The New Planet (closed)

[JadeKnight]

The planet Rutheria was tucked away in a small corner of the milky way galaxy, sitting on the tip of one of the many arms of the spiral galaxy. The solar system contained four planets orbiting the main star in it's center. Rutheria was the second planet from the sun, the right distance for life to develop. Two moons orbited the planet in a cross pattern, one along the equator and the second traveling between the poles.

One billion years after the formation of the planet, it became covered by mostly water and one very large landmass. Constant shifting of the planet's plates split the land mass into four sections floating through the water. A large ice shelf also developed on the southern pole of the planet, covering nearly half of the southern hemisphere.

During the next two million years life began to form in various forms of land, water, and air creatures. The ecosystem changed rapidly, creating the need for rapid evolution among the many lifeforms on the planet. Though the evolution was slowly for the smallest of the creatures, the lizards, they soon became the most powerful and ferocious lifeform after one million and seven hundred years. The lizards had evolved the ability to fly with wings nearly as long as their body mass. They would grow to stand nearly two stories tall at the height of their growth and grew up to fifty feet in length from head to tail.

After nearly three hundred thousand years of being the largest and top of the food chain, the dragons began to have a major effect on the environment. The food chain was barely able to keep up with the massive amount of resources need to sustain them. A struggle was soon being fought between the dragons and the world at large.

It was during this time of famine, as the dragons referred to it, that a strange dragon was born. Unlike most dragons who developed only solid colors for their scale coloring, this one was a multi-colored dragon, consisting of black, white, and red scales. His mother named him Draco. Draco was just over two thousand years old when a disease struck, killing over half of the dragon population and rendering most of the females infertile. He took it upon himself to try and bring together the rest of the dragons, settling on the northern most landmass. Despite the attempt of bringing the dragons together, the inability to reproduce took its toll, as well as the changing environment. An ice age set in as half of the polar ice cap broke away and made it way along the planet.

As the glaciers reformed the surface of the planet, the dropping temperatures made it harder for the dragons to hunt as more animals attempted to flee the danger. Draco ordered the dragons to find shelter for the coming ice age, believing it to only last a short while. Every dragon took shelter in any nook or crevice they could find.

As the glaciers moved along the surface, they helped push the landmasses together into two large landmasses. The sheer weight of the glaciers changed the land above and below, trapping or killing the dragons where they had taken shelter. Draco was lucky in not being killed, but his hiding place became part of a large mountain range that ran along the equator of the planet on one of the two landmasses. The sheer pressure also helped to form a diamond rich vein along most of the mountain range.

In addition to the ice-covered planet, a large errant meteorite struck the furthest planet in the small solar system. As the small planet was knocked from it's orbit, it was sent careening towards one of the two moons that orbited the ice-covered planet. The impact created a bullet storm of meteors, massive chunks of the moons flying in every direction. The second moon was destroyed as well, creating a massive meteor storm hurling towards the ice covered planet. The meteors ranged in size from micro all the way up to several hundred that were over a hundred miles in length.

The first part of the planet to be destroyed was the atmosphere, burning away by the passage of several close misses. The crust of the planet was cracked apart, flying into outer space. Next a massive hit to the planet's core cause it to explode, even more chunks of planet adding to the meteor storm racing through and out of the now extinct solar system.

Several meteors reached a faraway planet in another solar system, the largest only half a mile in length. The small group reached the outer edge of the closest planetary atmosphere. They could be seen as bright fireballs as they traveled through the atmosphere towards the ocean, half heading towards the ocean as the rest disappeared over the horizon. Steam rose in waves half a mile from the nearest shore, small waves traveling towards the shore. The largest chunk of ice and rock was seen as a massive fireball, impacting a mile from shore. The impact created large waves thirty feet high which rolled outward in every direction.

(I know the picture is solid black, but just imagine him with the different colors )

 

[dutchrain]

Standing on the top of the little hill she looked out over the sea.
Behind her the cows grazed or were busy with chewing over what they had managed to grab on their way up. The children were lying in the lush grass, talking only softly after they had finally managed to get the pigs in the pen.

Ingrid had been adamant. So adamant Kylikki herded the cows and the kids with the goats, sheep and pigs up in a steady pace.

Her mind went back to Ingrid's words once again.

"Run! Hurry, get up the hill! Now. Take the kids and the livestock, we'll follow as soon as we get the carts loaded. Run!"

Her aunt had been sleeping badly since a day or ten, had been urging people to get the harvest on, had pressed them to store the wheat in the huts on the hill. Which meant it might storm soon, or it might rain for a long time. In both occasions their fields became a swamp. It didn't look at all like rain or storm though. The sky was a clear blue dotted with a few white clouds. Perfect autumn weather. Not much wind either.

She turned her head, and looked at the women pushing and pulling the carts. Five women and three carts. Loaded high with bedding, baskets with food and clothes, chests with preciousnessess, cages with chickens and rabbits.

Kylikki reached up her shoulders and shed her backpack. It was heavy. She called two of the children and told them to take it to the hut her family used up here. It was such nonsense, she thought, up here, were they lived when the weather was bad, they lived in huts, down in the valley were they lived when the weather was nice, they lived in stabile, comfortable houses on stilts. She shook her head. She wanted to be fair. Most of the cold wintertime they lived in their warm houses.

Normally they stored all their produce under the roofs, and were fine. They always had an emergency supply up here, but Kylikki couldn't remember the last time when they had lugged all their possessions up here, behind the small walls circling the hill five man-lengths beneath were she stood. Normally they only brought the livestock up here, stored the rabbits and chickens under the roofs too, and took only some clothes and bedding with them. Of course if the flooding lasted longer than a day or two, some one or someones had to go down, wade through it and feed the small animals, but that wasn't a bad task, one always got nice hot soup afterwards. And tea with a lot of honey, a seldom treat.

"Go down, and help your mothers and aunts," she commanded the three bigger children. She looked over the sea once more. The water was calm, soft waves rippled against the low, rocky shore. Kylikki sighed.

"Can you see granddad's boat?" A tiny voice asked her. She shook her head, bent down and lifted her youngest niece on her shoulders.

"Your eyes are higher than mine now, can you see them?"

It wasn't completely a game. Her grandfather, father, brother and her uncles and her one cousin big enough were out there somewhere since eight days. "The weather is too good to not try to catch a fish or two", her grandfather had said, and despite Ingrid's warnings they had manned the boat. All six of them.

Suddenly the girl on her shoulders got agitated. Kylikki got a better hold of her legs.

"Sit still," she scolded softly. "Do you see them?"

"No, but look there, stars! Do you see the stars? They are falling! Falling stars at noon, isn't that wonderful?"

Kylikki followed the girl's pointing finger, and swallowed. It sure looked like falling stars, and that couldn't be something good. Not when the sun was high against the sky, not when Ingrid had had those kind of dreams.

"Yes. It looks very nice," she told her niece while she put her down. "Now be a good girl, tell the others to take care of the animals, I have to go down to help with the carts. Stay up here, tell the others too!"

Her eyes on the shiny points in the sky, Kylikki ran down, her long blond braids trailing behind her.

 

[JadeKnight]

Most of the meteorites that headed through the atmosphere burning up shortly after entry, a handful thumping into small craters further inland. As the large one that Draco was hidden streaked through the atmosphere, a large amount of the ice burned away from the chunk. At the impact between the heated rock and cool ocean, large cracks spider webbed from the point of impact over the surface of the meteorite. Draco was safely cushioned inside a large cavern with the chunk, encased in a large block of ice.

