The Great Dragon
Did they ever tell you where the scalefolk came from?
No?
Well, do you know why scalefolk all have five letter names?
When the gods made the world, they made the sky and the sea, the forests and the mountains and the fields. And when they had finished, they made the people. The Mountain made the furfolk and the Lady made the forestfolk, the Wanderer made the elves, and Aedfex the humans.
The Great Dragon carried her own broods. Her first child shone bright and hot, and he flew into the sky to become the first sun. Her second brood was a pair of twins, pale and luminous, who followed their brother to become the moons, to watch over their mother’s work from on high. Her third and fourth children were strong and fast, and they became the tides and the wind. And finally, the Dragon laid five eggs, so small that she could hold them all in one claw.
But the Dragon was weak and tired, so she searched for somewhere safe to rest. Each beat of her wings shook the world, because the Great Dragon was so enormous that she crossed the entire land in only five days. She went to each of the other gods, to see if they could give her somewhere to rest. In the north, she searched for the Lady, and a place to sleep, but the scent of the forests made her ill, so the Dragon continued on her way. She went to the Mountain, but the furfolk were so busy making new things that the sounds kept her awake. The Wanderer sent word that he had a place for her, but the Dragon couldn’t find him, for he couldn’t stay still. And as Aedifex was building his great city, there was nowhere for the Dragon to rest, so he suggested she go to the east.
When she came to the east, to the edge of the world, the Great Dragon lay down at last. But she still couldn’t rest, because her eggs hadn’t yet hatched. Then, she met five humans. Aedifex had told them what she had done, that she’d given them the sun and the moons, the tides and the winds, and the Great Dragon’s first four children had told them why their mother was crossing the land and shaking the world with her wingbeats. The humans were grateful, to the Dragon, and offered to guard her eggs so that she could rest.
When the Great Dragon woke, the humans were gone, and her eggs were too, and she was afraid that the humans had betrayed her. But as she raised up her head, she saw the humans approaching her, and with them came her fifth brood. They weren’t bright and terrible like their siblings, instead they were clever and wise. As the Great Dragon had flown across the land looking for somewhere to land, as they slept in her hand, they had learned from everything that the other gods had done.
When the fifth brood had hatched, the first thing that they had seen was the humans, and so they changed to look like them. They had neither tails, nor wings, nor claws, with soft skin instead of hard scales. But they kept their mothe’s horns, and their mother’s eyes, and some of them kept a few scales. They wanted to know more about this new world, and on her back, the Great Dragon raised up the mountains of Teveir, where the fifth brood decided to build a city in which to keep everything that they learned. Some of the humans stayed there, and some of the fifth brood followed the humans back to their home. And since then, for the dragons who founded Teveir, and the days that their mother carried them, every scalefolk has five letters in their name.
