Kadere

KADERE

Claws clicked on damp stone. She looked back to the light for only a few seconds before she paced forward, letting the gloom swallow her.

Deep below, eyes flicked open. Blue. Brown. Watching. Waiting. Eager. Curious.

The darkness was complete. Kadere couldn’t see a thing. She hesitated, then looked up, casting a small point of light to hover in the air beside her. It illuminated nothing but the dripping shale walls.

The eyes shuttered, slanted. Light. Away. Burns. Out.

Kadere’s light vanished. She stared at the place where it had been - where she thought it had been. So it was true, what she’d been told. Any magic in this place would be swallowed.

She curled her claws into the floor, willing herself not to turn tail and run. She’d come here for a reason. Only these dragons, these creatures, could replace what she’d lost.

The clicking grew louder. Brown eyes watched the Pearlcatcher’s progress, blue eyes watched her progression.

The only indication that Kadere was moving at all was the degree of slope under her feet. For a few meters, the tunnel dropped steeply, then her pads hit stone much sooner than she’d expected. She stumbled. The ground was flat and sandy, giving way to her claws.

Tentatively she crept forward.

“Hello?” she called.

It spoke? How curious. How delightful. Blue eyes illuminated a wide grin. Brown eyes stayed steady, moved forward.

“My name is Kadere,” she called. “I’ve- I’ve come to bargain.”

C u r i o u s.

She stepped forward again, looking around blindly. The sand beneath her claws crumbled and gave way. Her foot splashed into icy water. She shrieked, scrambling back.

A low laugh echoed around the cavern.

“Hello?” Kadere called again. She wished her voice wouldn’t shake. It was so undignified.

Glowing brown eyes appeared in midair before her.

Kadere tried to scramble back once again, but the sand gave way beneath her, trapping and holding her up to her knees. She thrashed. The earth hardened, cutting into her scales, making her gasp.

“Little hatchling,” crooned the mouth that belonged to those eyes. They came forward, then past her. The heavy coils of a Spiral dragon draped themselves over Kadere’s back, under her belly, around her neck, until its tail rested at her throat and its eyes were merely centimeters from Kadere’s own. “Baby hatchling. What has you so distressed?”

“I’m not a hatchling,” Kadere managed. Its breath smelled like rot. And that accent - that wasn’t an accent she’d ever heard before. Elongated vowels, breathy consonants…

“You’re the witch,” she said. “Aren’t you.”

The Spiral laughed in her face, breathing death and decay into Kadere’s lungs, seemingly not noticing when she gagged.

“I thought you came to bargain,” it mocked. “Or have you learned lies, hatchling? Have you picked up the filthy habit from your mother? Nasty, nasty lies.”

Kadere froze still. “What do you know about my mother?”

The Spiral constricted around her chest, its lips splitting into a sharp, yellowed grin. “I know all, hatchling,” it breathed.

Kadere felt a prickling at her throat. Then a sharp pain. Blood, warm and thick, ran down her scales, ran down the Spiral’s tail.

”Come with me,” said her mother. “We won’t go far.” And Kadere had followed - followed to the river, trusted blindly. She’d tried to follow when her mother flew away. She could not. And the sun set upon her.

Kadere struggled, but the rock and the Spiral held fast.

A younger time. The feeling of a pearl clearing Kadere’s throat, the pride swelling in her breast as she deposited the pearl between her tiny front claws. She licked it clean of slime and saliva, and keened her protest when Mother took it, examined it. Her keen fell silent when Mother’s face contorted and her claws crushed Kadere’s pearl.

“Stop it,” Kadere croaked.

”Not good enough,” her mother hissed. “Not perfect.” The dust of her pearl fell around Kadere as her mother’s wingbeats buffeted the nest.

“Isn’t that what you want?” the Spiral hissed. Kadere still saw her mother flying away, saw the broken remnants of her pearl. “The power to change all of that? Hmm?”

The vision vanished, and once more all Kadere saw was those brown eyes. She coughed to clear her throat of the pearl-phlegm that had nowhere to go.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. Please. I’ve come to bargain, give me the power.”

“Well,” drawled the Spiral- then the eyes disappeared, and its coils clutched Kadere even tighter, and it dropped like dead weight. Fast asleep.

Kadere waited for a few moments.

The earth turned to sand once more and released her.

“Uh,” she said, and awkwardly stepped back, dragging the Spiral with her. “Are you- gonna wake up, maybe?”

