Dragon's Baby

by Ella Hart

  His daughter came over to him again, and snuggled in by his chest. Her eyes closed softly, and soon he heard soft snores that only a newly hatched dragon could make. It was a sound he hadn’t heard in hundreds of years.

  “Awww.” Rani and Paulina began to look at the little dragon and watch her sleep. Cobalt put his wing over her to keep them from seeing that.

  “Cobalt. Why would you do that?” Rani spoke against the action, but Paulina just laughed at him. “Oh. Does he do that often?” She still had a lot to learn about what he did in this form. He didn’t blame her for it, though. It was partly his fault for not wanting to tell her about the fact that he was a dragon.

  “Yeah. When he is trying to tell me that something is supposed to be private.” She smiled softly. Rani shrugged and replied, “We’ll let her sleep in peace, then. We should probably clean up the egg shards before someone comes over.” His wife looked over to Rani. “Are you having company over at some point?”

  “I might be having company tomorrow. I’m honestly not sure if they’re going to come. They said they might have something else going on tomorrow, and I think I’m okay with them not coming over at the moment. Would it even be safe with a newborn dragon?” She looked to Cobalt.

  “Newly hatched, Rani.” He corrected her softly, and then nodded. “Yes. She will most likely stay with me or Paulina for the foreseeable future. Dragons are family-oriented at a young age, and we love our brood more than we can express.” The feelings he expressed had not been felt in a long time. Not since his immediate brood had been killed all those years ago.

  Chapter Ten: New Father Worries

  It was quiet for a while, but it didn’t take too long for Paulina to find something to say.. She kissed his cheek, and then looked towards her little daughter. He too smiled at Rose. There was so much to talk about, but so little that they could really say.

  Rani got up and left the room. He wasn’t sure if she felt that they were being too lovey-dovey, or if she was uncomfortable at the fact that they were comfortable with each other being like this. He didn’t much mind. At least this would allow him to be with his wife. His wife was an amazing woman; she was amazing in all kinds of ways.

  And the ability of hers to make him feel better was always surprising to him.

  “You’ll be all right, Cobalt.” She whispered softly to him. “I know how much it hurt to lose your family. But we will not go anywhere. We will not leave you.” She pressed another kiss to his cheek. There was nothing he needed to hear more than that.

  “Thank you.” He whispered. He didn’t want to wake his daughter up, but he shouldn’t have worried; dragon hatchlings were deep sleepers. He kissed Paulina with his giant lips.

  “You’re welcome.” She smiled at him softly, and then snuggled up against his body. He curled his neck down, and let her snuggle into the neck and head. He wanted to make sure that he could take care of his family as well as he could.

  “Sleep, my lovely one.” He curled around her a little more. “You are too stressed.”

  “I’m okay, honey.” She laughed a little, patting his head softly. “You’re also very stressed. Why don’t you try to get some sleep?” He wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him or if she was just trying to distract him. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. If he slept, he would relive that awful day. The day that he lost his family. “Are you okay?” She frowned.

  “If I sleep, I will see my family die again and again.” He let a soft sigh out through his nose. There was something about not wanting to see what had happened to his family again that made him not want to sleep, yet as Paulina began to sing a lullaby to him, he felt his eyes beginning to close.

  She kissed his cheek softly as he fell away into sleep’s darkness. There wasn’t a lot in his dreams today. He saw nothing about his family’s death, instead he saw happy things about his future. He wondered what Rose would look like in a couple of years, when she first shifted. She’d be a five-year-old before she would be able to shift into a human. She would probably have blue eyes, maybe with hints of red. Or maybe her hair would be red. It would be quite impressive – red hair with blue eyes. He liked that combination a lot.

  He woke up to a nuzzle on his head. Little Rose had woken up. She looked hungry.

  “Hi, little one.” He rose his head slowly. “Are you hungry?” He didn’t speak in English; instead, he spoke in the growls that she would understand. She nodded. Then, he looked towards his wife. She was fast asleep. He nudged her. She moved slightly, but didn’t wake up.

