From the journal of Orlanda:

At least Sebastian never laughed at me. The Heavens know he had plenty of opportunities. He nodded when I told him I slept with my first clutch until the first cracks appeared. Only the faintest of smiles was on his face when I relived their first meal of beans and tofu. He asked, “Did they like it?” I told him they’d seemed happy enough but they preferred the chickens.

Once those hatchlings grew into dragons, it was like an itch awaked in me. My skies were filled with visions of the beautiful dragons who considered me their friend but my mind was preoccupied. The solution came to me one afternoon sweeping out the barn:

I needed more dragons.

I had Quinn saddled and trotting to the gate in under fifteen minutes. The basket I’d collected my first, beautiful red egg in was strapped onto my back. A shadow the size of a cloud passed over me. I looked up in time to see Mahuna’ali’I shooting by, a blazing fireball with wings. I waved then urged Quinn onward, toward the Caves.

~ ~

[Out-of-story note: A little tense change here. It’s hard writing in the present and I don’t feel it as creatively so, back to the standard past tense.]


After settling the two hatchlings in for the night, who were now warily tolerating each other but from opposite sides of the hay pile, Orlanda headed back to the house to make some calls. She sat before the dark wooden box set back from casual sight on a small side table next to her desk. The box was wide and tall enough to serve as a step stool. A polished brass horn curved from its top like a bell-shaped flower. Orlanda reached for a brass cup attached to the box’s left side with a black cord, cradled in a hook. She wound the brass hand crank with matching wooden handle on the right. A scratchy voice came on the line.

“Redbourne Switchboard, how may I direct your call?”

“Sebastian Yates, please.”

“One moment.”

The line clicked and whirred as the call was connected. Sebastian was a bookkeeper from town who kept a lone white dragon. Orlanda enjoyed spending time with him during her twice-weekly trips into town. They talked about new books and any new rarities he’d managed to collect. She loved saying hello to his dragon companion, Sara, who always patiently allowed Orlanda to stroke her neck.

“Sebastian’s Books and Oddities, Sebastian speaking.”

Orlanda felt her cheeks redden. Focus! she scolded herself.

“Hi Sebastian, it’s Orlanda. Sorry to be calling so late but it’s important.”

“I hope nothing’s wrong?”

Orlanda shook her head then rolled her eyes at herself.

“Not wrong, per se. I’ve got a couple dragon eggs that hatched --”

“You finally got dragons of your own! That’s fantastic! Congratulations!”

Orlanda found herself grinning at his enthusiasm.

“Thanks. It is exciting but. . . I don’t know what to feed them.”

( Read On )


COMING UP:

- The little red (Mahunaalii Kaohimaunu) and little ice blue (Haukea Nalani) are all grown up: ~

- And they had an egg!

- Orlanda gets some new eggs: ~ ~

Orlanda rushes back out into the winter day carrying a wooden salad serving bowl. Looking into the bowl she feels a little stupid.

“I steal four dragon eggs and have nothing in the house but tofu and beans to feed them?” She shakes her head at herself. “What am I going to do when they get bigger than cats? Go buy a herd of cows and let them go at it?”

With a sigh she realizes that’s probably exactly what she’s going to have to do. She just hopes they’ll eat uncooked tofu slathered in red beans straight from the can.

Nearing the barn, she hears scuffling like she heard before but with high-pitched squeals. She has no experience with dragons and can’t differentiate between playful and pained sounds. She runs. She sets the bowl down hastily; it rocks madly on the bare, stony path before settling. The squealing is punctuated by growls and thumps.

“Gods help me,” Orlanda mutters before pulling the door open.

She sees the little red clinging to a wooden support column, squealing at. . .



Orlanda claps her hands together and holds them beneath her chin.

“You hatched too!”

The little ice blue dragon squeals and runs behind the shell it’s just hatched from. Orlanda drops to her knee like with the red dragon and holds her hand out. She speaks evenly and softly as to a shy kitten.