The waves created by the impact easily reached thirty feet as they moved outward in every direction. It would have been impossible for anything on the surface to stay afloat for long, even with skilled boating skills. Beneath the surface, the large chunk impacted into a crevice a mile below the surface, setting off an underwater volcano. The heat of the volcano heated up the water in the crevice quickly and would last for several days at least.

The heat began to melt the rest of the ice on the large meteorite, but it would be a day or longer before enough ice was melted to the point Draco would be freed to move. His biological clock had been thrown off by the freezing hibernation, so it was unknown when he would wake up.

Meanwhile the tidal waves heading towards shore wouldn't reach very far inland, at most two miles of flat land.

 

[dutchrain]

Running over the path spiraling the hill, going even faster as she reached the point where the hill stopped being a hill and started to be just a gentle sloping piece of land, Kylikki had her eyes or on the figures pulling and pushing the carts and the kids -jumping down the shortcuts (each one the height of two men on top of each other, but the lowest sloping much gentler than the higher ones) between the bends of the path- she had sent down to help them earlier, or on the points in the sky. She wasn't sure, but thought the gleaming points grew bigger at every step she took.

A moment she panicked, thinking it was her running down which made them grow. As the path grew less steep, Kylikki ran down the shortcuts too.

Almost at the foot of the hill she overtook the three kids.

"Hurry!" she called out to them, "the storm is coming!"

Without questioning her they started to run too. Fourteen year old Jurc ran alongside her for quite a while, only a desperate lunge put her in front of him. He grinned, she heard it in his voice when he yelled.

"Go on then!"

A smile crossed her face, he was fast, since the start of the summer they had been competing each other and winning from him had become quite a challenge for her. But they both enjoyed it.

She now could see the expressions on the faces of her mother and youngest aunt, the two pulling and pushing the closest cart. Wondering, anxious and annoyed.

She sprinted until she reached them.

"In the sky, over the sea, over Wale's Island, falling stars," she panted and took a deep breath. "Hurry. I'll help Irma."

They looked up, searched the sky and gasped. Kylikki gasped too. She now was sure the stars wouldn't pass somewhere in the sky, like falling stars always did, only visible for a half a breath, they would fall on the earth. Some disappeared as they looked at them, others changed into fire-enclosed balls. Her mother took a deep breath.

"Push," her mother commanded her sister-in law as she leaned into the harness. Kylikki was grateful they had allowed the animals to walk beside the path and graze before, and even more grateful they had lugged up almost everything they harvested in the past days; the path was well trodden now.

"Jurc, you help them," Kylikki said as he reached them just then. Jurc had heard enough of what she said to the women to not ask questions but duck under the harness beside his aunt and pull with her immediately.

Kylikki walked to the second cart, they had almost caught up anyway.

"I know!" Ingrid, pulling beside her sister panted, her eyes on the burning balls in the sky. "They'll burn the sea. They'll burn the water, and the rain will be salty!" Kylikki closed her eyes and nodded. Pulling even faster, the two women passed her.

"Have Irri and Jelle help you," Kylikki pointed at the boy and the girl standing beside the path -looking at the sky with fright in their eyes- a bit further on, and motioned them over.

Now Kylikki looked at the last cart. Quite a distance parted her from it. Irma was pulling as hard as she could, but on her own, even if she was the strongest of all, she wasn't able to go fast. Especially since she was pulling the heaviest cart.

Of course she had counted on getting help on the hill, maybe even having Kylikki and the kids get the cart up on their own while Irma walked beside it, but now she was still much closer to the village than to the hill.

It took Kylikki quite a while to reach her aunt. She now kept her eyes deliberately on her aunt, on the steadily moving strong legs beneath her pulled up skirt and the bulging muscles on her arms. Irma didn't like a harness. She always wrapped the bands around her hands. Irma kept her eyes on the ground before her. She didn't even seem to notice Kylikki, but Kylikki knew her aunt knew she was arriving. Irma had been a soldier too long. When she arrived ten years ago, she wore man's clothes.

She had barely greeted everyone after she stepped off the boat when she had vowed to never were those clothes again.

"Irma?" Kylikki's grandmother had asked softly. And Irma had nodded.

"Irmgur is gone. Forever." she had said as softly.

Kylikki's grandfather had looked a bit puzzled from his wife to her cousin, who he had never met before.

"What clothes are you planning to wear then?" he had asked. A soft "oh" had escaped his lips when Irma pointed to the skirts drying on the washing line.

"Here, if you would allow me to stay," Irma said insecure. "Elsewhere if not." she then stated. Without a word grandfather went into his house, rummaged around in his chest, and when he came out, he handed Irma a little parcel.

"It is my best," he said. "The sharpest blade ever made. My wife, knows how to handle it, let her help you. You need to grow your hair a bit though, and only two braids from now on then," he had ended chuckling. From then on he always introduced Irma as his sister-in law.

"Irma," Kylikki panted, taking one of the bands in her hands, "the sky, the stars!"

Irma looked up, tears in her eyes as she let go off one band and tightened her grip around the other.

"Water will come, a big wave if they hit the sea. We might need to run for our lives. But the books are in this cart!"

"We can write new books. You know them by heart anyway," Kylikki smiled. They were going twice as fast as before already. "I had three in my backpack. The ones I was learning from. Do you think we could take one or two of the shortcuts?"

"We might have to," she smiled. At least three of her precious books were saved. Together they pulled until a loud noise threw them out off balance. It was followed by more and when they looked up, only the fiercest ball was still in the sky. It was very close to the water surface and so close to them they felt the heat. Or thought they felt the heat.

"If I couldn't see the sun ..." Irma spluttered.

Kylikki nodded, her mouth wide open. A few breaths later the ground beneath their feet shook. They kept moving as fast as they could. The other two carts had rounded the first loop of the spiral and Jurc came running towards them, a harness over his chest, bands trailing behind him, he looped them over his arm as he ran.

The two women moved faster, knowing now soon three pairs of legs would share the load. Jurc stepped between the women, turned around.

"Keep going," he panted, walking backwards and knotting the reins onto the cart. Once he almost fell, but he caught himself just in time.

The ground started to slope ever so gently when they heard yells from higher up. When Kylikki looked, Irri stood at the first shortcut and pointed at the sea and yelled.
All three of them turned their heads and saw a low cloud moving in with incredible speed. They kept pulling, tried to go faster, gasping for air. A warm wetness engulfed them.

And was gone.

It rolled up the hills to their right, stopped, a part rolled back, much slower than before, and the biggest part engulfed the hills in a misty haze and rose to block the sun from their view.

"Wave will follow," Irma warned.

"Irri!" cried Jurc, "Wave! If you see a wave ..."

Irri came down as fast as could and started to push. Kylikki caught Irma's expression as Irri came down. It was one of immense pain and despair. Irri was Irma's daughter. Irri's twin brother had died shortly after Irma came to live with them, her mother got ill with grieve and rejected her daughter. Irma took care of the then four year old. A few weeks later Irri's mother asked Irma if she would look after the child and then she disappeared. One morning she simply wasn't around anymore and so Irri became Irma's daughter.

"Third loop," Jurc panted, Kylikki asked herself if he meant they would be safe when the reached the third loop, but when she looked up, she saw the other two carts moving along slowly. Or more exact, one cart was moved about ten man-lenghts by small figures, then the wheels were blocked and the children walked back to the second cart to move it forward too.

The women stood at the first shortcut. Kylikki could see their anxious expressions. And she saw the ropes in their hands. Moments later her mother walked beside the cart and bound her rope to it and pulled too. Others followed and Kylikki almost stumbled when the weight was suddenly taken from her.

