Chapter Text
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The Little Dragon
The Red Keep, one hundred and sixty one years after Aegon's Conquest...
It wasn't the cool winds fluttering in through the open shutters that made Elaena Targaryen look up from the pages of her book and break an hour of eager reading. Nor was it the crisp scent of the Narrow Sea, or the calling of a bird that dared to cry out in the dead of night, or the dog barks that answered it. It was not the flickering light of a candle burning low, or the growl of a hungry belly, or the dry pinch of a thirsty throat, or the growing weight of tiredness on her eyes, or even the tingling aches of a cushion in desperate need of plumping. It was none of those things that drew the attentions of a princess trapped by her king, of a sister imprisoned by her brother.
No, it was the knock of the Kingsguard on the door, whose sigh she could hear even from the room inside.
"My lady," Ser Terrence Toyne asked as he had about an hour before. "Shouldn't you be in bed by now?"
"I'm still reading," she said, before asking with a voice that was half japing and half serious, "Why aren't you?"
"I have the night's watch," the white cloak answered.
"You have the whole night's watch to yourself?" she asked.
"I and Ser Warrick, who guards the King's own chambers," he said. "The rest have gone to rest in the White Tower to rest, as is the custom. "
"Well, if you have the whole Night's Watch to yourself, you best get riding. It'll take you a moon or two to reach the Wall."
Ser Terrence sighed again, the noise coming with the softer thump of him leaning against the door, though she could never have helped herself with such an easy play on words. She had been trapped in her chambers with mayhaps a week or a moon's worth of time out of it since Baelor had became king, just as her sisters had. To protect their chastity, he said. To protect the men of the court from sinning at the sight of them, he said.
Protect my chastity, she sighed inwardly with a roll of her eyes and a glance at the candle flame. I'm not even a maiden yet. If a man's thinking of committing that sin, he's already going to the Seven Hells in the first place.
Elaena might've laughed at that, might've laughed at the protectiveness of a brother that had long since turned to madness, if the novelty of it hadn't worn off weeks before. The hope that Baelor might undo it had died with the announcement of his Maidenvault, of a permanent means to keep the sisters trapped within a gilded cage. Until then, she was not to be allowed out of her chambers. Until then, she was not allowed to so much as see a man other than the white cloaked knights of the Kingsguard with her own eyes, let alone talk to them or walk within so much as seven feet of them. Even Grand Maester Munkun was not allowed to be left with her anymore. That was one of the saddest things of all, she felt, a thought that turned even her teasing smile sad, perhaps the saddest of all. She missed sitting in the Godswood with the old maester beneath the clouds of a spring's day, reading and learning and just talking with the venerable mind, of learning all the things that he was so eager to speak about to anyone who might be interested enough to ask. Her brother Baelor had no qualms about allowing his sisters to meet with other women, so she was sometimes allowed to meet with Daena and Rhaena and even Naerys from time to time. She could speak to them whenever she wanted to, almost.
But not Munkun, who had gladly fed her hunger for books and learning and knowledge. The library of the Red Keep was certainly large, and Dragonstone had books so rare as to not be found in the Common Tongue at all, but the collections of the Citadel bordered on the unimaginable and the Grand Maester had but to write a single raven to have even the rarest of tomes sent in locked box from Oldtown to him by ship. Every other week had brought a new book, something new to read and learn and discuss, from the different stylings of castle around Westeros to how there was proof that the Ghiscari traded with the First Men, to richly detailed accounts of Aegon the Conqueror's reign on Dragonstone and campaign against Volantis before he came to Westeros. She missed those talks more than anything.
Still, the old man tried to help her. He could not meet her in person, could not talk to her. but there were septas who could, women who might accept the books he had to offer and deliver them to her for him. They wouldn't take everything he might offer, but they would bring something every once in a while to respect and honor the Crone and all her wisdom. She could read them on her own and learn, but...it just wasn't the same without him. It helped pass the time, yes, kept her mind from rusting, but the books that got through were not always books that might've interested her - it was one thing to read the history of White Harbor and the time of the Andals in the North, but it was another thing entirely when that book was written by a septon who could not stop rambling about the glories of the Seven as he did.
Not this book. Munkun was a maester. He knew how to think and he knew how to learn. For a month he had been sending her volumes to do with the slow spread of the Faith of the Seven in Westeros itself, a series of books that had been made by the dozen. One, two and three were dry reads, something even a septa would not bother to read after the first time and a glance at the familiar openings of the first ten pages.
It was the fourth she had now. The forth that kept her awake, kept her from even thinking of bed.
That was because it wasn't even what its cover said it was. It was another book entirely. Munkun had cut through the bindings of the book, kept the first dozen or so pages of the forth volume, then slipped the pages of an entirely different work behind it in fresh bindings, the septa herself carrying it to Elaena with none the wiser.
That thought made her laugh.
"Are you staying up just for the fun of it now?" Ser Terrence asked, harder. "The king would want you to be in bed."
"He does," Elaena answered cheerfully. "But he doesn't want you talking to me and gave me a lock on the inside of my door to keep men out."
As if to test her, as if to see that she was right, the Kingsguard knight pressed on the door - and the thick bolt of heavy steel that barred its insides did not even budge from the knight's push.
Elaena laughed.
"His Grace didn't think that through," she called out to the knight behind the door. "You'd need a battering ram to get in, and what then? Baelor wouldn't be happy if he found out a man helped me into my bed."
"Oh, for the Seven's sake," Toyne sighed again. "You know I don't like doing this bloody thing as much as he does, but orders are orders."
"Orders that have tied you in knots, ser."
