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Kim Soleum was not throwing a tantrum. That was something children did. This was his twenty-fourth birthday he could remember, and he had been assured there were four more before that he had slept through.
Kim Soleum was not throwing a tantrum because he wasn’t a child like Haje-noona and Minseong-hyung insisted he was.
It had been a year since he got a promise out of them to let him go to the human world once he grew up, and it seemed like they would never acknowledge that he was already all grown up. Humans considered themselves independent adults at sixteen. Soleum was almost double that!
Any time he tried to get an answer out of them about how old he needed to be for them to stop treating him like a kid, they would change the subject. Maybe it was because he wasn’t as big as them, so they thought he was still growing. But Noona kept getting longer too, so it wasn’t like adults didn’t still grow.
Soleum curled up in the hollow he kept his tiny hoard in and sulked. He had asked to visit a human town for his birthday, but Noona said that they had other plans. Then she had distracted him by showing off a new magic stone she had gotten recently, and he forgot that he was going to be grumpy about the refusal.
It was his birthday, but both Noona and Chief were gone, off somewhere on an adventure Soleum was never allowed to follow for.
“Roe, are you going to stay in there all day?” Hyung’s voice came from outside the narrow entrance that lead to the cavern Soleum kept his things in. He had kept moving it recently, unsatisfied with the corner of Chief’s hoard room he had kept it in before. It had felt too exposed to have all his precious things there, so he tried a couple different offshoots in the cave system before settling on this one.
However, this cave had the downside that the tunnel entrance was too small for most of his family to get into, even in human form. Chief had to make the rare change into his natural form to be the only one to visit Soleum’s tiny hoard.
“Yes,” Soleum replied. He didn’t see a reason to go out to another cave or the mountainside if he still wasn’t allowed to leave.
“Haje is going to be back soon.” As she should be. Going to the human world without him on Soleum’s birthday of all days was a violation of everything they had taught him birthdays were supposed to be about. Wasn’t today meant to be for him? “She was picking up your gift, so you’ll get to open it when she’s back.”
Soleum’s ears perked up at that. A gift from the human world? Maybe it would be a sword, which they had refused to bring him normally “because he didn’t have hands and might hurt himself”. He didn’t need human hands to put a sword in his hoard. What was so great about transforming into a human anyway. Soleum was totally fine being in his normal, draconic form. Which was completely unrelated to him not being able to figure out the transformation.
“You didn’t forget what today is?”
“Of course not! It’s our youngest’s birthday, how could we forget? The Chief will be back by tonight too to celebrate, don’t worry.” Soleum felt his tail start to swish back and forth, at least as much as was possible in the cramped cavern without smashing his precious things.
“If you come out to the main cave we can see her as soon as she gets back.”
Soleum unwound his body and slowly slinked out of the tunnel that led to his hoard, careful to keep his head low to avoid scraping his sensitive antlers on the ceiling. He had originally discounted this cave because it was too hard to get into, but the last one felt wrong after a few days and he had to move somewhere more private.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want his family to be able to visit his hoard. It just felt wrong to take up a corner of Chief’s cave. And it felt wrong to stash his things under a tree in Hyung’s garden. And he couldn’t get to it easily if he moved it to Noona’s mountain since he couldn’t fly. But lately he had been getting so anxious that something might go missing from his hoard any time he left it, and nowhere he moved it helped.
There wasn’t even anything worth stealing, not like Chief’s massive cave of gold or Noona’s precious stones. It was just odds and ends his family had brought him over the years. A stack of well-worn books he was scared to flip through too fast after the time his claw had gotten caught on a page. A glittering potion in a bottle that he was told had no effect other than being pretty. A red braided cord almost as long as his body that had apparently been used to tie back the curtains in a noble’s house at one point. An hourglass that kept exactly thirteen minutes of time. A bracelet that had beads in the color of all his family members’ scales.
But Soleum would solve the problem of finding a good place for his hoard on his own, because that’s what grown ups did, and he was definitely not a child.
“There you are! It took me a while to find you since you keep moving your stuff. Did you find a spot you like?” Hyung had happily helped Soleum move his things into his garden when asked, and just as happily helped him move it all out when he changed his mind. After the third move, Soleum felt bad asking for help and started doing it on his own.
“It’s better,” he replied. It still wasn’t good. Hyung gave him a knowing look but didn’t push.
“I was worried I’d lost you and Haje was going to get after me again. If you were hidden any better, I’d be waiting for your gifts to open themselves!”
