The unwanted princess - H.o.D.

Rotten egg

She knew people whispered about her. Everyone at court was always talking about young princess Velora and her rotten egg. It had been a few moons. Velora would keep her egg warm and protected and whenever she wasn't needed elsewhere in the castle, the girl could be found in her chambers, practicing her reading and her writing, sitting by her window, as close to her egg as she could be.

It would hatch. She knew it would. It had called for her. And that was what she told anyone who tried to convince her otherwise. That was what she told her half-brother and betrothed Aegon whenever the little boy decided to tease her about it.

"You have a rotten egg." He would said, he would laugh.

He was young, Velora reminded herself. He was a boy and he was young, he didn't understand. He didn't see in her egg what she saw. And that was alright, because as she sat beside her egg that afternoon, warming up her own body with the heated rocks she would put underneath the egg, she knew there was something special inside of it.

"I know you are in there." She whispered to her egg. "I know you are in there and I know you want to come out. So please, please come out so we can show them all how wrong they have been about us."

And that had continued for another moon. Velora would practice her reading and her needlework and study her history books beside her egg, hoping and praying it would, eventually hatch and, a moon before her seventh nameday, the day she had been hoping for finally arrived. It had started small - a kind of movement Velora herself would have missed if she hadn't been already so in tune with her egg. But it had started. Her egg shook over the heated rocks. She gasped, throwing her books aside as she crawled over the window sill and knelt by the warm nest she had created for her soon-to-be-dragon.

"There you are..." She whispered to it, a smile on her lips as the egg moved again at the sound of her voice. "Don't be shy now, my sweet. Come out to meet me."

And so the egg shook again. And then, there was a sound. Small, low, but undeniably, the sound of a crack. Her egg was hatching. Her old egg no one believe would hatch; her rotten egg Aegon liked to tease her so much for; the egg that had called for her and that she had believed in. It was hatching and a dragon would come out of it - her dragon.

The first thing to come out of her egg was a long talon. It broke through the scaled egg and Velora gasped again. There was a screech that followed and soon, another talon broke through. Velora's hand hovered over the egg, as if hesitating in helping her dragon, but she knew better than to mess with the natural order of things, so, instead, she just leaned a little more over the egg as she stood up on her knees. The talons pushed against the egg shell and once they managed to push it off, a head came out of the egg.

"Oh, hello." Velora smiled, her eyes full of wonder as she looked down at the little head a little bigger than her hand that poked out, mouth open as a loud screech slipped past sharp teeth. "Hello, little one."

She was beautiful, her dragon. Her eyes a deep green and her scales a shiny violet that Velora knew would only intensify as she grew. Velora stretched a finger out toward the small head and she laughed when the dragon stared at it for a moment before bending her slender neck to press the top of her head to her finger. The dragon screeched again and, this time, another sound very similar joined it. Velora frowned, confused, if only for a second because, soon enough, from the egg, emerged another head, just like the first, attached to a similar slender neck. Velora gasped, her eyes widening even more when a third head slipped out.

"Are these... Are these all yours?" Velora asked, and, almost as if to answer her question, the dragon broke free from the rest of the egg and shook its whole body to get rid of the grime around it.

Velora sat back on her knees and just watched as the beautiful creature unraveled before her eyes. A small little dragon, a little bigger than her arms in length, with a single tail, four legs, a pair of wings and incredible violet scales that reflected just right the light that came from her chamber's window. From the shoulders down, her dragon looked like every other dragon in her family, but from neck up - or maybe she should say necks, considering the little beast had three slender things coming out of its shoulders - it was different; special. It was a three-headed dragon, with three mouths, six eyes and gods knew how many teeth. She looked at Velora with her three heads and laid down on the heated rocks, as if finding comfort on the familiar heat of it. Velora smiled, her hand coming out toward the dragon again as she laughed when she used her necks to pass each of her heads through her fingers.

"Baelyx." She named her, pleased when the dragon huffed through the nose of her right head. "After my brother Baelor who never really got to see the light of day. You and I? We'll fly straight into the sun together one day."

Baelyx chirped through her mouths and Velora chose to assume that to be good.

"Ser Dalt!" Velora called out to her head of guard. It took the man less than a second to slip inside the princess' chambers and even less time to scout the room and land his eyes on the dragon still playing around Velora's fingers.

"My princess." He bowed, even though he hesitated on taking his eyes from the creature across from him, always prepared to lay his life for Velora's if necessary. "Is something the matter?"

"Send someone to fetch me a dragonkeeper." She said, her lips turning into a smirk as she looked away from her knight and back toward Baelyx instead. "Tell them to say my rotten egg has finally hatched."