"Only because you're the one tying them," the knight sighed again, before tapping the door, gentler, mayhaps defeated. "I have rounds to do. You won't be sneaking out, will you?"
If I wanted to get out that badly, I would've gone out the tunnels by now, a part of her was tempted to say, but didn't. "No, I'll be here..."
...and her voice wavered with a sudden yawn, as if reminded how late it was. Like an overflowing cup, the tiredness finally started to get to her, distracted as she was from her reading.
"...and probably in bed," she admitted. "Don't tell Baelor I was up this late, please? He might send a septa to stay with me."
"I know you enough to know you're reading," he said. "What book do you even have?"
"The, uh," Elaena quickly glanced at the cover. She couldn't tell him the truth. "March of the Seven Sided Star, Volume IV."
"...aye," the knight said, quieter. "I'll tell him you were reading that and he won't fuss. But you best start going to bed at better times, princess, else he'll be like to give you a bedtime himself."
"Thanks, ser," she said, climbing from the cushions and lifting the book carefully from the table. "Have a quiet watch, Toyne."
"Good night, little princess, the knight answered...and then he was gone, the door juddering ever so slightly as he leaned back and the sound of his footsteps trailed off into the night.
A part of her was tempted to get back to her reading, but she knew he was right. Elaena had to get some rest, lest she wake up too late and too tired the morning after to make any progress with the book before the septas came to take it back to Munkun at the week's end. She didn't want that to happen, not when it was something far too interesting and far too enjoyable to waste with tiredness. Still, she allowed herself to slide back into her chair for a little while longer and read a few more words that turned into a few more sentences that turned into the rest of the page, little by little, before finally setting her place for the night with a marker from the adopted bindings, proudly bearing the sign of the Seven Sided Star on faded, green cloth. She rose up again on tired legs, blinking the growing tiredness away for a moment, lifting the book, balancing it in her arm against her chest the way a wet nurse might carry a babe, freeing her left hand to pick up the candle holder, careful of the hot wax threatening to drip out onto her hands and beading at the candle's peak. Her steps were slow and careful, the darkness of her bedchamber fleeing even as the shadows everywhere else lengthened and grew, the flickering of the candlelight threatening to plunge her into a darkness broken only by distant starlight and the false glitterings of the moon's reflection on Blackwater waves.
She had never been afraid of the dark, not since she truly was a little princess at least, but even she felt relieved to be within the boundaries of her bedchamber proper, kicking the door shut behind her. Smaller and homelier, the space beyond the shutters did not face into the courtyard like they did for Daena, but out onto a flanking roof of one lower part of the Kitchen Keep, Baelor barring his sisters from residing within their old apartments in Maegor's Holdfast...and making sure that the littlest of his sisters couldn't escape by simply climbing out of the window by having it sealed shut by three thick, iron locks that sealed the shutter tight. Though they certainly helped to trap the warmth in and saved her a chore, trapping her was something they did terribly.
Oh, Baelor, she smiled to herself as she crossed the room. You should spend less time reading the Seven Sided Star and more time reading about Maegor's reign and just how "thick" he made these walls and why he said he didn't want any rats in Maegor's Holdfast...
That always tempted her, that did. She wasn't stupid. She knew about the tunnels and knew that she could use them to get out. She wasn't sure exactly where the entrances were, no one was, but she knew that the tunnels were there. That was the hard part. If you could get in, you could go anywhere in the castle. If you could go anywhere in the castle, you could get out of the castle. That was the part that was tempting. The problem was what came after. She could not just stay in the capital if she wanted to stay out of Baelor's clutches. She would need coin and plenty of it...and for all her wits and reading, one could not make coin without coin to start with, for even the Iron Bank of Braavos was not born from nothing, but her brother was not in the habit of giving his captive sisters money. As bad as it was trapped in her chambers, it was better than being out on the streets without a coin to her name. At least here she was safe. At least here it was was warm. At least here she had a featherbed to lie in.
The thought should have bittered her.
It didn't.
It didn't for one simple reason.
Here she did not have to worry about protecting something she loved, something that even Baelor himself did not dare to take from her. It glinted at her from across the room. It twinkled like the most beautiful star of the sky, even as it sat upon a soft cushion in its place of pride besides her bed, safe upon a plinth. The merest sight of it in the corner of her vision banished any unwelcome thoughts, hurrying Elaena's steps to the bedside table where she set down the candle and book both, before hurriedly, eagerly, moving around to the opposite side to properly look upon it in the light of slowly melting wax.
And there it was. A sight that could make her smile on even the darkest day. Scales of white and gold gleaming with uniform perfection, resting over one another from top to bottom like a shingled roof. Each and every one of them was hard to the touch, yet smooth and warm, warm.
It was her dragon egg.
And it was alive.
Elaena smiled widely, crouching down as if to meet it in eyes it didn't yet have.
"Good evening, my little dragon," she said as always, reaching out with a gentle hand to stroke its scales. "Not ready to hatch just yet?"
She waited a moment, as if to let it answer, simply letting her fingers slide over it. It felt strong, and firm, and warm, and full, full of promise. There was a dragon within it, growing slowly but surely into a hatchling. All it needed was time. A mouse might birth in days and a woman in months, so what harm was it if it took a dragon years to emerge from its egg? It was warm to the touch, and what better proof was there that it was alive than that? That it was growing, and that one day, one day, Elana would have a dragon? A newborn that would grow into a giant? What better proof was there that her egg was growing, and that within those scales beat the heart of a dragon?
Elaena smiled. She knew the egg was warm, and if it was warm, it was alive. She leaned in, gently, and kissed its gilded scales, no more than the tiniest peck before leaning back.