Soleum’s tail swished back and forth happily as he walked. Everything was in order in his hoard, and now he was going to get shiny new things to add to it. His family hadn’t forgotten him, so maybe today was a fine day after all.
It wasn’t too far of a walk to the massive cave at the heart of their lair. It was the only cave in this mountain big enough to hold all four of them in their true forms, since Noona and Hyung were so big.
Not long after they arrived, the air trembled and then a foot stepped through a slit in reality. “I’m back, where’s the birthday boy?”
Noona was wearing the fancy cloak she always wore when going out and had a box held carefully in hand.
“Perfect timing! I just wrangled him out of his cave.” Hyung took the box from Noona like he knew what was in it and took it over to a table they had shoved in a carved out corner of the cave. There were three human-sized chairs and a nicely cushioned bench for Soleum so they could all eat together.
“Who’s ready for your first gift?” she asked, striding toward Soleum.
“Is it going back to wherever you just were?” he grouched. She had surely just stepped out of a human town, and it itched at Soleum that he wasn’t allowed to go with. Nevertheless, he nudged his head affectionately at the hem of her pants, and then she grabbed him under his front legs and hoisted him up to her shoulder height.
“I brought back the best thing there, don’t you want to see that instead?” She carried him over to the table, swinging him back and forth playfully as she walked in a way that had the tip of Soleum’s tail tickling the floor. He grudgingly let her plop him on his cushion at the table in a way that had his lower half coiled up and his front legs sitting on the table.
Noona and Hyung both took their seats too and Noona started narrating her journey in the way Soleum always begged for when any of his family members got back from a trip.
“Since our Roe is curious about humans, I wanted to help you celebrate in a more human way this year. One of the things humans sometimes do is get a cake for their birthday. We’ve never brought back a cake since they aren’t easy to transport, so I thought it’d be perfect.” Soleum’s gaze fell on the box on the table.
In one of his books cake had been mentioned. It was at a big party of nobles where the knight was invited after winning a big battle. He’d figured it was just another one of those fancy snacks.
“So it’s a cake?” he asked impatiently. All this build up for a snack? The box was nice he supposed, with glossy paper and a gold ribbon tying it shut. But a cake was food. He couldn’t keep it forever.
“Not just any cake. We couldn’t have your first cake be just anything. It’s your birthday after all– you deserve the best cake that exists. So I went on a mission to find the absolute best cake in existence.” Noona’s eyes started sparkling the way they always did when she talked about tracking down the things she wanted in the human world.
“So I went around the capital asking about the best dessert shop, and then I went around the shops that came up and chatted up the bakers. I asked the best bakers in the biggest city on the continent if there was any other baker they looked up to, and one answer kept coming up.” Soleum was leaning in subconsciously.
“The previous royal pastry chef, who retired a few years ago to open a little shop in the countryside. The town he set up shop in has nothing of note other than that new bakery, but he constantly has orders lining up to get the famous cakes that used to be served to the royal family and their guests.”
Soleum’s tail thumped on the cushion in excitement. Someone who cooked for the king! His cakes must have been eaten by so many people who had seen so many things.
“He makes a single custom cake per day and otherwise only bakes what makes him happy now that he’s retired. I went to his shop and was able to reserve a custom cake, which has a months long reservation list. Nobody else on the continent could get this cake today, no matter how much money they had.”
Noona pulled the ribbon on the box loose and it fell open. It revealed layers of cake and cream, stacked in a delicate balance and with bright red strawberries patterned around it, cut in half, with the insides facing out. The top was another layer of cream, with intricate swirls of cream and full berries alternating in a circle.
It was beautiful and complex in a way only crafted by the human hands Soleum so envied. He could feel somehow all the experience that was poured into it, that lifelong love of a master for his craft. The cake would last a few days at best, but Soleum could sense the lifetime of effort baked into it. It was a bit sad that they were going to eat it.
As if she could sense what he was thinking, Noona held something else out to Soleum that she had pulled from somewhere inside her cloak.
“Did I mention I ordered two of the cakes? One for a few weeks ago to commission an artist to make plates of exactly what it looked like.” In Noona’s hand was a small plate with a painted image of the cake in front of Soleum in a form that would let him hold this day in his hands forever. She set the plate on the table in front of him so he could see every detail of the picture painted on it.
He could feel the story in this too. Noona hadn’t gone into detail about the artist who made it, but Soleum could tell they were just as skilled at their craft as the baker.
