Dragons of Skylark: The Four Heirs

To Earn The Sky

There were a lot of other creatures in the mountain alone. It was easy to find insects crawling along the cold floor. Each leg leaving a print in the moisture. Or a small family of mice, protected stubbornly by my sister. Bats pressed themselves into the corners in the hundreds. We tended to avoid those caves however, because your average dragon wasn't keen on wading through guano. Except Wren of course, but Wren was far from average.

Master Wren is the young leviathan teaching creature studies, which means they're the same age as my parents and still growing. Ronan always joked that if they held completely still, they'd be invisible, which I took to mean Wren's scales are...cave colored. I guess. I always liked them because they had a thing called spectacles, little discs of glass in a metal frame that curled around their horns to help them see. I don't understand how they work, but every few minutes one of their six hands would push them up to the bridge of their nose.

Master Wren was in the guano again when I found them, I kept my distance to save the water in my eyes. Unfortunately, my question was that pressing.

"Master?"

"Oh! Good morning Longtayle, you're up early." They laughed upon seeing my twisted-up face, "what's brings you to my stinkdom today?"

"Something along those lines. I was wondering if some dragons don't have a signature scent?"

They paused, "...no? Everything has a smell, whether it be sweet, sick, or sour."

Squelch, squelch, squelch. Master Wren joined me on the outcrop before the bat-pit and slipped off six pairs of soiled leg-coverings. "Scent is very important to dragons, especially. You can get all of your basic information about a new dragon from smell alone. No other creature I've found is as sensitive to pheromones. A dragon with no smell... that would be quite unnatural, there's not much point to it."

They pushed their glassed up to the bridge of their nose, the metal clacking against their horns, "Why do you ask? Are you planning on sneaking around undetected?"

My tongue curled around one of my fangs. "No, just... wondering, I guess. It was stupid."

Master Wren clucked in dismay, "the purposeless wonder of a young mind is the driving force behind innovation. It's the young bats that find these caves and populate them. It's the pups, in hungry curiosity, that find new sources of food."

They paused, lost in thought, "I've been studying this colony for quite some time. They look a lot like us, similar wing structure and all that. These creatures fly quite sporadically yet...there's a method here. I think somehow the darkness of the caves they can see, even though everything else suggests otherwise." 

I shrugged, "maybe they just have good hearing."

"Longtayle! Are you back here?" A wavering voice called down the tunnel.

"Good morning Hailpip!"

"You're late for teachings."

I turned to Master Wren, who I suspected I'd lost to thought. "I have to go, sorry. Thank you for helping me, hope you find what you're looking for in the bats!"

Hailpip chirped when she saw me and we dashed through the tunnels to our morning lesson.

Our new teacher's tail trailed along the grass with a hiss as we skidded to the halt.

"There you are, we were starting to worry." He said as if the words were bitter.

I stiffened, why did our flight teacher have to be Lore? Why not Master Kuu? She was surely the most adept at flying.