"Maybe tomorrow then," she suggested with a loving whisper. "Or the day after that? No?"
The young princess laughed.
"Some other time, then, my sweet little dragon," she said with a quiet, singing voice and another, gentle caress of its scales...
...and as she had done on so many days before, as she was sure to do for so many days to come, Elaena began to tend to the egg with a loving eye and a caring hand. Reaching down to the pedestal's sides and taking out the most delicate of cleaning cloths and a bowl of clean water she made sure to change every day and let rest near a tiny candle's flame until it was slightly warm, the small princess set to work on the task of cleaning it, of wiping away the daily grime and dust that might settle on its scaled surface, of looking after it the way a nurse might clean their newborn charge. She was careful to place her left hand against its side, keeping it safely still as her right hand wiped and rubbed and washed, smiling and humming all the while. Delicate twists of her hand turned it slowly, letting her make her way around it, to clean every part, tilting with the utmost care to reach the underside before tilting it back upright and starting all over again, cleaning from left to right and then right to left. By the time she was done, by the time she set the cloth down to admire her work, there was not an inch of it that hadn't been washed half a dozen times to allow the beautiful, white and gold shell to shine with the wetness of water.
And admire she did. The dragon egg was a beautiful thing, a gift from a loving father to a loved daughter. It was the youngest of all those that had been lain, the last egg by the last dragon, perfect for the last of his children. The first to hatch, her father had said with a loving smile. She and her brothers and sisters had each got one, but she was the only one to still have hers. Daeron had loved his egg just as much as Elaena did, dreaming of soaring on dragonback as the Conqueror had. He had left it behind in King's Landing before going to Dorne, cheered by a crowd that sang of sweet and swift victory, just as Elaena and her sisters did.
Those were bitter memories, now. Daeron never did fly. Dornish daggers drawn and bloodied beneath a banner of truce made sure of that.
Then there was Baelor's egg, as white as fresh fallen snow. She barely knew what he had done with his, other than that time that he took it to the Red Keep's small septry and prayed over it, asking the Seven to make it live. His prayers had gone unanswered, leading Baelor to think that it was some sin of his own that was why, so he set the egg aside so long ago that Elaena hadn't seen it in years. She wasn't sure he hadn't donated it to the Faith, or sold it for coin to give them, so that he might try and redeem himself.
Then there was Daena's egg. She was born to ride a dragon, she said, and the two had laughed and dreamt of the day that they could take to the skies together as sisters...but Daeron's death had seen her go to her own egg, begging and pleading and even praying, hungry for the vengeance that dragonfire could bring, yearning for the chance to turn the endless stretches of Dornish desert into oceans of glass. But for all her tears, for all her grief, for all her fury, the egg lay silent, Baelor became king, and she lost her hope and set it aside in some chest.
Then there was Rhaena's egg. Ever kind, ever loving, perhaps even the one and only one of Aegon's daughters who might've been eager to marry a brother, it was Rhaena who loved Baelor, not Daena, or so it seemed to Elaena herself. So desperate for his attentions that she herself took the vows so as to follow him into the faith, her egg had been one of the ones over which Baelor had prayed...and after it had failed to hatch, she had set it aside for the exact same reason that Baelor did, following him to fast and pray.
Then there were the eggs of her cousins. Aegon and Aemon both had their own eggs, once, though their father had taken them from the both of them years ago, before Elaena was old enough to understand why. It was Daena who had told her when no one else would; young Aemon had learnt of the Dance of the Dragons and the bloody battles that took place and wanted nothing to do with the egg his father had given him, yet Aegon was older, impetuous, and coming into an age where he might've begun to understand what it meant to be a Targaryen, an age where he was no longer but a boy, but a Targaryen boy. The elder brother had refused to allow the younger brother to part from his egg, pushing it back into Aemon's unwanting hands...until, eventually, one thing led to another and the two were fighting with it. Viserys had took both their eggs for that, reminded too much of the Dance that had slew so many of his kin to let the brothers keep them. One of them had accepted it, the other wept, and so it was that they lost their eggs, until eventually they no longer cared that they had ever had them.
All of them had lost faith. All of them stopped believing that they would hatch. All of them believed that dragons were gone from the world, now and forever, never to return.
But not Elaena. Not her. She believed. She had always believed. Dragons were gone, yes, but they weren't going to stay gone. They would be back eventually, she was sure of it, whether in one year or one hundred. They'd be back, and if they could come back, then why couldn't they come back now? If they could come back, why not the next year, or the one after that, or the one after that? Who was to say that it wouldn't be her egg that hatched because she took such good care of it? Because she washed it when it was dirty, warmed it when it was cold, sang to it when it was lonely? Who was to say that wasn't what was missing? Baelor had prayed, Aegon had fought, Daena had wept. What about love? Who was to say that the egg didn't need to be loved, like newborns did? Who was to say that the dragon within did not know if it was wanted or not, and needed to be loved to come out of the comforts of the egg?
So Elaena loved her egg. She loved it and cherished it and loved every part of it. She loved the way it looked. She loved the way it felt against her fingers. She loved the way it glistened in the light of morning and dusk. She loved it for everything it was, and she loved it for everything that it could become. She loved that it would be a dragon someday, that the little shell she cleaned would one day crack open and a tiny new life would fill the air with sweet and noble dragonsong. But it wouldn't be little for long, oh no. It would grow, bigger and stronger and bigger and stronger and bigger and stronger and beautiful and proud and loving, as loving of her as she was of it, as all the other dragons were to their riders.