“Happy birthday, kid.” Noona and Hyung both smiled at him, eyes fond.
“‘M not a kid”, Soleum protested, too overwhelmed to come up with much more. How was he supposed to be upset about anything when they gave him everything he didn’t know he needed?
“You’ll always be our kid. She only stopped calling me a kid when you came along, and I was over a hundred!”
“It’s a set of four plates, are we allowed to use the others to eat the cake?” Noona pulled out the rest of the plates and set the stack on the table.
“Yes.” They could all eat together and then the plates would be theirs and Soleum’s and the moment would be immortal.
Hyung grabbed a knife to cut the cake and also came back with forks to lay next to the other three plates arranged around the table. Noona cut the cake into even triangles and placed a slice on each of the four plates, even the one whose owner hadn’t yet returned. The inside of the cake showed off the various stacked layers even better.
Soleum clumsily spun the plate around so he could see the cake from every angle before eating it. Noona and Hyung seemed to be waiting for him to try it first, so eventually he settled on angling the point of the cake slice toward him and twisting his head sideways to take a careful bite out of the corner of it.
“How is it?” Soleum had never had anything so sweet. It was sweeter than the sweetest fruit he had ever tasted from Hyung’s garden. The cake was soft, and the cream between the layers melted in his mouth. He had thought that berries were best if they were as sweet as possible, but rather than add to the sweetness, the strawberries in the cake helped balance the rest of the sugar.
“Really good.” He felt a dot of frosting on the tip of his snout and licked it off, not wanting to waste a morsel.
Noona and Hyung took that as approval to try their own cake. Soleum felt weird watching them pick up their fragile plates holding an intricate slice of cake and use a fork to neatly slice through the cream. He looked at his own piece, which had a jagged bite taken out of the corner, even though he had been as careful as possible.
Noona’s fork paused halfway to her mouth and then lowered the bite she had almost taken back onto the plate. She put her now empty fork down next to the plate and grabbed a chunk of cake to stuff in her mouth with her bare hand. “Wow, this stuff is sweet,” she said, mouth full of cake.
“The layers balance each other really well,” Hyung noted, hand sticky with frosting from following suit. The neat lines of their own slices of cake were now just as messy as Soleum’s.
He took another bite and chewed it, wondering if the cake had gotten even sweeter.
They all polished off their slices of cake quickly, and Soleum licked his plate clean, revealing the painted picture of the cake as it had been the second the box was opened underneath. The remaining half of the cake still sat beautifully in the middle of the table.
“Can you close it up so we can have the rest later?” he asked. Soleum wanted to hide the rest away to stare at on his own. He knew it wouldn’t be good forever, but looking at it for a day or two couldn’t hurt.
“Anything you want.” She folded the box back up and retied the ribbon a bit less perfectly than it had started.
“Now, I don’t have quite as much of a story with my gift, but do you want to see that next?” Soleum tore his gaze from the painted plate to look up at Hyung’s smile.
“Yes.”
Hyung pulled out one of the spacial bags Chief made that they always used to store things that were hard to carry. He reached inside and pulled out a book with an embossed leather cover.
“This is the most popular adventure book printed this year.” He set it in front of Soleum and flipped open the front cover. “I had the author sign it and write a note for you.”
While Soleum was absorbed reading the messy handwriting on the title page, Hyung pulled something else out of his bag.
“And here are the most popular fiction books printed every year since you hatched. I couldn’t track down all of the authors though, so some aren’t signed.” A tall stack of books rose on the table as he continued pulling them out. Soleum felt his tail thumping on the bench again.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed books like this?” His family had gotten him a few books after he had become obsessed with the one he found in the wreckage next to the first human he had ever met. But when he started begging to go to the human world, they had limited his new books to only things about monsters and plants and other natural things that could be found within their territory.
Soleum was stuck clinging to his two books of legends to read about brave knights saving princesses and fighting demons, and he kept them in the safest spot in his hoard. Now he was flooded with a whole stack of The Adventures of Sir Arthur and Sparkling Ocean Palace.
“We decided that since you really wanted more books it would be better to bring them than have you try and look yourself. These are the best stories out there, Roe, we can bring them all to you here. Won’t you stay where it’s safe until you’re older? Let us bring the world to you, okay?”
Soleum knew that they refused to take him to the human world because it was dangerous. And Soleum was a bit scared of the way he read that humans wielded swords and fought over everything. It was just that he could feel something out there beyond the world he knew missing from him. When he saw his family use magic, he could tell that the magic was part of them in a way he couldn’t feel when it circulated through him.
