished. Bundles of straw had been dragged from beside the horse's stall, and one side of the haystack had collapsed into a ragged slope. Loose hay clung to Shale's jaws and the stony ridges beneath his chin. Orion stepped past him and began sorting through the damage. He lifted one half-chewed length of firewood, stared at it, and let it fall.

"How much?" Aurelia asked. He did not answer immediately. His gaze moved from the remaining wood to the hay, then to the boards and cut lumber they had stored after completing the cottage. Some of that had also been eaten, though Shale had favored the firewood and horse feed. Roy's expression finally sobered.

"Kindle helped us conserve more wood than we expected," he said.

"We still have the trees we marked near the eastern edge, and the house holds heat properly now."

"That wood was meant to last through winter," Orion replied.

"The lumber was meant for repairs to the barn and whatever comes next. The hay is for the horse." The horse thrust his head over the stall door as if eager to confirm his involvement. Orion crouched beside the remaining stack and counted silently. His scarred hand moved stiffly over the split logs, but the injury no longer prevented him from working. Aurelia had stopped seeing the bandage several days ago.

The scar remained, pale and angry through the center of his palm, a permanent reminder of the instant he had placed himself between her and a knife.

"At this rate," Orion said, "we have perhaps two weeks." Roy looked toward Shale.

"Assuming he eats the same amount every night."

"One week if he eats more as he grows." Shale's head lifted at the change in their voices. The drake looked from Orion to the ruined stacks, then to Aurelia. His tail, which had begun to rise, settled carefully against the floor. The plates along his back lowered. Even his broad head seemed to sink between his shoulders. He understood enough. Perhaps not the words themselves, but the panic behind them. Aurelia crossed the barn before Orion could stop her.

Shale watched her approach with dark, uncertain eyes, his body held unnaturally still. At his new size, his foreclaw was broader than both her hands together, but he drew it inward when she knelt beside him.

"You were hungry," Aurelia said. Shale released a low sound, too deep to be a whine but carrying the same guilty note. She placed one hand against the side of his snout. The scales were cool and rough beneath her palm, more like weathered stone than Kindle's warm hide.

"It is all right. You need to eat too." Orion exhaled behind her.

"Aurelia—""He does."

"He ate enough to endanger the horse." Shale's eyes shifted toward the stall. The horse retreated at once. Aurelia kept her hand on the drake's snout.

"You cannot eat all of this again. Do you understand?" Shale remained still.

"The hay belongs to him." She pointed toward the horse, then the remaining haystack.

"Not Shale." The drake's gaze followed her gesture. His nostrils widened as he studied the hay, and Aurelia could not tell whether he understood that it was forbidden or merely wondered why she was showing him breakfast.

"And the stacked wood belongs to the house," she continued.

"We will find something else for you. We will work together." At that, Shale leaned forward until the weight of his head pressed into her chest. Aurelia nearly toppled backward. She caught herself against one of his ridges and found her face buried beside his eye. Roy's voice softened.

"I think he knows he upset us."

"He did not know," Aurelia said. Orion looked at the remaining supplies.

"That does not change what happens if we cannot feed him."

"No," she agreed.

"It means we solve it without making him afraid to be hungry." Shale's tail moved once, slowly enough that it only scraped the floor. Orion rubbed both hands over his face.

"I barely understood how to feed Kindle, and Kindle was small enough to sleep in the hearth. This one is larger than our horse and apparently eats houses." Shale gave a low, offended rumble.

"He did not eat the house," Aurelia said.

"He ate the pieces we were going to use to repair everything other than the house." Roy stepped farther into the barn and picked through the remains. He examined a chewed log, then a mouthful of damp hay Shale had left beneath one foreclaw. He crouched near the burrowed section of earth and sifted dirt between his fingers.

"Perhaps he does not eat wood," he said. Orion stared at him.

"The evidence seems unusually strong."

"He ate hay too."

"That does not improve the situation."

"No, but it means he may not be seeking either one specifically." Roy moved closer to Shale, who watched him with cautious interest.

"Burrowback. Earth. Digging. He might eat plant matter from the ground. Roots, fallen limbs, old stumps, leaves beneath the snow. Whatever breaks down into the forest floor."