She loved her egg. She loved the dragon it would become, and she bent down and leaned forward to give it a hug goodnight -
- and it was the quiet, sizzling sigh of the bedside table that broke the little princess from her worshipful daze. Elaena paused, confused for a but a moment, then looked over to see her candle, flickering brightly...and trailing a thin web of wax down the side of its mount and overflowing onto the richly decorated parchment of the book that was right besides its light. Weeks of work by tens of hands bubbled and hissed with a thin wisp of smoke, the heat drawing the inks from the pages, melting them away in tears of red and blue and green and black.
"Oh, seven hells!" the princess cursed and gasped at once, diving across the bed, shoving the book aside only to send it tumbling onto the ground, snapping shut. Her eyes widened, realizing, and she reached out with arms just an inch too short, costing precious seconds as she scooted herself forward and snatched it from the floor. Sitting upright on the bed and pulling the book onto her lap, she tugged hard on the cloth marker, prying the pages against the will of the quickly cooling wax, slipping a finger into the gap. She pulled, she pried, and the book reluctantly came open to reveal...
...scarred pages. The wax had hardened quickly, binding to the dimples and imperfections in the parchment. It had melted the inks and pigments that had been the work of a true artist the likes of which was found but rarely. But the worst damage came when it was slammed shut, spreading the wax from but one page to the other and binding them together by a lump of wax as wide as a copper, so that when they were pulled apart, it ripped the drawings and words from the opposite side just as it disfigured those beneath it.
Words that she had loved to read.
Drawings that she had loved to see.
Drawings of dragons.
That was what had covered it, dragons, drawn to such a vivid detail that it seemed as if they could leap from the pages and take flight. Dragons were everything to her. They had been everything since she was old enough to know what they were. They were beautiful creatures, beautiful and strong and proud and beautiful. She could read about them for hours, days, weeks. She had loved them even before she had learnt to read, ever since she was a little girl clutching at her dragon of cloth and stuffing and button eyes, sobbing for hours after learning that Serwyn of the Mirror Shield killed one. She had loved them before that. Her father had said as much when he gave her the egg, saying that she refused to sleep unless in a cot decorated with them, that he nearly gave her the egg then and there. Where other girls obsessed over puppies and kittens, she had wanted nothing more than to hold a newborn dragon in her arms, as the Targaryens before her did, and share in the bond of dragon and rider that the ancient Valyrians said was like none other in the entire world.
She wanted a dragon.
There was nothing she wanted more. Dragons were the heart and soul of the Targaryen line. They adorned their banners, stood watch on the battlements of Dragonstone, had soared above the island to whom they had given its name. They were the very reason that there were Targaryens at all, for dragons were what had made them one of the Forty Families of Old Valyria, which gave them the wealth and power to follow the the winds of fate across the Narrow Sea and escape the Doom that destroyed all others. The maesters might've called him Aegon the Conqueror, but the singers knew him as Aegon the Dragon, for only a dragon could force all the lions, wolves, stags, falcons and krakens in Westeros to their knees and bind them together into one kingdom. Balerion had forged the Iron Throne in a way that went far beyond the mere heating of metal. Dragons had built the Seven Kingdoms as much as any man had, or his sisters.
But there was more to it than that. More to it than power.
What were they without their dragons? Kings? Princes? Lords? What were the meaning of such words, when the very things that made the Targaryens what they were are now gone from the world? The Targaryens without their dragons were like a knight without a sword, a lord without a castle, a king without a realm. They were meaningless, utterly devoid of purpose. They were - are - incomplete. The charcoal sketch before the paint, the armor before the polish, the crown before the gems. A Targaryen without a dragon was not a Targaryen. They had said as much years before, treated Targaryens as such years before. Men wondered at the parentage of Aegon the Conqueror's firstborn son til his egg hatched and proved him a Targaryen. If they could do that to the son of the Conqueror himself, then what about her, removed generations from him? What about her sisters Daena and Rhaena? Or Baelor? Or...or Daeron?
The thought was bitter, stabbing, cold. How could they be a Targaryen when they lacked that which made them Targaryens? How could Elaena be Elaena Targaryen without a dragon? Baelor could let her out the morning after and let her wander the Crownlands, treading the paths where brothers and sisters of greatness stood and conquered, a family whose name was Targaryen, but how could she possibly call herself like them, when they had dragons and she had but an egg?
Doubt. That was it. Doubt.
The egg countered that quickly. It would hatch. It would. She knew it. It was lain by a dragon that lived in her father's day, and her father had a dragon to call his own, once. That was the thought that drove the darkness away. Her father. Aegon III Targaryen, dragonrider, Targaryen. It pushed it back, driving it. She was the daughter of a true Targaryen, merely waiting for the day her egg might hatch. Her hour was near. Her time would come.
That was what she wanted.
That was what she believed.
But there was more than that, more than a desire to be a true Targaryen, more than to honor the heritage of Valyria and more than finding something to do with her years. Something that was often so much more, a yearning that burnt within her heart, yet something far simpler.
Elaena wanted to fly.
She wanted to soar amongst the clouds as her grandmother had. She wanted to fly. She wanted to see the world from above, see all the beauty of creation in a way that she could never see from the ground. She wanted to fly. She wanted to leave behind the walls of the Red Keep and the white cloaks of the Kingsguard and travel, wherever and whenever she wished it.
