Chapter 39: A Really Old Dragon.
Elian somehow ended up first in the line that formed, Milena behind him, and the entire class filing into a neat row behind her.
Miss Talia waved him forward with an easy, encouraging gesture, already sizing him up, most likely deciding on how much he could handle before she interfere.
"Alright. Elian Valcourt, was it? I’ve heard quite a bit about you already, though I try not to let rumors color a first assessment."
She nodded toward the open middle of the yard.
"Just walk out there and stand still. You don’t need to call anything, I’ll ask the beasts to take a look at you, anyone that finds you interesting will come forward by themselves.
A small pause.
"Don’t project anything, don’t do that thing where you try to look approachable—animals see through that faster than people do, ironically. Just be exactly as unbothered or as nervous as you actually are."
"That’s oddly specific advice."
"It’s the only advice that actually works."
She crossed her arms, watching as he stepped out into the open grass.
"Everything else other than your true feelings is theater, and theater doesn’t fool anything with actual instincts."
Elian walked out slowly, staff in hand, acutely aware of the entire line watching him—Milena’s sharp attention just behind him, the low murmur of the rest of the class settling into curious quiet.
Though for the first time in a long while, he felt like he could manage just fine even with the attention on him.
He stopped roughly in the center of the yard and simply stood there, not entirely sure what ’unbothered’ was supposed to look like when performed on command, which felt like a contradiction in terms.
Though he tried his best to do exactly that, pulling from his experience of trying to get the Everbloom to co-operate with him.
Professor Fenn closed her eyes and sent out what felt like a pulse of mana.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
The drakes near the pens didn’t so much as lift its head.
The oversized birds along the fence line stayed perched, uninterested.
The large black snake lurking in the grass too, looked unbothered.
Then, from the reinforced enclosure at the yard’s far edge—the one Elian hadn’t gotten a proper look at yet—something shifted.
A low, rumbling sound, more felt than heard, vibrated faintly through the ground beneath his boots.
Fenn’s easy expression sharpened into something more alert.
"Huh,"
She said, already moving toward the enclosure herself, tone shifting from casual instruction into something considerably more focused.
"That’s new."
She turned to Elian, beckoning him close, then turned to the entire class.
"Everyone stay where they are, don’t move until i tell you to."
The rumbling grew louder, clearer as Elian closed the distance to the pen, his nerves starting to act up despite his best attempt at controlling it.
Even as he stopped near the fence, whatever was inside didn’t come into view yet, but the sheer weight of the sound was already more than enough for Elian to understand that it didn’t need to be seen to be taken seriously.
"Alright, now stay where you are. Make sure that staff of yours don’t act up when i open the gate okay?"
Elian froze exactly where he stood, staff gripped loosely rather than white-knuckled, some part of him registering that the old instinct to brace hard would probably make whatever was coming worse rather than better.
The gate of the enclosure groaned open under Miss Talia’s hand, and the thing inside finally stepped out into the light.
It was enormous—easily twice the size of the drakes dozing by the pens, built low and powerful. It had a scaled hide the deep grey-blue of storm clouds, with a crest of jagged spines running from its skull down the length of its spine.
Two gigantic wings lay folded on its sides, the thickness of it looking like it could create storms with just a swing. Its eye, the one that was blinded and wasn’t cloudy, fixed on Elian. It was slitted and pale, unnervingly intelligent in a way that made the yard’s earlier casual atmosphere evaporate entirely.
"That," The professor said, positioning herself between the students and the beast while not quite blocking its line of sight with Elian. "Is a really, really old dragon."
She hesitated.
"We’ve never been able to exactly place her age, but it’s easy to guess that it’s somewhere in the thousands."
Elian blinked, staring back at the dragon that studying him.
The dragon’s low rumble hadn’t stopped, but something in its posture had shifted. It was no longer defensive, Elian realized slowly, more like focused, head lowering slightly, nostrils flaring in his direction.
Miss Talia gave him an impressed frown, looking between the dragon and Elian.
"She’s not treating you like prey, or an enemy for that matter."
She walked up to the gigantic beast, tenderly taking it’s head in her arms and giving the old dragon a few rubs.
"She think you’re an equal,"
She waved Elian closer, motioning him to hold out his arms.
"It’s never happened in a long time, ever since i found her in forest on the western border. She’s been out here since. Never let anyone else close, not even me most days. I feed her, check on her, that’s about the extent of what she tolerates."
Fenn kept one hand resting against the dragon’s massive jaw, gentle, practiced.
"Whatever she’s seen of you Elian, she’s decided it means something good. Go on. Slow."
Elian stepped forward, arms held out the way Fenn had shown him, heart hammering loud enough he was fairly sure the dragon could hear it.
Up close, the damage he registered earlier was even harder to look past—the clouded eye, the scarred flank, the labored rasp underneath every breath she took.
But for one, she didn’t feel dangerous anymore, not in this proximity. She felt like something ancient that had simply run out of energy to spend on making new connections, patient in the specific way only the truly exhausted managed to be.
The dragon lowered her head into his arms without hesitation, heavy and warm despite the visible frailty underneath, and let out a long, rattling breath that stirred his hair.
She knows,
Elian thought, putting the pieces together.
She knows what Kaveri is, she can sense it. She’s trying to find a companion, a familiar face after so long.
Fenn watched the two of them with an expression Elian couldn’t quite place. It was somewhere between reverence and old, private grief.
"She’s not going to be around much longer," She said quietly, more to herself than to him, or maybe to the class still watching silently from behind them.
"I’ve known that for a while now. I think, some days, she knows it too."
A pause, her hand still resting against the dragon’s jaw.
"I’ve never seen her do this with anyone. Not once, in all these years. She must really like you if she’s this gentle with you on first meeting."
The dragon shifted, one great clawed foot dragging slow and deliberate through the dirt, and pulled back just enough to look at him properly with her one clear eye.
Then, with the careful, painstaking effort of a creature whose every movement now cost her more than it once had, she turned and made her way back toward the enclosure, not fleeing exactly, but with gait of something that had exhausted it’s capacity for socialization for one day.
Which in Elian’s humble opinion was, a perfectly reasonable course of action.