"Mulch," Aurelia said. Roy nodded.

"Something like it. The dead wood and dry hay may simply have been the closest food available." Orion looked toward the closed barn doors. Beyond them, the entire farm lay beneath several feet of snow.

"So the food he needs may be everywhere," he said, "buried beneath winter."

"Perhaps." Orion's jaw tightened. For years, he had carried every household problem as though admitting uncertainty would make it heavier for the rest of them. He decided when they cut wood, how far they could stretch flour, whether a roof beam could endure another storm. Even after Roy awakened as an Architect, Orion had continued to treat each plan as something he needed to approve rather than something he might need help understanding.

Now he looked at the giant drake, the eaten stores, and the snow beyond the walls. Then he looked directly at Roy.

"What do we do?" Roy blinked. Aurelia felt the question settle over the barn. Orion rarely asked either of them for a plan. He listened when they offered one and adjusted when they proved him wrong, but asking was different. Asking meant he had reached the edge of what he knew and trusted Roy to see beyond it. Roy straightened.

"You are asking me?"

"I am already reconsidering it."

"No, I think this is important. We should remember the occasion. Aurelia, do we have parchment?"

"Roy."

"Right." He folded his arms and studied the damage again. The humor left his face by degrees.

"We hatch the second egg." Orion stared at him. Aurelia was not surprised when he said, "Absolutely not."

"We cannot feed the two dragons we already have," Roy said.

"Which is why we need another option."

"Your option is to add a third creature to the problem."

"My option is to add a water creature."

"We do not know that."

"The egg is always damp. Its shell is gray-blue. Its objective requires a hot bath. It is a reasonable conclusion."

"A reasonable conclusion is not food."

"No, but water is essential for every kind of life we know." Roy gestured toward the snow outside.

"We are surrounded by it, but it takes hours of labor and wood to make any of it useful. A dragon connected to water may give us something we do not have now."

"Or it may drink us dry."

"It may," Roy admitted. The simple admission robbed Orion of his next objection. Roy continued more carefully.

"I am not promising that the egg solves Shale's food. It may not. But water means crops, trees, animals, soil. It means cleaning, building, and surviving. And if the creature is connected to water, it may also be connected to snow." Aurelia glanced toward Shale.

"Which we need removed before we can reach the forest floor."

"Exactly. Otherwise, Orion and I spend every day shoveling a path to the trees, cutting whatever we can find, and hauling it back merely to keep Shale from eating the barn. We rebuilt the cottage so we could stop surviving one day at a time. If feeding him traps us in the same cycle, then we need another tool." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Orion remained silent. Roy's voice lost its remaining levity.

"The Weave gave us these eggs after we chose to remain together. I do not think it expects every dragon to make our lives easier, but I also do not think it gave us four creatures that can only consume what little we have. There is a pattern here. Kindle made winter possible. Shale can help us rebuild and may become useful for the land. The second egg is our best chance at opening the next door." Aurelia stood beside Shale, one hand resting between the ridges above his eye.

"I agree," she said. Orion looked from her to Roy, then back toward the ruined stores.

"One day," he muttered, "I am going to ask for advice and receive something that does not involve hatching a dragon." Roy brightened.

"You could ask me what to make for dinner."

"I would rather starve." Shale's nostrils widened at the word. Aurelia patted his snout.

"No one is starving." Not yet, at least. They left the barn after moving the remaining hay behind the horse's stall and placing the surviving lumber in the cottage. Whether Shale understood the restriction remained uncertain, but he refused to move from Aurelia's side until she reassured him twice more. By the time they closed the doors, he had curled into his earthen cove with his nose tucked beneath one foreleg.

That evening, Aurelia carried him a basket filled with bark, vegetable peelings, dead leaves they had collected before the snow, and the soft remnants swept from beneath the old woodpile. Shale devoured the mixture with such enthusiasm that the basket nearly disappeared with it. The meal did not satisfy him for long, but it strengthened Roy's theory enough that they began work at first light. ─── 🐲 ─── Shale had not grown again. Orion stood in the barn doorway for a full minute before accepting that fact.

The drake remained larger than the horse, but no new ridges scraped the rafters, and his tail had not become thick enough to knock through a wall.

