Chương 9: A Larger Dream

Roy had never considered "waiting" to be a strenuous activity until Aurelia went outside to hatch a dragon without him. He sat at the kitchen table with one leg bouncing beneath it, listening for any sound from beyond the cottage walls. The wind remained light. The house still maintained Kindle's heat from earlier now that it was repaired and much more airtight. Somewhere overhead, one of the new roof beams settled with a quiet creak that no longer made either brother look up in alarm. Nothing screamed.

Nothing exploded. Considering the family's recent experience with dragon eggs, Roy was uncertain whether the silence should reassure him. Orion sat across from him with both arms folded. He had chosen the chair that faced the door and had glanced toward it often enough that any pretense of patience had disappeared several minutes ago.

"How long does a bath normally take?" Roy asked.

"As long as Aurelia wants it to."

"That is an unhelpful measurement."

"It is not our bath."

"The egg may have absorbed her." Orion's gaze hardened.

"Do not say that."

"Kindle would have come inside."

"Unless it absorbed him too." Roy leaned back.

"You see? Now you are thinking constructively." Orion unfolded his arms only to plant both hands flat upon the table.

"I preferred the house when every problem could be repaired with wood."

"You complained about the wood constantly."

"I understood it. A broken beam could be replaced. A leaking roof could be patched. Even the storm gave me something physical to fight." Roy studied him. The admission had come cleanly, almost as if Orion had not intended to speak it aloud. His eldest brother had spent most of their lives reducing every disaster into labor. Hunger meant rationing and hunting. Cold meant chopping more wood. Damage meant working until the structure stood again. A dragon egg offered no such certainty.

They had placed it in Aurelia's arms and trusted a system none of them understood.

"Moments like this are the worst for you," Roy said. Orion scowled.

"I did not say that."

"You did, but with fewer useful words."

"I said I prefer solvable problems."

"You prefer problems that you can strike with a hammer… And yet you survived raising me."

"Barely." Roy grinned.

"You make my childhood sound difficult."

"I spent half of it repairing whatever happened after you said you had an idea." Roy tried to remember how many fences, tools, shelves, and kitchen implements had suffered beneath his early attempts to improve them. There had been enough that Orion's claim was probably fair. Most of those ideas seemed amusing now, but they had not always been. After their parents died, a failed experiment meant wasting supplies they could not replace. Orion had learned caution because every mistake threatened something essential.

Roy had learned to hide how much he hated that fact beneath jokes and schemes grand enough to make their lives feel less narrow.

"The third egg requires a clean house," he said. Orion gave him a long look.

"We are still waiting to learn whether the second egg hatched."

"I know."

"You are already planning the third."

"I am considering possibilities." Roy glanced toward the hearth, though his eyes passed over the golden lettering suspended above it without reading.

"A water-oriented dragon would make cleaning the house easier. Even if this one cannot solve Shale's food problem, it may help us hatch the final egg."

"So your answer to a failed gamble is another gamble."

"Sometimes doubling down is how people lose everything. But sometimes it is also how they avoid a worse outcome." Orion's brow furrowed.

"You sound like a dishonest card player."

"I have never played cards dishonestly."

"You used marked pieces of bark."

"You noticed them, didn't you?"

"That does not make it honest!" Roy waved the accusation away.

"My point is that caution has a cost too. Doing nothing leaves us with one or two weeks of supplies and a dragon large enough to eat through them. That's almost as bad as our life before…"

"I never considered our life before a bad outcome." The words landed more heavily than Roy expected. He looked across the table. Orion's face remained composed, but something guarded had entered his expression.

"You speak as if everything before the Weave was a trap," Orion continued.

"We had a home. We had enough to survive. It was difficult, but it was ours. You were the one who was never satisfied." Roy opened his mouth, then stopped. There was truth in that. He had hated the repetition, the smallness, and the certainty that every year would resemble the one before it. He had hated watching books describe cities, inventions, and awakened people while their own lives narrowed to whether the roof would endure another winter. Yet that was not the part he had resented most.

"I hated Aurelia's plan to leave," he said. Orion's expression changed.

"She was not supposed to remain here forever."

"That is not what I said."

"She wanted a life in Bellhaven."

"She wanted work. Then she expected to find a husband because she believed that was the best way to stop burdening us." Orion did not answer. Roy's voice remained calm, but the words had lived within him too long to be softened entirely.

"There is a difference between leaving because something makes you happy and selling yourself into whatever marriage will take you because you think your family would be better without you."

"She never called it that."