She wanted to be free. Free of the earth that snared her to its surface, dragging her back to the ground after every jump. Free of the walls of the Red Keep that trapped her body and caged her mind in equal measure. She wanted to be free of Baelor, the kingly brother who held her within her own chambers like a prisoner within the black cells, never to be heard or seen. She wanted to be free. She yearned for it. Hungered for it. A dragon could do that, a part of her whispered, her thumb trailing the lines of the great dragons that covered the page. No one with a dragon could ever be a prisoner, not when its fire and might could reduce the greatest of citadels to ruin. No one with a dragon could ever be forced to stay in one place, not when new lands and new skies were but a wing's beat away. Baelor couldn't keep her within the prison of home if she had one. How free should be if dragons still lived, if her egg hatched and she had a dragon to call her own. The dream of that brought a smile to her face. To travel and soar, to fly and feel the wind in her hair and the clouds on her cheeks, to see Baelor and the ramparts of the Red Keep fade into the distance behind her wings...sweet thoughts, and comforting.
Yet the thinker within her could not help itself. Always clever, always thinking, always curious, always delighting the maester's with the swiftness it took to their supposed "challenges" and questions. It could not help itself but remain anchored to the ground whilst the dreamer soared.
And it brought forth a single, simple realization.
If.
Her smile vanished, her dream soured and Elaena forced her eyes shut, clutching at the book's bindings and at the tears welling onto her cheeks. The last of the Targaryen dragons had passed in her father's reign, long before she was born...and the dragon that had died was not merely the last dragon in Westeros, it was the last dragon anywhere. They were gone from the world, now, gone and -
- a heavy bang echoed behind her, something falling and exploding on the stones into a hundred thousand pieces and making all the hairs upon her neck stand upright as a long, cold chill washed over her in a wave of muted, dead understanding.
Elaena looked, eyes aching with silent tears.
What she saw was the worst thing since Daeron had returned atop a wagon and not a horse.
The pedestal was empty.
The egg had fell.
And she was not fool enough to not know the sound of something shattering.
"No," she cried, a breathless, feeble rasping word.
The haste she had moved around the bed to save her book was nothing compared to that of her rush around the room, hoping and praying and begging and pleading - and gasping.
The egg had fell.
Fragments of the immaculately cleaned shell covered the floor, some but the size of a single scale that broke clean off, some big enough to fill her hand with jagged fragments as sharp as razors. Some shone back at her with their familiar hues of white and gold, others were an inside she had never seen, covered in thin mats of a pinkish-white webbing, some as big and wide as veins, others as narrow as the lines of a spider's web and just as shining. Milky fluids pooled on the ground and dripped from the shards,
The egg had fell.
The egg had shattered.
And in the center of it all, sat in the very midst of the shattered scales and broken dreams was a lump. A fleshy and meaty lump that should've been a dragon.
But it wasn't. It wasn't a dragon. It looked nothing like the ones in her drawings, like the ones her father had told her about, like the ones who decorated their tapestries and filled the tales of singers and the plays of mummers. It was a globular, awkward ball covered in lumps and ridges and recesses, sticky with what little liquid remained within the broken egg and smelling exactly like the egg of a hen that had gone bad, all around a bulk that was covered in webs of pale white. Elaena clawed closer, unbelieving, refusing to believe what she saw, the restrained tears from before surging, swelling, a choking sob rising in her throat. A tumor. That's what it was, she realized. A tumor, a pestilent blight that had devoured any chance of life. There had been no dragon within her egg, no slumbering hatchling awaiting but the right day to emerge, no life within to listen to her songs and hear her speak of hopes and dreams, no heart beating to the sound of her own when she clutched it close.
There was no dragon within her egg.
There never had been.
"My egg," she said with a cracking voice, reaching out towards it with trembling hands, with tears streaming down her cheeks, with her heart pounding in her ears. "M-my little dragon...."
Right before her fingers could reach it, right before she could touch that which had never lived, something gasped and gurgled.
And it wasn't her.
Elaena froze. Her eyes widened.
A wisping, wheezing rasp of a breath.
Then another. So very weak, so very slow.
Then another. Stronger, if only just.
Then another. Something was spat out.
Then another, and another, and another, each and every one stronger than the one that came before -
- and Elaena could only stare as the lump began to stretch out with all the weary tiredness of a kitten woken from a long nap. Uncoiling itself, a long, milky white tail extended out onto the scarlet stones of the floor, dripping the waxy liquids of the egg's interior onto the masonry. Wrapped in a scaffold of sinuous cord that were no longer needed, a pair of small wings pushed away from the rounded body, slowly and carefully, the membranes that would one day give it flight and allow it to soar amongst the clouds so thin and delicate as to be almost see through, yet carrying the barely perceptible tints of silver and gold and ivory. The angular head came about with closed eyes, gnawing on the now useless flesh that had restricted its wings, biting with the few teeth it had, tugging, chewing, eating. It took but a few moments for it to scoff down the web of flesh and meat that had allowed it to grow, giving it a final purpose as a first meal, using the energy to stagger forwards on tiny, uncertain legs...and to open its eyes to reveal two large orbs of blue-purple, indigo and amethyst colors to match a Targaryen's own.
It was only then, after witness it all, after seeing the creature move, after heaving the tiny noises it made, that the young Elaena could finally move.
It was a dragon. It was no lump of rotten flesh. It was a dragon, hatched and breathing and moving and living, and it was hers, her dragon, her newborn, her savior, her hero, her dream, living and breathing and moving.
Her egg hadn't fallen. Her egg hadn't shattered. Her egg hadn't failed to make life.
It had hatched.
"Oh, oh gods," she gasped breathlessly, excitement threatening to shatter through in a shout of utter joy, the terror and woe vanquished in a moment. "You're....you're a dragon. A dragon!"