Only breaths later they had passed the first shortcut, the women threw the ropes on the cart and ran up to help the children up the fourth. Slower now Kylikki, Irma, Jurc and Irri pulled the cart over the path towards the second shortcut. Nearly up the second one, two of Kylikki's aunts arrived to help them.

Together they moved the cart to the third shortcut, and up. Kylikki's legs burnt, her lungs burnt, her arms hurt from pulling. But she knew she couldn't stop. Two shortcuts and the wall had to be conquered before they were safe behind the wall. Being behind the wall never had made Kylikki feel any safer than being on this side of it, only drier.

But now it seemed very important to reach the other side of the small wall.

"Water!" a voice yelled. "Our houses!"

Stunned thy turned, and watched a big wave rolling in, thundering over the rocky shore and keep rolling, burying their houses beneath it. In the time it took to blink, the whole little valley was filled with water, and their feet wet while the water still rose.

"Up! Irma commanded in her deepest voice, the one she always was careful not to use. "Pull!" They pulled. Ran through the rising water and pulled. On the second part of the third shortcut the ground under their feet was dry. The water followed them though. Not with as much force since they were on the inland side of the hill now.

The others were above them. Nearly a loop and a half. On the seaside of the hill. But high above the sea. Very high above the sea. Normally.

Fright cringed Kylikki's heart.

"Should we leave the cart and help the others," she gasped.

Irma shook her head.

"Pull!" she commanded.

When they finally managed the wall, the children dropped down and Kylikki longed to do the same. She had seen the water flood the third shortcut and reach the fourth. Now it slowly drew back.

"They were out there somewhere," her mother murmured.

"They are alright," Ingrid said matter of factly, "but they won't recognize our shore. Our houses are gone, the dock is gone, the big boulder is gone, there will be a sandy beach until the storm. We'll be here all winter."

"We'd better get ready then," Irma looked worried. All adults looked worried, the smaller children looked frightened and Jurc and Irri looked worried and frightened. They unloaded the carts, lugged some the lighter things up, then the carts pulled with the remaining luggage beside the huts. Luckily the huts stood in an un-deep hollow at the inland side. Until late in the evening they worked, with only a little break to drink some water, and eat a few slices of bread.

Too tired to sleep, too cold and too wet, they women fell on their beds long after the children.

On the second day the water had left and their fields were ruined. They were still wet. With saltwater. It would need a lot of rain before enough salt would be washed away to seed again. Their houses were gone. Only the stilts stood criss cross in the swamp.
Some wood lay around, planks which had once been a part of their houses. Kylikki and Irma went down, collected what wood they could. They needed firewood. They needed peat. The whole stack which had been drying was washed away by the big wave.

"Tomorrow you and I and Jurc will have to get peat," Kylikki sighed as lifted a soaked sod from the ground.

 

[JadeKnight]

The tidal wave reached shore a short time later, coming in with a roar. It crashed onto shore, reaching a mile inland before retreating. The sea destroyed everything it hit, drawing the debris out with it. Several more smaller waves came in, pounding the beach for a short time before retreating back to a calmer state. The area where the underwater volcano was activated continued to boil the water around it, killing off aquatic life that roamed into the area.

The salty water evaporating into the air, dark storms clouds forming over the water. Thunder rumbled as the storm brewed, lighting crackling across the dark cloud bank. The winds soon carried the storm towards shore, lasting through the rest of the day and into the night. The storm soon broke up just before dawn.

Beneath the water, the ice covering the cavern opening slowly melted away in the boiling water. The volcano settles down shortly after midnight, the boiling water cooling off by the next afternoon. Inside the cavern the ice melted away around Draco by the next evening, leaving him in a damp, but breathable cavern, still sleeping. The warm of the cavern after the ice was gone slowly warmed up the sleeping Dragon, his biological functions slowly returning to where the needed to be.

It was the hunger in the belly that woke him up, blacked lidded eyelids retracting slowly so that his red eyes shone in the darkness. The air was crisp and clean from the cleansing of the ice, a new strangeness to him. His position had shifted in the cavern, as the large chunk had settled at an angle so the cavern opening was beneath him rather than in front of him. He snorted as the smell of warm salt hit his nostrils as he last remembered taking refuge high in the mountains away from the ocean.

Moving carefully in the cavern towards the opening, he lowered his head towards the opening carefully. He stopped at the touch of water, growling softly. He tried to figure out what had happened while he slept, but nothing came to mind. Inhaling for a moment, he plunged through the opening into the salty ocean.

It only took a few moments for him to hit the ocean bottom, his red eyes protected against the salty water by thick membranes beneath his eyelids. The moonlight barely reached the ocean floor where he was, but it was enough to give him a bearing. Gathering his legs beneath him, he launched himself upwards through the water.

He cleared the the surface, his wings spreading wide to fling the water off of them. A few flaps of his wings and he is high in the air, just below the clouds. He hovered for a few moments, inhaling the new scents of the world around him. He didn't recognize a single thing below him, growling softly. He opened his mouth and let loose a thunderous roar, calling for any other dragons to him.

 

[dutchrain]

After a frugal meal, the wood was much too wet to build a fire -the few bits of peat under a shelter had been used, with the harvest and the lugging it up no-one had had time to bring peat up- they went to bed.

Work for the next day had been discussed, tasks had been allotted to each and every one. Normally time spent in the huts was a kind of holiday, only minimal tasks had to done, but now they were working hard to prepare for an entire long and hard winter.

Food-wise they weren't in a bad place, with a bit of rationing they would have enough. They could butcher some cows and pigs, even some of the sheep. A few cows, carefully selected, and one bull would form the base of the next herd. The same with the pigs and the sheep.

They had al there clothes, al their bedding, nearly all their possessions. They filled the huts almost to the brim, they slept between and on their chests and things.

They had almost no firewood. Kylikki's mother and Irma had decided the wooded planks would be used to reinforce the huts. They would only burn the carts as a very last resource. Jurc had taken the wheels from the smallest cart and halved two of them and had reattached them to all four corners -round sides down- to create a crude sleigh. It would be heavy to pull, but still easier than trying to roll it through the deep mud.

Early in the night Ingrid started to moan and trash around in her sleep. They all woke, and thought of their husbands, fathers, brothers with fright. Kylikki heard Irma get up, and talk to Ingrid.

"It is not the boat," she said a little bit later aloud, knowing that all would hear her well enough through the thinnish wands of the huts. "Ingrid has just a bona fida nightmare about a dragon."

Some of the children giggled, and Kylikki stifled a loud laugh.

All drifted back into sleep again, cozy under their woolen blankets.

Until a loud thundering roar woke them up in the middle of the night.

 

[JadeKnight]

Draco was silent for several moments as he listened for any sounds of wings flapping, return calls, or even their familiar scent on the wind. Two toughts crossed his mind at that moment, either they hadn't heard him, or they were all dead. Either thought was very upsetting to him, espcially if he was the last of his kind.

His talons curled and uncurled for several moment before he took in another breathe, releasing yet another thunderous roar. As he waited again for any sign, his stomach rumbled to remind him that he had not eaten in a very long time. He snorted for a moment, sniffing at the air. It was all very strange to him, but one familiar scent did reach him, that of dead fish.

Spotting the piles of fish and aquatic life washed ashore dead from the underwater volcano, the dragon dove towards the beach like a dart. The slick sand didn't give him a good foothold at first, so he went sliding a few yards before stopping. It only took him a few minutes to eat most of the dead animals in a feeding frenzy, a weariness coming over him.