"She did not need to." Orion looked toward the door, perhaps imagining Aurelia beyond it. Roy continued before caution could close his mouth.

"I hated your plan too."

"My plan was to remain here."

"That was the problem." Orion's eyes returned to him.

"The farm needs someone."

"The farm needed you because we had no other choice. That does not mean you were supposed to spend the rest of your life alone, working until you became too old to continue."

"What else should I have done?"

"I do not know." The answer appeared to surprise Orion. Roy leaned back and looked around the kitchen. The walls remained familiar despite every repair. Their father's old table bore the same knife scars beneath Roy's hands. Yet the room was warmer than it had ever been, and the floor no longer shifted when Orion crossed it.

"I do not know what you would choose," Roy said.

"I only know you stopped asking before you were ever able to realize your own potential." Orion studied him for several quiet breaths.

"Where did this sudden selflessness come from?" Roy smiled faintly.

"It is not sudden." Their parents' deaths had divided childhood from everything that came after. From then onward, the seasons changed while their lives did not. They planted, repaired, harvested, rationed, and endured winter. Their bodies grew and their responsibilities shifted. Aurelia became capable of managing the household, Roy learned enough to make his ideas less destructive, and Orion grew broad enough to carry burdens that should have required two men. But the pattern remained.

Orion had accepted it because acceptance allowed him to continue. Roy had never possessed that strength, or perhaps he had never considered it strength at all.

"You should tell Aurelia," Orion said. Roy's fingers stopped tapping.

"Tell her what?"

"That you were afraid of losing her."

"I did not say I was afraid."

"You used more words." Roy considered another joke but found none that fit. The thought of speaking to Aurelia directly settled uneasily in his chest. He did not know whether the conversation would comfort her or make her feel guiltier for ever planning to leave. Before he could decide what he felt, he looked toward the window. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"It has been a long bath." Roy's attention shifted toward the hearth at last. The golden message suspended above it no longer read two. [Dragons in Community — 3/4.] Roy stood so quickly that his chair scraped backward. Orion immediately looked to the hearth and had a similar reaction. They crossed the yard at a run, boots sinking into the path they had cleared earlier. The air had grown colder as evening approached, and vapor drifted beyond the barn where the bathing basin lay hidden from the cottage.

Roy rounded the corner first, then came to a dead stop. The basin remained, though most of the snow surrounding it had disappeared. Bare ground formed a broad ring around the hollow, extending farther than the area they had cleared that afternoon. Aurelia sat several feet away, fully dressed and wrapped in a blanket. She was not sitting on the ground. A pale-blue drake the size of Shale lay coiled beneath her, its serpentine body arranged in a broad mound like an enormous cushion.

Smooth scales faded into a white underside so soft that it looked less like hide than a bank of summer clouds. Rounded fins rested beside its head, and the tip of its long tail dissolved into a drifting wisp. Kindle lay curled against Aurelia's side, his warm ridges pressed into the new drake's body. Heat from him had spread through the coiled surface, creating a warm bed from which Aurelia appeared reluctant to rise. Her eyes opened halfway.

"You took your time." Orion stared at the dragon beneath her.

"Another big one..." The drake lifted her head. She was far longer than the hatchling Roy had expected to find, but every part of her had expanded proportionally. She had not become swollen or heavy. She looked like the same sleek creature scaled upward until her coils were broad enough to hold Aurelia and Kindle together.

"This is Nimbus," Aurelia said. Nimbus chirped and floated her head toward them without uncoiling the rest of her body. Orion's expression had acquired the same horror he had worn upon seeing Shale's overnight growth.

"Why is she enormous?"

"She ate the snow." Roy looked at the cleared ground with a rush of interest.

"All of it?"

"Most of what was near the basin. She glides through and absorbs it."

"Show me." Aurelia sighed as though the request were a terrible inconvenience, but she pushed the blanket aside and rose. Kindle climbed down after her, giving Nimbus an uncertain glance before settling beside Aurelia's boots. Nimbus uncoiled, her body hovered inches above the earth, moving through the air with slow serpentine waves. She drifted to the basin and positioned herself over its edge.

"Warm water," Aurelia said.

"Steady stream." Nimbus opened her mouth. Water poured from it in a solid, controlled flow. It struck the center of the basin without splashing over the clay rim. Steam rose immediately, though Kindle remained several feet away. As the hollow began to fill from Nimbus, her body shrank. The change passed through her smoothly. Her length shortened, her fins diminished, and the broad coils that had supported Aurelia reduced until she hovered only slightly larger than Kindle. Orion watched in silence.

Roy moved closer to the basin.

"The water becomes part of her."

