Dragon

Chapter 8

Jaimin sat and stared at the near-vacant shelves before him while Maayin ran through her records. Hearing the whisper of her voice, he glanced at her tiny form hunched over the scroll lying atop the dusty table. A curl of dark hair fell forward, obscuring the face scrunched with concentration. Her fingers smoothed the parchment over and over, tips tracing the images and runes with the tip of a finger.

He'd never been much of a scholar, but he had explained the symbols used to describe breed type as best as he could. Had even tried to do the same with the runes. Yet she still seemed to be having difficulty with them. His dame would've been far better at the task.

He sighed, the blast rustling through the handful of scrolls. A tiny pile of nine. They rocked against each other, aged parchment whispering on even older wood. His dame's records sat amongst them. She'd be over three hundred years old by now, had been heading for it well before Hurani's demise. Almost to the first quarter of her third century. Providing she lived.

No one knew if any of the kidnapped dragons still lived. Just as none had yet gathered the courage to place these nine scrolls with the others. They could only presume their stolen females lived. To think otherwise was to consign them all to one desperate hope.

If his sire hadn't clipped him one for going along with this foolishness, his dame surely would have.

Hearing the thud of booted feet, he swung to face Maayin. Scroll in hand, she stared up at him with a puzzled, and oddly sheepish, frown marring her otherwise pretty face. Pretty? Jaimin twitched a wing, grimacing at the thought. He was not Jipp. The human form held no attraction for him, and yet .... She is beautiful. Hurani's human guise hadn't looked nearly as stunning.

"What does this say?" She tapped on the parchment with a fingernail. "I forget."

He leant closer, chin hovering over her shoulder as he peered down at the tiny writing. "That is Leonra," he whispered, fully aware of how close his snout was to her ears. "Your dame."

She shuddered though he could not consider it cold. "Why is there little else before her?"

He straightened, allowing himself the smallest of sighs to ease his frustration. It tugged at the scroll, all but wrenching it from her hands. She'd asked him that before. Did she think the answer would change if she enquired again? "We do not have access to the records of scaleds hatched outside the lairs and she obviously could not recall her grandparent's names."

Maayin looked back up at him. How was it that her dark eyes so readily tweaked his wings? "Why not make these bigger?"

He snorted, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards. "This is just a copy."

She frowned, the generous bow of her lips pouting ever so slightly. "Where is the bigger version?" Did she think they would not trust her with the real thing?

"Still sitting in the vaults at the Great Tree. It has not been the best weather for transporting something so fragile." What with winter fast approaching, Tirin would've killed before allowing anyone to take a scroll from his lair. Female or no. "I can show you mine, if you like." He walked over to the racks and wrapped his claws around one of the knobs sticking out.

She gave a small nod, gaze unwavering from the turned wood. So intense.

The scroll unfurled in his hands, bar bouncing off the stone to rumbled its way across the floor. Two great columns ran along the parchment's length, letters longer than a claw. He knew without looking that each name bore the intricate representation of a mountain peak after it. At the top, partly obscured by his claws, sat the same swirling symbol as that which marked his face. It was mimicked in miniature running down his sire's side of the genealogy, put before their names instead of after.