The wind blew the storm away, running out of energy in the early hours of the morning so that watery winter sunlight filtered into the cave when dawn broke over the land. Aurha was awake even before her excited hatchlings, and gazed out of the cave's entrance, and the world beyond framed by the dark, jewel studded rock. Hanorh woke with what was almost a start as he no longer felt the warmth of his mate next to him, but as he looked out he smiled. Aurha had always liked watching stars. With a glance at their still snoring brood, he moved out to join her on the ledge.



'It looks like good weather this morning, my love,' he said, trailing his snout along the edge of her wing. A pleasured growl rumbled in her throat at the touch.



'Yes, and our children will learn quickly today. Perhaps soon we may take them to Avalon.'



'Little wingbeats, my love. They will need to build their strength first. Were the stars shining last night?'



'As brightly as your scales, my lord,' Aurha crooned, nuzzling him.



They didn't have peace for long. Since the hatchlings often slept in an unruly pile, entwined around each other for warmth, as one woke and shifted so the others got up, yawning, until seven small masses of scale, all neck and tail and wings, erupted in a rabble. Immediately they remembered their mother's promise of the day before and all came rushing out, wings flapping in excitement.



'Yes, my stars, today is when you will unfold your wings and take up your birthright,' the silver said.



'I will fly over mountains and vast horizons!' Seshkra declared from her position above Hanorh's eyes.



'Maybe someday, but today you will not go far.' The hatchlings started to argue, to clamour and beat their wings to show how strong they were, but their mother's firm stare quelled them. Many a hatchling had been killed on their first flight because they had ventured too far.



Aurha looked benignly at her hatchlings before launching off the cliff into the thermal of rising, heated air; it let her hover more easily just beyond the ledge, ready to catch any tentative young dragons should they fall. Now that the prospect of flying was actually before them, the hatchlings looked slightly nervous, especially Iissell and Rhehala, who backed away from the edge with agitated tails.



Not so Handreth, who, puffing out his little silver chest, took a running leap at the edge of the cliff, flapping for all he was worth. The air beneath his wings for the first time felt the most liberating thing in the world, far better even than gorging on fresh cow. He squeaked half in pleasure and half in surprise as an updraft, stronger than the rest, lifted him a few feet and toppled him sideways. Quickly the young dragon corrected, using instincts honed to perfection by generations of his kind. There was nothing that could defeat him now, especially not the men who featured so often and so darkly in his parents' bedtime stories.



But keeping aloft was not automatic yet, and just as the Handreth swivelled his neck to proclaim victory to his clutchmates, he stopped beating his wings. A fall of about twenty feet taught him to keep his guard up, but earned laughter from his siblings.



'Wonderful demonstration!' Seshkra shouted down to him, and she barely missed the jet of flame spitefully hurled her way.



'Well then let's see you do better,' Hanorh said, dropping her most unceremoniously off the hard bone and scale of his forehead. With a haughty glance the lithe copper-silver settled herself on the edge and dived off just in the fashion of her mother. The little mix had watched her parents when they went out hunting, and analysed how they flew, so she knew how. But her parents' wings and shoulders were far more developed, so the graceful dive became an awkward, spiralling fall.



'Seshkra!' Aurha cried, and locked her wings tight to catch up with her flailing daughter, falling like a peregrine. 'Seshkra, don't panic!' the copper called over the wind. 'Move with the air, not against it! Control your fall!'



Despite the nearness of the ground, and her own panic, the words reached Seshkra. In that instant, some deep rooted reflex made the young mix clasp her wings about herself, corkscrewing out of the fall to cup the air with her wings to gain altitude. Aurha followed anxiously a few feet behind, but after the first initial fright brought on by overconfidence, Seshkra seemed to take to the sky as a dragon should, and better than most of Aurha's brothers and sisters had when they had fledged.



From up on the cliff, Hanorh breathed a sigh of relief, and let the example of their two older siblings cow the rest into not attempting too much too soon. But one by one, they fledged and flew, gaining strength and speed every day, until the confidence of the older ones increased enough for mock battles to be held in the skies near the cave, though Aurha for fear of discovery would make them cavort a little way away from the cave entrance. It would not do to have men find their way to the family home. These aerial acrobatics, complete with fire displays and occasional hunting dives when the hatchlings, now of a size larger than wolves, would spot prey in the meadows and woods below, increased the uneasiness of the parents and they kept careful watch over the brood one at a time, while the other flew far away to find food.



Eventually though, as the season progressed and the hatchlings grew in their last growth spurt before they would leave their home cave, they wandered further and further afield, foraging and fighting, putting on muscle and wingspan to become properly proportioned adults. One afternoon, when Hanorh was away in the mountains to the north searching for aurochs in the deep forests that wooded the hillsides, Aurha had found a comfortable crag from which to keep an eye on her brood. It was out of the wind and high in the sun, with a commanding view all around. But complacency and comfort soon had her eyelids drooping and she fell asleep, catlike, in the warmth.



