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Jarzyl Fledgling Developments: 5

Mini-series first chapter (chapter 1): https://sofurry.com/s/Rnoz2Yxm

Previous chapter (chapter 4): https://sofurry.com/s/nZ7R2Np1

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“Oh. Oh! Really!? Wow!!” Jarzyl’s neck frill perked all the way up, as a grin crossed her face. “Fire affinity! None of that boring neural affinity, I’m a firebreather!”

She wanted to turn her head towards Atlas, but he immediately ducked. “Careful. Don’t set me on fire.”

“Haha!” Jarzyl laughed elatedly, and she hugged Atlas tightly, then she slid up to a stand and pranced around the room, alternating between pairs of paws. She flicked her wings open and closed, waving her tail about. “Fire breath, fire breath! Jarzyl, of Clan Mintaka in Avaeria, a firebreather! Newest fire breather in the City of Wings! Awesome!”

Atlas rolled onto his front and also stood up, though he hesitated as Jarzyl danced around her room and got near to him. “That was hot. I could feel the heat against my scales when you sneezed. That was real fire breath.”

Jarzyl licked her teeth and grinned. “I’m too hot! Hahaha! You saw it too. It wasn’t just me this time, you saw it!”

Atlas smiled, but still looked serious. “What was it like?”

Jarzyl made a carefree shrug of her wings. “It felt like a normal sneeze. My mouth doesn’t feel any warmer than normal, and I can’t taste smoke. How interesting!” She approached Atlas, but he made a side step to stand beside her instead of right in front. “Hey. Are you avoiding me?”

“I don’t want to be scorched again by a sneeze.”

Jarzyl pretended to be offended. “I didn’t actually burn you the first time, did I? Don’t worry! I’m in control of it.”

Atlas looked highly sceptical—this was a natural expression for his face. “Are you in control of it?”

“No idea. Here, let me try again.” Jarzyl went to the emptiest part of her room—avoiding valuable things such as her light field projector, her telescope mounted on its tripod, and her desk and bed—and aimed herself squarely at the wall. The wall was covered in chalk marks, from scribblings, drawings, and other notes which she had made over many years.

“Wait, wait!” With his three-legged, limping hop, Atlas hurried out of her room and into the corridor outside. “Ok, blast away now.”

“Very funny!” Jarzyl exclaimed. “I’m not blasting. I’m just going to make a small little puff of magic. All controlled and precise. Ok. Right. Let me try.” Taking a deep breath, Jarzyl tried to channel the same magic again, and she exhaled sharply at the opposing wall which had a balcony window. “Huhhh!”

Nothing came out of her mouth except for air. Jarzyl tapped her paw against the stone wall, but it was completely cool to the touch.

“Nothing?” She turned around, and saw that Atlas was peaking at her through the doorway. “Nothing. Maybe it was just another magical surge,” he said.

“Well, uh… No, maybe I merely need a moment to recharge.” Jarzyl’s ecstatic mood simmered down to a more modest level—still happy, but not quite as overjoyed. “I definitely have fire breath. You saw it before.” She tried again to channel firebreath, making Atlas duck behind the corridor wall. “Hahhh!” No effect.

“How about you try that in your bathroom? So you can use the water to put out the fire if you actually succeed,” he suggested.

“What an excellent idea.” Jarzyl relocated to her bathroom, and Atlas followed her and watched from her bedroom, again just outside the door. “I just need to recreate the circumstances.” Jarzyl looked at the mirror, and found an amber orange-coloured dragon fledgling staring back out at her, with a big membranous frill tracing around her neck and head, and curious, bright eyes.

Jarzyl winked at herself. “I was using magic. I’m a drakka!” She closed her eyes, and let her mind go still. The thoughts emptied out of her head as she focused on the subtle sensations of her body—the position of her legs, the feel of her wings furled tight against her back, and even the constant double-pulse of her hearts beating in rhythm. She tried to think back to that brief instant where she’d channelled magic—what had she been thinking and feeling.

Then she opened her eyes, turned towards the bathroom wall, and with complete confidence she exhaled magic. This time she kept her eyes open and saw the burst of magic as it blasted from her throat and out her open jaws, feeling like power and energy. Billowing white vaporous smoke came out her mouth and hit the wall tiles before spreading out evenly in a circular wave that dissipated quickly. She could only keep it up for a split second, but that was proof enough. “There we go. I’m in control!” Jarzyl broke into a wide grin, and turned to her friend. “Awesome!”