“I’m not going to hurt you, little one. Recognize me? I’m the one who’s been talking to you and stacking hay around your shell to keep you warm.” She smirks at the irony of trying to keep an ice cold egg warm. “Not that you needed any warmth.”

The second hatchling peeks out from behind its shell – in several small and large pieces, none of which were doing any good hiding it anyway – and gives a hesitant squeak. The red dragon, still hanging from the support beam with its head toward the floor, snorts a poof of smoke larger than the ones Orlanda had seen earlier.

Orlanda remembers the bowl of food. She rises slowly, hands held in front of her.
“I’ve got something delicious for you two! Would you like to see what it is? Stay right there.”

The air outside is crisp and fresh after the stuffy, straw-filled barn. Orlanda reminds herself to air the place out once all the eggs hatch. She returns with the bowl. The red hatchling is craning its neck out toward her. The ice blue hatchling is staring at her, unmoving. Orlanda wishes she’d brought another bowl.

“Here’s your first ever meal. I hope you like it.”

She decides to risk it and places the bowl, which is as big as or bigger than each of the tiny dragons’ bodies, in the middle of the sunlight streaming in the door. She then steps back and leans against the inside of the doorframe, watching to see what they’ll do.

The red’s eyes never leave the bowl as it drops to the ground, straw rustling and crunching. It takes a couple small steps toward the bowl, stops, and snorts smoke. Orlanda muses on the irony of what appears to be a fire-breathing dragon hatching the same day as a wintery dragon. The blue makes a tiny sound not unlike a cat’s meow, watching to see what the red will do. The red takes several more cautious steps until it reaches the bowl. It sticks its snout over the lip of the bowl and sniffs deeply, then looks to Orlanda as if asking, “What the heck is this?”

“Eat it, silly!”

The red turns back to the bowl. It sticks it tongue into the bowl. It smacks its jaw a couple of times then sticks its entire snout into the white and brown mixture. The blue watches the red eat. After nearly thirty seconds it bounds across the barn and shoves its head in too, not wanting to be left out. The red squawks at it and claws at it. Orlanda takes a step in.

“Hey!” The red puffs smoke at her. “Don’t give me any crap – share the food and be civil.”

The baby dragons go back to their strange meal. Orlanda chuckles to herself wondering if she’ll raise the first brood of vegetarian dragons.

“Not likely,” she answers herself. “Just wait – you will be buying that herd of cows for them.”

The Sun shines directly overhead.  The chalk blue sky is visible through the naked brown branches of the trees.  Orlanda steps off the front porch onto the hard ground.  Grass smooshes beneath her knee-high riding boots.  She crosses her arms tightly across her chest and hunches over against the cold air.  She checks to see if her breath is visible; it’s not.  She hurries out of the shade of the two-story gray house and into the winter sunlight.

 

The green barn is only a couple hundred feet away but it feels like miles as she follows the worn dirt path.  When she went to bed last night, each of the four eggs had delicate cracks webbing their shells.  Based on others’ eggs she’s been privileged enough to touch, Orlanda expects to see a hole in at least one of them this afternoon.  She quickens her step to a slow jog.  It’s her first time checking on the eggs today; her morning was filled with paperwork, mostly replying to scrolls that had arrived overnight.

 

At the barn door she hears a strange scuffling sound.  Her heart jumps – could a predator have gotten in?  The bar across the door doesn’t appear to have moved.  She throws the bar back and pulls the door open in a wild-eyed frenzy.

 

Sunlight pierces the darkness in a solid gold beam that just barely touches the eggs.  Orlanda takes a headcount: turquoise, blue with white swirls, blue with a wing shape. . . oh gods, the red egg!  Wishing she thought to bring something she could use as a weapon.  She hears the scuffling sound again coming from – where else? – the dark back corner of the barn.

 

“Hello?” she calls then instantly  feels like an idiot.  As if a thief or an animal would answer her.

