Tailbiter
Jarzyl encounters danger at the clanless home where Atlas lives
I'll get back to uploading longer stories... eventually. For now, here's another slice of life.
With a flutter of her wings and a small hop forward, Jarzyl landed on the rooftop. The warm evening breeze tugged at her flight surfaces for a few more seconds, until the dragon fledgling pulled in her wings and furled them onto her back.
The building she now stood on top of was square shaped with an open-air courtyard in the middle. Jarzyl peered down into the courtyard, watching as a dozen or so young dragons—including both tiny little hatchlings and larger, older fledglings—ran around the area, chasing a ball and batting it to each other with their forepaws or wings. Balconies and corridors from the second and third level of the building overlooked the courtyard, with more dragons spectating the game or simply lazing about on the tiled floor, enjoying an evening nap. Others were playing games, having conversations, grooming each other’s scales, or doing schoolwork.
Though this building was officially a sheltered home for clanless young dragons, in many ways it resembled the communal home of a small, modest little clan. The most obvious difference was that the flag flapping from a pole on the rooftop was a plain grey colour with no clan insignia.
A second difference was that almost everyone here was young. There was an equal mix of hatchlings and fledglings, with only a single adult drakken in sight. The adult was wearing a flight harness bearing the city’s Education Division logo and was sitting in a room overseeing several hatchlings as they all diligently read from books placed in front of them.
Jarzyl glanced back at her own wings. A pair of pennant flags were tied to her wingtips, made from orange fabric to match her scale colour, and boldly emblazoned with the symbol of Clan Mintaka. Though Jarzyl was normally proud to wear her clan symbol, now she untied those triangular flags and slipped them into a flight harness pouch. Here, visiting this place, it was unnecessarily boastful to flaunt her clan to other young dragons who lacked the status that she had.
Moving along the rooftop, Jarzyl headed towards the stairwell entrance that led down into the building. But before she got there, another dragon came walking up the stairs and nudged open the door with his shoulder—an adolescent drake with sooty black scales, similar in size and age to Jarzyl, but crippled and missing his left forelimb. His expression was sharp but calm, and a faint smile crossed his face when he saw her.
Jarzyl was less restrained. “Hey!” Her neck frill perked up and she grinned widely, scampering over to her friend. He had barely stepped out onto the rooftop when Jarzyl crashed into him and threw her wings around him in a friendly hug, almost making them both fall down the stairs. Pulling back from the embrace, Jarzyl gave an approving, fond nod to her friend. “Atlas.” She tapped his snout gently, touching his nose with her paw. “Funny finding you here…”
Atlas looked amused. “You say that like you’re surprised to see me, here at my home, at the exact time we agreed to meet.”
“Heh. Hehe…” Jarzyl chuckled. Reaching up, she grabbed one of Atlas’s horns and wobbled his head. She quickly glanced around, making sure that the rooftop was empty except for the two of them, then she darted her head forward and bumped her snout against his—nothing excessive or prolonged, but a quick kiss, made all the better for being stolen.
Atlas’s faint grin became not so faint. “How was the flight over?”
Jarzyl tapped her paws against the ground excitedly. “Windy! Street-level conditions are gusty today.” Turning around, she gestured at the open sky and the gleaming urban landscape that surrounded them. “Ready to head to the festival?”
Atlas nodded. “Yep. I’m good to go. You know the way?”
Jarzyl eagerly bobbed her head. “Yeah! The Festival of Stars is at the new Mintaka sector! It’s in the park garden of sector 49. Food, games, and the maze this year is really big. This is going to be so much fun—yahhh!” She yelped loudly, cutting herself off midsentence at a sharp pain came from her tail.
“Ow!” Jarzyl’s first thought was that her tail tip had been pinched by the closing door of the stairwell entrance. However, spinning around, she instead discovered a small female hatchling had come up the stairway after Atlas, and was now biting down on her tail. The little hatchling had black scales and a neck crest fin, and she had her jaws clamped right around Jarzyl tail tip. It hurt.
“What…!?” Jarzyl instinctually flicked out her wing and swung it downwards with great speed and violence, but she stopped right before smashing the leading edge into the little hatchling. The downforce from her wing stroke made the hatchling’s neck fin and wings flutter, but the tiny dragon kept biting tight. Jarzyl then tried to raise her tail and pull it out of the hatchling’s jaws, but she refused to let go, just fully dangling with body limp but grip tight.
Jarzyl curled her tail forward to glare at the hatchling, and she reached out with claws fully extended. “You pesky little…!” At the last moment she retracted in her claws and gently grabbed the hatchling around her midriff. She tried to carefully pull her tail free, but the hatchling simply bit down harder in response. “Oi! Hey. Hey!!”
Atlas thumped his own tail firmly against the ground and clicked his tongue. “Tsk. Cedar!”
Immediately the hatchling let go of Jarzyl’s tail. Still holding onto Cedar with her paws, Jarzyl winced and checked her tail—there were a few drops of blood dripping from small toothmarks, but it wasn’t a deep wound.
