Oct 23 2020, 08:29 PM
She hadn't even looked back. Hadn't looked for her father, or for the other members of the Lair. Bone had followed the call, instead, blindly: the welcoming warmth of it an irresistable draw. She'd seen nothing wrong with that. She hadn't known of the dangers.
Dread had fought the Hive, but he'd known little of it... of its subtle infiltration. Its redirection of a Gembound's very being.
When Svartis had fallen in the snow, succumbing to his chrysalis, she'd covered him with powder to hide him--and then trudged onward, shivering against the icy winds. She was a creature of heat and warmth, as her father was; this place was too cold for her. But the farther in she went, the more at home she felt--the closer to-... to something, to whatever she was supposed to find. Her wounds were painful, bruising pressed into muscle, but she forced herself ahead.
Eventually, the white dragon took wing, sweeping into the slicing air and squinting white eyes against its flurry, her slow and thumping wingbeats carrying her (swaying dangerously against the strong currents here) up along the flank of the mountain.
Bone had swept over the glacier, scouring the ice tunnels with her eyes, where they opened to the sky; she'd circled once over the drowned forest, but seen nothing, felt nothing, drawing her there.
At length she'd followed the call to a cave half-hidden in Ursa Major's highest crags and there she'd curled to rest, shivering until sleep took her. Her stone, however--unlike her brother's--did not. And no one came; no one knew where she was.
And that, Mother told her, was good.
Since then, she'd made no effort to contact family. She knew they would be fine, with the knowledge that Mother granted her--and Bone had no reason to doubt these blind reassurances, so confident was the soothing voice. They did not need her, and this was her time to finally blossom, a time for joyous freedom. The time to find herself.
Bone knew nothing of subjugation.
She thought that her gradual adaptation to the cold was freedom, not reformation. And as she grew used to the Lessers here, hunting what white scurrying creatures she could find, she felt at home among them--even when delivering them, lovingly, to the cave mouths that she was directed to. Never did she linger, to spy and see what would collect them: she only placed them where the ever-stronger voice told her to, and then left, warmly trusting that she'd done well, knowing that now she was part of-... of something greater.
Slowly, the dragon regained her strength. Her health returned to her, and she shared the skies with only the ghostly birds of prey that soared the mountain peaks. Now she revelled in the bitter air: something about the cold was-... structured, yes, in a way that called to her now.
Structure was a new part of her life, too. Those few trinkets she'd brought back to her den were painstakingly-arranged: white feathers carefully grouped by size, a few pale pebbles laid in two straight lines. Some bleached-white bones she'd found were arranged as if to form a tiny Lesser skeleton--and the missing pieces always irked her, but there was nothing she could do.
At times she simply dozed, blank, and she would only rouse herself to realize that hours had passed. But that warm blanket of fuzzy contentment remained, and it never bothered her that she'd lost time. Indeed, she felt as though she were... waiting, for something; but for what?
Bone didn't know.
And so she waited: dozing in her little hidden cave, watching the snow sweeping past the entrance.
And she hunted, brief forays to soar over Ursa Major, picking prey from the snowy cliffs.
And she slept.
Soon, she knew--soon--she would be awakened.