Pearl

AFFILIATION: ENIGMATICS

DESCRIPTION: Pearl is Ozensa’s adopted daughter and protege. Like her mentor, she is blind. However, Pearl seems to have the unique ability to see wisps of ancient spirits in her dreams- making her a valued oracle.
Like her mentor, Pearl is rather reserved and curt. However, she is thought to be moderately more approachable than her mentor, with many dragons coming to Pearl to relay messages to Ozensa due to their fear of the older Pearlcatcher.

———-
Cold. Such cold.

An icy, hard surface lay below the newly emerged hatchling, cold and uninviting. The small hatchling wriggled on the on the surface, letting out weak pleas for comfort. Where was her mother? The hatchling could smell the presence of others, her siblings perhaps? She could also detect the soft scent of her mother she had known since her egg, but nobody was coming to console her.

Sharp echoes of claws moving on the floor echoed behind her, and she was hit by a sharp scent. She was too young to name the emotion laden in the air, but it made her body stiffen, her heart race, and her blood run colder.

“Her eyes! What’s wrong with her eyes?!”

Mother?

The hatchling instinctively was drawn to the voice of her parent, desperately crawling across the blistering cold floor in attempt to reach her. But no matter how hard she tried, her parent only seemed to move further and further away from the newborn.

“She’s blind, can’t you see?”

A gruffer voice, this time. Her father, perhaps? She felt a slight rush of wind across her face, an object, presumably the forearm of the male dragon, had waved in front of her face.

“See? She can’t see us.”

“What are we going to do, oh please- what are we going to do?!”

The voice of her mother was shriller this time, the intensity of her voice making it the hatchling tremble. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she knew it had to do with her. Something was wrong with her.

“There’s nothing we can do. Look- we can’t take her with us. She will slow us down. They’re only a day’s travel behind us- she will get ALL of us killed!”

“We can’t just LEAVE her!”

She began to tremble again, distressed by her parents’ cries. Other voices joined in- weak whimpers of protest from her fellow newborn siblings. The cries of the other hatchlings seemed to upset her parents, prompted them to lower their tone. She heard her mother go over to them, bringing them close to her warmth.

But not her.

The newborn shuddered, closing her eyes. The fear and cold had begun to settle deep into her bones, bringing darkness to the edges of her mind. Distantly, she could hear the echoes of her parents’ murmurs, but even they too were fading.

Then, she saw.

Shadows of pink silhouettes, dancing in the darkness behind her eyes. They seemed to be speaking to her, but what they were saying she didn’t understand. Mostly, they seemed to be regarding her, analyzing this foreign body in their world. An alien feeling over-swept her, and the hatchling had a feeling that she was no longer in her own mind. But where she was, she had no answer.

But the images soon faded, their whispers becoming fainter. She felt a hard surface beneath her, and reality was returned to her. The scent in the cave was old, her family had left her. She was abandoned, alone. And yet, on the wind, she sensed something approaching.

More claw-steps, and a foreign scent entered the cave. One seemed almost familiar, the smell of a dragon like herself. But there were two peculiar, stronger scents she couldn’t recognize. The hatchling instinctively stilled her body.

“Looks like they cleared out, they used this place as a make-shift nesting ground before moving on. Cursed trespassing thieves-“

“Wait.”

A sharp, authoritative female voice pierced the air. The hatchling held her breath.

“Ajah, what is that?”

She knew.

She heard one of the foreign dragons approaching her. “Looks like one of the hatchlings didn’t make it. Pitiful little thing.”

“No, you’re wrong. It’s alive.” The familiar dragon approached her, giving her a curious sniff. Her ruse exposed, she began to shake once more.

“Well look at that! The little scrap is a fighter. Why did they leave her- wait a second.”

The first dragon was closer this time, near her face. “Her eyes, they’re like yours. I think she’s blind, pretty common when you’re born faceted right?”

Like yours?

The familiar dragon stood over her, nudging her gently with her nose. It was warm, and welcoming. She drew closer to the dragon, crying softly. The dragon seemed taken aback at first, flinching at her touch, but then her expression softened and she brought the hatchling closer.

“Yes, she’s blind.” She felt the female open her mouth, gently grabbing her by the scruff. “I’m taking her back with us.”

“Hey, you can’t just-!”

The third companion dragon, who had yet to speak, opened her mouth in protest. But when the dragon carrying her turned her head to look at her companion, something in her gaze must have told them protest was useless.

As the three dragons and the hatchling left the cave, the newborn finally felt herself, for the first time in her life, becoming calmer. She felt safe, protected by this dragon, who was somehow like her.

“Little scrapper needs a name, doesn’t she?” It was the foreign dragon again, Ajah?

“Pearl.” The reply was muffled, but clear enough to be understood.

“A pearlcatcher naming a pearl colored kid pearlcatcher Pearl, how... creative of you.”

“Shut it.”

———-

As Pearl grew, she came to understand the circumstances of her birth. Her parents had been thieves, attempting to steal arcane research from her adopted clan, The Enigmatics. The dragon who had carried her back to the clan was like her- a fellow Pearlcatcher dragon who had been born blind, named Ozensa.

Within the clan, Ozensa was by every right her teacher, mentor, and mother. Despite her normally cold and quiet demeanor, Pearl knew Ozensa was particularly soft on her. Although she didn’t know what it was, something about the tiny blind hatchling had awoken the hidden kindness and gentleness in Ozensa. Either way, the two were close, closer than most other parent-child bonds within the clan. Ozensa taught her how to live, how to thrive with her blindness- a trait which had almost condemned her to death.

And still, at night the pink silhouettes still danced in her mind. They whispered to her history long forgotten, futures unfulfilled, and, in her dreams, she saw what she knew was invisible to all others.





Art by: Dukedwagon