wann?” Tima whispered, startled a hatchling should make such sounds.How a Dragon Dawned by Deborah O'Neill Cordes The baby looked straight into her eyes, her gaze sparkling – and too bright – and then she opened her mouth a little, moving her jaw and fussing. Satisfied she was finally alone, she placed Dawann in her nest-bed and whispered, “You are dear to me, little one.”

She swooped into the light-filled room, pink as the Moozrabian dawn-sky, and dismissed the other attendants with orders for fresh baby food.

A surge of love swept over Tima as she moved away from the crowd and toward the royal nursery. The baby-scent was as clean and sweet as a nest of softest down. The hatchling gave a yawn as she was placed in Tima’s sheltering arms. This time I’ll be ready, she told herself. They had gone back to the Eternal Silence. She remembered the two precious hatchlings, now dead. Tima had always assumed it was from the Keeper’s former love, a way for him to recapture something of his own kind, a race which had died out so long ago. The baby would now receive the spirit of someone else: her temperament, the essence of her mind, perhaps a few stray memories. Tima shuddered as Shanash affixed the soul-catcher to the hatchling’s brow. He looked out over the awaiting saurians, his eyes narrowing for an instant, before he said, “Dawann-dracon.” “My lord, what name have you chosen?” Shanash asked. Shaken, Tima watched as Shanash turned to the Keeper. The thought came from nowhere, her mind seizing the dark possibility of what might have been. From the moment he had assumed power, he’d used the ancient ways of her race, even the most hallowed ceremonies, to further his aim. She hazarded a glance at the Keeper, whose face betrayed nothing but the gloat of satisfaction. Yet, as time wore on, Tima had grown uneasy about these conclusions, her instincts teetering toward her worst fears, until she could think of little else. The Alpha-Nu had personally conducted the autopsies, and her findings indicated both had succumbed to deadly mutations as a result of complications of the cloning process. The last little hatchling had died less than two years ago, a precious four-year-old whom Tima had lovingly raised, the one before that only three years old and darling, too. “Behold, the Royal Consort!” Shanash intoned.īut not the first. The Ceremony of the Soul-catcher had begun, and Tima nervously waited to fulfill her role. She waited a moment as Shanash, the Alpha-Nu Dracon, raised the hatchling before the Court of the One. Tima kept her gaze on the hatchling-clone’s sweet face, not trusting herself to look at the Keeper. Thirty years later in the depths of the Keeper’s lair, in the RoyalCity of Moozrab. Moment of Impact Painting in the Public Domain, Artist Don Davis for NASA. Copyright © 2014 by Deborah O'Neill Cordes.Īll rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Dragon Dawn by Deborah O'Neill Cordes