  It took another nudge, this time from Rose, before she woke up. She laughed softly as Rose got up into her lap.

  “Hi Rose.” She smiled softly, putting her arms around their daughter. “Hi.” She didn’t seem to understand that she was hungry.

  “Rose is hungry, love. And so am I, actually. Could you help out?” He spoke softly. There was an odd, sweet silence in the air. He didn’t want to break it. His wife nodded, and got up. She set their daughter on the ground softly.

  Rose snuggled back up to him. He curled around her, and then played with her. She giggled and laughed as they played. It was a version of peek-a-boo that dragons loved to play. One would hide under the other’s wings – typically a child hiding under a mother or father’s wings – and would peek out from under. If the other could keep a smile from appearing, they kept going. It ended when one smiled, and began to laugh. It didn’t help that Cobalt was tickling her. Rose lost quite often.

  It wasn’t long before Paulina returned to the room. She carried two bowls of salad in her hands. One was small, probably for Rose. The larger one was for him. She set the two bowls down. Rose smelled the food, and darted out from under his wings. He laughed a little as she did so. That was a hungry dragon.

  She knocked the bowl of salad over, and then began to eat it off the floor. Paulina was a little taken aback by the sight, but she didn’t try to stop Rose. It was part of the learning process, and he had explained – at some point – that she would probably be eating off the floor.

  . Though it took her a moment, she managed to laugh it off.

  “Oh my gosh. Come here, you little rascal.” She smiled softly at their daughter. “Let’s get you cleaned up. And get the carpet cleaned up.” She picked Rose up and took her into the bathroom. It was one of the good things about Rani’s little house; it had a full bathroom on the first floor. It was one of the few advantages he had seen to having the room that Paulina liked to stay in. Rani had insisted it was her regular guest room, however, so they couldn’t have it.

  While his wife cleaned their daughter up, he worked on the carpet. Though she didn’t know it, he could easily wipe things up into his mouth via his tongue. It was an odd concept for someone who wasn’t accustomed to dragon culture to think about. He hadn’t told her about it before their daughter was hatched.

  As he licked the carpet, he found that it didn’t taste all that good. That would hopefully be helpful in preventing Rose from knocking many things over. It didn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t knock things over or eat off the floor. Given that they had vacuumed it and had made sure that it was clean before the egg was hatched, he wasn’t too worried about her getting sick.

  “Cobalt? Are you doing something?” Rani’s voice came through the house. “If you’re not busy, do you think you could light a fire in the fireplace for me?” She didn’t ask him to move. Or to even try to change back. Instead, she was asking him to do something that was very natural to him. There was nothing more natural to a dragon than starting a fire.

  “I can do so, Rani.” He called back to her, his voice a little raspy and weak from not being used initially as a dragon. However, that would get better with time. It always did.

  “Thank you! There’s some firewood tucked under a tarp in the living room.” She quickly told him how to make it work without burning the house down or filling it with smoke and making the smoke detectors go off. That was something he’d always hated abou
t modern homes. They all had smoke detectors that would go off if there was enough smoke in the house. Dragons typically grew up in smoky areas; not because there were always fires, but because they often set things on fire accidentally. It took dragons many years to learn how to control it properly.

  He followed her instructions to the best of his abilities. His claws helped him hold onto the logs and arrange them in the fireplace. It only took a soft breeze from him to ignite them – no match needed. The room soon began to feel and smell like the forests in the warmest summers he’d ever felt. Warm. Wonderful.

  With his back to the fire – but not enough that he was blocking it from warming the rest of the room – he began to feel sleepy. Like when his mother would light a fire behind them, and they would let it burn as they slept. A bit of smoke would help their daughter get used to life as a dragon, unlike human babies typically being averse to smoke.

  As he thought she might, Rose came in at the smell of the smoke. She growled at him. The words were broken and almost unintelligible at this point because she was so excited, but he knew what she was asking. What was that wonderful smell?

