Dread had accepted the giant flint as a part of his daily life. It was huge, and took up half his nest, but like any dutiful parent he rested atop the 'egg' (which was pleasantly warm when the sun had been settling on it, anyway) and waited for it to hatch. Some of his 'eggs' took longer than others; but this one had been... many cycles, cycles beyond his count. Mostly because he did not count, or had not bothered to. (Years?) With an egg (read: chrysalis) about to hatch, he generally stuck quite close, leaving only for short trips to hunt, and asked Blight to watch the nest if he had to go any farther. But he'd taken to sort of assuming this one was different, and gone back, eventually, to a regular routine.

So when the cracking began, he was off soaring the warm updrafts of the bay, light gleaming down through dark wings to illuminate them red; he was basking in the joy of sea spray and open winds, drifting ever higher on the air.

The distant squawk of 'Fooood!' therefore took him by surprise: he barely heard it and, at first, he thought it was an intruder. Spines and fins bristled along his neck and he turned, banking for the sea stack, wings pumping and eyes narrowing.

His slam down onto the edge was menacing, all arched neck and blazing eyes, smoke curling from his nostrils as his gaze shot around in search of an intruder--but when it fell upon the hatching "child," he softened immeasurably at once. Fins lowered, head slid down, smoke extinguished; his ember eyes widened and he slid closer, the boom that had been about to erupt from his chest in a roar instead curling into comfort. "Be careful," he urged at once, more than familiar with the cutting edges of a chrysalis--his own, obsidian, was a bitch with razor shards whenever he awoke. "It is sharp." His immediate task, as it always was with his newly hatching children, was to clear a safe space for them to pull free: and so his snout and wing-claws began the swift but careful work of picking pieces aside, breaking chunks that might have caused more serious injury, and pulling shards away with his jaws. These he scattered on the ground, a little ways away, while his eyes ranged over the full-grown child in search of injury. He saw nothing serious, but noted how much--how perfectly--this child was a halfway point between he and Kalama. Draconic, but feathered; sharing both their colors, but mainly hers, and with a determined ferocity to it that already gave him pride. He bristled a little again, this time not in aggression. Oh--but the chrysalis shards...

With a grunt he carried on, pausing only to blink and speak. "I AM DREAD. I am your father. Kalama is your mother. She will be proud of you," he decided. It was an odd set of things to inform a child immediately upon its hatching--but Dread was an impulsive sort. And a repeated urging: "BE CAREFUL. THESE ARE SHARP! -I will find you food when you are out!"

All the important things were now covered, he felt--and he set himself back to freeing the feathered dragon.

He withdrew at the blast of heat, blinking--but rather than be irritated or aggressive, the mindset of a proud new parent quickly set in. "THAT WAS VERY GOOD," he boomed. And then--"YOUR NAME IS KNELL." It was a repetition, not instruction; an agreement, an acknowledgment that he'd heard and understood and maybe even approved. Then Dread backed up, his reverse-wingwalking somewhat awkward, to make room--until his talons were again perched at the very lip of the stack.

He waited, watching closely, to see that the fresh adult-child crawling from the chrysalis did so safely; and when no horrific wounds opened up, Dread began to turn. "FOOD," he confirmed; "I WILL GET SOME NOW. WAIT HERE--UNLESS YOU WANT TO LEARN TO FLY NOW? AND COME AND WATCH?" Loudly-given options, but options nonetheless: he'd offer the flint--no, Knell--freedom and a choice. No child of Dread's would be restricted unnecessarily. That wasn't what being a dragon was about.

Well, there was no use in prolonging the lesson, in any case. "IF YOU DO WANT TO FLY," since the child would need to some day, anyway, "-YOU MIGHT WANT TO EXERCISE YOUR WINGS FIRST." A belated realization--he wasn't sure how much they might need strengthening. "BUT YOU JUMP AND FLAP AND HOLD YOURSELF ON YOUR WINGS. WARM AIR IS EASIER. IF YOU FALL YOU MIGHT DIE," he added--there was water down there, sure, but the drop was a hell of a long one.

Dread launched out, shoving off and up as he raised his wings out and up; a hefty thud of wing-leather as he began to fall drew him skyward and he turned, wings beating as he circled a lazy arc to sweep back toward the stack. He waited to see if Knell would come, or not. If not--he'd go and hunt for him; if he did follow, Dread was alert and ready with his magic to ensure the child did not fall to his death right away.

Poor child. The thought was unusually sympathetic, for Dread, but nobody--well, very few, and nobody he'd ever spoken kindly to again--had ever accused him of being a bad parent. "IT'S OKAY," he assured, shaking himself as he paused to hover for a moment before the stack. Fins rattled, and then he turned, flapping into a glide away as he called back: "STAY THERE. I WILL BRING FOOD."

He dove low, wind whistling around him until the seafoam sprayed cold around his talons--but he saw nothing at the froth of the waves, no gleam of easily-snagged fish. He slid upwards again, beating his wings for shore, and if Knell were watching he would see the muscled back of the black dragon working in a way his own wings would hopefully soon manage. Dread's wingspan was broader, though, relatively speaking--and as he reached the treeline, sliding into the drifting fog of Leo's humid bay, he cut through it like a horizontal black knife.

The picture of grace was somewhat ruined when--after a bloom of orange light ignited the distant fog--an irritated roar echoed far-off. And then Dread's voice, carrying over the bay, the wind sometimes bringing it close enough for Knell to hear: "COME BACK. LET ME EAT YOU. STOP-"

"IT IS A DEER. JUST WAIT THERE."

"I ALMOST HAVE IT."

"I SAID STOP!"

Frustration seemingly gave way to impatience, and all at once, the distant father dragon put his full power on display. Rather than little blasts of flame that kept missing the whatever-it-was in the mist, the distant sheets of fog abruptly ignited in a firestorm of devastation. Enormous balls of flame coalesced and cascaded down out of sight like meteors, their resulting impacts like the constant explosions of artillery; the cloud bank lit in repeated brilliant flashes of firelight.

With this entirely reasonable and equal-force attack on a small prey animal administered, Dread dipped deeper into the cloud bank. His silhouette vanished briefly from sight before reappearing a moment later, twisting up to face the sea stack, a charred and quite dead cave deer clutched firmly in his talons.

It took him another moment to wing his way back, a laborious but graceful flight upward over the glittering bay. When he arrived, he looked pleased with himself, if still mildly irritated; the deer was shifted to the clutch of one foot, the dragon landing and balancing on the other as he pitched the prey forward toward his child.

"HERE," he offered; "THE FUR IS NOT GOOD TO EAT. BUT PULL IT OFF AND EAT INSIDE. IT IS STILL WARM," he added, though whether that was assurance or warning remained to be seen. (It was assurance. The flight had cooled it well enough.)

Then he rocked forward onto his wings, shaking himself again and wing-walking around the edge of the stack. He began to nudge the sharp shards of flint into a neater pile, intending to dispose of them. As he did, he spoke. "I WILL TEACH YOU HOW TO FLY AND CATCH YOUR FOOD! There is... fish, and there are deer. And we have other family!" he added. "Svartis and Bone and Cadenza and others!" He could rattle them all off, sure, with a little thought--but the list was just so long.

He debated offering to take Knell to meet Kalama straightaway but he wasn't sure where to find her. And a more reasonable parent might have warned Knell not to listen too much to Kalama's urging--not to turn into a weapon at his mother's behest--but Dread wasn't really aware of any potential in Kalama to do this. So far as he was concerned, Kalama was loud and strange and violent but had no ulterior plans--and Knell could undoubtedly decide what to do for himself.