Atlas took the hatchling from Jarzyl. He put her down on the ground, but kept his paw holding her by the scruff, right at the back of her neck. Lowering his head, he spoke to the hatchling softly. “Cedar! We’ve talked about this. What did we agree?”
Cedar hid from Atlas’s gaze, tucking her head under her wing. Jarzyl would have said it was extremely cute if she hadn’t just been assaulted by the adorable little hatchling. Reaching into her flight harness, Jarzyl pulled out a small healing crystal and brushed it against her tail. Sparks of healing magic washed over the appendage, and the injury was wiped away in a few seconds. “Dangerous part of the city,” she muttered.
Atlas sighed. “Sorry. Cedar is… she has some behavioural issues, particularly around strangers.” Using his paw, he patted the hatchling’s back, gently stroking her wings. “She’s a little tailbiter.”
“Uggh.” Jarzyl shuddered. “Soon! Once you get your magic, you can find a clan that will take you in. Then you can move out of this place and into a clan residential zone. Soon.”
Atlas chuckled. As he patted Cedar’s back, the hatchling slowly took her head out from under her wing and rubbed her snout against Atlas’s paw. “True, yes. It shouldn’t be any more than a year away now before we get our magic. And hopefully I’ll find a job, then a clan to take me in. But… I think I’ll still miss this shelter once I’ve left. I’ll miss the people.”
Jarzyl glared at the hatchling, and she kept her tail firmly out of reach. “Really? You’ve told me how it so crowded here, and noisy, and you have hatchlings going around biting tails? Terrible. Terrible.”
Atlas laughed good-heartedly. “Children are children. Don’t you have this sort of thing even in any clan? Your Mintaka community centre seemed just as lively when you took me there once. Some hatchlings like to bite tails.” Picking up Cedar, he let her sit on his paw, and gave her a judgemental look. “Cedar. We don’t bite people. Not friends, not strangers, not anyone. You need to say sorry, ok?” He turned Cedar around and raised her towards Jarzyl. “Say sorry.”
The little hatchling resisted for a few seconds, then her crest fin drooped flat and she dipped her head in a bow. “Sorry,” she squeaked.
Jarzyl scowled angrily. Atlas then treated her to a dose of his judgemental look as well. Jarzyl let out an annoyed growl, but finally she relented and bowed back at the hatchling. “Mhhmmm! Fine! Apology accepted, you little pest.”
Atlas bounced Cedar up and down on his paw, and she fluttered her wings excitedly. The he put her back down on the ground and nudged her towards the stairwell. “Go back to the common room, and find Thel or Mahkol. They can play or read a book to you, ok? I’m busy now. Go on.” The hatchling nodded obediently and scampered off, bouncing down the stairs, two legs on each step at a time.
Atlas smiled. “She’s cute, isn’t she?”
Cedar was cute, but Jarzyl didn’t want to admit it. She shrugged reluctantly. “If you consider hatchlings cute, I suppose you might say she’s cute. But evidently she has violent tendencies and a taste for blood.”
Atlas laughed. “Violent tendencies? You almost thwacked a poor little clanless hatchling with your wing, just for nibbling on your tail.”
“I didn’t! It would have been self-defence. But I didn’t.” Jarzyl shuddered. “Oh, imagine if my new siblings end up being tailbiters. My life will never be peaceful again.”
Atlas was very amused. “Is your life peaceful now?”
“Not really. Especially when I get assaulted by tail biting hatchlings.”
Atlas nodded sympathetically. “Cedar likes to bite things. It was worse when she was younger, but in recent months she’s gotten much better! Normally we give her a carrot and let her gnaw on it, and that keeps her happy enough to not go biting tails.” He grinned at her and winked. “Maybe your tail looks a bit too much like a carrot. Orange scales, and all that.”
“Oh!” Jarzyl’s neck frill perked up. She used her tail tip to poke Atlas’s side. “I’m a carrot, am I?”
Atlas used his wing to deflect her playful jabs. “Yes! You’re a… a carrot! You are a crunchy, nutritious root vegetable, full of fibre! A healthy snack!”
“Eat me then.” Jarzyl slid her tail tip upwards, moving the point of contact from Atlas’s torso to his chest, then his neck, throat, and even brushing against his chin.
Atlas didn’t back down. “Maybe I should eat you.” Without hesitating, he took her tail tip into his mouth. Instead of biting hard, he gently nibbled on the appendage, his tongue wet and ticklish against the numerous tiny scales that covered her tail. “Mhm, delicious.” He made a jerk of his head, playfully tugging her tail and making her take a step back towards him.
Jarzyl’s neck frill perked up. “I think you’d rather—”
Abruptly a loud cheer came from the courtyard below, and both fledglings sprung apart. But it wasn’t anything in response to them—the ball game in the courtyard had ended with a dramatic goal, hence the sudden noise.
Atlas and Jarzyl both shared a slightly embarrassed look, then they both laughed. The moment of odd tension, whatever it had been, faded by to the comfortable ease of friendship. Ok, let’s go to that festival.”
“Onwards.”
In unison, the two fledglings opened their wings and took to the sky.
END