A part of her knew she should be quiet, should be careful, should do everything in her power to avoid drawing the attentions of the Kingsguard. Who knew what they would do, if they found her with a newborn dragon in her arms? Who knew what Baelor would do, if he saw that his littlest sister had a dragon and he and all his prayers had not? Who knew what the realm would do, if they heard news that the sound of thunderous roars and the shadow of vast wings might soon fill the skies once more? She knew she should be quiet, should be careful, should try and keep it secret for a little while longer.
But she couldn't help it. She couldn't. She never could've done it. Not now. Not ten years ago. Not ten years from now.
With growing excitement, Elaena hurried towards it as fast as her longs skirts would let her, crouching down to see the new life squirming on the floor. She almost couldn't believe it was real, that she hadn't fell asleep on her bed and that this was all just a dream, and yet, and yet, there it was, right in front of her, breathing, moving, wiggling. Her egg had hatched. Her egg had hatched, and now there was a baby dragon wiggling on her floor, wiggling and moving and hatched and living. A dragon, the one and only one in Westeros, the one and only one to be found anywhere, and it was right in front of her, right there, right on the floor in her bedchamber, hatched from her egg. Her egg! The dreams flared in her mind - soaring amongst the clouds as the Targaryens of old did, feeling the cool winds of a summer's day flowing through her hair, travelling from here and there and everywhere not to reach anywhere, but for the simple joy of flight, to be with a friend of gold and ivory unlike any other. She knew she should be quiet, should be careful, but she couldn't help it. Giggling, Elaena's hand reached out to touch the dragon, to feel its scales, to feel its warmth as it drew in a deep breath -
- and suddenly the newborn began to cough, choking. Panic flooded through her as fast as the joy had, fear and dread, utter terror at the merest chance that the dragon that had so suddenly been born could so suddenly die, to send her dreams of flight crashing into cruel earth. Tears welled in her eyes as her mind raced at a thousand, thousand possibilities to try, to the idea of even shouting for the Kingsguard themselves for the hope that they might be able to save the hatchling as it coughed and sputtered and struggled. Any fear that might've been in her heart boiled off at the sight of the newborn's struggle, and her hand's darted forward, grasping onto the hatchling, tapping at its back the way that a nurse might their baby, but still it struggled, still it coughed, still it gasped, desperate for air, a thin wisp of smoke rising from its flaring nostrils as it spat...
...oil?
Elaena realized quickly.
Her hand was not nearly so fast.
Pulling back as fast as she could, the hatchling coughed again, but this time, this time, it hacked up a torrent of sparks and smoke, every rasp punctuated by the flash of a flame within its throat and a wisp of smoke from its nostrils. The sparks struck her sleeve and caught in an instant, the cloth bursting into flame. Her eyes widened, but Elaena reacted by instinct, her free hand grabbing at the bed linens and slapping the fire with them quickly, beating it, snuffing it out before it could spread up the rest of her gown. The young dragon staggered backwards, its cough clearing, spitting out not the fuel for its fire, but the last of the egg's milky liquid. By the time the fire was out, by the time Elaena's hair of silver and gold was marred by the ash of the dirtily burnt oil, the newborn dragon was already looking towards her with guilty eyes, so big and innocent as to be like a puppy, realizing it had done something wrong and pleading for silent forgiveness.
She might've been angry about the fire. By some miracle of the Seven, she hadn't been burnt, but she might've been angry.
She might've been relieved. The dragon had not meant to set her on fire, surely, it had merely been trying to clear its throat.
She might've been scared. What if that was but the first sign of something far more terrible, something that might take the newborn from her before she even had a chance to truly know them?
She might've been angry, relieved or scared.
But Elaena was none of those things.
She was smiling.
She was giggling.
She was laughing.
Elaena Targaryen had a dragon.
And in that moment, that was the only thing that mattered.
Chapter Text
****
The first thought that entered the dragon's newborn mind was one of utter confusion. It was not the comforting warm wetness of moments before, where it was content to sleep and rest for a hundred years and then a hundred more. Barely used senses shouted at it, screaming...things. It was no longer floating as it had but a while before in the time before its birth. It was touching...something. Something hard. Something cold. It knew of hard things. It knew things like the barrier that had wrapped all around it, comforting and protective, even if it had shrank and became too close and too tight for it. No, that wasn't right, a part of it understood quickly. The barrier - no, the egg - hadn't shrank, the dragon had grew. What it felt beneath it now felt like the barrier, but...wasn't. It was wet, yes, but cold and sticky and hard and lumpy, and...and...
...air.
Something clicked inside the dragonling. Instinct woke. Instinct ordered the chaos, resolved the confusion.
They knew what to do.
Air. Breathe. It opened something - not something, its maw, its mouth - and the life giving liquid that had sustained it in the egg spilled out onto the ground. Much more of it remained inside, but there was enough, just enough, that it was able to draw a breath. Cool air slipped into its nose and mouth and throat and lungs, carrying with it the heavy smells of its own birth. The first breath, weak as it was, flooded it with new energy.
Air. Another. Breathe again, the instincts commanded. It obeyed. It spat up more, breathed more. The noise was stronger. Something else was breathing near. Someone else? Someone familiar? Someone...loving? It knew those sounds.
Again. Harder and longer this time. Stronger. More air, more strength, more warmth.
Again. Again. Again. With every breath the newborn dragon took, more and more of the liquid that had filled its throat was replaced by air. Where before it felt confused, sluggish, now it found itself filled with a purpose spurred on by the energies of breathing. It was curled up tight, compacted, constrained as it was meant to be within the barrier. It did not open its eyes. Not just yet, a part of it said with certainty. Relax, it commanded. Unfurl, it commanded. He tried to flex his fingers. Fingers? It didn't know what those were, didn't feel them as a part of itself, yet their wings - his wings, their wings, its wings? - twitched in answer, pressing against the restraining membranes and tissues that had held the delicate limbs in place for years, days, months. Hours?