 

Then she hears a snarfling sound from the same place she heard the shuffling.  The barn has never resembled the cave she stole the eggs from as much as it does right now.  Clenching her jaw, she takes a tiny step forward.  A shadow lopes toward her.  Orlanda muffles her scream behind her hand and flattens herself against the wall.  The closer the shape gets to the door, the more it resembles. . .

 

“A dragon!” she exclaims.  “Did you hatch, little red one?”

 

She drops to one knee, squinting into the darkness.  The dragon-shaped shadow has stopped just short of the sunlight.  Orlanda holds out a hand while a lump chokes her throat.

 

“It’s me, Orlanda.  Don’t you recognize my voice?   Come on, it’s okay.”

 

The dragon-shaped shadow snorts and a fist-sized puff of smoke rises above its head.  Orlanda giggles.

 

“Are you trying to breathe fire, little red?” 

 

The hatchling moves into the light enough for its piercing yellow eyes to be visible.  It appears to be studying her.  Its skin is smooth and the color of bricks.  Its feet are smaller than Orlanda’s fist but they end in thin, pointy, black claws.  It has a delicate face that reminds her of a fine Arabian horse.  It sneezes another puff of smoke.

 

“Are you hungry?  Wait here while I get you some lunch.  Until I get back, why don’t you ask your nest mates to hurry up and join us?”

 

Orlanda winks and waves at the hatchling.  She closes the barn door behind her and runs back home so hard she can feel the steps in her skull.

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Orlanda checks in on her eggs and sees tiny cracks in two of them! She clenches her fists against the overwhelming urge to pick at them.

Orlanda sits in the thick straw of the barn and crosses her legs beneath her.  She’s sitting in the center of a circle made of four dragon eggs.  One is red, the red you bleed from a large cut.  She rests a hand gently against the shell.  Warmth radiates up her arm.  The other three eggs are several shades of blue.  There is a slate blue one with what looks like a flame or wing on its side.  No matter how many times she lines it up with the other eggs, it always seems to move out a bit from the others.  The next is turquoise with delicate white swirls.  The last, and the first one she carried from the cave, is a sharp ice blue.  Orlanda places her other hand on this egg, enjoying the differing sensations in her hands.  A vision of a cracked gray egg flits into her mind.  Clenching her jaw, she wills the memory away.

She drops her hands into her lap and sighs.  Her stomach has been clenching and turning all day thinking about the eggs and the hatchlings she hopes to see soon.  It’s only been two days since she followed her friend to the dragon cave.  Everything is new and unknown.  Her impatience drives her to her feet.  She takes the lamp hanging from its wall hook, pulls her robe tight around her, and ventures into the night.  The barn door swings silently shut when she pushes it behind her. 

Winter air shocks her lungs when she inhales.  She places the lamp on the ground, turning her face toward the black sky.  There are only a few smudges of gray cloud marring the view of the glowing stars.  The stars look like blue flames that are missing their candles.  A stray gust of wind draws her hair over her left shoulder.  Staring at the stars she could almost forget the pain of waiting.  She wonders what she was even thinking when stealing those dragon eggs.  Well, it wasn’t exactly stealing.  The eggs she found had been abandoned by their mothers because they smelled of humans.  So really she’d rescued them, right?

Orlanda peeks into the barn one last time for the night.  The eggs are as she left them, their shells smooth as polished marble.  She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment in a wish for cracks to appear.  She blows them a kiss and locks the barn door.  As she’s walking across the open field, she wishes the Moon were fuller than the slender crescent hanging above her.  She makes it back to her home without incident.  After putting another log on the fire, she forces herself to sit down and read a scroll, any scroll, so long as it doesn’t mention dragons. 

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I spend most of my time running the women's writing workshop I created called Women Writing in Asheville.  It takes up all my time when I'm not writing, walking the world, eating the delicious vegan creations created by my partner, playing with my cats, watching too much Star Trek, taking classes in computer programming, oh and sleeping.

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