CHARON
The very mountains whisper your name...

Charon very suddenly burst from his chrysalis with a roar, thrashing about as he quickly broke free and continued to wiggle and squirm, unable to figure out why the hell his limbs weren't working.

”Bone- BONE!”, he yelled, stuck on his back and unable to get up, ”Something's wrong!”

Something touched his tail and he squealed, managing to get up and look down only to find that his arms were missing and his legs- his LEGS?! He had legs!! Why did he have legs?!

”DREAD! BONE!”, he called out, his torso feeling so strange and his legs kicking uselessly.

His wings were massive and heavy, definitely bigger than when he'd gone to sleep. He used them to crawl out of the hole, quickly realizing that his wings and arms seemed to have fused. As for his hind legs, he couldn't figure that out. He'd meant to nap and woken up with wings that were bigger, which was honestly his intention anyway, though. He only had to figure out how to use them, now, which was a whole other problem.

Though now he couldn't move around and he was completely alone. Wonderful.

”DREEEAAAAAAAD!”, he yelled, honestly a little bit scared. Those gulls over there were looking at him weird...

@Dread

The cries woke him, and he was scrambling up before consciousness had fully returned. For a moment, he thought the distant voice was Svartis, and fear quaked in his chest--he'd seen Svartis attacked before, nearly killed, by another creature who he had last seen in this very cave. But as he woke fully--as he scrambled to the edge of his nest--he realized it was Charon.

A voice he'd only heard once--and after that, his "almost-son" (as Dread confusedly thought of him) had fallen asleep in his rock. Dread had seen it, in passing; he and Bone, even Blight, had briefly discussed it. So Charon had awoken--and now he was screaming for Dread, who thought he heard threads of panic in the voice.

Powerful legs were already shoving off the sea stack, wings snapping out to catch the warm air, but the dragon didn't glide--he powered furiously down and forward, his wingbeats a rapid thud, flying as fast as he could toward Asimona's child.

Is he being attacked-? the black dragon wondered--had something smashed his stone!?

He was in sight in seconds, the thrashing pale blue shape down below already leaving marks across the sand--but there were no enemies. Heat shimmered around the black dragon, ember sparks flashing, as he dove and swept low. He wasn't about to take any chances, and instead of immediately landing, he flew a low and swift arc around Charon--jaw opening wide, light igniting in his gullet. A stream of flame swept down as he flew this curve, a sputtering wall of low fire charring the sand in an arc between Charon and the trees.

It was intended to be a wall of flame, but it couldn't really catch along the sand, so it was mostly a wall of smoke and steam that quickly dissipated; but a few tufts of dried palm leaves and grass did catch, providing sporadic cover.

The entire event lasted only seconds: from Dread's arrival to his sweeping around Charon in an eye-blink, and now, the black dragon curved back, slowed, and landed feet-first in the sand close by.

There was no danger that he could see: his fins raised as he stared past his brief flames into the forest, but nothing was lurking there, waiting to charge in. With a wary snort, he quickly wing-walked the rest of the distance to Charon, little puffs of wet sand kicking up behind him. "WHAT HAPPENED?" he demanded, instincts of territory and family driving his aggressive stare to scour the trees again. "DID YOU GET ATTACKED?!"

@Charon

CHARON
The very mountains whisper your name...

Charon saw black in the distance and felt relieved. The instinct right after hatching to not be alone was extremely strong, especially as vulnerable as he was, laying on the sand with his wings awkwardly spread and one leg twisted beneath him because he otherwise didn't know what to do with it.

The display made him wince and shy away, though not very far due to his predicament. His center of balance was not where it used to be, so the best he could do at the moment was crawl and slither uselessly. He finally looked up as Dread landed, peering back towards the birds and realizing they'd instead moved to the cliff instead of the rocks, and there were a lot of them. All staring at him, waiting for him to die so they could eat.

He shuddered.

”Not yet,” he said, ”I-I can't walk, my arms are gone a-and I can't use my legs yet.”

Charon pushed his head against the sand, trying not to snort it up his nose as he used his tail to lift his back end. His claws sat awkwardly on the sand, one close in a fist and the other spread awkwardly. His arms were similar, moving like they used to but the weight of his wings meant his arms drooped quite a bit. He didn't even know how to hold them, higher up to balance the weight better.

Honestly he was a mess.

”Can you see them?”, he spoke, voice muffled by the sand, ”... I thought no one would come and those damn birds up there were gonna eat me if I didn't move for long enough.”

It was humiliating to not be able to fly but now to not be able to walk because he didn't know how. And it wasn't like he was a baby who was lighter and could carry their own weight much more easily and therefore get a sense for their balance and everything. Nope, Charon was hundreds if not thousands of pounds and that was a lot of weight to heave off of the ground.