"That is encouraging," Roy said.

"That is the lowest standard for encouragement I have ever heard." They carried the gray-blue egg outside while Aurelia prepared food. The air was bitter but clear, and sunlight flashed across the snow until the entire farm seemed made from white glass. The restored cottage stood solidly against it, old in shape but new in every line, its walls straight and its roof clean beneath the accumulated snow. Roy selected a sheltered area on the far side of the barn where the building blocked the worst of the wind.

The space was close enough to the cottage that they could carry heated stones and firewood without crossing the entire yard.

"Here," Roy said.

"Ten feet by ten." Orion looked at the marked square.

"For a bath?"

"We need room to work around it."

"We could bathe half of Bellhaven in that."

"Then we will have options." They spent the next two hours clearing snow, Shale watching from beside the barn. Orion drove his shovel into the packed surface, lifted another heavy load, and threw it beyond Roy's boundary. Roy worked opposite him, though his pace slowed whenever he stopped to examine the ground or reconsider the basin's shape. Aurelia hauled the loosened snow away in a wooden sled.

Kindle bounded between them, plunging beneath drifts and erupting in showers of steam whenever snow touched the heated ridges along his back. Shale remained motionless. At first, Aurelia assumed he was observing. Then she noticed his eyes drifting closed. Orion leaned on his shovel.

"Shale." One eye opened.

"You can move earth. Dig." Shale's head rose at the direct command. Orion pointed to the cleared square.

"Dig there." The drake lumbered forward, examined the boundary Roy had marked, and placed both shovel-like claws against the frozen ground. For one breath, nothing happened. Then the earth vanished beneath him. Soil sprayed behind Shale in two controlled streams. His foreclaws tore through frozen dirt as though it were loose grain, carving downward and outward with impossible speed. Roy leapt aside. Orion dragged the sled clear just before a wave of soil buried it.

Within moments, Shale stood at the bottom of a broad, shallow basin. Roy stepped to the edge and looked down.

"Thirty seconds."

"Closer to twenty," Orion said. Shale climbed out, shook dirt from his scales, and returned to his previous spot beside the barn. Orion pointed toward the mountains of snow surrounding the basin.

"Now help us clear that." Shale looked at the snow. His lips pulled back from his blunt teeth, then he turned his head away with unmistakable disdain.

"You dug through frozen earth," Orion said. Shale sat.

"You are covered in dirt." Shale's tail curled around his feet as though the discussion were beneath him. Roy patted Orion on the shoulder.

"He has principles."

"He has four legs and a shovel attached to each front one."

"Principles rarely care about efficiency." Orion stared at Shale for several seconds, then drove his shovel back into the snow with enough force to strike earth. By midday, the basin had been cleared and shaped. Its rough walls were too porous to hold water, but the ground beneath the topsoil contained enough clay for Roy to attempt a lining. He knelt at the basin's edge with both hands pressed to the earth. [Basic Transmutation] The soil shifted beneath his fingers.

Small stones trembled free and rose toward the surface. Coarse sand separated from darker clay, gathering in uneven ridges that Orion scraped aside. Roy worked slowly, maintaining contact as he drew the finer earth together and compressed it. Aurelia added cups of melted snow when he asked. The dry clay darkened, becoming slick beneath Roy's palms. Rather than transforming into finished stone or pottery, it packed into a dense lining several inches thick, its surface smoothed enough to slow the water's escape.

By the time Roy finished, his Weave Reserve had fallen low enough that Aurelia ordered him to stop.

"It will hold," he said.

"For long enough."

"That is what you said about the first brace you made."

"And it held until we replaced it."

"It collapsed while Orion was standing beneath it."

"A minor flaw." They filled it with snow, which was a process that took most of the afternoon. Orion spoke to Shale several times, each attempt less patient than the last. The Burrowback would open one eye, observe the snow, and return to sleep with the contentment of a creature certain he had already performed the only work worthy of him. Kindle proved more helpful, though not immediately.

The Hearth Drake jumped into the basin once it was half-filled, sank chest-deep into the loose snow, and scrambled out with an offended hiss. Aurelia coaxed him back by holding up a split log.