"That was my conclusion," Aurelia said.

"How much did she absorb before she reached the size we found her?"

"Most of the basin, then the surrounding snow." Nimbus stopped once the water neared the rim. She floated beside Aurelia, now small enough to wrap herself around the girl's shoulders if she chose. Aurelia rubbed beneath one of her rounded fins.

"Thank you." Nimbus chirped happily and dove headfirst into the basin. Her body passed through the water in a smooth loop. The level fell behind her as though the pool were being pulled into the scales along her underside. Nimbus lengthened with every turn until the basin was empty and she once again possessed the broad, horse-sized proportions Roy had first seen. She rose from the hollow without a drop clinging to her. Roy circled her once.

"Her growth slowed near this size?"

"Significantly," Aurelia said.

"She absorbed more after reaching it, but changed very little."

"Then each increase requires more water than the one before it." Orion looked at the cleared snow around them.

"Can she remove enough to reach the trees?" Roy could already see the path. The eastern grove stood beneath layers that would have taken them days to clear by hand. Beneath those trees lay fallen branches, roots, decaying leaves, and stumps—exactly the food Shale might need. Nimbus could expose the ground. Shale could tear through it. Roy could process the usable wood before Orion exhausted himself chopping it.

Then there was the field, then the remaining egg, then— Roy realized he was grinning before his train of thought could finish. Orion noticed too.

"I dislike that expression."

"I think we have a workable plan."

"That is what you said before we spent an entire day building an outdoor bath."

"And now we possess a dragon that drinks winter." Nimbus nuzzled Aurelia's shoulder.

"Shale only needs to leave our stores alone for one more night," Roy continued.

"Tomorrow we begin early." From the other side of the barn came a low snort. Shale had pushed his head through the open doorway. One dark eye watched them from between the frame and his broad snout. Aurelia pointed toward him.

"No hay. No stacked wood." Shale's eye narrowed with solemn concentration, then he snorted again and withdrew. Orion watched him disappear.

"I am choosing to interpret that as agreement." ─── 🐲 ─── They rose before sunrise. During breakfast, Roy spread his plan across the table between bowls of porridge and the final pieces of Aurelia's birthday pie. He did not issue orders. Orion would have ignored the tone, and Aurelia would have reminded him that an Architect was not a monarch. Instead, Roy described what each part required and allowed the others to choose where they fit. Nimbus would clear a path to the eastern trees first.

Shale would uproot several once Roy marked them. Roy would transmute the trunks into firewood and useful lumber, leaving roots and stumps for Shale. Once enough wood had been prepared, Orion would take both larger drakes to the crop field while Roy paced his Weave reserve. Aurelia would use Nimbus whenever she was free to begin washing the cottage and organizing the new waste area. Kindle would go wherever warmth was needed. It was an imperfect plan assembled around creatures they barely understood.

But by midmorning, it was working. Nimbus skimmed across the snow like a pale-blue river moving over white ground. Wherever her underside touched, the snow vanished into her scales. She enlarged quickly at first, lengthening from Kindle's size toward that of the horse before her growth slowed. The path behind her emerged dry. No slush remained. No layer of ice formed across the exposed earth. Even the dead grass appeared merely flattened rather than soaked.

Roy followed with Shale and Orion, marking trees as they reached the grove. He chose dead trunks first, then several living ones spaced far enough apart that removing them would not leave the slope exposed. Shale refused Roy's initial instruction to "clear the area." He did, however, obey when Roy pointed to one specific tree and said, "Pull this out. Roots included." The Burrowback approached the trunk, dug both foreclaws into the earth, and disappeared halfway beneath it.

Soil trembled, and roots snapped deep underground. The entire tree leaned as Shale heaved once. The trunk tore free with its root mass intact and crashed into the cleared path. Shale emerged beneath it with dirt coating his head and an expression of immense satisfaction.

"That would have taken us most of a day," Orion said. Roy rested both hands against the fallen trunk. [Basic Transmutation.] The grain twisted beneath his palms. Branches shuddered free. Bark peeled away in long sheets where it was damaged or diseased. The trunk separated into measured lengths, then split along the grain into firewood and straight boards. The work pulled hard at Roy's reserve. Pressure gathered behind his eyes. His arms trembled by the time the final log settled into place. He checked his status.

[Weave Reserve: 76%.] Roy stared at the number. The same amount of processing would once have cost him far more. Transforming an entire tree at once was much more than refining a single beam, and his body felt as if he had spent an hour sawing despite never lifting a blade. Yet the drain was lower than he expected. Practice mattered. Perhaps understanding the desired result mattered too. During the cottage reconstruction, he had learned the shapes of sound boards, proper firewood, and stable joints.