No response.

“Oh, come on,” said Kadere. Her heart sunk. “Please? Wake up? I don’t want to have to wait here. It’s creepy.”

The Spiral snored. That same stench of rot rose to meet Kadere’s nostrils. She gagged and turned her head aside, fighting the urge to retch.

“Right,” she said. “I can wait in the sun.”

She turned to leave, hoping she knew where the exit was. Right behind her, it should be. She hadn’t made any turns when walking into the cavern or down the tunnel.

Tentatively, Kadere stretched out a claw, feeling to see if the sand was solid. She bumped into a warm body.

Blue glowing eyes opened.

Kadere screamed and stumbled back.

The Guardian leapt up and pounced for her, slamming her to the ground with the Spiral still wrapped around her, holding her pinned to the sand flats as Kadere struggled. Its blue eyes pierced hers.

“This is your moment,” it said. Unlike its Spiral companion, the Guardian’s voice was warm, distinctly feminine. But her claws pricked Kadere’s delicate wings. “Yes- yes. I can see it. You may leave if you wish. You may leave and live out a life of mediocrity and longing for something you will never have.”

The Guardian’s claws dug into Kadere’s wings, and Kadere went limp with fear. The Spiral gave another shuddering snore.

“I wanted to bargain,” she whispered, clinging to that last hope. The Guardian trilled. A laugh? A sound of anger? Kadere wished she’d never come here.

“You can,” hissed the Guardian. “Make your bargain. Seal the pact. What have you to offer us in exchange for the power you seek?”

“What do you want from me?” Kadere’s voice trembled.

The Guardian blinked at her. Then it threw its head back and trilled - long, loud, echoing, until the cavern (this must be a cavern) was filled with the sounds of a thousand Guardians cackling.

“You should not have said that,” it finally gasped. “It is not wise to offer us what we desire. But I will be more merciful than my sibling. I will take something that you shall not miss- much. Now. Set forth, jewel-hatchling Kadere, and receive your-”

Kadere opened her eyes.

She lay flat on her back in the Tsunami Flats. Gentle waves of salt water lapped over her outstretched legs and exposed belly. The sky above was very blue and very light.

She turned over and scrambled to her knees, then her feet.

What had happened? Her memories faded in and out of focus. She had gone to the cave, yes, but how had she gotten out? Did she make her bargain?

Kadere sunk her claws into the coarse beach sand, willing herself to remember. And something tugged at her heart. At a void in her belly that had been there since her mother destroyed her pearl.

The sand stretched, bubbled, cascaded from a perfectly formed pearl.

It caught the light as lapping waves washed it clean, as it shone white and gold and purple and all the colors Kadere so loved. She scooped it up reverently in both her forepaws. It was the perfect weight - not too light, not too heavy - and it was the perfect shape for her, just like her old pearl, just like she’d always wanted.

“Mine,” she whispered, then it became a shout. “Mine, mine, mine!”

She clutched the pearl to her chest and dissolved into hysterical laughter.


In the cave deep below the earth, the Guardian watched the embarrassing scene within one of the cavern’s tidepools. The Spiral draped itself over the Guardian’s neck and squinted at the water.

“She’ll find her clan,” it hissed, “won’t she? Find the misfits, the outcasts, and make her home among them with her enchantments and her jewelry. Be the witch among the monsters.”

“Yes,” the Guardian responded. “Yes. And someday, she will die-”

They shared a grin and a chorus.

“And her soul shall be ours.”

Bio written by the winderful blazingsnark

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╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮ jewlery crafter cautious ● cold ● creative pronouns (gender); orientations ♥ mate ╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯ ╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮ "Come with me," her mother had said just moments after glancing at her sleeping sibling. "I want to show you something. We won't go far." Curious, Kadere obeyed without hesitation, and never saw her sibling again. Betu lead her to a small stream, pointed out a few smooth stones after they drank, then crept away while she was distracted. When Kadere heard the sound of wings easily lifting her mother into the air, her tiny legs desperately gave chase, but it was already too late. She only realized that she was lost and alone when the sun dipped below the horizon. ╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯ ╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮ TRIVIA Her original pearl was destroyed by Betu. Resents her mother; can't help but feel envious when she sees children with their parents, then immediately feels guilty for inadvertently separating herself from her clutch sibling all those years ago. Something here?. RELATIONS relation, relation, relation ╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯

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