He may have been in biberation and slept a very long time, but his strength was still low. He gave a yawned for a moment before curling up on the beach in a large ball. The water lapping against his hide didn't bother him as he fell in a deep slumber, his sides moving in and out slowly. From a distance he looked like a strange black, white, and red two story tall and wide boulder that washed ashore.

 

[dutchrain]

Kylikki jumped out off her bed, threw her cloak over her underwear, and ran out, grabbing the sword laying on top of a chest.

Outside more shadowy figures came out off the huts, and children cried. The tallest shadow also carried a sword, the moonlight gleamed off of it. Kylikki ran over to Irma. She didn't join the choir of what was that's. How should Irma know what it was?

"Hush," Irma commanded in a soft voice, "get the animals calm, and the children. Kylikki and I will stand guard. We'll get the cows tomorrow."

Only now Kylikki realized the cows had stampeded off.

"I hope that beast, what ever it was, doesn't find them before us," she whispered to Irma.

"So do I," Irma said in a grim voice. "Are you barefoot?"

Kylikki nodded.

"Well, get dressed properly, I mean what I said before, we will stand guard. It'll be a long, cold night until dawn. Hurry, then I'll throw on some more clothes."

It didn't take Kylikki long to get dressed in her leggings of soft leather, a woolen undershirt and her leather vest. She started to pull pull her boots over her dirty feet, skipping the knee-long socks when the roar sounded again. Moments later she stood beside Irma again, sword in her hand and cloak over her arm.

"I hope this doesn't continue for the rest of the night, the cows might decide to swim to the mainland," she tried to mask her fear.

"So do I," Irma said calmly. "Nothing we can do now but to give the others a sense of safety. Put your cloak on, or on the ground. This way nor your sword, nor your cloak are of any use."

Kylikki blushed deeply, she still felt her cheeks burning after Irma had disappeared in the hut she shared with Irri. The next breaths nothing happened except a very soft swooshing sound.

She didn't say anything about it when Irma returned. She was too taken aback seeing her wearing leggings and a short leather tunic.

"We need to burn those fishes," Kylikki whispered just to not talk about Irma's soldier's clothes. "The stench is awful."

Irma nodded. Together they patrolled around the huts until the few still tending the animals went inside too. Only breathing sounds filled the air. Once in a while a body moved or a chicken chuckled, otherwise all was quiet. After a while Kylikki noted Irma widened their circles. They spiraled the whole hill top down to he wall, followed it, and went up again. Suddenly Kylikki noted she could see more. The first light was creeping in. It would be quite a while before the sun rose, but it wasn't completely dark anymore.

On the inland side dark objects appeared at the foot of the hill and up the other one, their cows, Kylikki thought. She pointed them out to Irma, who nodded.

"They won't have liked the swamp their former pastures now is."

Turning the curve and arriving at the seaside, they both halted.

"Is the boulder back?" Kylikki wondered.

Irma looked around, walked a few steps to get a better view of he valley.

"No, it still is there in the middle of the apple trees I think, where the wave put it. That black mass there?"

Kylikki nodded. It still was there. They had found some planks half buried under it, which they had salvaged, and two apple trees, which they decided to get later.

"Then where did that new boulder come from? Could it be there was another falling star which hit our island? Could that have been last night's thunder?"

Irma shrugged her shoulders and continued her way. Kylikki followed. They rounded the hill, seeing more with almost every breath they took. They counted the cows, saw that the bull already was rounding them up -which made them giggle and was one of the rare occasions Irma told a few soldier's jokes- and herding them up their hill. As the two women came to the seaside again they grew sober again.

"It definitely isn't our boulder on the new beach," Kylikki said.

"It isn't black like all other rocks around here either," Irma said. "I wonder where it came from. Could it be the sea brought it from a southern land? Or could it be the sea
dug it up?"

"You wake the others," Kylikki said, "and I'll go down, to get a better look."

 

[JadeKnight]

As Draco slept, he dreamed for the first time in a long time. He found himself back home, soaring high above the green planet. Two suns shone in the sky, close to each other and warmed the planet. Most of the world was a mountainous one, perfect for him to live. The sky was filled with others of his kind, calling to each other from time to time. Despite the large number, he knew they were in trouble for survival.

AS he soared through the air, he saw the first signs of the coming ice age where the polar ice cap was split through half the shelf as it threatened to give way. Other larger chunks of ice were beginning to form further from the ice cap, slowly moving south. Most of the animals on land had sensed the change in the climate as well, trying their best to gather what they could to survive a harsh winter. However none of them could have known how bad the winter was going to be.

He had earned his place among the dragons, beating all the males who had rose to challenge him. He had the choice of the most fertile females, as few as they were. However it was not yet time for mating, so their time had to be spent doing more important things. He flew around the world, urging and ordering the other dragons to gather what food they could and prepare themselves for a long winter. Once they hibernated, perhaps the mating season would come once more to increase their numbers.

There was very little movement from Draco as he slept to get his strength back. The large amount of fish he ate would satisfy him for the next few days before he would need to eat, and a few hours rest would restore his strength once more. His tail twitched from time to time, the only movement from his sleeping form.

As the first rays of light hit upon his scales, it began to create a little shimmering effect to anyone who saw it.

 

[dutchrain]

Walking down the hill, Kylikki thought she saw something moving beside the boulder, and shrugged her shoulder. Maybe it is a big fish, trapped under it somehow, she thought hopeful. A big fish would be great, they could dry the meat. The first rays of the sun shone over the sea. It would be some time before the sun was visible, but already Kylikki felt more at ease.

The sun would rise, just like the other days, it hadn't fallen from the sky, the falling stars hadn't been pieces of the sun either, she had spent quite some time the first day after the flood to check the sun. Again and again she had looked at it, protecting her eyes with the little wooden plank with the slit in it she used when the snow was high and the sun glistering on it so hard she couldn't see any contours anymore.

She neared the new boulder, carefully walking on the shifting sand. They had walked on it the first day -to see if they could use any if the fish, but they looked like they had been boiled, and almost fell in pieces when they touched them- and in some places Kylikki hadn't only felt the sand moving under her feet but also rocks still seeking to settle. After a few minutes Irma had commanded them of the beach, she thought it much too dangerous. "If it shifts too much, we might end up trapped under a rock and sand at the bottom of the sea" she had warned Kylikki and Jurc. Knowing how deep the sea was around their island, they quickly retreated to the grassland which had been the border between their houses and the shore before.

Kylikki's attention was more on the sand beneath her feet, than on the boulder when she reached it. Almost all the fish was gone, she noted, even the two dolphins. She felt warmth coming from the boulder, and stepped back. Very carefully she touched it with her sword. It was kind of soft. She prodded a bit more. It was soft under the hard surface. Which meant the inside was still hot if a falling star cooled down the same way a clay pot dried: from the outside.

The outside had dried in a beautiful way though, it looked very smooth, and it had cracked in a wonderful pattern, black, red and white scales.

Standing beside it, she looked up against it. It was higher than her grandfather's house had been, she thought. She looked over to where it once throned over the others, closest to the well. She shook her head. They had to get the saltwater out off it. With buckets, and then hope the welling water would be sweet.

Her attention back on the boulder, she tipped her sword against it. It sounded strange, not at all how stone sounded when one tipped against it with metal. She couldn't describe the tone she heard and tried it again. Somehow it sounded more woody than stony, she decided.

"Might be because it is still hot inside," she mumbled.

She walked up the beach, stepped around the part of the boulder laying on the grass, to look at the other side. A soft surprised cheer escaped her mouth.

