Dragon Reincarnated (Working title)

A Mother's Legacy

I dragged my long body out of the lake for about the sixth time in the last two hours. Clearly, aerial acrobatics were just not in my near future.

It had to of been months now, since the death of Mother and the promise I made to avenger her and save the other eggs, and I was getting ever more impatient to be off. It had to be time!

I had more than doubled in size again, now too large to fit in my tree at all, leaving it to Momma Bird and her noisy chicks. I slept below it now, Verona's Heart Stone hidden in the earth beneath the tree's roots.

At the size of a very long necked horse, there was little in the way of monsters or animals that proved too much of a threat any longer. Not that the larger monsters couldn't kill me, as I was sure many of them could, especially in groups, but I was big enough that they thought twice about it. After all, even monsters didn't want to risk unnecessary injury. It could mean death later on.

Even flight was no longer a problem. It took me several weeks to get the hang of it enough to brave high flying. I was afraid I would fall out of the sky and plummet to my death for the longest time. 

That first flight, high above the trees... Wow.  A sea of green blow, spanning out far to the east, north, and south, broken only by scattered lakes and hillocks. The sky was a vibrant blue, the clouds appearing closer than ever. It was a sense of freedom I never expected to feel...

But, I eventually had to land. The truth was that my stamina was pretty abysmal. And even now, it was still rather miserable. I couldn't fly more than a couple hours at a time, and then I had to eat and sleep. These last weeks I had dedicated myself to building up that stamina, but it seemed to be slow going.

Flight was absolutely needed for my path ahead. No way I could walk all the way to wherever the bandits had scurried off too. And being able to fly was a great advantage when it came to speed, versatility, and escape power too. Being able to just take to the sky when the going got rough was a huge advantage.

It wasn't perfect, but I could fly. Even if it was only a couple hours, it was still better than walking. A girl could cover a lot of ground in two hours when she could fly. And, the longer I waited, the greater the chance that my siblings would be long out of my reach. I already worried that they had gotten too far, and too lost. But I wasn't about to abandon them either.

I dragged myself out of the lake. The last couple days I had been trying to pull off some pretty outrageous flight maneuvers. I figured that if I came across another flying monster- other than the large bird I had seen in the distance that one time, I had yet to see any- I would need to be nimble. That was, clearly, not going to be happening any time soon. Every attempt had ended with me either nearly crashing into trees or straight into the lake as I had just done.

I shook water droplets of my scales and wing membranes, admiring the sun playing on them for a moment before heading back into the forest. It was getting tight between the trees in places, and there were clear trails where I walked often. If anyone came looking for me, I would not be hard to find.

Mother must have done some real damage to those thieves for them not to have come back. I had expected them to do so. Not just for Mother's Heart Stone, but for her various body parts too. I could be wrong, but I was pretty sure that it was a big trope that dragon parts were a hot commodity, right? Bones, teeth, and scales used in making weapons and armor, and their blood and the like in medicine?

No one had come. I did go and visit Verona a time or two... It was hard and sad, but I wanted to make sure no humans had come to try and cart her off.

There hadn't been any humans, but clearly animals and monsters had made quick work of her flesh and organs. When I had went to check on her the day before yesterday, she had fully been picked clean. All that remained of my mother were her massive bones, still towering above me. And, nothing but egg fragments remained of my dead brothers. It had saddened me to see they were gone completely. It felt as if I should have berried them or something. Though, I was pretty sure that dragons did not burry their dead.