  With a gentle nudge towards the fireplace, he explained what had happened after her mother took her to clean her up. He had lit a fire in the fireplace. Unless Rose was supervised by himself, her mother or by Rani, she shouldn’t be playing in the fire-place with a lit fire. Nor was she to be starting fires without supervision. He didn’t want her to burn the house down, especially since this wasn’t their house.

  She nodded slowly and curled up in front of the fire. It felt good, she said. She wanted to fall asleep right there, right then, and just sleep there for the night. He laughed again. She looked up at him.

  “Honey, it’s not for sleeping in front of. Come here. Come under my wings. You can sleep there tonight.” This was something he had been particularly fond of – sleeping in front of the flames like that. It was something all dragons did, but not when they were so young. When they were young, their scales weren’t fully formed. She could seriously injure herself if she were to be burnt by the fire without proper protection. Without proper supervision, specifically.

  As Rose snuggled into his wings, he held her softly but tightly. He wanted her to know that she was okay as long as she listened to what he said. Often, dragon hatchlings had a sense of what their elders were saying was true. They didn’t have the same entitled attitude that he now saw in many young humans. Granted, Paulina was part of that generation and she didn’t have the entitled attitude that was so prevalent. He chalked that up to the fact that her parents, grandparents and great grandparents had been good examples for her.

  Rose snuggled into him, and was soon sleeping peacefully against his chest. He didn’t try to wake her up when Rani came in.

  “Are you going to stay there?” She didn’t seem too sure about his prospects at the moment. He nodded. “Is Rose with you?” He nodded again. “Is she going to run around and make a fuss?” He lifted his wing to show that she had fallen asleep under it. She smiled a little. “I’ll take that as a no. However, I do have people coming over. Is there something I should do about the egg shards?” He then looked towards where he had been curled around the egg.

  There were still plenty of egg shards on the carpet.

  “They make good compost, if you need something to put in your compost pile.” He had noticed last time they had stayed with her that she had a decent-sized compost pile. Rani laughed lightly.

  “All right. I’ll add them to my compost pile. Are you sure Rose won’t need them at this point, though?” Now she seemed to be stalling for some reason. He nodded slowly. No dragon ever needed the shards of their eggs, though many did keep a piece, for a time. He didn’t think it was necessary for Rose to keep a piece of the egg. There was no reason for her to. “All right. Just checking.” She smiled, and then began to pick up the shards from the carpet.

  He wondered who could be coming over. There wasn’t a lot of options for him at the moment, nor for Rose. They were both stuck in dragon form until they could shift. For him, it would be the end of the full moon. For Rose... not until she was five. They could easily move and keep her contained in a car for the ride if they had to, but like him, she wouldn’t be too fond of staying indoors all the time. That would be the hardest part of the next five years. She wouldn’t want to stay indoors.

  As he thought about it, he put his head on the ground. He didn’t want to startle someone by going statue in an odd position. He’d done that to Rani and Paulina before. It wouldn’t scare them again, but it might scare Rani’s guests. He didn’t want to do that to them. So, on the ground his head would stay.

  He checked on Rose before letting his thoughts drift again. She was sleeping peacefully. The soft little snores she made echoed around the room, barely audible. He kissed her forehead softly as he covered her again with his wing. There was so much that he loved about being a parent – even being a faux parent, as he had been when he helped take care of his siblings.

  He finally had his own little child. His own ‘bundle of joy,’ as his mother had called each new hatchling when she was alive. After years of wondering how it would feel to have his own child, he now knew that it was exhilarating. It was wonderful. He knew how much his mother and father had loved him, but he never imagined that it had been so instant.

  He had loved Rose from the moment she hatched. She was incredibly perfect – a small bundle of absolute perfection and of all that was right in the world. There was nothing he could be told that would make her any different to him. Even the fact that, technically – as Paulina had noted earlier – Rose was half-human.

  He didn’t care. He wasn’t the only dragon left in the world now. Even if his brother had gotten away from that awful woman, he wasn’t the only dragon. He wasn’t the only dragon. The phrase continued to run through his head as he understood the gravity of that. The dragon shifters were making a resurgence. They had been almost extinct, but no one knew because of how long they lived.