"Beautiful!" she added loudly. This side too had dried in the scaly pattern, and it glistened wonderful in the first rays of the sun. She couldn't keep herself from leaning in and touching it with the tips of her fingers. Warm, but not as warm as she had thought it would be, and in awe she put the flat of her hand against it. And pulled it alarmed back.

The boulder had moved! She darted back, away from it, afraid it would fall on her.

Standing beside the lower part on the grass and looking closely, she noted something she hadn't seen before, the bigger, broader and higher part moved in a steady rhythm.

"Because it is still cooling down," she said aloud to calm herself. "It gets bigger if some heat is close to the outside, and gets smaller when that bit of heat cools down. That is why the smaller part," she tipped it with her sword, "isn't moving at all. It looks nice. A bit like a sculpture. This here," she tipped the spot she tipped before again, "could be the snout, and this," she tipped against a roundish part running over it a bit higher up, "could be the tail. Here a leg, and that, "she stood on the tips of her toes and was just able to reach the piece she was talking about with the tip of her sword if she stretched her arm as far as she could, "could be a wing."

 

[JadeKnight]

Despite Kylikki's prodding with her sword and investigating, Draco continued to sleep. He normally wasn't a deep sleeper, but his situation was currently different. In his dream, he was reliving the last past of the scramble for a place to hibernate. The cavern he had chosen was a last minute one, without any of his treasure. However the walls of the cavern did have bits of diamonds in the wall, ready for harvesting at another time.

The dream soon faded into nothingness, replaced by his younger days of flying. Soon the images mixed and mashed to the point of being unable to tell heads from tails. Despite this, he continued to sleep. As the morning drug on, the water lapping around him wore away the sand, sinking him a little deeper into the beach.

It was nearly noon when he began to wake up, but he didn't open his eyes yet. The wind had shifted around him, bringing strange new scents. There were several he couldn't identify, but the smell of smoke reached his nostrils making him think of fire somewhere. The smoke could have been another dragon somewhere nearby, but he wasn't sure.

He soon stirred, opening his red eyes as he lifted his large head to look out towards the water. Shifting in the sand, he pushed himself onto all fours before raising up to his full height. From the ground up, he was nearly three stories tall, his scales shifting in the sunlight. From his nose to tail he was fifty feet long, and he spread his wings out to their full hundred foot wingspan, leaving them to catch the breeze for a few moment as his tail swung back and forth slowly behind him.

 

[dutchrain]

A yell reached Kylikki's ears, she looked up and saw Irri beckoning her. With a sigh she looked at the wonderful boulder once more, taking in the sparkling on the scales once more before she turned her back to it.

Walking through the mud was a chore for her tired feet. A lot of sand clung to her boots as well, and more mud added itself to that. Luckily the hill wasn't that far away. She understood perfectly why her grandfather had chosen this island, and especially this side of it to settle. With her back to the sea the rougher, rockier hills where to her right, the valley stretched out in front of her and the hill was to her left. In front of it was a low one, behind it and at the end of the valley a range gently rising in height. To the left of the hill was the highest of the range, protecting the huts from being seen from the sea from that side too. Actually one could only see the huts if one walked up the valley a bit, past the orchard.

The houses could only be seen from directly ahead. One had to know where and when to look to see them from the sea. The story her grandfather told was about him being on his grandfather's boat when they passed this island much closer than they normally did, and him seeing a glimpse of something strange on a hill. On their next fishing trip he had tied a small rowing boat on the deck of his grandfather's boat, and with his brother he had rowed over to the island.

When they discovered the strange thing he had seen was a wall two-thrids up the hill, they had climbed it. While climbing, they had found the spiraling path. They followed it, and reached the wall. Behind it, nearly at the flatfish top of the hill, they found the small hollow with a straight back on the inland side of the hill baking in the afternoon sun. A few pieces of wood laying around and rests of two ovens told them people had lived here long ago who probably had build the wall with stones broken from the hill, thus forming the small, protected hollow where they lived.

Back on the boat he told his grandfather he wanted to settle here, on Olaf's Island when he married. His grandfather had chuckled. "So you decided to rename it after yourself already? People know this island as The Dolphin, since the island a bit to the left is Whale's Island." Her grandfather said he had only shrugged his shoulders then and nodded.

Over the time of three years the then 14 year old planted apple trees in the valley, and a lot of firs on the backside of the hills at the end of it. He also undertook a few exploring expeditions with his brothers, and they found this was the only bigger valley on a relatively small island mostly covered by rocky hills.

They found some of the smaller valleys had peat in them. They found a few ponds in the middle of the biggest peat patches. They found some bramble bushes, elderberry and cranberries growing on the hills. They dug a hole in the big valley -her grandfather wanted to build a cistern for rainwater- and found sweet water welling up.

He went on a few raids for the king, and paid for his boat with his part of the loot.

When he married a the age of nineteen, he brought his wife and her dowery of two cows and a young bull here, build two tents -one on the hill for his brothers- and started to build his house with the help of two of his brothers and the planks and timber his father and grandfather gave him as a wedding present.

They only thing telling people on sea from far away their where people living here was the smoke rising from the chimneys, but since there was almost always a wind which mostly came from the sea, the smoke was dispersed quite quickly.

"Hey! Where is your mind?"

Kylikki smiled as she nearly bumped into Irri.

"At the story of how grandfather came to live here. And at the new boulder. It is marvelous. It glistens in the sun, and it is almost like a sculpture of a, of a dragon!" she ended her sentence after a little pause in which she searched for the word.

"So Ingrid's dream wasn't a bona fida nightmare after all!" Irri laughed. "Wait until I tell her!"

Giggling the young woman and elder girl ran up to get some food.

Kylikki was allowed to take a short nap. Irma already was napping, she had went to bed as soon as Ingrid and Kylikki's mother were fully awake.

A bit later in the morning than planned, Kylikki, Irma and Jurc pulled the new sleigh down. Kylikki had her snowshoes with her. At first Irma and Jurc laughed when she bound them under feet at the foot of the hill, but soon they looked a bit jealous as she sank less deep in the mud than they, and more important, much less mud clung to her boots.

Kylikki's offer to show them the new rock was declined.

"We'll see it every day from now on," Jurc said, "so why should we want to look at it now? If it really is so special, I'll chip of a few pieces later in the winter, and make a bowl or something for ..." he suddenly fell silent.

"For who?" Kylikki taunted. "For your bride? And who have you, mighty warrior, cast your eye upon?"

Irma chuckled as Jurc's cheeks turned bright red, not the most fortunate combination with his flaming red hair. Kylikki always was grateful she turned out much blonder than her mother, who was as red as the brother of her who was Jurc's father. Chitchatting they soon reached the little valley where one of their peat fields was. It was the closest one, and the one the men had dug peat earlier this summer and piled it up beside the the trench they made in digging it, to have a second stack at the ready. There was better field, with an older and bigger stack, but it was farther away and Irma wanted to remain as close to the rest of the family as possible.

They hoped the wave hadn't reached into the small valley and washed the peat bricks away. But Kylikki speculated that if the wave reached that far, it had lost most of its power against the hills and only washed the bricks in last year's trench. The bricks however would be drained by the storm which came right after the wave anyway.

They found the top layer drying, but the lower ones drenched. Not much of the little wall had been washed away either. They smiled. Jurc got a load of elderberry twigs which he stacked at one end of the cart while Kylikki carried the driest bricks to the cart and Irma dug for the fallen bricks.