Whatever that Something was had been packed into all of these gifts, the cake, the plates, and every book in a different way. It seemed like his family knew what he was missing better than he did. They always did, whenever he was happy, or sad or anything else.
“I’m going to have to move my hoard again,” he said, pressing his face into the table. He was glad for once that he wasn’t in a human form, since those apparently had a tendency to do something called “blushing”. He had been given so much that there wouldn’t be enough space for him to sleep by the time he fit all of the books in his current cave.
“We can help, but let’s wait ‘til the chief gets back. You’ve got one more gift coming. He had to go finish setting it up.”
“Setup is complete.” They had somehow all missed Chief coming back.
“Welcome back!” Noona pushed the plate toward Chief. “We saved you a slice of cake.”
“Yes.” Chief raised the plate to his face and took a bite out of the tip in the same way Soleum had.
Noona and Hyung stood up, suddenly as excited as Soleum. “Roe, you’re going to love this, c’mon.”
“Chief is going to make it look like we weren’t even trying.” The energy was infectious, and Soleum somehow got even more excited. Wanting even more must be what they called a dragon’s greed, but his family didn’t fault him for it.
Chief finished his cake and hoisted Soleum up onto his shoulders after setting down the plate. His shoulders were Soleum’s favorite since they were the broadest and highest. Soleum let his tail drape lazily down, content to be carried. They headed outside, Noona and Hyung chattering the whole way.
Eventually, they arrived at a spot by the lake. Their territory consisted of three mountains surrounding a lake, with Chief’s mountain between the other two. Noona’s mountain was high and jagged, capped with the ice that she controlled. Hyung’s mountain was all soft curves covered with the plants he loved. Chief’s had a complex system of caves Soleum could get lost in.
One side of the lake was bordered not by a mountain, but by a magical barrier to keep humans out. This was the side where they stood.
Chief raised a hand toward the barrier. “I will start.”
“Wait, no, Chief, you’ve got to tell him what you’re doing! Explain it to him!” Hyung made him pause, frantic.
“Yes. I will now put your mountain here, Soleum.” What?
“Ack, we should have explained it.” What did he mean a mountain?
Magic burst out of the body beneath Soleum in the overwhelming presence only a centuries old dragon could possess. It was more a raw stream of mana than a spell, but Soleum could feel it lodge into a few anchor points as it washed over the ground. He must have drawn a magic circle in advance to direct the magic. This was something dragons didn’t usually need to do unless they wanted very large or very precise magic.
And large it was. It didn’t take long for Soleum to realize what they meant by a mountain when the mana formed into a peak in front of him. A mountain really did appear in front of him, not as tall as Noona’s or as lush as Hyungs, but Soleum could feel it sing to him in the same way the rest of his gifts had.
The magic faded, and Soleum took in the mountain in front of him. Trees dotted the lower slopes, but the top was rocky and bare. The peak was fractured around a hollow that opened wide in the side of the mountain, stretching about halfway down it.
“You made me a mountain?” he asked, dumbfounded.
“To be precise, he moved it. We picked this one out together, but actually moving mountains is something only the Chief can do.” Soleum didn’t think that moving a mountain was any less of a feat than creating one.
“Chief skipped the story, but this mountain was the location where a general of the Demon King once self-destructed to eliminate a human Hero sent by the Empire who threatened demonkind. That’s why the mountain is hollow, but about a hundred years later, demon rebels against the crown took it up as a base. That was still a few centuries ago though, so they all died since and the mountain has been uninhabited for a while.”
“Do you want to go check it out?” Hyung and Noona looked at him like it was only natural they had done this much and there was still more to show.
How were you supposed to respond to being given a mountain? Soleum had thought every year that the gifts his family gave him were incredible, but he couldn’t even fathom how much time and energy they had put into everything this year.
“Thank you,” he got out. “For everything.”
“No problem. Chief, explain the other part, the barrier.” Noona nudged Chief, and Soleum’s tail swung as they shifted slightly.
“Additional space has been added to the outside of the safe zone.”
“It would be faster for us to explain at this rate,” Noona said, exasperated.
“One more, Chief, explain why we got him a mountain. Don’t let us take all the credit.”
“Yes. Above a certain age, it becomes physiologically difficult for dragons to store their hoard in a space that is not their own.” Chief’s head turned slightly so Soleum could better see the small smile on his face from his spot on his shoulder. “Therefore a new mountain was required.”
