fandomania | The Adventure continues... (Reply)

It was all that I could do to not fret myself to death. When I started pacing up and down, I began to notice that my children and hatchlings were picking up on my agitation. I had to calm myself down and think about other things, so that I would not unduly upset them. I began to play games with them so as to occupy myself and keep myself from worrying about what was happening with the raid.

When waves of earthquakes rippled by us, I knew that it had begun and I had to keep not only myself but all of my young ones from panicking. It wasn't long before columns of smoke could be seen arising from the general area of Haven. It was within an hour I started hearing victorious thoughts. But it was four hours after that that the dragons returned and with them came hundreds upon hundreds of hatchlings of every color and kind of dragon in pitiful states of exhaustion and illness.

Our hatchlings:

Our eggs:

In all my years in Freedonia, I had never seen hatchlings in such bad shape. It seemed a miracle that they were still alive. Although there were half a dozen white dragons tending to them, there were just too many sicklings and not enough to care for them.

Donal volunteered to brew healing poultices, which I told him to start, while my younglings and I searched for the herbs that he would need. All that day, all through the night and well into the next morning, the dragons, Donal and I tended the sick hatchlings. I wish that I could say that all of them survived, but I can not. A handful of them were just too wounded and too malnourished and abused to survive. But they died amongst friends and those who loved them and their passings were as painless as we could make them. The rest of the hatchlings responded to our care and gradually regained their strength and wellbeing.

Soon there came the question of what to do with all of these babies. We couldn't just set them free. Some might survive okay, but most wouldn't. If Freedonia had been whole and not overrun by Georgists, it would have been just a simple matter to take them there and they would have found plenty of families to take them in and care for them. But that was no longer an option. I didn't know the towns and villages that were ahead of us. If they were anything like Haven, then it wouldn't be wise to take them there. The only option that seemed apparent to me was to get the dragons themselves to adopt these orphans.

Dragons didn't like taking in others that weren't of their own bloodlinea. That is how Freedonia came into being and became protectors of dragons. Because of this attitude, I spent many hours arguing with the wild dragons, telling them how cruel and ironic it would be for them to have rescued these hatchlings from the Haveners only to allow them to die from neglect and the harsh reality of nature. If I could have, I would have adopted all of the hatchlings, but with the journey that we were on, it took all of my energy to care for the ones I already had. To add hundreds more would have been impossible. And so, I continued to argue and guilt the wild dragons into taking in these young ones. Eventually, I wore them down and they agreed to take in all of the rescuees and care for them until they were adults. In their heart of hearts, they knew that this was the right thing to do.