The hatchlings paid no heed to their mother, so bright were they in the glory of their birthright. The high sense gleaned from dizzying first flight had not yet worn off, and euphoria guided them in their daily pursuits. Khrath, the dark silver, took a playful roll at the now bulky Drethse, trying to provoke a spar from the bigger but less nimble gray. But on banking away, his sharp eyes spotted something amidst the trees, in a small clearing. It shined, whatever it was, but not in the pure, reflective way of water. This had an almost greasy look to it. With a bugle that told the others he had found something, Khrath descended to a lower altitude to examine the bright object more closely.





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King Freyne was becoming bored with all the petitions from his peasants, and the lords too lazy to deal with them themselves. There were hordes of dragons, they said; breathing fire and stealing livestock, they complained. Aislinn, seated next to him only in the matters concerning the dragons because of the knowledge held by her people, and only present to have her advice overlooked, knew that the peasants were more frightened by the show of the powerful, deadly grace of a dragon aloft, and it was the lords who told tales of cows being taken, since they wanted tax reprieves of the king. The Copper Drakka was far too wise to let her clutch take anything but wild beasts.



This went on for weeks. Freyne called upon the lords themselves to remove the problem, if they so wished, because the problems of one province did not concern the others, or the king. In truth he was too idle to want to exert effort to kill these dragons, and unwilling to spend money to hire dragonslayers to do it for him, especially if they were foreign and unlikely to pay it back to him in tax. But eventually persistence, and whispers of cowardice behind his back, roused the king's ire.



He ordered thirty of his palace guard to follow him to where the dragons were last seen, and a messenger was sent to the neighbouring realms offering gold to the services of a dragonslayer. The man they got was grizzled and burned, with an eye missing and half of his right hand clean removed in some struggle. He knew tricks to lure the dragons in, and to ground them, but with a tight lipped, knowing smile, refused to fight himself. He knew what was in store for these foolish men.





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The first bolt shot up from the trees with the fatal grace of a heron striking. It came at Khrath from the right, and, not expecting it, he veered to late, and was raked along the ribs by the vicious iron barb. It fastened into his flesh even as he cried out in pain and tried to beat away, but the winch attached to the other end reeled him quickly towards the ground.



The others, seeing their brother attacked, came in in a whirlwind of flaming taloned fury. Iissell swung round and launched her flame at the rope, expecting it to snap, but iron was woven into the fibre and it held. The speed of the copper was too great to backbeat or turn when she realised, and she collided with the cable, getting tangled and bringing both her and her screaming brother to the ground. Trees crashed down as they smashed into the ground and men wasted no time in launching into the dazed creatures with arrows and axes. Iissell's final breath came in a gush of flame that killed three men in its path, and Khrath's in defending the body of his limp sister.



Rage overcame Rhehala for his copper sister's death, the only one of his siblings not to bully him, and swooped over to douse all the offenders in fire. But he came too low, and one of the bolts punched a hole right through his lungs on the downbeat, its force toppling him sideways into the branches of a large beech. It wasn't only branches snapping as he fell thrashing to the ground. His last gargling breath passed before the men dared come near him.



More harpoons shot up, but the remaining hatchlings, though past any thought but hatred, were now wary, and the lessons their parents taught came to the surface.



'Threha, go and find mother!' Handreth roared to his sister. They were still hatchlings after all. He watched her for just a heartbeat too long as a man managed to get an aim and shot an arrow through the delicate joint of his wing. He roared and shot fire wildly into the trees, but unable to use his right wing, could not stay aloft.



'Glide away, brother, we will stay!' called Seshkra over the sound of Drethse's fire. She barrelled round to catch a bolt aiming for her brother's flank. More arrows and harpoons flew from all directions, and she caught them all, unaware of the contingent of riders following them.



Behind her, her brother swooped low. All the humans had vanished, but he saw a slight twitch in Khrath's body. Surely his nestmate couldn't still be alive? The men had all gone, their scent only remained on the bodies of those he had charred to little more than skeletons. Still, he landed with all the power he could, wings half furled to impress his size, even though he was little bigger than a pony. All was quiet in the clearing, and Drethse let loose a low hiss to Khrath, a warning and a query. But no movement came from the body. Drethse stepped closer, sure of the movement he had seen. Then he smelled it. Human.



Khrath's body suddenly erupted, and only the basest instinct jerked the mix's head back far enough to avoid being impaled on a pike. His neck whipped round snakelike as men emerged from the trees, sticking lances into his sides before he could react. He unfurled his wings in reaction, tearing the delicate membrane in his blind terror, but the men had an answer to that as well, and weighted nets were thrown over his back. A long tail sweep cut a mailed man in half. But lances in his neck pinioned him, and the pike found its mark.





