Dragon Reincarnated (Working title)

Bears and Snakes are Scary

The next couple days were, admittedly, hard. To say that my coming to this would had been far more traumatic than I would have ever suspected, would be putting it mildly. But life had to go on, and I quickly realized that my dragon abilities to compartmentalize was far greater than when I had been human.

It wasn't that I was not sad about my dead mother and my little brothers, because I was. In fact, I was sad, and angry. But I was also, apparently, more logical in my processes, and was able to put those emotions aside enough to survive.

So what I first did was pretty gross, in retrospect. One of the few memories that Verona had managed to give me was that there was something I had to remove from her body. A magic stone, knows as a Dragon's Heart. It was the source of a dragon's mana and every dragon had one and it was extremally valuable.

Mother left me this memory, almost above all others, so that I would be sure not to leave her Dragon Heart there. The bandits may come back for it, and even if they didn't another monster or person may come across it and take it. It was not for them to have.

It was gory work, using my small, but sharp, claws to cut through my own mother's flesh and finally extract the beautiful, crystal clear, red stone from next to my mother's huge heart.

For some reason, I had expected it to be huge, just like my mother, but it wasn't. I'd say it was about the size of my fist... er, my former fist. And some what spherical in shape.

I couldn't do anything with it now, but eventually, when I got just a little bigger, I would eat it. This stone held a great deal of my mother's power, and it was this power and my new name that she was able to leave me. I would not look down on either.

But for now, I was too small to eat the stone and absorb the power it held. But soon I would be big enough to swallow it with out choaking. For now, I would concentrate on surviving and growing big and strong, just as Mother told me too. I'd need all the size and strength that I could get.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't tempted to rush after Verona's murderers right away. But I was smart enough to know that a baby dragon could do nothing to a group of people who had taken out a dragon, like my mother. Even if they only defeated her because they struck at the one and only time she was weak. Spinless monsters that they were. 

It took me some time to climb out of the dried up river bed that mother had chosen to make her nest. It would have made for great cover while preventing the forest catching fire when she heated our eggs, but in the end it was the cage that ensured her death.

Once I managed to get myself and the Dragon Heart out of the nest and up to the thick forest above, I was a little lost for what to do. A rumbling tummy told me I needed to eat, and I knew, instinctively, the basics of hunting... but I still felt stuck.

'okay' I said to myself, mentally. 'Find a place to hide Mother's stone first.'

I couldn't just carry this thing around, after all. I could use my front paws to hold things better than I thought I could, but I couldn't walk on two legs while holding it... And I definitely could not fly yet.

I glanced at my wings. It was hard to tell what color I was. It had turned night and apparently Dragons did not have night vision. Not this dragon at least. But I could tell that my wings were too small to carry me, and instinct told me that it would be a couple months before I could even try it.

At least I was big enough to hunt small prey, but I was still too small to be invulnerable. I needed a place to spend the nights and to store the stone.

I spent a while wandering through the forest, stone firmly clasped in my teeth. I didn't think i would miss my gripping hands so soon... But I wasn't going to leave the stone. No way. So, sore neck and jaw aside, I was going to make sure it was safe.