He gently lifted Soleum off of his shoulders and placed him in front of him on the newly changed ground. Soleum could sense the magic still buzzing around them, but more than that, he could feel the life and the history of this ground steeped in legends. He had never felt the mana in the air so clearly, maybe because he had just witnessed so much of it being used.
“We noticed you couldn’t find a spot for your hoard, Roe. It happened to us too, which is why we all have our own mountain.” Hyung explained.
“Want to check it out?” Noona took a few steps ahead, leading. Soleum started slowly following, feeling like he could sense the world breathing through the ground beneath his feet.
“Yes.” He couldn’t take his senses off the feel of whatever it was he had always been missing finally surrounding him.
“Watch where you’re going, Roe,” Hyung chided. The ground was uneven with roots and covered in small plants that were still taller than Soleum. “I guess I could clear the way instead.”
Hyung sent out a pulse of magic to identify all of the nearby plants, and Soleum looked up at him. He saw Hyung’s magic wind out of him as if it were a sentence on the page of reality.
Then flowers bloomed on the trees bounding a clear, winding path up the mountain.
For some reason, Soleum thought in that moment that he could give himself the sea of lights he always wanted to see in a human city.
Then flowers bloomed into light on the trees bounding a clear, winding path up the mountain, he rewrote as the magic spiraled through the air and blanketed the mountain.
Just as written, the trees in front of them burst into luminescent blooms in a line that traced up the mountain.
Noona whistled. “Showoff. You said you couldn’t do stuff like this when I asked, guess we all spoil the kid too much.”
The person who had cast the spell was frozen. He was the only one who noticed what had interfered with the magic before it had taken effect. “Roe, did you do that?”
Noona whipped around from where she had been stepping onto the new path, lit by the faint glow of falling petals. “That wasn’t you?”
Everyone’s eyes were on Soleum again, and he shrunk into the ground. Was he in trouble for messing with Hyung’s magic?
“Part of it was me, but I really can’t make them do something biologically impossible like this without another spell.” Hyung pressed a hand to the trunk of a nearby tree. “It’s a totally different plant,” he mused.
“Roe did you use magic?” Noona ran back to him and picked him up. The bright petals of the flowers on the trees were even prettier from closer.
“Sorry I ruined your spell,” he said weakly, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes.
“What are you sorry for? It’s your first real magic!” Soleum snuck a peek up to meet her gaze and could see her eyes glowing with pride. A look at his other family members confirmed the same look.
“Roe, can I keep one of these trees? I’ve never seen one like it.”
“Is now really the time to be thinking about plants?”
“Our kid made them, how can I not keep at least one? I’d take the whole lot if they weren’t on his mountain. To think Roe’s first magic is something so pretty, I’d be happy sleeping under one of these for a decade.”
“Now you sound like an old man, who sleeps that long at your age?”
Soleum felt his eyes growing heavy. He wanted to explore the mountain, but he was suddenly so very tired.
“Soleum is experiencing mana depletion.” Chief said. Oh. That must be why Soleum felt like he could fall asleep right there, even as he was yanked around in Noona’s grasp to keep him away from Hyung trying to steal him. They stopped at Chief’s words, and holding still had Soleum nodding off even faster.
“Shit, sorry Roe.” Noona pulled him into a more secure hold and put an arm under his lower half so he wouldn’t swing when she moved.
“It’s okay… can we all sleep together?” he said blearily.
“Of course.”
They fit into the main cavern of their lair like puzzle pieces, perfectly filling the space. First Noona turned back into her true form, long and serpentine, and wrapped around the border of the cave, blocking all the tunnels that connected to it at the ground level. Chief shifted next, into a tiny form that Hyung could pick up and set on Soleum’s head, right between his horns. Then Hyung draped Soleum over his shoulders and Soleum was rapidly pushed higher as Hyung’s scales sprouted underneath Soleum.
Once they were settled, all curled together, Noona would drape her large feathered wing over the pile of the rest of them, settling its bend on Hyung’s head next to them for Soleum to nuzzle into.
Mana buzzed in the cave in a density that made the air feel as thick as water, and everything in Soleum’s world balanced perfectly, with Hyung’s warm scales beneath him, Noona’s cool feathers beside him, and Chief’s magic between his horns where he could feel it best.
Maybe it was just perfect that they stayed home for his birthday.