“I don't know,” Waveripple said.
Emeraldeyes came over to the pile of soil that Waveripple had dug up, and started shifting through it. Waveripple saw that she was trying to separate the ashes from the regular soil, and started helping her.
When they had separated the ashes from the soil as well as they could, they had a small dark heap of ashes and soil.
“What do you think was burned?” Waveripple asked, staring at the pile of ashes.
“When something is burned, the pile of ashes is much smaller than whatever it was before it was burned,” Emeraldeyes said speculatively, sounding as if she were talking to herself again.
Waveripple tried to piece together all the information so that it made sense. A dragon had been killed nearby. There were ashes in the soil, ashes that someone had obviously buried there. And the Vampire's scent was all over the area of the ground where the ashes were buried.
“Do you think that this pile of ashes could be from the Forest dragon that was killed?” Waveripple asked, shocked at the idea.
“They could be,” Emeraldeyes said slowly. “The Vampire wouldn't want anyone to find the Forest's body, so it could burn the dragon, and then bury the ashes so that no one would find them. It makes sense. After all, if no one found the body, it would be as if the Forest just left this area. There's still some blood on the grass, but other dragons could think that it was just from something the Forest had caught to eat. No one would suspect a Vampire.”
Waveripple and Emeraldeyes stood there staring at the pile of ashes for several minutes. The sun was already starting to sink down in the sky.
“I have to go back to the lake now,” Waveripple said. “I'll come back to the forest tomorrow.” Then he added, “But I'm not coming back to this place.”
He started pushing all the soil he had dug up back into the hole, while Emeraldeyes filled up the hole she had dug. Waveripple finished first and went over to help Emeraldeyes.
“Bye,” he said to her when they had finished filling up the holes.
“Goodbye, Waveripple,” she answered.
Waveripple walked quickly out of the forest, heading back to the lake.
~~~
The next night, Whiteswirl decided to continue exploring the forest. He flew over the trees, locating the caves he had found before, and finding a few new ones. Occasionally, he would fly over a small, hidden clearing in the middle of the forest. These clearings were mostly just grassy areas, and some of them had small trees growing in them, as the forest spread into those clearings.
Then Whiteswirl flew over the lake again, and the same bizarre feeling he had felt before suddenly returned. This time he realized that the lake had somehow caused it. He landed softly on the ground and walked closer to the lake, trying to make sense of the strange feeling.
Whiteswirl suddenly knew what the feeling was–it was longing, almost like homesickness. He wondered how the lake could possibly be producing that feeling in him. He had seen hardly any lakes before, and he had never lived next to any, or even walked around one. So it made no sense that he would feel like he was missing the lake, when he had never been there in the first place.
Whiteswirl continued staring at the lake until he thought of a reason that it could be producing that feeling in him. He could have been some species of water dragon, before he had been turned into a Vampire.
Whiteswirl had never asked Redclaws what kind of dragon he had been before; he had never really thought about it. He wondered now which kind of water dragon he had been. Had he been an Ocean dragon? That was not likely. Oceans lived thousands of miles away in the seas and oceans. Redclaws would not have been able to get one of those eggs. Maybe he was a Lake dragon. They lived in lakes and ponds, so he could have been one. Another possibility was that he had been an Amphibian dragon. Both of those eggs would have been easy enough for Redclaws to get, so he could not figure out which one he had been.
As he stared out across the lake, Whiteswirl saw that there were three Amphibian dragons sleeping beside it. One of them was a hatchling and the other two were adults. He had not seen them before because they were camouflaged near the plants by the lake, just like his black coloring camouflaged him in the night. Looking at the Amphibians sleeping peacefully by the lake, Whiteswirl wondered again if he would have been an Amphibian.
He tried to imagine his life as one–around the water most of the time, being a weak, normal dragon. They could transform into a water or land dragon, but this small advantage would not make up for their lack of speed and strength.
Whiteswirl was glad that he was not an Amphibian, and that he was a Vampire instead. Vampires were stronger and faster than other dragons, and did not have to worry about anyone attacking them. No normal dragon would attack a Vampire by itself. They would get a whole group together to attack, but by that time the Vampire could be gone. While it was true that some Tigers overestimated their fighting skills and attacked Vampires by themselves, they rarely won those battles.
Another advantage of being a Vampire was that they did not need to hunt every night, despite what normal dragons thought about them. Drinking blood once a month was enough to sustain a Vampire, while normal dragons had to eat every day.
Whiteswirl flew back to the cave and found it empty. Since he would not be thirsty again for a few weeks, he decided to wait there until Redclaws returned.
A few hours later, Whiteswirl heard Redclaws landing quietly outside their cave. She walked inside, looking annoyed.
“Some dragons have found our catches,” she said. “Now we'll have to take the bodies farther away from where we killed them before we bury them.”
Whiteswirl groaned inwardly. Almost all adult dragons, including Vampires, could breathe fire, but very few hatchlings could. Redclaws could just burn the bodies of the dragons she hunted; then she would have a small pile of ashes to bury. But he had to dig a much deeper hole to bury the whole dragon! That was hard enough as it was without also having to drag the body far away to bury it. But it would definitely be worth it. The convenience of burying the dragons' bodies where he killed them was not worth being chased away from their home again and having to find a new one.