Soon the driest bricks where on the twigs and other ones beside it, enough to make the cart heavy.

"We'll cut some grass on the way back," Irma said. "but first we'll have a bite and a rest." She unpacked her backpack. They had tried the water in the trench when they arrived, it tasted peaty of course, but not very salty. Kylikki had laid some twigs over the bowl they had brought to drink from, and put some of the wettest bricks on it before she carried others to the cart, and now they found much sweeter water in it to drink from.

After a few sips Kylikki felt she would fall asleep if she sat down and took a piece of stale bread and a luxurious amount of yesterday's mutton.

"I'll walk around a bit," she told Jurc and Irma.

"Take your sword," a tired Irma murmured in respons.

The few glances of the dragon rock Kylikki had taken on the way were still in her mind. The rock had sparkled even more than in the first morning light, and she decided to get a better look. It was easy to keep her eyes on the rock as soon as she crossed the small rise between two of the hills at the back of their valley, much easier than to look at the devastation around her.

Once or twice she blinked. She thought she was falling asleep while walking, or dreaming because she thought she saw the rock move. If she didn't know it was a rock, she would have said it was twitching like a sleeping cow or pig feeling a fly on its skin.

She had almost finished her bread when she dropped it. She was a bit less than half a hundred man lengths away from the rock, but she was sure she had seen it move. As if it had lifted its head a bit. A moment she waited, not sure if she should call Irma, and then she haltingly walked a few lengths closer. As nothing happened she walked faster. Then she halted again. Now it really looked as if it was moving. Ripples ran over it, as if muscles underneath the skin were moving.

Her mouth fell open when suddenly the rock rose up on four feet and a long, very long tail unwrapped itself from around it. With her head in her neck she looked up, not ten man lengths away, at the enormous creature rising and unfolding itself right before her eyes.

Majestic, was the only thought her mind was capable of. The sun shone off its scales. And then it opened its wings. Kylikki shook her head. Closed her mouth and opened it again. In awe she couldn't take her eyes from it. She couldn't get a sound out off her throat to warn the others. She couldn't even move her hand to her sword.

 

[JadeKnight]

If Draco noticed her nearby, he made no visible signs of it. He just looked out over the ocean as the waves came up around his claws. As the sand shifted beneath him, he readjusted his footing every few moments as he pulled his wings in against his body.

His eyes blinked for a moment as his mind went through everything that had happened so far. He went through the basic checklist of what he needed to survive, the first being food. The ocean seemed to have an abundance of food, so that would be more than sufficient for his needs.

The next items he needed was a new shelter, as his current one was buried beneath the waves, and a place to store treasure. All dragons loved their treasure, and Draco was no exception. He had managed to acquire quite the large trove on the previous planet, but that was gone. That went to the diamond veins that had been exposed during his little jail time within the large chunk of rock.

With a sudden leap, he was high in the air before his wings unfolded. He flew over the ocean to the point where he felt the rock was sitting before diving into the water. With his large lung capacity, he was able to find the cavern opening within a few minutes. Once he was within the cavern, he went to work on the exposed veins with his claws and teeth.

He soon had two clawfuls of diamonds of various sizes, along with one the size of a human head. The journey back to the surface caused the smallest of diamonds to be lost in the water, but he held the largest one n his teeth. He soon returned to the beach where he had slept, dropping the diamonds in a pile before he finally noticing Kylikki standing there. His red eyes regarded her curiously for a few moments before looking towards the rest of the island, looking at the hills.

 

[dutchrain]

Kylikki fell on her seat when the dragon suddenly spread his wings again and took off. Like a little child she sat there, her legs spread, leaning on her hands behind her back.

"Oh gods," she whispered, "a dragon. A real dragon. Here." She took a deep breath. "He was here!" she screamed as cries from up the hill got to her ear. "A dragon!"

She didn't know how long she sat there, staring over the sea where she thought the dragon had dived into the water, but her behind was getting to feel moist when she heard sloshing, running steps behind her. She turned her head. Irma, looking very worried.

"We heard screams! What happened, get up, girl! Are you wounded?"

Kylikki turned her head back to the sea.

"The new boulder, Ingrid's nightmare, it is a dragon! A true dragon ..."

Irma stood beside her, reached her hand out and pulled Kylikki to her feet. And put a hand on Kylikki's brow.

"You are not hot. Do you feel alright? Are you wounded?" Kylikki got turned around like a little child, and kept moving her head to keep her eyes on the sea, also just like a little child having more important matters on its mind than the adult wanting to dress or bath or feed it.

"I am alright, Irma. Really. Look, the boulder is gone. The dragon got up, looked around, flew away and dived into the sea. Do you think it lives there? Oh gods, I poked it with my sword this morning!"

"You what?" Irma looked stunned. "A dragon? Are you sure? The boulder could have just rolled back into the sea ..."

All of a sudden Kylikki was pulled into her mother's arms.

"I saw it," her mother whispered. "Thanks to the gods it didn't eat you!"

"There!" Kylikki pointed to the sky. "It is coming back."

It was a truly majestic sight to see the dragon dive up from under the water.

Her mother pulled at her arm, Irma drew her sword.

Kylikki shook her head.

"I poked it. In it sleep, I think. I need to apologize."

Her mother drew a sharp breath. And nodded. As did Irma. Both retreated. On her own Kylikki watched the dragon come back, land and drop shiny stones on the beach.

It looked at her for a moment. Kylikki opened her mouth. Then the dragon looked towards the hills.

"I am sorry," Kylikki said in a small voice. She cleared her throat and made herself as tall as she could. "I am sorry I poked you this morning. I really am sorry if I disturbed your sleep. I thought you were just a boulder fallen from the sky. Please don't hurt my family.I am the one responsible for disturbing your sleep."

She pulled her sword, took three steps forward and put it on the ground before she took three steps back again.

 

[JadeKnight]

At the first sounds from Kylikki's mouth, those red eyes were on her once more. Though he didn't understand her, he could tell she was trying to communicate with him. He gave a slight snort in response when he felt she was finished at attempting to communicate.

However when she stepped forward towards him, he spread a claw wide and put it on the diamonds, his lips lifting to show his teeth. He watched her place her sword down and then step back. He relaxed slight when she didn't forward anymore, lowering his lips. He lifted his claw from the pile and covered them with some of the sand, but not completely burying them.

He glanced towards Kylikki once more, followed by her mother and Irma. His look was one of curiosity, studying the strange two-legged creatures. His attention was diverted back towards the rest of the island.

He was airborne a moment later, flying high over the island in a wide circle. He soon landed on the tallest hill, overlooking the valley and village. He inhaled deeply and gave long, deep roar over the island. He paused as he listened for the answer he expected. The air was filled with answering calls from the livestock and other wildlife, birds flying into the air, but they weren't spooked.

Satisfied with what he heard, he turned his attention to finding a suitable cave or cavern to make his bedding area.

 

[dutchrain]

It had taken Kylikki all the courage she could muster to complete the few sentences and lay her sword down once the dragon's eyes locked on her. The lifted claw when she neared him, with the sharp talons, almost made her turn and run away. But then he put it on the shiny stones and bared his teeth. Which was never a good sign on any animal. She didn't know if the snort was positive sign, or just one of annoyance.

She had taken a deep, shaking breath when she bend down, and willed herself to not step back faster than she had neared him. She didn't know why she suddenly thought of him as a him and not as an it anymore.

She had no idea why he had dropped a clawful of sand on the stones before but she kept her eyes on him when he looked at her mother and Irma, a few man lengths behind her.

Somehow she sensed the look wasn't a hostile one though.