Atlas was watching her, but he shook his head. “No.”

“I breathed fire! You saw it.”

Atlas strolled into the bathroom and he examined the wall. “That wasn’t firebreath. That was different from before.”

“What!” Jarzyl hovered her paw over the tiles which she’d blasted with firebreath. Instead of a black mark, some sort of whitish residue had been left behind. Then she gingerly tapped the tip of her tail against that spot of the wall, and found that instead of any warmth, it was chillingly cold—the whitish residue was ice. “Oh. It’s cold. That’s frost breath, not fire breath.”

Atlas looked at her, then in unison the two fledglings broke out into laughter. “Hahaha!”

Still giggling, Jarzyl went back to her bedroom and flopped onto her bed. Atlas followed her, and after a moment’s hesitation, he joined her on her bed and hugged her from the back. “If I stay behind you, at least you won’t be able to blast my face with your breath.”

Jarzyl tilted her head to peer at him out the corner of her eye. “But it’s harder to kiss when your behind me…”

Atlas leaned forward and affectionately bumped his snout against her cheek. “There.”

“Hehe.” Jarzyl leaned back against her friend, enjoying the way her body fit against his. She curled her tail tip around his. “So, firebreath and frostbreath. That’s not too uncommon to have both types together, right?”

“Well, yes. But it’s even more common for dragons our age to have a surge, which you obviously are having.”

“A magic surge, bah!” With an overly dramatic sigh, Jarzyl dropped her head down against her mattress, pretending to be sad. “Lame. I want to have real magic! I want to know exactly what type of affinity I have. A magic surge is lame.”

Atlas put his forelimb around her in a hug, then he began lazily preening at her neck, grooming the scales there with gentle licks. “Maybe you’re just too unstable…”

Jarzyl kicked her four legs against the bedsheet. “Boring. I want to have magic. I want to scorch things with fire, or go catching lightning bolts. If I get air magic, I could dance through the sky and… and if I had… magic it would be…” The way Atlas’s tongue felt against her neck was very distracting, and she let out a happy, rumbly noise. “That feels very nice. Rrhhmmm…”

Atlas didn’t say anything, but just kept meticulously licking her scales. There wasn’t any dirt to be cleaned—she’d just taken a shower—but still it was a pleasant sensation. Slowly the licks moved up her neck, then Atlas began licking at her neck frill, and Jarzyl let out a soft moan. “Ooh.” A shiver went through her body, and she clutched at Atlas’s forelimb as it was wrapped around her shoulder. “Very sensitive, there.”

Her friend chuckled. “Jarz.”

Jarzyl had her eyes closed, but she blinked them half open. “Hmmm?”

“Nothing.” Atlas kept casually cleaning her scales with his tongue.

It was a calm, peaceful, comfortable moment. A cool breeze rolled through the room, and all was quiet and still. Jarzyl could easily have fallen asleep like this. “It’s nice.”

“It’s nice,” Atlas agreed.

Jarzyl fell asleep. A carefree few minutes passed, or perhaps more than a few.

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When Jarzyl jerked awake, warm sun was streaming in through a crack in the curtains drawn across her balcony doors—from the angle of the sunlight, it was late afternoon already.

Raising her head sleepily, Jarzyl glanced back and found Atlas also asleep, and still snuggling her from behind. He’d dozed off too. Now his snout was resting against her neck, with a small spot of saliva drooling out from his mouth and wetting her scales—Jarzyl held back a chuckle. For a moment she simply stared at her friend, admiring his face.

Jarzyl stretched out her legs and yawned, even while still lying on the bed. Her bed was still as comfortable as before, but now she felt a restless desire to move—but doing so might wake Atlas up, and he looked so comfortable napping on the bed behind her.

Jarzyl blinked slowly and glanced around the room. Her bedroom door had been left open, and idly she wondered if her parents were home—she wasn’t sure when they would be coming back, but the thought of being caught napping with Atlas felt… embarrassing, even though there was nothing truly wrong with that. It was intimate and a private moment shared between them, and not for anyone else’s eyes.

Fortunately the house sounded quiet. Jarzyl waited for another moment, but falling back asleep proved impossible, and her impatience eventually got the better of her. The dragon fledgling slowly stretched out one leg, then the other, then the other two, and with the most miniscule and gradual of movements she slipped her way out of Atlas’s embrace and carefully lowered herself to the floor.