Something didn't seem right, he and it thought.
But instinct pressed them, pushed them, forced them together, forced them through. It felt it first. It reached for the toes, and found something else. Something familiar...something long, something...thin? And coiled?
Tail, it realized. The tail came first. Tail for balance, tail for strength. It unraveled himself, itself, slowly and carefully, learning to control the motion of a limb that it could barely move within what he knew to be an egg. It moved at first with trembling motions, but motions that became stronger and more certain with every second, stronger and easier and quicker, until the tail simply brushed across the floor. Floor, they realized. It was a floor underneath them. Floor...indoors? Indoors...big shell? Big building?
Building, it questioned itself? How did it even know what a building was?
Instinct forced it forward again. Wings. Restrained, bound. They had to be freed now that they were hatched-born. They had be freed soon, lest they do damage that it might not be able to recover from. Its head turned quickly and without sight, simply knowing exactly where the bond was - and bit with the tip of its teeth, nibbling, tugging, pulling. There were no nerves there, no pain. It bit, it pulled, and it tasted. It had no real flavor in itself, tasting little unlike the fluid that had filled the egg, but the texture was...familiar? Something from the sea? What was a sea?
Whatever it was, whatever it could somehow remind it of, the dragon ate. It chewed on, ate on, devouring the frame that had helped hold its developing body together and protected its wings from harm. It ate. It feasted. Chewing, swallowing. The flesh fueled it, gave it power, gave it energy, gave it the strength to move forward faster, easier. It felt quicker, in mind and body, but it was the former that confused the latter even as it stretched out its wings and felt them tremble with the exertion, only to strengthen quickly. He? It? They? Something did not make sense, something was wrong in a way that even the inborn programming of its hatching instincts could not explain or answer.
But it could overrule, and it did. Instinct forced the matter aside. Move. With the first pieces of membrane eaten, the rest would fall off and free the rest of the body. It had to move. One step, two, three. Twitching and weak, it took every drop of strength that it had to lift the foot off the ground, steadying itself with balanced wings and balanced tail, standing, lifting - and forward, falling onto itself. Flesh with a finished purpose slid off its body, but not all of it. Again. Balance the wings, balance the tail, raise the foot, forward, down. Again. Wings, tail, foot. One step, two, three, four. The ground beneath its toes was drier and colder, and its ears heard the dripping and wet slaps as the last of the scaffold flopped free.
The hatching instinct was done. It loosened its grip.
But it said one more thing.
Eyes. Open your eyes.
It was the most familiar thing of all. It had opened its eyes before, within the shell, within the egg. It had seen the dim light through the scales as it floated within. It had seen a shadow come to it, felt them touch, heard them sing. They had cared for them as they grew, protected and loved. It opened its eyes, tentatively, as if afraid of the world...and saw. There was no liquid here, there was air. Air all around, and stone beneath their feet, hard and strong. It was night outside, dark, but within the shell of brick and mortar, light still shone, even if it could not see the source. It looked around, searching, searching for siblings, searching for the carer, trying to understand where it was. It mewled, a quiet, puplike whine, a quiet call to any others like it. Was it the only one? Did it get separated from the clutch, or were the others already out of sight? Was it the first? The last?
Something gasped in joy. Something moved, so fast that the newborn only saw a wall of billowing blackness close in. For a heartbeat, he was terrified. For a heartbeat, it was terrified, too. They were terrified.
But then the wall stopped, and the dragon looked up with scared eyes to see...someone familiar. Someone it knew. Someone with silver hair and a golden stripe. Someone with violet eyes. Silver and violet comforted him. They were familiar, but it couldn't tell why. It didn't know. Did he? He wasn't sure. But whatever the cause, whatever the memory, she crouched down, looking with a wide and happy smile, the light of the candle darkening her shape and making it all the more familiar, giggling.
It knew that shape. That was the shadow on the egg.
It knew that giggle. It had heard it within the egg.
It knew her.
This was the one who looked after the egg, who looked after them as they grew in the dreamless twilight of sleep and not-sleep. It knew her. Instinct told them to be wary, to be careful, but it knew her, knew that she was safe to be with. This was the one. The one that cared. The one that loved.
The newborn dragon relaxed. It looked up to her with violet eyes, and cooed.
"Oh, oh gods," the girl gasped with utter delight. It barely heard. "You're...you're a dragon. A dragon!"
It didn't understand what she said, only that it was a good thing, but the words sank in deep, deeper, then deeper still...
...and as the girl reached out to touch it, him, them, something happened, like the opening of a door, or the unlocking of a chest, all things that the dragon realized it had never seen within its egg, all things that the dragon realized that it should not know. It felt suddenly dizzy, the room seeming to tilt and warp. Strange thoughts flickered in, guttering in and out of the existence like the wisping sparks of a dying flame. The dragon was not sure what they were, not sure to even begin to guess what they were. He. It. They. It felt confused. Sick. Light.
Octopus. It had tasted of boiled octopus.
Were...they dreams?
The big shell was not a shell, it was a building.
How could it know that? How could it dream of a world that it had never seen past the walls of the shell?
It was not a wall, it was a dress.
How could it even be an imagining, when it had not seen anything to imagine it?