“I'll bury them farther away,” he told Redclaws.
“We'll also have to start hunting farther away from the lake, at least for a little while,” Redclaws said. “Some of the dragons in the woods around the lake are the ones who found our catches.”
Whiteswirl nodded.
He decided to stay in the cave for the rest of the night and go out to keep exploring–this time farther away–the next night.
CHAPTER SEVEN: EXPLORING
Waveripple went into the forest the next day to visit Indigowings and Emeraldeyes. Since he did not know where Emeraldeyes lived, he went to Indigowings's cave, which was empty.
Instead of waiting outside the cave, Waveripple decided to walk through the forest to explore it more. He might find Indigowings wandering around, too.
Waveripple went straight past Indigowings's cave, deeper into the forest. At first he was just walking through pine trees and the occasional clearing in between.
Then he came to a much larger opening in the forest. It was at least as big as the meadow surrounding the lake, if not larger. The clearing mostly had grass in it, with a few trees and flowers dotted here and there.
Near the far edge of the meadow, Waveripple saw a small herd of three deer. He had seen deer a few times before, when they came to drink water at the lake, not knowing that dragons were nearby. But they were still interesting to watch.
Two does were grazing, while the buck looked alertly in Waveripple's direction. Waveripple held still for a few minutes, and the buck went back to grazing with the does. Then Waveripple slowly turned and went back into the forest so that he would not disturb the deer.
After Waveripple had walked through a few more small clearings, he heard the noise of a large animal running away from something. It was coming from a few hundred feet i
n front of him. Waveripple walked past a few more pine trees and came to another open clearing. A large buck ran through the clearing and disappeared into the pine trees. Suddenly, a pack of white wolves ran into the clearing, and then back out the other side, following the deer. Waveripple had seen a few wolves in the distance before, but none this close. He started running after the wolves and deer so that he could watch them.
The wolves and deer ran much too quickly for Waveripple to keep up, and soon he could not see them anymore. He kept running in the direction that they had been going anyway. He knew that he would be able to see them again if they were able to catch the deer. If they did not catch it, they would probably go off to look for another one, and Waveripple would not be able to locate them again.
Waveripple kept going in the direction the wolves had gone, but he could not find them again. He soon turned around and started going back to Indigowings's cave.
Waveripple walked for a long time, but he did not get back to the meadow that he had seen the wolves chasing the deer in. He had planned to go there because from there he knew how to get to the first large meadow he had found, and then back to the cave. But he could not find the first clearing.
Waveripple began to panic as he realized that he might be lost. If he had not been following the exact path he had originally taken, he could have walked right past the clearing long ago.
He calmed down when he remembered that he could just follow his own scent trail backwards to the cave. After all, he had not crossed through any streams, so following his scent trail would be easy enough.
Waveripple first sniffed the ground to see if he was already going in the right direction. He could not find his scent anywhere except behind him, so he turned around and went back the way he had come. After a while he came back to the point where he had decided to turn back, and soon after that he came to the meadow that he had seen the wolves in.
Waveripple kept following his scent trail until he was back at Indigowings's cave, thinking about how much time he had wasted when he could have just followed his scent from the beginning.
Indigowings had already returned to the cave and was standing at its entrance. “Hi Waveripple!” he said. “Were you exploring the forest?” he asked, noticing that Waveripple had come back from a deeper part of the forest instead of from the direction of the lake.
“Hi Indigowings. Yeah, I was exploring. I saw a few deer and some wolves. I was following the wolves for a while, so that's why I didn't come back here sooner,” Waveripple replied. “Did any other dragons get killed?”
“Not that I know of,” Indigowings said. “Emeraldeyes didn't notice any other missing dragons either.”
“That's good,” Waveripple said. “Where does Emeraldeyes live?” he asked after a little while. “Does she live in a cave like you?”
“No, she doesn't live in a cave,” Indigowings replied. “Do you want to visit her?”
“Yeah,” Waveripple replied. “If she doesn't live in a cave, where does she live?”
“I'll show you,” was Indigowings's only answer. “Her home is this way.” He started walking through the forest, and Waveripple followed him.
They walked past a lot of pine trees and through a few small clearings. Then they came to an area in the forest that had more broadleaf trees than evergreens. There were oak trees, maple trees, birch trees, and many others.
“We're almost there,” Indigowings told Waveripple.
They kept walking until they came to a huge oak tree which had branches spreading more than a hundred feet from the tip of a branch on one side of the tree to the tip of a branch on the other side. Indigowings stopped beside the tree.
Waveripple looked around for anything that seemed like it could be a home for a Dwarf dragon. He just saw trees and open ground, with no place that looked sheltered, other than the trees which provided protection from precipitation.
“Why did we stop?” he asked Indigowings. “Is Emeraldeyes's home nearby?”
“Yes,” Indigowings replied, grinning. “She lives up in that oak tree.”
