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“I’m sorry, hatchling. You are an outcast. You must learn to overcome on your own.”
He huddled against the base of the egg shelf, cold and alone.
No pleasant dream, this.
Chapter 2
Loneliness was a constant companion to the outcast. Often hunger tagged along throughout the day, gnawing at him from belly to tail-tip, but hunger wandered off at night as he dreamed of warm, rich feasts. Loneliness would not be so easily seen off.
Only loneliness is mine to hold,
Scalel-edge sharp and dreadful cold.
The outcast rhymed to himself, in imitation of the songs he heard from the egg shelf.
He made his first kill almost by accident. While sleeping, tucked into a crack lest the Gray attack him again with a pounce and a triumphant squawk, he felt an odd tickle at his tail. A wide, flat thing, rather like his tongue save for a questing projection that stuck up from its front—he knew the front judging by the direction it slurped—had touched his tail and recoiled.
He fell on it without really knowing what he was doing and tore it open as he landed. It still writhed, so he batted it about some more before biting off the head. It mindlessly crept down his throat, seeking tight, wet safety, and he instinctively swallowed.
It tasted vile and slimy, but filled his belly. He ate the other half and suffered no ill effects save for a hunger that came back all the fiercer for having once been assuaged.
Hunger drove him out into the cave when his belly sagged, empty, and loneliness forced him back to the crevices under the egg shelf.
He explored the cave from the egg shelf to the entrance hole, knew its drains and its hollows and its patches of shining green moss that brought light to the blackness, thriving on dragon waste and bat droppings.
Often he clung to the side of the egg shelf, straining to pick up mind-pictures from Mother as she taught the rest of her clutch. Stories, lessons, songs, rhymes, she bubbled like the trickle at the other end of the egg shelf whenever she didn’t sleep.
The Gray was named Auron, he knew. His noisy sisters were Wistala and Jizara.
And then he met his father.
Father was a massive bronze mass, frightening in the quiet with which he moved. One moment the outcast was following a slug trail in the hope of another ephemeral meal of slug meat, and the next it seemed as though the cave wall had shifted next to him, a startling mass of sliding scales approaching the egg shelf.
He keened up at Father, tried to form words, sat up on his hindquarters and yapped until his head swam.
Father stared at his stiff, maimed limb, snorted, and continued his journey toward the egg shelf. He had to dodge Father’s swinging tail by retreating into a crevice.
Of course, he and Mother began to discuss Auron, the Gray Rat. To the Copper his brother was rather like an oversized rat: quick, quiet, and vicious.
Thus the pattern of his days was set.
He managed a grubby sort of survival, living off slugs, rats, and the bit of hoof or tail that he could sometimes filch by sneaking up onto the egg shelf when the others were sleeping.
How he longed to join them, basking in Mother’s heat!
Once he tried to settle up against them, under Mother’s protective wing, but she began to shift and rumble and woke Auron. He had to scramble off the egg shelf, pursued by his brother’s angry yaps.
He sat at the base of the egg shelf, picking up a stray mind-picture or two from Mother as she taught the others in dreams. He hugged the memory of Mother’s attention at his hatching. Would it be too much for her to stretch her neck and give him a lick, breathe a few bars of one of the long songs she sang to him in the egg…?
Tell him his name?
Little crying coughs escaped his body.
He learned to differentiate his sisters. Wistala was quick of tongue, Jizara long, elegant, and with a melodious voice.
He avoided Auron. The Gray seemed vulnerable, with a thick, pebbly skin instead of scales, but was fast and alert and hard to hear coming. And he was growing strong on what he and the sisters hunted and the choicest bits of whatever Father brought back.
But soon the Copper realized he only thought he knew unhappiness and longing.