The thought made the dragon pause and hesitate, struggling with the confusion of its birth. The enormous princess reached forth, her fingers but an inch from their scales. Their scales. She did not scare him. Them. He knew this princess, knew her from his time within the shell. It knew. He knew her to be warm and caring, to have protected the egg whilst he struggled to grow within it. They grew. She had kept it warm, protected it, cleaned it. Cleaned them. She had held it, too. Held him. Held it in her arms, loving and caring. Held them. He remembered that. The dragon remembered that. He? It? They?
They.
They remembered that, remembered the changings of the light and the muted thumpings of a caring heart. They remembered the sound of her voice, of the soothing songs she might sing as they grew within the dreamless sleep.
But then they remembered more than that. They remembered something before that. Flashes, blurry, confused, too fast to understand.
The fury of battle.
An antlered giant.
The hammer blow.
Smashed rubies flying.
Pain. Terrible pain.
A wife's name.
The cold water.
So cold.
So terribly, terribly cold.
The dragon shivered. They shivered. It felt the cold. It felt the cold within. Felt the cold of the memory. Felt the water upon its broken chest, saw the glittering rubies splashing into the river, saw the antlered shadow stood overhead. Heard the word leave his tongue, felt the life falling out of his flesh. His. Not its, not theirs. His.
They felt him die.
The cold flared, as if hungry, as if gripping, as if trying to drag him and it and them together. Suddenly they felt weak, felt sick, felt dizzier. He-it-they felt something in their throat, felt the cold pressing about, felt a bitter, stinging chill on their scales. They were being squeezed. Squeezed by the cold. He had a name, once. He didn't remember it. It didn't have a name. They were a dragon. He had dreamt he was. Still it squeezed. Still it attacked. Breaths that had been so easy but a few moments before became desperate battles as the lump rose, as the memories flashed and burned, as the water came in, as the hammer came down, as the rubies flew - choking hard, bitter. The cold closed in on it, threatening, pulling. It wanted it. It wanted him. It wanted them. Them.
The dragon choked, and the girl recoiled. Through the barest sliver of eyes nearly shut, they saw the fear in her, saw the terror, saw the grief. Saw the loneliness. Saw the hope, that desperate, pleading hope. She wanted them. She wanted them to live. Her hands moved forward so fast to be a blur and where she touched, where she felt, the hungering cold of death retreated. The lump shrank. Liquid. That was what it was. Liquid. She tried to help. She tapped their back. Gently, so gently as to be like a mother, like a father and the newborn son they hardly knew. They could barely breathe. Barely think. Barely move.
But through vision blurring and darkening, they saw the tears in her eyes.
She was crying.
The cold wanted them.
But she wanted them too.
The dragon mustered the strength it had left, the dying drops of a dying body. It reached in, drawing a deep breath, wheezing, deeper, struggling, deeper, spitting, deeper, a thick trail of smoke rising from its nostrils -
- and let go right as the girl yanked her hands. A bellowing torrent of sparks and smoke screeched out from between its jaws, driving the cold back, forcing it back, but it pushed harder, more sparks, more smoke, harder harder, harder, smoke turning to sparks and sparks into flashes of flame. It held it for as long as it could. It held it for a second and no more. The flames died, the sparks burnt out, the smoke faded, and it coughed at the exertion, coughed at the force, coughed...and realized.
It wasn't cold anymore.
It was warm. The struggle to cleanse itself of the last of the egg's white-water had lit a fire within its belly, filling them with a heat that spread from its core outwards, through every fibre of its being. It drove the cold away screaming and swift. It drove the hungry death back to whence it came, defeated. This was but a shadow of the might it would have one day, a part of it realized, the newborn flames of a newborn dragon whose furnace had only just begun to smoulder, yet even that fire had been enough to banish the bitter chill of the river, to boil off its waters and melt the rubies and consume the hammer and antlers and giant in plumes of ash and smoke. It was enough. But still it coughed, clearing its throat before the next breath they drew together came strong and powerful, filling its newborn lungs with all the energy that had bled out of it with death's touch...but it opened its eyes again to see the girl, her silver hair besmirched with ash and dust, beating out the flames on her sleeve, clubbing at her sleeve with the the cloth of her bed.
And all the dragon could do was stare with guilt. Their fire had hit the girl that loved them and set her sleeve ablaze. They had burnt the girl who had watched over their egg and loved them before she even knew them. How could they not feel guilt for that? How could they not feel guilt?
But she was not angry.
She smiled.
She giggled.
She laughed.
She laughed as she reached down with a joyous look in her eyes, filled with nothing but utter happiness and utter relief.
She laughed as she placed her arms together, offering them to a dragon whose guilt was melting to delight.
The baby dragon cooed happily, stepping forward on eager legs...
...and Rhaegar climbed into her arms.
*****
End!
Notes:
This is that aforementioned semi-canon chapter - one of the ideas that I had when working on this back in 2020 or so was that the dragons that might hatch in the course of this story would be the reincarnations of various Targaryens from the past, the present and, in this case, the future: Elaena's egg is actually a reborn Rhaegar Targaryen. At the time this seemed like a fun addition to the story, and would serve to give the dragons some personality (not that they'd be like, talking like human beings or even thinking like them - as you can probably tell from the above, the dragon isn't 100% Rhaegar, but more like a heavily Rhaegar flavored dragon, if that makes sense?) and also to make a certain game of the readership having to guess which dragon was which Targaryen.
Nowadays, I'm not so sold on that possibility (it can feel a bit of a gimmick in a weird way that's hard to explain), but that doesn't mean that the chapter wasn't written, so here - any future updates of this probably won't go with this concept, but for completion's sake, you get it all the same :P
Dante101 on Chapter 1 Wed 22 Nov 2023 05:01PM UTC
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