Waveripple looked up into the tree branches more closely. Most of the branches were spread out, but he saw an area where they were all close together, overlapping each other. As he stared at those branches, he realized that only a few of them were growing out of the tree. The rest appeared to have been dragged over those branches to make a floor.
“Does she live in those branches that have been dragged on top of the other tree branches?” Waveripple asked, pointing to them.
“Yeah, she does,” Indigowings said. “It's a cool place to live. Better than my cave. Emeraldeyes!” Indigowings shouted. “Are you up there?” There was no reply.
“Looks like she's not there,” Waveripple said.
“She's probably hunting with her parents,” Indigowings said. “Since she's not here right now, do you want to keep exploring the forest while we wait for her to come back?”
“Yeah, sure,” Waveripple said. “How much of the forest have you already explored?”
“I explored the whole area around my cave, and most of the forest by Emeraldeyes's tree. But I've never been on the other side of your lake, or explored the forest more than a few hundred yards around where I live.”
“Then let's explore a part of the forest that you haven't already,” Waveripple suggested.
“Okay,” Indigowings agreed. “We can go up to the last part that I explored by Emeraldeyes's tree, and then go past that to explore more.”
Waveripple and Indigowings walked through the forest, with Indigowings leading them to the edge of the area that he had been in.
When they reached a certain point, Indigowings told Waveripple, “I didn't explore anything past here.”
“Okay,” Waveripple said. “Then everything past here will be completely new.” He liked that they had reached a place that Indigowings had not explored; now everything would be new and exciting for both of them.
After a few minutes, the hatchlings came to a small pond. Waveripple ran to the pond and jumped inside, splashing Indigowings, who had stayed on dry land. “Hey!” he complained.
“You should come in the water,” Waveripple said. With a sly grin, he said, “Then you can splash me back,” and splashed Indigowings again, this time on purpose.
“You asked for it,” Indigowings said playfully. Then he jumped into the pond, making a huge wave as he landed, soaking Waveripple.
Waveripple laughed and splashed him back. Then he dove underneath the water to avoid Indigowings's next splash. When he was underwater, he noticed that there were no fish in this pond, but there were turtles and frogs. He came back up right behind Indigowings and splashed him again.
Indigowings turned and jumped at the same time, sending a huge splash at Waveripple. The two hatchlings continued with their splash fight until they were tired of it, more than half an hour later. Then Indigowings started to walk out of the pond.
“Wait!” Waveripple said. “Let's chase the turtles and frogs around. I bet you can't catch any.” He said the last part to try to make Indigowings come back to try.
“Turtles and frogs? I didn't even notice they were here,” Indigowings said. Walking back into the pond, he said, “Actually, I think I can catch more than you can. I'm faster.”
“I don't think so,” Waveripple said, wondering where Indigowings had gotten that idea.
“We'll see,” Indigowings said. “First let's see who can catch the most frogs, and then the most turtles.”
“Okay,” Waveripple agreed. “Whoever gets to ten frogs first is the winner.”
“Alright,” Indigowings said. “Get ready, set, go!”
Both hatchlings dove under the water to look for frogs. Waveripple swam quickly to the end of the pond opposite the spot that Indigowings was in. Indigowings was splashing around too much and moving too quickly, scaring all the frogs away.
Waveripple did not move as much, not even needing to surface for air. When he was under the water
, he held still, and the frogs that were fleeing from Indigowings swam over to him. He swiftly grabbed a Leopard frog and bit down on it, killing it. He threw it on land and then went back into the water.
Looking around for another frog, Waveripple saw a brown frog swimming away from him, and began chasing after it. He caught it in his mouth and threw it on top of the first frog he had caught. Waveripple soon caught three more Leopard frogs, but by then they were becoming harder to find. A lot of them had hopped out of the water to hide in the grass. It was also harder to see them because he and Indigowings had stirred up the soil on the bottom of the pond, muddying the water.
But Waveripple was used to finding animals in murky water, so soon managed to find another frog. He swam after it and tried to grab it in his mouth but missed.
Waveripple surfaced for a moment to see how well Indigowings was doing. He saw him splashing around on the other side of the pond, looking more like he was having a splash fight with an invisible opponent than trying to catch something. There was a small pile of frogs on the ground by Indigowings, but they were too far away to be counted.
When Waveripple went back under the water, he saw a large green frog sitting at the bottom of the pond. He dove down quickly and grabbed the frog in his mouth, getting a lot of water as well.
Waveripple came back up to put his latest catch on the pile and then dove back under. He swam around until he found a small green frog, which he quickly caught.
After a few more minutes, Waveripple had caught two more frogs. Just one more and he would win!
Waveripple swam around, scanning the water for movement. He did not see any frogs, so he swam closer to Indigowings. Then he saw a dark brown frog at the bottom of the pond, camouflaged in the mud. He dove down swiftly and caught it.
When he surfaced, Waveripple threw his last frog in the pile he had caught. “Ten!” he shouted exultantly.
Indigowings stopped splashing around. He swam to shallower water and said proudly, “I caught eight. And you said I couldn't catch any.”
“Do you want to see who can get to ten turtles first?” Waveripple asked.
Dragon Land: Two Dragon Brothers # 1: The Beginning Page 4