@Dread

Dread eyed Charon's legs, arms--then, quizzically and over his shoulder, the seabirds. He snorted with amusement.

He peered back to Charon. "I FEED THEM," he boomed. They were his tolerated, frequent companions as he flew around--unlike some of the other dragons who lived here, who snapped at them and drove them off. Jerks. The seabirds ate his scraps, and he'd never known them to be aggressive, except to one another. "THEY ARE PROBABLY HOPING YOU WILL FEED THEM. THEY ARE AFRAID OF BIG THINGS. THEY WILL NOT TRY TO EAT YOU," he reassured. They only ever attacked things far smaller than themselves, or ate carrion, but only stuff that was already dead. Then, they were like ants, carrying off anything they could.

Dread summoned up a banana, a brief spark of magic, then grabbed it in his jaws; he flung it over his shoulder, where it landed heavily between the birds--where they'd likely immediately devolve into fighting over the single magic fruit. It wasn't the fish he normally tossed or left them, or the meat scraps he left behind, but it was food regardless and many of them knew Dread as a source of food, by now.

Attention swept to Charon's wings, then, and he studied them. "YOU WANTED WINGS. YOURS ARE BIGGER, I THINK," he observed. "YOUR LEGS LOOK NORMAL." Maybe not Charon's normal, but--normal-normal, now. "IF YOU WANT TO LEARN TO FLY I CAN TRY TO TEACH YOU."

He blinked, considering. "AND IF YOU WANT TO MEET BLIGHT HE CAME HOME. HE BREATHES WATER, NOW."

Whatever that meant.

@Charon

CHARON
The very mountains whisper your name...

Charon blinked and sagged in relief, looking like a wet paper towel where he lay on the ground, limbs spread out awkwardly and only his head raised to look at Dread.

”Oh... that's comforting,” he said, watching the banana land and the birds attack it ravenously, still a bit... disheartened.

”Are they?”, he asked, trying to lift them, the instinct to flap suddenly programmed into his brain. He stopped the motion after he nearly toppled himself over, struggling to stand up using his new back feet.

After a few minutes of trying he lurched up onto his feet, stumbling forward before coming to a stop on shaky limbs. For the first time in his entire life his belly and tail were off the ground, the thick limb poised carefully to help him balance.

”Woah-”, he said, claws digging into the ground, feeling strangely high up for some reason, ”I'm... I'm standing!”

A startled laugh left his mouth as he took a cautious step forward, nearly falling over from the lack of one of his four supports, but he managed one step, then two.

”Flying? But what if I can't?”, he asked, looking back to Dread with wide eyes. Just walking was difficult, he couldn't imagine flying.

Charon stopped again and stood, his posture similar to Dread's but with plenty of differences. Heavy-set in the front with longer front limbs than his hind ones, making his shoulders arch slightly, his head resting a littler lower than the black dragon's. He was definitely not as graceful, with a thicker chest and a more filled out waist (not that he was fat, he was just more... worm-shaped). But overall, he looked like a proper dragon.

”... Hey uh... h-how do I look?”, he asked, wincing at his own shyness, ”I mean... do I look like a dragon now? Like... like you? A-and Bone and stuff?”

But as for Blight...

”Yeah,” he said, voice cracking with emotion as he sniffed and looked away, remaining as stoic as he could despite how his eyes watered, ”I-I'd love to meet 'im.”

@Dread

"MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY WALKING FIRST," Dread admitted, watching how Charon stumbled and fought to stay upright. He hadn't considered that walking would be hard. "TO LAND YOU HAVE TO RUN. I CAN SHOW YOU. BUT CAN YOU SWIM? IF YOU CAN SWIM WE CAN TRY OVER WATER. BUT LOW. FALLING FROM HIGH INTO WATER STILL HURTS," he explained, "IF YOU DO IT WRONG." He'd seen Blight dive from great heights, but that involved folding the wings and slipping in neatly, not slapping down like a cannonball failure. "FOR NOW THOUGH YOU CAN WALK."

Charon's question struck Dread as strange, and the way the black dragon tilted his head to peer over the blue body quizzically said as much clearly enough. "YOU ALWAYS LOOKED LIKE A DRAGON," he answered, puzzled.

Dread inhaled, looking off then toward his sea stack, and called out for Blight--what was intended to be a deafening bellow. It started off strangely quiet--"Bl-" and immediately devolved into a fit of coughing as a stray feather tumbled into the dragon's throat.

For a long moment Dread just stood there, leaning over his own wings, awkwardly choking and coughing on the beach.

@Charon

CHARON
The very mountains whisper your name...

”I don't know,” he said, ”I never tried. The water in Ursa was always so cold and I'd probably have frozen to death. And elsewhere it wasn't really deep enough.”