Then she turned around and found Atlas awake. His eyes were open and his head was raised, and he was watching her with an amused look. Jarzyl flicked her neck frill at him. “Oh, hello. Always nice to have an afternoon nap.”

Atlas nodded. “Yes.” He stared at her for a few seconds, which Jarzyl then took as invitation to hop forward and take a quick, affectionate kiss. “Jarz…”

Jarzyl stood up on her haunches and patted Atlas on the head, as he lay on her bed. “I’m going to get a drink. Do you want a drink? I’ll get you one.” She turned around and strolled out of her room, using her dextrous tail tip to tug out the water pouch as she passed by her flight harness.

Heading off to the kitchen, Jarzyl passed through the living room and she took a moment to check in on the incubator box placed atop a side table. Inside the incubator sat two dragon eggs, similarly large in size—her two future siblings, in some manner of months to go. Jarzyl checked the incubator’s readings, which showed that the temperature and humidity inside were all ideal, then she peered through the glass at the two eggs and gave them an approving nod. “Hope you two are having a good nap too! Or… are you even old enough to nap? Are you still just yolk? I don’t know.”

Jarzyl headed off the kitchen and quickly refilled her water pouch from a jug of water. She sipped a few gulps, then carrying the pouch in her mouth she trotted back to her bedroom. Atlas had gotten off her bed and was sitting on the floor, with his paw hovering over the magical affinity-detecting toy they’d been playing with earlier.

The toy spun around and around, before coming to a stop at fire affinity. Atlas smoothly spun it again. “There’s no consistency. You can’t read affinity just with a spinner box,” he muttered to her.

Jarzyl came over and passed the water pouch to Atlas. “Normally I wouldn’t share water with anyone, cause that’s how diseases spread. But since I’ve already had your tongue in my mouth, I guess we’ve already exchanged whatever germs we have.”

Atlas laughed and took a drink of the water. “I have to go soon. I need to be back at the shelter by dinner time, cause I have a night shift of some chores.”

Jarzyl nodded. “Oh. Ok. But not too soon, right? You can stay for a while more.”

“A while.”

“Great. Because I got a feeling!” Padding over to the side of her bedroom, Jarzyl picked up her radio set and adjusted the knobs. She tuned it to a different channel that was playing lively, energetic music, then turned up the volume so it was more audible. Making eye contact with Atlas, she started dancing, bouncing between her four paws along to the quick rhythm. “I feel… alive! I can feel my magic coming again.”

Atlas bobbed his head to the beat, and a grin crossed his face. “Should I take cover? Fire, then frost breath—will it be acid spitting this time?”

Jarzyl playfully stuck out her tongue at him. “Don’t be so pessimistic. Sooner or later, my magic will stabilize!” She flicked her wings open and close, then swept them about in smooth, dancing motions. “I can have any magic I want. As long as I believe.”

“I don’t think that is factual.” Atlas put on a scholarly expression—a slight furrow of his brow, with head slightly tilted as he thought about it. “Willpower might affect the amount of magic you can use, but the specific affinity of magic you’ll get is mostly inherited. You cannot yearn your way into getting a different type of magic.”

“I believe! Anything is possible as long as you believe!” Jarzyl insisted. Scampering over to Atlas, she pulled him into a hug then shook his upper body playfully. “You have to believe! Believe in me!”

Atlas nodded his head. “Oh yes, of course. I believe in you.”

Jarzyl laughed. “Right then. Let’s make predictions.” She raised her paws and gestured about. “I am predicting my magic will be… air affinity. That would be nice! What do you think—what magic will I get?”

“That’s hardly more than a wild guess. Wishing for a specific type of magic doesn’t make it happen, any more than I could wish that I was taller and just have it happen.”

“I don’t wish you were taller or shorter. I like you exactly the size you are.” Jarzyl playfully bit at Atlas’s neck. “I remember there was a time when we were hatchlings when you were a little bit smaller than me. Then as fledglings, your wings got all big really fast, faster even than me. But now we’re about the same size, and that’s nice.”

“I’ve never really thought about that…”

“But anyway, the topic we were discussing was magical affinity. What type of magic do you predict you’ll get? Or what type do you predict I’ll get?”

Atlas shrugged. “It’s not possible to make an accurate prediction. Scientists have been trying for centuries to figure it out, without success.”

