The birth of a dragon.

The irony of this situation is not lost on the black titan. He met Isopia when his dragon hatched; now he's heading to the creation of her own companion, the birth of the most important figure in her life. That fills him with a small spasm of jealousy, as it did when his sister's black hatched, but it's fleeting, momentary. He didn't know whether the egg Isopia was given at the God fight was indeed a dragon, but Vérzés' keen senses and quivering excitement tell him it is. The red perches on the stallion's shoulders, his claws hooked into tight black flesh, his serpentine neck tilted to peer around his master's neck whilst his spikes stand erect and his crimson eyes glow with anticipation.

The pair were already on the archipelago even before Vérzés began to chirrup and show Volterra mental images of a quivering bronze egg. The monolith doesn't quite comprehend how his companion can sense the birth of another of his species, but he also appreciates that there's a lot about dragonkind that he doesn't understand, despite his obsession with them. Dragon-boy to dragon-man, yet the scaled species are a wealth of secrets, secrets even he has no right to question. So he doesn't. He simply follows the blood-dragon's instructions, and pays little heed when Vérzés boosts from his shoulders and jets through the trees without a word. One scarred brow is furrowed, but he gives no other reaction to his bonded's disappearance.

He sees her, then; the towering form of Isopia. Her egg bobs in the water, and the massive young stallion slows his bumpy trot to stand still near to her. He fixes her with his crimson-eyed stare, one corner of his lips tilting up in a grin. "Deja vu, kis hollo." He is referring, of course, to their first meeting, when his blood-red egg became the partner of his mind and soul. There's a whisper of wind and a flash of leathery wings, and Vérzés drops the carcass of a massive fish at Volterra's feet, a gift for the newborn. Then, with a glance at the pulsing egg, he is gone again - far away, this time. Why? The stallion's mental voice is questioning, despite his promise not to. He would have thought the red beast would want to witness the hatching of another of his kind, to help ease the newborn into life, but it seems not. "Hatchling must see mind-friend first, not other dragon. If hatchling see dragon first, hatchling might not want mind-friend, hatchling might want wild-freedom. This hatchling strong - this hatchling make mind-friend with earth-girl. Hatching best not see other dragon until mind-bond done."

The crimson's reply isn't quite one he was expecting. Do dragons perhaps have a form of imprinting, where they bond to the first one they see? If they saw another dragon first, would they succumb to the call of the wild rather than the call of a strange kind of captivity? After all, the leviathan has noticed that bonding is not entirely perfect for a dragon. He has met wild dragons, and bonding seems to destroy a part of their sheer majesty, their iradescent lethal beauty. It stunts their growth, tames a part of their wildness, their fierce aggression; if Volterra was a dragon, he would rather remain wild than be tied to an animal that, ironically, he would usually see as prey.

Is bonding perhaps the equivalent of gelding a dragon? Asserting dominance, removing wildness, making it into a robotic ghost of itself?

But the giant doesn't dwell on this for too long. Bonding has given him the most important creature in his life, and Vérzés doesn't seem to miss what he could have been. Even when Volterra told him of his wild mother, the red did not express sorrow for the life he could have had. Shaking his colossal head to remove such thoughts, the beast looks back to Isopia. "Are you...excited?" Can she even feel that? Is she eager to embark on this next stage of her life, or will she see the companion as a burden?