"You may have this while you work." Kindle stared at the wood, then at the basin, then back at the wood.

"More than one," Roy said. Kindle's eyes shifted toward him.

"Two," Aurelia offered. The drake remained unconvinced. Orion added another log to her arms.

"Three." Kindle climbed into the basin. He settled near the center with only his head and upper ridges above the snow. Aurelia handed him the first piece of firewood. His jaws closed around it with a crack, and heat rolled through his body. Steam rose immediately as the snow touching his flanks collapsed into water. The water spread outward, melting more snow before the winter air stole the heat from it.

They continued adding snow as Kindle chewed, turning the basin into a churning mixture of slush, hot water, and drifting vapor. It was painfully inefficient. It was also the most water Aurelia had seen gathered in one place since autumn. Near evening, the basin was finally deep enough for the egg. Roy carried it from the cottage in both arms, its gray-blue shell gleaming damply despite the cold. He lowered it into the water and waited to see the result of their creativity and labor. The egg floated.

All three siblings watched it bob toward the edge. Orion pushed it beneath the surface with one hand. The moment he released it, the egg shot upward and rolled against his wrist.

"Well," Roy said. Orion tried again. The result did not change.

"Someone must hold it down," Aurelia said. Both brothers looked at her. She narrowed her eyes.

"No."

"You are the Caretaker," Roy said.

"You are the Architect. You designed the bath."

"And Orion is the Protector. He should remain available in case something attacks." Orion nodded solemnly.

"A compelling argument."

"You both decided that very quickly." Roy gestured toward the water.

"The quest requires a hot bath, not merely hot water. It may matter that someone is actually bathing."

"You want me to sit outside in winter."

"In hot water."

"While holding a dragon egg."

"Exactly." Aurelia looked at Orion for support. He avoided her eyes. She should have refused. She had spent the day hauling snow while the brothers shaped the basin, and neither of them possessed a better claim to remaining dry. Yet the water steamed invitingly in the fading light, and Kindle sat within it chewing the second of his promised logs. The egg floated past him. Kindle nudged it away with his nose. Aurelia sighed.

"Go inside." Roy grinned.

"We will keep the fire warm."

"Go." They carried the tools back toward the cottage, still discussing whether the clay lining could be reused in spring. Aurelia waited until the door closed behind them before placing her basket beside the basin. The barn shielded her from the worst wind. Even so, cold needled through her clothing as she undressed quickly and folded each piece beneath a blanket where the snow could not reach it. There was nothing shameful in the act. Privacy had always been the true luxury.

Baths at the cottage were normally taken from a basin before the hearth, with everyone else finding reasons to remain in another room. Water had to be carried, heated, and used before it cooled. Even when she had been young enough to bathe in Bellhaven with her mother, the memory held crowded rooms, borrowed tubs, and the awareness that every extra minute cost coin. This was different. Aurelia stepped into the basin. The heat wrapped around her ankles so suddenly that she gasped.

She lowered herself carefully, expecting the comfort to fade as soon as her body displaced the water. It did not. Kindle sat opposite her, submerged to the shoulders, chewing his firewood with an expression of intense purpose. Heat poured from his soot-dark scales. The water closest to him was almost too hot, while the outer edges remained merely warm. Aurelia sank until the water reached her neck. For several breaths, she forgot the egg. Every muscle in her body seemed to loosen at once.

The ache in her shoulders faded. Her fingers stopped feeling stiff from the cold. Steam drifted past her face, blurring the snowbanks and the edge of the barn until the world beyond the basin ceased to matter. She retrieved the egg before it could float away and settled it against her stomach, holding it beneath the surface with both arms. Kindle watched her.

"This is absurd," she murmured. His head tilted.

"I think I understand why people with money waste so much time." Kindle crunched through another piece of wood. Aurelia simply closed her eyes. When Roy had first suggested that the Weave might be trying to give them more than survival, she had dismissed the thought as one of his grander fantasies. Skills were tools. Dragons created needs as often as they solved them. Every improvement required labor, and every reward seemed to reveal a larger problem waiting behind it.