  His eyes slowly closed as he let the warmth of that idea come over him. No longer was he alone. He couldn’t believe that the life he had thought would never end, the life that would always be lonely, was turning around. Turning out to be what he once thought impossible – full of love, and of ones that he loved too. He thought that he’d never be able to love again after what had happened to his family.

  He had never imagined he’d be so amazingly wrong about that. That said, he was also glad that he had been so wrong. He wouldn’t trade the way Paulina looked at him – or that he looked at Paulina – for anything.

  He lifted his head when a door opened somewhere in the house. He had trained himself to listen for the noises of a human home, despite the fact that he had never really lived in one. Rose stayed fast asleep under his wing despite the noise. Footsteps shuffled through the hallway. He kept his wing firmly planted on the ground, but not so firmly that it looked as though he was trying to hide something. Hopefully, Rani had warned her guests that they had a newborn baby in the house, and that it was typically nap time at this point. Or something like that.

  Two men walked into the room. There was something slightly off about them, but he didn’t know what. It wasn’t that they were hunters. There was something missing for it to be that kind of uneasy feeling to Cobalt. It was a generally uneasiness of a new parent. Well, that was the conclusion that he came to. A parental uneasiness would easily explain it.

  “You must be Cobalt. I’m Jack, Rani’s older brother.” The moment one of them spoke, all the uneasiness was dispelled. He looked up and down Cobalt’s large body. “I didn’t realize she had a boyfriend. A dragon boyfriend.”

  “I am not Rani’s boyfriend, nor am I her husband.” He quickly put those rumors to rest. “I am Paulina’s husband, and my wife is Rani’s best friend.”

  “Right. Paulina Monson... I wondered when we’d see her again.” The other man spoke. “I’m Todd, Rani’s younger brother.” The younger man sm
iled at him now. “Paulina’s a good woman. You’re lucky to have her as your wife.” He felt Rose shifting under his wing. Before he could soothe her back to sleep, she was up and running around the room. This was one of the few things he missed about being a hatchling. He had been able to rival her speed when he was her age.

  “Easy, Rose.” He said two simple words. “Remember, this isn’t our home.” Rani’s brothers looked at him like he had gone mad. Then, Todd saw Rose. Rose was scared of the newcomers, and darted back under his wings. He laughed softly. “It’s okay, Rose. They won’t hurt you.” He switched from English to the dragon’s native tongue. She peeked out from underneath his wing. Making no move to go talk to them, he didn’t try to force her.

  Todd got down on his knees to talk to the little one.

  “I won’t hurt you.” He smiled softly at her. Gently, he put his hand out. He cupped it, palm up, like someone waiting for a dog to sniff his hand. She nuzzled it softly, and when he simply petted her, she giggled. She was a very touchy dragon. She loved to be petted. He didn’t blame her; being petted was one of the few things that he still enjoyed about having a dragon form.

  “Todd, Jack, are you here?” Rani’s voice echoed through the room. Then, she walked into the living room. “Oh. You are. I didn’t even have to yell. Sorry, Cobalt.” She looked towards where Rose had been sleeping, and saw that she was awake. “Oh. She’s awake.”

  “I think I woke her by accident.” Todd spoke up, looking up from where he was petting Rose. “But she’s absolutely beautiful. This is amazing, Rani. Since when did you have a dragon family in your house?”

  “Since they needed a place to stay. Come on, now. We don’t have all day to chit-chat.” She smiled at him, and then took her brothers out through the front door. Paulina walked into the room shortly after they left.

  Rose ran to her clumsily.

  As his wife picked up their child, he realized how blessed he was to have this opportunity. There were so many things she had taught him in the past two years. The most important lesson she had taught him had been gratitude. He hadn’t realized how grateful he was to still be alive until he met her. There had been so many times where he had almost made the choice to end it all, not having a reason to continue any longer.