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Tap tap tap. The little dragon, not yet named, hears it but sees nothing but darkness in her shell. She’s colder now, than she was in the nest. She hears no other dragons, no other eggs, no scraping of scales on stone and growling and hissing. Something, someone, grabs her, their hands and hot and they wrap her in something soft and warm. They talk softly, to themself? To her? She does not know, she cannot understand them.
They move, not running, not walking. They keep talking, to her she thinks, softly petting her egg, comforting her. The sound of talons, one pair not two, and a bird squawks as the person holding her pulls themself up onto it. Another voice talks, shouting at the person holding her, anger? Annoyance? She can’t tell. The soft and warm wrapped around her moves and the yelling one stops, and then starts again but in a different tone. About her? The person holding her yells back. She squeaks, and they both stop. They talk again, calmer, and seem to agree on something. The birds start moving and she’s wrapped up again.
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She’s been listening, the days since she had been found. She cannot understand them yet, not well, but she’s learned the names of the people who found her, the one who had picked her up was Kael’thas, the one who had yelled was Rommath. They both talk to her, Kael’thas the most. She hasn’t heard anyone else talk to her, or see her. The people that found her have been talking about someone a lot, Al’ar. For some reason she recognizes the name, but not why or from where.
She was put in a nest, not a dragon nest, there was not enough rocks and stone, but it was hot. Surrounded by what she thought were feathers, hot feathers, soft feathers, they kept the same temperature, never too hot but never too cold. They kept away the darkness she always felt, but didn’t notice. The cold, black darkness, and the feeling of being watched.
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Her egg is cramped, she can feel her paws against her chin and knows it won't be long until she breaks her shell, as she had heard others do before her. The people seem to know as well, Kael’thas scoops up her egg and nest, and wraps her in cloth again. They leave the room, quiet, and the building. A lock breaks and two birds squawk, awoken from sleep. The birds run fast, faster than when she was found. She squeaks and the person holding her, Kael’thas, shushes her and rubs her egg.
There’s cold, the birds go from running on grass to running on ice. She’s held closely to his chest, wrapped tighter in the cloth. The birds run on grass and it's warm again. They slow, and the person holding her gets off. They walk, petting her egg comfortably. There’s voices she does not recognize and the ones she does say something and they walk again.
The building is hot, hotter than the fire and lava from her first nest, hotter than the feathers in her second. The cold darkness is nearly gone, hissing and writhing in the corners of her mind. She squeaks again, too cramped in her egg. She scratches at the wall, she's shushed, she somehow understands when told she can hatch soon, and she curls in on herself as much as she can, she trusts the people who found her.
They’re in the center of the room, hotter than around it, rather than being uncomfortable, it relaxes her, calms her. They stop, she’s unwrapped from the cloth, from the feathers, from the makeshift nest. She’s placed on the ground, and in a moment surrounded by feathers, larger than the birds the people rode on. Hot hot hot feathers, comforting feathers. A voice whispers in her head, she does not understand it, but it calms her, chases the cold darkness away, burning it to a crisp.
She’s placed on the ground, in a nest of feathers and down and sticks. The bird, the Phoenix, Al’ar. Speaks to her, telling her to hatch, to break her shell. And she does, scratching and clawing at her shell, pushing the horn on her face against it. The shell cracks and splinters. She squeaks and chirps, stretching her limbs, spreading her tiny wings and sharp but small claws. Zynthia opens her red eyes to obsidian black scales.