Jarzyl squinted at him, and used her tail tip to poke his side.

“Ok, ok. Fine. Uhh, if I was forced to make a guess about affinity, it would be based on family. Now for me, I don’t have any blood-related family and I have no clue what type of magic my parents had, so I truly had zero idea what my affinity will end up being. But for you? Either rockshifting or healing, probably, since that’s what your parents have.”

“Healing… just like my mother.” Jarzyl stared at her paws, imaging tiny sparks of healing magic flowing across her scales and her paw pads. “That would be something.” She glanced up at Atlas. “Do you have any recent cuts or broken scales? I can try healing you!”

Atlas shook his head. “I’m not injured. Why would I be injured?”

“I don’t know. Don’t you ever get bumped or scraped?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll hit you! On guard!” Hopping up and down, Jarzyl scampered forward on three legs and used her forelimb to make mock swipes at Atlas’s side, with her claws fully extended. “I’m going to smack you!” She feinted repeatedly, but he didn’t move at all.

Instead her friend lazily shuffled his wings about on his back, then he stretched and sat down on his front. “Go on. Smack my face then,” he said to her, with absolute confidence that she would not.

Jarzyl did not. “But I like your face.”

Atlas dipped his head in a bow. “Why, thank you.”

“I’ll smack somewhere else!” Jarzyl scurried around behind him and used her paw to playfully bat at his hindquarters, using light taps with her claws retracted. “I’ll smack this. Smack, smack. Although… I like that part too. Actually I think I’m rather fond of all of you.” Pausing her assault, Jarzyl peered closely at Atlas’s numerous sooty-black scales. “Do you really not have a single cut, bruise, or broken scale anywhere?”

“No? Why would I have an injury?”

“Because life has challenges! There’s always the risk of falling or tripping, or clipping your wing against a doorway, or bumping your shoulder against a table corner. And especially with flying.” Jarzyl showed Atlas her left front paw. “See, I have a little abrasion here from last week when I landed in a crosswind and fell sideways.” Spinning around, she gestured at the underside of her tail. “And just yesterday I had a tail strike from landing too fast when I was rushing to get to school. See the cracked scale?”

Atlas gave her a wonderfully judgemental look. “I’m detecting a common trend here. Perhaps if you were more careful with your landings, you’d have less scrapes.”

“But life is too boring when I slow down. I can heal from scrapes—and I can surely heal even faster if I had healing magic!”

Jarzyl raised her paw and swept it over the leading edge of her wing—unexpectedly, a spark of energy slid down her wing’s front edge, tracing between the lines of her scales as it followed behind her paw, before vanishing a split-second later. “Oh! Did you see that?”

Atlas hadn’t been looking at her. “What?”

“Magic!” Jarzyl touched her wing again, then at various parts of her body, trying to recreate the effect. “Magic. I saw a spark. How did I…? Oh, there!” Holding her paw up, a tiny spark of magic circled around, weaving between her paw pads and the lines of her scales. It seemed to follow her thoughts tenuously, sometimes changing directions when she wanted it to, but mostly just spiralling around her paw. “Ho!”

Atlas perked up, and he strolled over.

Jarzyl grinned happily. “You see that! That’s got to be healing affinity! When my mother heals, there’s all these little sparks of healing energy that fix things up.”

Atlas tilted his head and made a curious sound. “Huh. That is new.”

“So cool.” Jarzyl tried touching her paw to her other forelimb, where she had a scab from a small abrasion, but the spark of magic continued flowing over her scales without any change to her flesh or scales. “Hmm. I’m not healing. Maybe it needs to be someone else? Let me trying touching you.” She raised her paw towards Atlas, but now he moved quickly and slid back out of her reach.

“Hey, wait! Are you sure that’s a spark of healing magic?” he asked.

“But what else could it be?”

Atlas let out chuckle. “Sparkcasting. Electric affinity, perhaps?”

“That is a good point.” Jarzyl’s neck frill perked up and she nodded at Atlas. “You’re so clever! Hehe. Ok, good thing I didn’t touch you in case I zapped you with my new awesome electric powers. Let me test this.”

Jarzyl walked three-legged over to her radio set, which was still playing lively dance music, and then she moved her paw next to the antenna. The music continued unabated. “Radio works by electricity. There should be some effect on the music…?” Jarzyl moved her paw all about, then finally she grabbed the radio set, but it just kept playing music. “Hmm.”