The Weave no longer needed to follow uncertain intent. He looked toward the next tree. It would not be effortless, but it would slowly get easier. Someday, perhaps just "easy". Shale attacked the exposed root ball as soon as Roy moved away. He bit through smaller roots, crushed rotten wood between his teeth, and consumed mouthfuls of soil tangled with dead plant matter. His tail struck the ground in contented thumps. Roy had found his food.

They repeated the process twice more before Roy's reserve dropped far enough that he stopped. He separated the work into stages after that—removing branches first, splitting trunks later, checking his percentage whenever the physical strain began to blur his focus. When a large pile of unprocessed wood had accumulated, Roy sent Shale with Orion. The Burrowback followed only after Orion pointed toward the distant field and stated, "Aurelia is there." That proved more persuasive than any explanation of agriculture.

Nimbus had already stripped the snow from the small field by the time they arrived. The earth beneath was cold but dry, exposed to sunlight for the first time in weeks. Shale tilled it in minutes. He needed exact boundaries and repeated instructions to keep him from digging a trench, but once Orion demonstrated the desired depth, Shale tore through the field in straight, powerful lines. Dark soil rolled behind him in loose furrows.

Orion followed with their limited store of hardy seed and several cloves Aurelia had saved for spring. The planting was not intended to feed them soon. Most of it might remain dormant until the weather softened, and some might never emerge. But it would serve as proof if it worked. If Nimbus could keep the ground clear each morning, and if Shale's work left the soil workable, then next winter did not need to resemble this one. They could plan for it. Store seed for it.

Perhaps even coax something from land they had always surrendered to snow. While Orion planted, Aurelia called Nimbus back to the cottage. Roy returned occasionally while waiting for his reserve to recover. He found Aurelia directing a narrow spray beneath the kitchen shelves. Nimbus adjusted the stream at each command, changing from a warm trickle to a sharper jet capable of lifting years of grime from the floorboards without soaking the walls. Dirty water gathered in a controlled ribbon and flowed into a bucket.

"Less pressure," Aurelia said. The stream softened instantly.

"Warmer." Steam rose. Roy leaned in the doorway.

"You have trained her quickly." Aurelia looked offended.

"I asked politely!" Nimbus chirped.

"She understands more than Shale," Roy said. From outside came a heavy crash, followed by Orion shouting Shale's name. Aurelia glanced toward the window.

"That is not difficult." Later, Shale dug a broad pit away from the cottage and downhill from the well. Aurelia marked the area where ash, spoiled food, stable waste, and other refuse could be gathered rather than scattered behind the barn as necessity had often forced them to do. Nimbus shaped the pit's edges with controlled water, loosening stubborn earth where Shale had compacted it. By late afternoon, the farm no longer looked like a household struggling against winter.

A clear route stretched from the cottage to the trees. Stacks of fresh firewood waited beside the barn. The field lay dark and furrowed beneath the pale sky. Clean windows reflected sunlight from walls that had lost years of soot and dust. Roy sat on a cut log near the eastern grove with his back against another. His Weave Reserve remained safely above half. He could have processed more, but the pressure behind his eyes warned him not to mistake improvement for invulnerability.

Kindle lay beside the newest stack of split wood, radiating enough heat to draw moisture from it. The Hearth Drake had eaten well for his trouble and now watched faint steam curl from the logs with sleepy satisfaction. Roy looked across the farm. A month earlier, rebuilding the cottage had seemed like the largest achievement he could imagine. Before that, his ambitions had extended little farther than reaching Bellhaven, awakening a Seal, and proving that he had not been foolish to want more.

Those dreams had once felt impossibly large. Now Nimbus moved between the field and cottage with water stored inside her body. Shale could overturn land in moments. Kindle turned wood into warmth with almost nothing wasted. Aurelia's skill made exhaustion recoverable. Orion could cross impossible distances to protect them. Roy had spent years believing the world beyond their farm contained everything extraordinary. Now, he was realizing his plans might need to become larger. Not merely a stronger house.

Not merely enough food for winter. Something— A scream tore through the trees. High, young, and terrified. Roy was on his feet before the sound ended. Kindle's head snapped toward the deeper woods, ridges flaring orange.

"Go warn the others." Kindle looked at Roy, then toward the direction of the scream.

"Go!" The drake hesitated for one heartbeat, then he turned and raced toward the farm. Roy plunged between the trees without a weapon, without a plan, and disappeared into the woods.