Scales

A/N: I own Everything

I

Summer had come early to the Saffron Valley, sinking its heat into the very dirt that paved the streets of the small village of Cutnor. It was something of a good Omen for the dragons that resided there. A sign of a long, hot summer, and a perfect time for hatchlings to come out of their shells and perhaps even test their wings (should they have them, that is). For the humans, though, the promise of a long, hot summer was a mixed blessing, bringing with it a slim chance for any good rainfall and a high chance of heat-stroke for those who were over forty. It also meant long, miserable days for those who worked the fields or mines, and even the human soldiers, who were using the village as a minor guard station through the pass in the Halidar Mountains, looked weary and disgruntled at the thought of wearing their armor in the heat.

Elias Doziah wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead before it could drip into his eye with his left hand, his right hand resting carefully on the shoulder of Briotle, the Meershire Dragon having difficulties with both the surprising heat of the day and the weight of the wagon she was once again forced to pull.

"Come on, Bri," he coaxed as the heavy-set dragon, whose thick black fur and bright green feathers were meant for the chilly marshes of the Gargimesh lands far to the North. "Only a few blocks more, and we can get the harness off." A low snarl rippled from his other side, and Lirrat barred is small, needle-like fangs, digging his wing-talons deep into the ground as his serpentine neck jerked in anger.

"It's not right!" He spat, his mule-like ears pinning back beneath the spiked, spiral black horns that curved above them and back close towards his downward-curved neck. The Wyvern-like Cartivan Dragon lashed his unadorned tail, the green-brown of the swamp-dragon's skin looking dull in the light.

"A dragon," he continued in his hissing, hoarse voice, like someone who hadn't spoken in a long while, as he glared balefully at Elias and the harness, his dark green, pupiless-eyes matching the skin of his snout, and then the fur that abruptly sprouted like sparse and mangled weeds from his forehead, following down and along his spine to disappear before it reached his tail. "A dragon," he hissed, "being used like a filthy pack-animal. It's disgraceful!" he spat, and Elias glared at him as Briotle shrank down a bit and huddled on her large paws, nibbling her lips awkwardly, as her to eyeteeth were three-inches past her lip, and the curved tips past her chin.

"You humans are always using us for your gain," Lirrat snapped, turning his ire on Elias, who was well used to it after seven years of knowing the Cartivan Swamp-Dragon. He was all talk, and no bite, but that never stopped his words from sometimes getting a rise from the people around him.

"If I could drag the wagon myself, Lirrat, you know I would," Elias told him stiffly, glaring at the dragon. "But I can't, and Mr. Klas is too damn cheap to rent a horse or ox. So, when Bri volunteers, because she's the only one who can wear the harness right now until Aliree is bigger, then we fully appreciate it. We don't stand around badmouthing her and being a lazy sack of skin," he snapped, glowering, the skin around the three scars on his face pulling tight as he did so. The two males glared at one another until, with a snarling hiss, Lirrat used his powerful back legs to throw himself into the air, and flew ahead. Huffing after the Cartivan, Elias turned his attention back to Briotle, who turned her bulging, yellow eyes on him uncertainly. He smiled reassuringly at the dragon who reached his sternum, and rubbed the furless, featherless skin that was right behind the dark yellow, serrated, spiral horns that were nestled in the crest of bright green feathers on the top of her head, the Meershire breed's signature, besides her saberteeth.

"You just ignore him, okay?" he ordered her kindly, stroking the surprisingly soft skin behind her horns gently. "He's always looking for something to complain about." Briotle blinked her bulging eyes, and gave him a hesitant smile, nodding.

"Okay, Elias," she said in a deep, crooning, slow kind of way, almost like the call of a cow or ox. As she turned her attention to once more straining against the pull of the wagon, Elias patted her on one broad, strong shoulder, and padded back to check and make sure that there was no trouble at the back of the wagon.

"Lirrat giving you trouble?" Savryn asked as he padded easily behind the wagon, his long, cat-like body weaving gracefully from one side of the wagon to the other. Elias rolled his eyes at the Flyxi, pushing aside the constant wonder of how the dragon-cat kept his white fur and feathered wings so pristine while he ran around on dusty, muddy roads.

"It's Lirrat," he replied dryly. "What do you think?" Savryn grinned, the pale-blue crest on his head shifting with his amusement behind his small, curved black horned. The dark gray of his snout wrinkled as he paused when Briotle was once again forced to stop to take a breather, and the three long, turquoise speckled tendrils on either side of his nose curled and wiggled.

"Well, at least he flew on ahead and isn't bothering you any more," the Flyxi declared, and sent a dark look with his black-outlined-blue eyes up to the dragon who flew above them, the feathers under his horns, and the crest above them, pinning back in irritation as he scowled, the turquoise-outlined-black fin on his tail snapping open with a crack and slowly closing again. "Galtr flies down here every few minutes to whine about his empty stomach and how he's bored." Elias rolled his eyes at that, and cast the flying form of the green-and-black Gloxxnin dragon a fondly exasperated look.

"He hasn't spat his acid on you yet, Savryn," he said calmly, smiling slightly. "So he's not bored enough to start a fight." The seventeen-year-old shook his head, and scratched the scars on his face, turning his gray eyes on the wagon as it once again started moving. "When he comes down again, tell him we'll eat when we reach the Foundling Home, just like we always do when we go to get the monthly food supply for Mr. Klas." The Flyxi nodded his head, stretching his paws out before padding after the wagon easily. Elias shook his head and trotted to once more catch up to Briotle, and place his hand on the Meershire's broad, fur-covered shoulder. As they walked, he watched the small groups of human soldiers they passed, knowing that the dragon soldiers didn't come too close to the village for lack of food. Watching them, dread slithered slowly into his stomach, as it had for the last few months, every time he saw a soldier. His eighteenth birthday was in a week, and he knew two very important things were going to happen.

One, it would be the (hopefully) last time he ever laid eyes on the Foundling Home Orphanage, called either the Home or Foundling Home by most. It was the place he'd spent the last ten years of his life, since his family was killed by a feral dragon of unknown origin. The same dragon that had left the three scars that marred the entire left-side of his face, and made his left eye remain always half-closed. He couldn't wait to be gone from the place, though, where he was ridiculed and bullied for the constant reminded that marred his skin, that his family was never coming to get him. The scars had also scared off any potential adoptions, as most took it for a bad Omen, and avoided him like the plague. When he turned eighteen, however, he would never have to deal with that pain and rejection ever again, though.

He would, however, have to deal with something else. For the second thing that would happen when he turned eighteen, would be forced induction into His Majesty's army, unless he could find someone willing to take him on as an apprentice which, knowing that everyone in the village believed him to be cursed, was as likely to happen as any dragon giving up their Hoard to charity. The very idea of it was absurd to the point of ridiculousness, and Elias felt his lips twitch slightly at that, amused despite his steadily darkening mood. He had a week before his life, his freedom, would belong to the faceless King Zell of the entire country of Hawn, and he would be forced to fight in wars he didn't believe in, for a King who had done nothing for him.

As the Foundling Home came, finally, into view, Elias clenched his hands into fists, and hoped desperately for a way out.