She then tried touching various things around her room, starting with various household appliances, then the light on her bedside table, then she even tried touching the metal handle of her storage chest. Nothing seemed to react, and that singular fleck of glowing magic continued to dance and happily weave its way around her paw. “I was expecting magic to be more exciting than this.”

Atlas looked as curious as she felt. “I don’t think it’s electric affinity. If it was, you’d probably have messed up your projector when you touched it.”

“But if it’s not electric affinity, then what is it? Healing affinity?”

Atlas shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a manifestation of raw, unshaped magic.”

“That’s boring! No, it’s probably healing. Let me try healing you?” Jarzyl carefully reached out towards Atlas, who gave her a suspicious squint.

“Don’t touch my neck. At least touch my leg or my tail—that way if you give me a huge electric shock, you would shock my hearts out of synchronization.”

“Good idea. But you probably won’t get shocked. Instead with my new amazing magical power, you’re going to be healed up and have a lovely sensation of wellbeing and health. Ok, I’m doing it. Three, two, one…” Jarzyl hesitated, then she grabbed the very tip of Atlas’s tail.

Nothing happened. The spark of magic that had been orbiting around her paw faded into Atlas’s scales and vanished entirely. Jarzyl blinked at her friend. “Are… you feeling healed? Or electrocuted? Or something else?”

He was looking back over shoulder at her. “I feel exactly the same as I did before.”

“Oh.” Jarzyl stared down at her paw. “That was lame. No, come on! My time is now! Where’s my magic? I—ah, ha!” Suddenly the tiny spark of magic reappeared, flowing down her forearm to circle about her paw again. This time instead of just one, there came two sparks, then three tiny glowing beads of energy that orbited and swirled around her paw. “There it is. That is magic.”

Atlas was unconvinced. “It’s magic, but you aren’t controlling it. It’s just another surge of raw energy.”

“Sshh. Be optimistic.” Jarzyl touched her forepaws together, and the sparks of magic jumped back and forth between her paws, tracing glowing lines through the air. Bring her paws close to her snout, she whispered, “What are you? What is this? Healing? Are you sparks of healing magic?”

Her friend shook his head. “You can’t talk to magic! That is not how that works.”

Jarzyl flicked her neck frill. “Then what should I do?”

“Just wait it out? If your magic is coming, it’ll stabilize sooner or later.”

More and more sparks were starting to appear, swirling around Jarzyl’s two front paws and making them glow. She waved, and all the sparks seemed to leave glowing trails as she moved her paws about. “This is so fascinating. I’m glowing.” She shifted her wings about on her back, and then she noticed that sparks were starting to weave up and down her wings, collating especially on the forward leading edges and her wing tips. “I am radiant. Look at all this!”

Atlas paced around, looking at her from different angles. “There’s no way this is fire breath, or any breath magic. That ought to be collecting energy in your chest. It looks like the magic is collecting in your extremities—your paws, your wings, even your tail.” He gestured at her tail tip, where now there were sparks of glowing magic which were also starting to swirl. When he touched her tail the sparks suddenly faded away there, but they reappeared when he let go. “How interesting.”

Jarzyl shifted her weight, and excitedly bounced up and down on the spot. It felt like something was building up inside her—a deep sense of potential, of arcane power. More and more magic was rushing all about her, but it felt familiar and comfortable. This was her magic. There was a warm resonant hum to it, as the energy tingled against her scales.

As she kept moving her paws about, she noticed that the sparks seemed to react to the exact position her paws were in. When her limbs were at just the right distance apart, the sparks intensified and glowed brighter. Magic collected around her wings, even more so when she extended them fully open, but there was a sweet spot when her wings were half open which turned the steady cascade of white sparks into streaks of colourful energy.

“That’s very interesting. I wonder—” Atlas started to say.

But then Jarzyl put her wings and her paws into the precise correct spacing and angle. All the sparks became streaks of colour, and then the streaks became swirling, jagged bolts that whirled all around in her in a sphere of colourful, humming magic. The whole world twisted around her, and Jarzyl felt a wave of disorientation as her internal compass spun suddenly.

And then suddenly she was elsewhere. All was quiet and still, and the magic around her body was gone. But she was no longer in her bedroom. Instead, she was sitting in the kitchen again. She’d displaced herself. “Oh. That is interesting.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Next chapter: https://sofurry.com/s/nLr4PL3e