Her mouth dropped open when he took off. She turned her head as far as she could to follow his flight over the island. She caught a glimpse of her mother, who covered her mouth with her hand, and Irma, who followed the dragon's flight with a grim look on her face and her hand on the hilt of her sword.

Kylikki's knees wobbled; the dragon landed on small of top the highest hill, the one just behind theirs, and roared. The livestock seemed to answer him, but they didn't panic like they did in the night. As far as Kylikki could tell from below, the cows soon bend their head again and continued to graze.

The dragon seemed content too, he just looked around. Kylikki's mother took a few steps back and picked something up from the ground. A basket.

"I just had it in my hands when I saw the dragon fly away," she said in a trembling voice. "I was gathering grass for the rabbits." She hesitantly took a few steps, then walked on with more confidence in her steps, put the basket beside the heap, looked at Irma and Kylikki.

"Shall I put them in, and put it higher up? The tide is rising ..."

Kylikki shrugged her shoulders.

"Leave it there and come back. You go to the others, Edna, and you, Kylikki come with me. The peat is waiting." Irma turned around and looked up at the dragon. She almost stumbled in the mud. Kylikki smiled a weak smile at her mother.

"The peat seems to be more important than the dragon's stones, mother," she said in a low voice before she followed Irma.

 

[JadeKnight]

Draco spent his time crawling over the hills of the island, pausing every now and then to watch the island's inhabitants. His search for a suitable cave didn't go very well, lasting until it was just after sundown. He found the two-legged creatures intrigued, picking up bits of conversation as he watched them. He still didn't understand their language, but he was beginning to pick up patterns from time to time.

His luck at finding a possible cave did change when he found signs of broken steps along the back side of the mountain, chiseled into the rock face. The steps started on an inaccessible beach surrounded by large rocks at the base of the mountains opposite the village. Well, the area had no visible signs of having been visited by any of Kylikki's people in a long time.

A stairway of stones zigzaging up the rock face had been chiseled in. Water and weather had eroded a few of the indentions away, while others were cut deeper into the rock face. The stairway lead up to a large pile of rocks looking like they had been placed there on purpose. The original opening had been well-hidden, just a little bigger than a small house. However the climate and weather of the island eroded more of the opening away, shifted the boulders a bit.

Draco pulled the boulders out of the way, examining the dark opening. Using his front crawls to pull himself forward, he squeezed his large bulk into the opening and down a long passage that slanted downwards. He soon found himself in a very large cavern, carved out beneath Kylikki's village. Examining the large cavern, he found a large stone slab stained with years of bloods and multiple carved statues around the cavern. Relics of the ancient civilization that their village had been built from, it had no significance for him. But it fit him perfectly for a new lair, there was even a large standing pool of water that had been carved out from the rain coming in over the centuries since the place had been built.

 

[dutchrain]

"And the dragon," Kylikki added under her breath while she followed Irma.

Often that day they saw the dragon. They saw him crawling over the hills, sometimes they saw him looking at them, sometimes they talked to each other about him. They wondered what he was searching. Because he was searching for something. They were aware of that, very well aware. They wondered if he had been here before. They were afraid he would claim or reclaim their island as his, they were afraid they would have to leave.

Despite their fears, they worked hard. Because if they would stay, if they wanted to live, they needed to survive the winter.

Kylikki, Irma and Jurc managed to get in two loads of peat. It seemed so much when they pulled the sleigh, but as soon as it was spread out to dry, it looked like nothing at all. "Twenty days of cooking" Kylikki's mother had sighed when they arrived with the first load "and then it is gone".

They had wanted to turn most of the sheep free, but now they were afraid the dragon would hunt them. And thus they had cut loads of grass because the hay stacks and the straw -the whole supply for the winter- had been washed away by the wave.

 

[JadeKnight]

Satisfied with the large ritual chamber as his new home, Draco decided to was time to survey his new little kingdom that he had claimed for himself. The animals had seemed responsive in his challenge, showing their submissiveness. However the two-legged creatures he wasn't so sure about. They were interesting to him, but he couldn't yet communicate with them. He was very intelligent and knew that was only a matter of time before he came to know their language.

He crawled his way out of the chamber and back up onto the top of the moutain once more. He strecthed his wings wide for a moment before pulling them back to his sides. His red eyes glowed in the growing darkness as he peered out over the valley once more. He deeped in the new scents of the island as the ocean wind blew in from behind him, trying to connect with everything he saw.

He thought about going down among the houses of the village, but he knew his presence might spook the two-legged creatures. No, the best he could do for the time being was to watch the events unfold around him so he knew what to expect in the coming days. He soon laid his head down against the large hill, his scales reflecting in the moonlight.

 

[dutchrain]

In the almost pitch-dark night -only the dying fire in the cooking hut threw a bit of flickering light on the group of people sitting close together and the moon just rising over the mountain at the back of their old village- Kylikki dozed and listened to the soft voices of her mother and aunts. They talked about the disasters happened to them; the falling stars, the wave, the men still out at sea (now ten full days, much longer than they usually were on a fishing trip) and the dragon.

The dragon had disappeared somewhere. They hoped he had flown away although no-one had seen him take off. Kylikki wondered if she and Irma would be able to fight the dragon off, should he be hostile. Irma had taught them all how to use a sword but they had only two swords here and Irma and Kylikki were the two best fighters.

Jurc, Irri and Edna were very good archers though. They never really hunted -there was no wildlife except a the offspring of a few escaped rabbits and chickens and hose the men kept at bay- but they loved to compete against each other on targets.

In the dimming light Kylikki had seen the stones and the basket beside it on the beach. She wondered why he hadn't come back to it, so protective as he had been about those stones. They were kind of pretty, glimmered like the crystals they sometimes found in small caves or when a boulder had freshly broken loose after the winter, but she didn't think the dragon's stones could be sold to the king to make glasses or bowls out off them. Most were much too small. But maybe, if one polished them with sand, one could use them to decorate an ordinary drinking horn or its stand?

While she pondered these possibilities the others decided on the tasks for the next day. The younger children would help the youngest aunt to gather grass while they herded the cows and the sheep on the low hill, Ingrid and Edna would try to salvage more planks in the swampy valley and clean out the small cistern just above the huts, Irma, Jurc, Irri and Kylikki would get more peat.

"Even if the dragon is still around, we need to take the risks. The autumn storms will set in any day now," Edna sighed.

The sigh, almost a sob, woke Kylikki up. She seldom had heard her mother so desperate.

"I think he ate the dead fish on the beach," she comforted her mother, herself and the others. "We could bring the old ram to the beach," she mused, "or maybe we shouldn't do that, he might think it would be okay to hunt them. He hasn't even really looked at our livestock today. And he only lifted his claw to protect his stones when we were at the beach. Somehow I sensed he was careful to not hurt me, not touch me even, when he got up or took off."

Kylikki's gaze wandered over the island. Something was strange. The moon had been rising, and now it was blocked. She draw a sharp breath and pointed.

"Is that, could that be, where did he come from?"

They all turned their heads.

On the top of the mountain a big shade was moving around, moonlight glistening off of the top. After a little while it stopped moving. Two reddish glowing points stared at them for a while, then they disappeared.

Silent they, closer together than before, sat in the slowly cooling night air for a while.

"Lets go to bed," Irma said softly. "I'll take the first watch, Jurc the second, Edna the third and Kylikki the fourth."

