A Wizard's Dream

Vagran

Vagokaraine was quickly shortened to Vagran when they discovered that the baby was a boy. Asja liked the new name just as much. It reminded her that, like her, he was an orphan who onlyhad a home thanks to the generosity of strangers and their hospitable customs.

She wouldn't let the fledgling bird out of her sight. She followed him through the house and on his tottering explorations of the garden. He slept inside his eggshell at the foot of her bed, though it didn't last long. It kept shrinking while he slumbered before vanishing altogether. Only once did Asja keep an eye half-open to see a fragment of the shell spark and flash before being absorbed by the bird's body, a fleeting sapphire spot in his side the only evidence of the event. She didn't know what to make of it, but suspected it had something to do with his rapid growth.

When he grew too big for their modest house, he joined Armo in the adjacent barn. The ram had more spacious lodgings and didn't mind the guest, and even welcomed the warmth providedby the bird. As did Asja. She snuggled up to the thunderoc every night, pressing against the perennial warmth of his feathery chest and feeling safe in the cosy embrace of his large wings.When a lightning bolt struck the barn and nearly set the roof ablaze, Tor insisted that the thunderoc move again, this time to an elevated part of the yard by the outside hearth. Undeterred, Asja slept there too. His growing wings proved remarkably effective atsheltering her from the rain, though not from stormy discharges who held lethal attraction to their bestial kin. More than once did she awake from deep slumber convulsing from the latest thunderbolt absorbed by the bird.

The lightning discharges seemed to be all he needed to strengthen and grow. She never saw him eat anything else. Even lengthy absence of a storm didn't seem to bother him, though his size remained stagnant during this time. Her fascination with magic led her to muse that he was able to absorb nourishment from his surroundings to sustain him during these fasts. She certainly tired in his company quickly during that time – falling asleep easily and waking with difficulty – eventually longing for a storm to come. He spent much of his time gazing at the sky. Clouds, skylights, rainbows and rain, the pointy denizens of the celestial night, all fascinated him. Even clear skies could hold his attention for days on end. He couldn't yet fly, but Asja sensed a longing there, as if he knew that he belonged with heavenly forms rather than solid ground.

Other kids from the hills disagreed. They loved being in his company, stroking his translucent plumes that shimmered in the dark, pressing their faces against the crackling warmth of his skin,laughing at the unsteadiness of his long feet, and standing in awe of his mighty wings. They ran with him in his persistent attempts to reach for the sky, spurring him on every step of the way. And they comforted him in his frustration when his wings – impressive as they were – failed to take flight.

Her association with Vagran raised Asja's standing in the eyes of the kids. No longer was she the peculiar child who spontaneously communed with the spirits of nature in ways mysterious even to her. Now she was the self-appointed caretaker of someone imposing yet so thoroughly different that even her oddity paled in comparison. Someone who was adored by all of her friends. Until their parents discovered just what kind of bird she harboured at her home.

As the word of Vagran's ancestry spread through the foothills, so did the dwarves' end to their children's company. They couldn't challenge Tor and Erna's sacred duty to raise a child of the mountain – whatever form he may take – but it did irreparable damage to the esteem in which they were held for having undertaken the same task many cycles earlier with what at least looked like a dwarf. One by one, Asja's friends made themselves scarce. They avoided the bird and, as his constant companion, they avoided her too. She learned to make do with his company alone, as if his sheer size could take the place of the friends she had lost.

Only at night, in the privacy of her sleep, did another come to ease her loneliness. The land herself sprang to life in the most picturesque visions the girl had ever seen. She recognized in her the goddess Ama, known by the dwarves as the soul of their world. She was the only one Asja could confide in, the only one with whom she could share the growing pains of a foreigner struggling to fit in as a dwarf, and childhood milestones reached with an avian friend whom Peruvius Mountains had all but forgotten.