The Oldest Egg

The Oldest Egg

A short story

Companion piece to: The Foundling

There is a rather curious thing in the oldest hatching grounds. An egg that never hatched yet did not go rancid and did not show any other signs of decay. Young dragons, once they leave the nest, often go upon learning of it to see the curiosity for themselves. Rumors circulate that it can even grant wishes and the lure of having their dreams made true draws those that would not otherwise be interested. 

The dark water reflected the misty clouds and star-studded sky, a giant slab of obsidian turned mirror. The fine clouds wafting through the sky gave the moon a blue-white halo that reminded the two young dragons of the stories they had heard of the dragon that lived on its dark side.

"There's no air up there," the younger of the two, who would someday come to be called Monarch, reassured the other.

The pale silvery dragon shifted her head towards the younger one and then looked back up to the sky before speaking, " I know that but, have you ever seen a dragon bigger than the one that watches over us or even one of the same size? Someone had to lay her egg and she didn't lay ours."

Monarch was troubled by the other's words and tentatively said, " She came to see the egg when she was our size and she heard of it from her own dragon teacher. So, how long ago was it laid?"

The silver dragon, tired of the conversation and drawn by the mystery, leapt into the water and began to swim to the island in the center. From the shore, Monarch looked warily at the dark water before diving in after the other.

"Who would lay an egg in a place so cold?" Monarch asked but the other did not answer.

The older one was a silver streak amongst the dark moving quickly towards the shore and darting sometimes beneath the water only to reemerge much closer to the island. Monarch on the other hand, lacked grace in the water and made slow progress.

By the time purple wings were being fanned on the shore to dry droplets that clung and chilled between scales, a silver tail was hitting the sand impatiently. Monarch met the companion's eager eyes and could find nothing to be cross about. No insult was meant.

" I found it!" the other could no longer restrain and it was obvious to Monarch that this had occurred in the time lapse between their separate arrivals on shore. She then briefly wondered why they had swum and not flown to the island before chasing after the silver companion that had darted into the tree-line.

The two young dragons found themselves in a mossy clearing covered in dew that glittered as it caught the faint moonlight. In the center of the clearing, was a dragon egg that appeared to them as black at first but upon further inspection they realized that it had an iridescent quality to it.

"Do all dragon eggs look like that?" the silver one asked Monarch.

"I don't know, I don't remember much from when we were hatchlings," Monarch answered as she sniffed the egg and attempted to push it over.

The egg was unaffected, it was fused to the ground below from when the stone had been molten in an age long past. However, someone was very upset and they made a point of standing on the violet dragon's nose until she had the scaly thing's attention. Monarch shifted her eyes to the front of her skull to gaze at the odd little creature that resembled a human but was smaller and scrawnier than one of their infants.

The thing about dragons is, they really don't like to be touched uninvited to begin with and they detest getting dirty as it's hard for them to clean between their scales. You can imagine then, how furious a dragon can get when something as dirty as the not-human thing, caked in mud and dressed in leaves, decided that a dragon's nose was an acceptable perch.

Scalding steam escaped from Monarch's nostril and party open mouth. In truth, she'd been intending to set the pesky thing on fire but her several near drownings had led her to the accidental discovery of steam breath. The thing atop her nose shrieked but to Monarch's disappointment and growing horror this was not because it had been scalded but rather because its mud and leaf attire was melting off its body from the heat and moisture and running in-between the fine scales of her nose.

The thing darted through the air and into the trees. Monarch's companion, having decided the thing was not human and therefore acceptable to eat,  darted after it now that her mouth wouldn't be filled by the taste of mud.

That, was the last Monarch saw of her companion for many centuries. She searched Old Egg Island until she was covered in more mud and leaves than the female, winged, human-like thing she and her companion had encountered. She searched until she began to bleed between her scales from infection and it was then that she decided that it was time to go home.

Violet wings were so caked with mud that they looked to have been crudely sculpted at the hands of a small human child playing in the dirt against the mother's wishes. Monarch knew that she wouldn't be able to fly in the state she was in and resigned herself to the long swim back to shore. She hoped that the water would clean her enough that she could take to the skies for otherwise the way back to the den would be a long one.

The swim was painful and cold. Monarch shuddered every time she crossed an area of floating slush. The ice-water wicked* the heat from her body and burned her with its frost. All of that was made to seem as something little to endure when she left the water for the shore only to be met with chilly wind against her wet body.

She found that the infection had reached her bloodstream and spread to her wings. She would be walking. As she'd expected, the journey was long and filled with pain from her illness. What she had not expected was looking up at the slightest sound, expecting to see her companion rush out from behind a tree or bush. It never was and her heart grew heavier with each passing day. She wished she could convince herself that her companion had merely gone home ahead of her all those months before but she knew that if that had been the case there would have been a scent trail at the very least to follow. There had been none. It was as if she'd gone into the trees and been swallowed by them, engulfed.

It was a long time before she made it back home in her weakened state and longer still before she was strong enough to relay her tale to her caretaker. When she did her caretaker nodded gravely and told her of the fae, dimension travelers she called them, who would whisk humans away and that this was the first time she had heard of a dragon meeting that fate.

Monarch flew each month for many years to spend the full moon in the clearing but her companion never returned and her visits became scarcer and scarcer as the centuries passed.

*wicked - past tense of wick which means to draw from. Nothing to do with evil this time around. :)