Yet she was sitting in hot water beneath an open winter sky. The bath required no coin. No trip to town. No stranger waiting for her to finish. No pot that cooled before she could wash her hair. Kindle required food, but he ate while providing the heat, content with an arrangement that allowed Aurelia to rest. Comfort without sacrifice. The thought almost frightened her more than the dragons had. For most of her life, comfort belonged to other people. A warm room meant someone had cut the wood.

A full plate meant flour would be missing later. Every small pleasure took from a store that might be needed when snow came or work failed. She had prepared herself to leave because that seemed like the only way to stop taking from her brothers. Bellhaven had represented work, marriage, and usefulness—a life in which Orion no longer counted portions with her in mind. Remaining at the cottage was supposed to be a delay. Instead, the cottage had grown stronger.

Roy had become capable of rebuilding what their father could not. Orion had asked for help. Aurelia had cared for both of them and watched their conditions improve beneath her hands. Kindle had joined their hearth. Shale had pressed his guilty head against her because he already understood that their fear mattered. Perhaps she was not remaining in the life she had failed to leave. Perhaps their life was becoming something new around her. Aurelia opened her eyes as the egg shifted.

A faint vibration passed through the shell into her arms. The water rippled outward, though Kindle had stopped moving.

"Is that you?" The egg pulsed again. Kindle dropped the half-eaten log, and the water around Aurelia's body began to turn. At first, she thought the basin had sprung a leak. The level fell against her shoulders, then her chest, draining too quickly for the clay to explain. Water streamed toward the egg from every direction, coiling around its gray-blue shell in thin spirals. Aurelia tightened her grip.

"Kindle?" The Hearth Drake stood abruptly. Steam billowed from his exposed back as the water sank below his shoulders. He stared at the egg, eyes widening. The basin drained in seconds, the warmth vanishing from Aurelia's skin. She found herself seated in a few inches of muddy water, naked beneath an early-evening winter sky, clutching a damp egg while Kindle's heated body sent clouds of steam into the freezing air.

"Oh, that is cruel." The egg cracked. Aurelia barely had time to move it away from her chest as the shell burst apart in her arms. Fragments flew across the basin. Something pale blue shot upward through the spray, struck Aurelia beneath the chin, and wrapped around her shoulders. She cried out, more startled than hurt. A long serpentine body coiled around her neck and upper chest. It was sleek rather than swollen, covered in smooth blue scales that faded toward a cloud-soft white underside.

Rounded fins fluttered beside its head, and its narrow tail dissolved into a wispy tuft that drifted without touching the ground. The hatchling hovered. Not flying. Her body floated several inches above Aurelia's lap, undulating through the air as if swimming in an invisible current. The drake pressed her face against Aurelia's cheek. Her hide was impossibly soft.

"Oh," Aurelia whispered. The hatchling chirped and nuzzled harder. Kindle stepped toward them with a warning rumble. The new drake lifted her head, and Kindle's back ridges brightened. He planted all four paws in the remaining water and stared at her with the stern suspicion of an older sibling who had not agreed to become one. The hatchling stared back, then she launched herself at him.

Kindle yelped as the new drake wound around his shoulders, bumped her forehead against his snout, and fluttered her rounded fins with delighted urgency. Kindle twisted, trying to remove her without biting. The blue drake followed every movement, hovering around his head and chirping as though they had invented a wonderful game. Kindle's warning rumble weakened into confused grunts. Aurelia laughed.

Cold air bit into her skin, and she should have been scrambling for the blanket, but the sound came too freely to stop. Kindle backed around the basin with the hatchling wrapped loosely around his neck, his expression shifting from alarm to resignation. The new drake released him only to return to Aurelia. She floated directly before her face. A translucent golden prompt formed in the air. [Cloudbelly Drake awaiting designation.] Aurelia studied the hatchling's pale scales, white underside, and drifting tail.

The wisps around her fins curled like small clouds, soft enough that Aurelia wanted to bury both hands in them. A word surfaced from one of Roy's books. He had once explained the names scholars used for clouds, though Aurelia had only half listened while kneading dough. One term had meant a cloud heavy with rain—a promise of water carried across the sky.

"Nimbus." The prompt changed. [Proposed Name: Nimbus.] The Cloudbelly Drake chirped. Aurelia smiled. [Confirm designation?]"Confirm!"