 

[JadeKnight]

He watched the village from his perch on the mountain for a little longer before going to sleep himself. One could have almost said he was like the shepard watching over his flock, though his was more of watching his island. His dreams were filled with images of flying over his old home planet, reminding him of his loneliness here. Despite the beauty of the dreams, they were soon forgotten as he woke up, just as the sun was rising at dawn.

He lifted his head slowly, yawning wide for several seconds before refocusing on the village beneath him. There were some signs of movement, but it was mostly of the livestock waking up. He raised himself up to his full height as he stretched his wings wide, before launching into the sky. He circled lazily in the air as he gazed out over the ocean for several moments.

A strange object bobbing on the horizon caught his attention a little ways off the beach where the village had been. He veered towards the object, flapping his wings as he went, the morning rays catching his movements. The object soon turned out to be a fishing boat, but a large blanket or covering was over part of the boat. Using all four sets of claws, the dragon easily hauled the boat from the water and into the air.

He soon flew the boat back to the island, depositing it near the stone way before flying down to the beach beside the diamonds. He sniffed at the semi-buried pile for a moment before settling down beside it, looking out over the ocean once more.

 

[dutchrain]

It was pitch dark when Kylikki opened her eyes after someone kissed her brow and whispered her name.

"It is all quite, the dragon is asleep," her mother said softly. "Here is tea for you, drink it while it is still hot, Ky. There is more in a pot in the kitchen, I needed something to keep me awake."

Kylikki swung her legs out from under her blankets, and cringed. The muscles in her legs and back ached. She decided she would do the exercises Irma had shown her, to get her muscles supple again.

First she sat down on a rock and sipped the tea though, looking around. The sky was full with stars, and the half moon made the dragon's scales glow softly. It was kind of peaceful.

Warm after the exercises, she walked around a bit. All was quite. She suppressed the urge to call it out aloud. But she whispered it. A few times.

Soft noises from the animals answered her.

Smiling she sat down again, ad her thoughts went to the men at sea. Ingrid had said they were alright. But Ingrid had been wrong a few times. Or she had seen or known something, but not all of what would happen. Last year she had known Ilsa was pregnant with twin boys. It were twins, and boys, but they died soon after they were born, one had a mis-figured back with the bones visible, and the other one his heart almost outside its body, only covered with a very thin layer of skin.

Kylikki sighed, wiped a tear from her eye. Relieved she saw the night wasn't as dark as before anymore. She made another round along the wall. Back at the rock she had been sitting on, she looked at the dragon. It was still too dark to se the different colors of his scales, and the glimmering had stopped. He looked just like a boulder again.

Until the first rays of the sun touched him much later. His scales sparkled to live, the more since he started to move.

Kylikki's mouth fell open and she jumped up when he opened his snout to yawn. Her mouth was still wide open when he closed his mouth and turned his head to look at her. She quickly closed it. And opened it again when he spread his wings and took off. She kept her eyes on him while rose in lazy circles above the island.

In awe she shook her head.

Suddenly he took off, and she looked at him until he was just a small dot at the horizon. Just when she wanted to turn around and the wake the ones who hadn't had stood watch, it looked like he was coming back.

For some time she was puzzled, he looked to be closer than he was, until she realized he was carrying something. Something big. A few seconds she watched him, and then she gasped. He was carrying a boat.

Speechless she watched him coming closer. It didn't seem to cost him any effort to carry the boat. It was cradled in his claws.

Kylikki slapped her hand over her mouth. The figure on the bow looked familiar. The closer the dragon came, the more secure she was. It was her grandfather's boat. The carved boar's head on the bow, other details confirmed it. The boat looked wracked. The dragon was carrying it so easily because the mast was missing.

Kylikki waved her arms. It looked like the dragon would fly high over the island. As he reached the beach, he changed his flight path and came in deeper. Biting her lower lip, Kylikki saw him fly towards the hill.

"The boat," she yelled running down towards the wall where the dragon put the boat gently down.

The sail was draped over the boat. Nothing was moving beneath it. Breathless she grabbed a rope hanging over the board, tugged, and slung it around a boulder before she climbed in the boat and slipped under the sail.

 

[JadeKnight]

Beneath the tarp was a busted net half full of caught fish, with the rest spilling into the boat. Most of the fishing supplies were gone, only a stump left of the mast. Half-buried among the spilled fish were four of the surviving men who had went out to gather fish, including Kylikki's father and grandfather. They were unconscious, and showed signs of having been battered around in the storm for a little bit while they were out before ending up in the fish pile.

As Draco sat on the beach, he noticed the half-buried basket still in the sand next to the pile of diamonds. He looked between the pile and the basket for several moments before pulling the basket out with his teeth. He dropped the basket in front of him before digging out the diamonds carefully with his talons. Once that was done, he dropped the diamonds into the basket until it was full.

Once he finished with the diamonds, he craned his head around so he could watch what was happening at the strange boat he had just pulled out. He had heard the young two-legged creature making a loud noise a few moments before, and she had pulled some strange covering off of the object he had placed on the ground.

 

[dutchrain]

Before any of the others arrived, Kylikki had crawled over the bodies, felt each one the pulse at the throat. Only then she realized it were only four. Her father, her grandfather, her cousin and one uncle. It looked like her father had a broken arm, her grandfather had hurt his head in a bad way, her cousin and her uncle looked okay.

She shoved fish out off her way and examined them more carefully. Irma was the first to arrive. Together they first pulled her grandfather out from under the fish and the tarp. Kylikki had tried to pull the tarp away, but it was stuck in a few places.

"It is ripped beyond repair anyway," Irma groaned while she cut a big piece off of the sail. Outside the boat Ingrid and Edna, both only half dressed, laid it down, and Irma and Kylikki carefully dropped grandfather down. Someone was stirring beneath the tarp.

"Lets hope he'll be able to walk," Kylikki murmured.

"Are they all there?" Irma whispered in her ear.

Kylikki shook her head.

"I haven't seen uncle Bjorn and uncle Petir," she sighed.

Together they helped Jörn, Kylikki's father crawl out. He cradled his left arm.

"Broken," he moaned. "We," he looked around. "Was that a wave? What put us here? We need water. We lost our water when the storm hit us. We collected some on the sail, but a wave spoiled it. Bjorn was hit by the mast. His head, we had to let him go yesterday." He sighed, licked his parched lips. Kylikki helped him climb over the side of the boat.

"It was the dragon who brought you here," she told him softly. "I am very grateful he did.

"Dragon?" Her father looked her deep in the eyes.

Kylikki pointed to the big, sparkling form on the beach. Jörn gasped. And fainted. Luckily Kylikki still held his right hand, and Irri was already at his side. Kylikki turned and five minutes later she and Irma lowered the last man, cousin Björk, over the railing. Kylikki wanted to follow her aunts who dragged him up the hill, on yet another piece torn and cut off the sail. Irma's strong hand landed on her shoulder.

"The fish," she said grim. "We'll clean them here."

 

[JadeKnight]

The dragon snorted softly for a moment as he watched the new villagers come from the boat, wondering what else was in the boat. The fish stench had been a bit overwhelming, so he hadn't noticed the four in the boat. He continued to watch for a few moments longer, tilting his head a little.

He watched the four villagers get carried off before deciding to check things out himself. He lifted up from the sand, shaking the sand off some. He picked the basket of gems up in his mouth before turning around. He arched his back upwards for a moment, spreading his wings before relaxing again.

He moved slowly towards the boat, his claws sinking into the soft sand a few inches before hitting the solid ground of the hill. He stopped a few feet from the boat and settled down once more, dropping the basket in front of him. He lifted one claw, using his talon to scratch behind his jaw for a moment, removing more sand.