Charon took a few more cautious steps, his back legs lagging a bit. He forgot to use them every now and then, ending up stumbling and falling as he continued to walk circles around Dread, just trying to get used to moving and how his muscles worked.

”If Blight comes,” he said, making his way over to pat Dread's back awkwardly to try and help, ”Maybe he can be in the water when I try to fly the first time.”

He pulled away and sat down, lifting a front leg to spread his wing out, admiring it as he gazed over blue scales mixing with white. They looked like sheets of ice made into wings.

”Are you okay?”, he asked Dread after a moment, realizing that he was kind of massive up close. Not that he wasn't far away, but one of Dread's scales was huge, nearly as long as one of his fingers.

@Dread

As the coughing subsided, Dread shook himself, a little. He wing-walked to the water's edge, taking a long drink of the water--tipping his head back, bird-like, to gulp down individual sips. Then he glanced at Charon. "I AM ALL RIGHT," he confirmed, and then--as if this needed explaining--"I WAS COUGHING."

With that safely out of the way, he looked out across the water again. "WINGS MAKE IT HARD TO SWIM, BUT HARD TO SINK, TOO. YOU CAN TRY TO SWIM FIRST, MAYBE. IT WILL HELP, I THINK; FLYING IS LIKE SWIMMING. BUT IN THE AIR." At least, the movements were similar enough; and he figured the practice would test Charon's wing muscles, too. "THEN WE CAN KNOW IF YOU CAN SWIM."

Dread decided, then, to demonstrate: he walked out into the surf, then deeper--chest-deep, pushing out with his feet against each rush of the breakers cascading around his neck in white foam. When he kicked up into deeper waters, he sort of floated there, wings spread over the surface; then, with slow pushes and pulls, he drifted around with the current. It wasn't unlike the way a bat would swim, really, except his head was reared back in a serpentine manner to keep well clear of the surface, and his tail was sweeping to and fro behind him like a snake's.

"DO YOU WANT TO TRY IT?" he asked, and made his way back onto dry land, curving his head back around to peer up at his sea stack, again.

"BLIGHT?" he called again, and then inhaled, letting loose a mighty roar. He waited, and then yelled a second time: "BLIIIIIGHT?"

His voice didn't really carry over the roar of the breakers, and he shook his head, after a moment. "HE IS PROBABLY ASLEEP. I WILL GO AND GET HIM. TRY TO SWIM IN THE SHALLOW WATER?" he suggested.

He paced away, a little, then broke into a short run, each stride leaping a little into the air--then his pumping wings lifted him airborne. He streaked into the sky, curving away, lifted on the warmth of the updraft--drops of water streaking down behind him, catching the orb-light like falling diamonds.

@Charon

CHARON
The very mountains whisper your name...

Charon shakily followed Dread and nodded, watching the other walk into the surf with no hesitation. He followed with a little more of that and stopped when the water was chest-deep, eyeing it distrustfully. It felt... strange. It moved around him similar to a very thick fog, but obviously even thicker and heavier.

He lifted a leg and shook it off, not very fond of the feeling yet.

”Uh... yeah, I'll try it,” he said after a moment, wading in a bit further and finding it wasn't so hard to walk in it, ”Hey, this is kinda nice.”

Charon floated like Dread had previously, his tail swishing gently in the water. He looked back as Dread prepared to take off, panicking a little bit as he kicked his back legs weakly, only managing to spin around in a circle.

”Uh-”, he said intelligently, ”O-okay! I'll be fine don't worry!”

Mostly to console himself, but whatever. He wouldn't admit it.

Charon floated some more, his head held high and his wings spread, looking like a waterlogged bird than a dragon at this point. He managed to get himself turned back towards the shore and was inching back towards it, his tail waving behind him as he kicked his legs weakly.

”He made it look so easy...”, he grumbled to himself, kicking a bit harder.

@Dread

It was Blight that came in first: tattered wings flapping at a brisk clip, eyes bright with excitement. He arrowed for the blue-gray shape in the shallows, and he didn't slow: he curved out a little deeper and dove, crashing into the ocean with a splash.

He came up with an enthusiastic stare Charon's way. If he could've grinned, he would have.

"HEY," he called, swimming his way over. He'd learned well enough from his foray into the Black City (and he was never going back down there again); he still wasn't as smooth in the water as some, but he could breathe down there now, at least. And anyway-! New brother time!

"Dad-Dad says you're Charon-? Bone told me all about you--it's good to meet you! I'm Blight!"

He paddled a little closer, shaking his head briefly to get rid of some of the water coursing down his face. He eyed over the way the stranger was floating around in half-circles, and--with a friendly tone--asked, "You doing okay?"