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Mother opened an eye. She had grown perceptibly thinner, eating only the leavings from her hungry brood. She closed it again.
“Mother! I need a rock moved. I can get a slug if you move it!” he insisted.
“Quiet, Auron. You’ll drop the bats from the ceiling, you’re making so much noise.” His sisters, waking from their nap, glared at him in agreement.
“It will only take you moments, Mother! Please, I’m so hungry!”
“A rock over a dry trickle, Auron?”
“Yes.”
“Your father put that there for a purpose. He will move it for you, maybe. Please let me sleep.”
“The slug will get away!”
“Slugs and bugs, let it. Your father will be back soon.”
“But—”
Mother’s tail lashed out, the thin end catching him across the snout.
He smarted to his eye sockets. “Owww! You didn’t have to crack me!”
His sisters touched snouts in triumph and thrummed out their satisfaction to each other. Auron ignored the prrum.
“I wasn’t biting anyone,” he said in a much quieter tone.
“Don’t whine. You are flapping me to distraction. Check the floor for dead bats if you’re that hungry. I’ve been hearing them fall all day. Will this winter never end?”
She turned her head back and forth, a sign Auron knew meant she was listening for Father.
“We must have patience, Auron.”
Patience comes hard to a four-month-old hatchling, so Auron passed his time trying to shift the rock. He tried pushing it, he tried pulling it, he tried rotating it. He tried different angles, but the rock remained immovable. Finally, he fell asleep on top of it.
Father made a noisy entrance, waking him. At other times, Father moved stealthily enough for Auron to pick up his smell before his sound—as stealthily as something of his bulk could move, that is. But Auron heard him enter the great passage at the top of the cave this time; something was wrong with his walk. Was Father hurt?
Auron climbed a stalagmite for a better view and saw Father moving to the egg shelf. He held something in his jaws, as well as a forearm. Food!
Father was arguing with Mother when he joined the family at the ledge. “You’ll eat a whole horse, and that’s the end of it,” Father rasped. “I went to a lot of trouble for these.”
The bronze dragon’s mandibles moved, and Auron watched him work the inside of his mouth with his tongue. An ivory tooth fell out, broken and bloody.
Auron noticed shafts like quills in Father’s neck, and a longer length of carved wood in his flank. “Father, there’s a spear in your side!” Auron said.
“What’s that?” He craned his neck and sniffed at his flank. “Too big to be a spear, Gray. That’s a lance. It’s a weapon men riding horses use; they can drive it right through you. If they can get their horse to charge a dragon, that is.”
“Two sii to the right, and it would have gone right up your tail-vent,” Mother chuckled.
Auron clamped his jaws shut to keep from laughing.
“So that’s what kept you,” Mother continued, sniffing at one of the dead horses. “You flew with two horses in your claws?”
“Two horizons at least. My jaw is going to be sore for a week. What really slowed me down was this.” Father opened his hand, and a mass of fabric, rope, and broken pieces of wood fell to the floor.
“What is that? More to eat?” his sister Jizara asked.
The mass moved, and Auron saw a foreleg emerge. It was thinner than his, proportioned strangely, and with four-and-one as its claw arrangement—though perhaps claw was the wrong word, as the creature had no talons.