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Threha's wings had never pulsed as fast as they did in trying to reach Aurha's perch. She didn't realise they had come so far! Even though her body flew forward, her mind raced back to the awful scene with its sense of woodsmoke and gore, and poor Iissell and Khrath and Rhehala lying torn upon the ground.



A form was growing on the horizon; her mother. The cries of her young had reached her even so far away, and the smell of blood borne on the wind unleashed the full fury of the adult dragon. Aurha flew unthinkingly, guided by that first instinct of Protection, Nature's first Law. The air was cleaved by the strokes of her strong wings, and none who encountered her would have stayed long in her path. Threha halted and hovered, waiting for her mother to reach her.



'Take me there,' was all the grim greeting the young silver got.





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When she saw the carnage and the smoking trees Aurha's rage knew no boundaries. She dived for the clearing, landing with a force that shook the ground. A roar was all the warning the humans got before a deadly wall of fire consumed them in seconds, and others were mowed down by a long cut of the tail. One was standing stupefied over the body of Drethse, its pike still lodged in her son's skull. She took him up in her jaws, severing the Rheshrah's pact as she crushed his bones.



But now they swarmed over her too, casting ropes on either side of her body and tightening them so she was forced to crouch and could only move her neck. For every one she killed there was always another to take his place.



The archers fired again, and found their mark. A great stinging pain struck Aurha's skull as her vision went dark. They had blinded her. But not before she saw the man who led them.



Freyne.



The bonds snapped like reeds as she lunged for his voice. He was the one who had brought this upon her family. He would pay. She stumbled. An axe had hacked at her foreleg. A brush of her tail sent the man into a tree to move no more. Freyne was so close; she could hear his heart beating. One last gush of fire and he would be dead.



A scream from above. Threha's wings had been snared by one of the weighted nets and she came down awkwardly on her neck, but not before the archers burned. Aurha turned towards the sound of her last living daughter, and in the moment of exposing her neck, Freyne's last soldier struck. The drakka's cry was barbled and pained, the young man died instantly as her claws stabbed through his mail as easily as butter.



The dragon was still alive! Freyne heard then a sound to chill his heart: a dragon calling to its mate. If he stayed, he would die, and there was nobody left to dispute that he had dealt the deathblow to the huge copper. He spurred his all too willing horse away from the scene, riding hard for the castle.



As soon as he smelt the scar of woodsmoke Hanorh knew something was wrong. He dropped the aurochs he had been carrying and headed for the source of the scent. It soon became mingled with blood. A desperate cry to Aurha went unanswered, but it was her blood he had smelled, and that of his hatchlings and a good many men.



The sight that met his eyes in the clearing almost stopped his heart. Iissell, Khrath, Drethse, Rhehala, and Threha all dead, their bodies broken against each other. There was no sign of the two eldest, but how could any of them have survived such an attack? The saddest thing was the sight of his mate, his beautiful, wild-hearted mate, her scales chipped an bloody across her flanks, her eyes weeping between punctured slits and her once wide wings in tatters. Ragged breaths still gurgled from her throat.



'Hanorh? Is that – you?' she panted.



'Yes, my love, I am here,' the silver replied, settling down beside the copper to lend her his warmth and strength.



'They're all dead,' she sobbed. 'All broken and bleeding.' Hanorh soothed her as best he could. 'But we should be – proud. When I arrived, there were very few left.'



'Hush now, save your strength,' the drake murmured, licking at a deep gash in the muscle of her shoulder. She would never fly again, he half realised. Too fully acknowledge it would have been too painful.



'For what?' came his mate's answer, as she drifted into a half consciousness. Still she lived and suffered. Hanorh wants so many times that day to simply close his jaws on his mate's skull and end it, but even as her lifeblood soaked into the earth, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Finally, night swept along the sky and dusk deepened to twilight. Aurha awoke with a cough.



'Is it night?' she asked.



'It is.'



'I remember – in the north, winters used to be night. Always.' A smile cracked on her lips, blood choked through her teeth. 'There was no sun. And the stars used to shine so brightly, they were like white fires against the dark.' Another gurgle coughed along her gullet, frothing from lungs choked with fluid. 'Hanorh?'



'Yes my love?' the drake asked, trying to keep the sobs out of his voice.



'I cannot see,' she whispered. 'Are the stars shining tonight?'



Hanorh's heart broke. 'As brightly as I have ever seen them, my love. They welcome you.' He felt the final breath released, and was ended. His mate's form dissolved into stardust, brilliant and gold. A dragon's life essence. Around the clearing, the bodies of his children rose likewise, and joined with their mother. To Hanorh it seemed like she nuzzled them closer before leading them away on a path that flew higher than he could ever go; into the eye of the moon and beyond. His mate would finally get to touch it.





(CRY, you know it's sad!)