The shadows caress him like great blackened fingers, drawing the goliath deeper into their embrace. They touch, fondle, feel their way into his pores, into his mind, a mind that's suddenly drifting back, back, back...

The forest was afire that day.

It was a dark spring evening, one of those where the night seems almost like an insult after the long, languid warmth of the day. It was an evening like any other for the black colt who slipped slowly, carefully, through the trees. He was only a handful of months old, all gangly limbs and overgrown feet, assets he had not yet grown into (but he would, oh, he would!). His bright red eyes were alight with curiosity and not a hint of fear as they caught sight of the flame that tore the forest in two, and the greed that glowed in those young eyes was quite alarming to behold.

There was a roar, then; a savage howl, the scream of a dragon. The black boy's stride suddenly became hurried, shifting into a heavy gallop that ate up the hard ground beneath him. Faster and faster he went, until...

He burst out into a clearing, looking around with those earnest red eyes. A massive bronze dragon - larger than any he'd seen before, so big it could have carried him away like prey - was rising from the ground, his fury something to behold as he ripped the tops off trees and tore huge furrows into the earth with his talons and tail. He roared, and he rose, ascending from the chaos into the heavens.

Volterra stood in stunned silence for a moment. He had just seen a wild dragon in all its splendour, and it had been glorious! It was worthwhile noting that the boy adored dragons, worshipped them, and desired one of his own more than anything else. He envied those who had already bonded, and craved it for himself; part of the reason he was so muscular for his age was because he had trained tirelessly to try and make himself stronger and more appealing to a potential scaled suitor.

His gaze shifted down, down - and there on the ground lay a wild green dragon. She (for the colt's studies told him greens were always female) was smaller than the bronze, but still quite huge; he thought for a moment of his father's green, Cynder, but there was nothing tame about this particular drake. She was magnificent, and yet...she was broken. Her wings were coiled around her, and one was badly maimed, the bone showing clearly through the jade membrane. Blood oozed from between her scales, and she was breathing heavily. It did not take Volterra long to realise that she was the victim of a savage attack from the bronze - but why? He did not know, and he never would.

Dotted around the dying green was a rainbow of colours; shattered dragon eggs in every shade, and broken pieces of nest as well. The colt felt something odd in the depths of his chest. Was it pity? Sympathy? Whatever it was, he knew he could not let the green die alone. He moved to her, slow and cautious as though approaching a wild animal - which, he reasoned, he was. She lifted her head, glared at him, and tightened her wings around whatever she was holding beneath her body.

He should have left - he had no right to interfere in nature. Yet the thought of a predator killing this magnificent creature sickened him - she deserved to die with dignity.

So he stood by her, a black sentinel, and guarded her from the howls and screams of the night. As the light slowly died from her eyes, she shifted - and from the folds of her wings rolled a single red egg, intact. The oval moved inexorably towards him and stopped at his hooves, where it glimmered like a precious ruby. The green fixed him with one intelligent eye, under no illusions about the gift she had just given him - and then she died.

That was the day he learnt that maybe empathy wasn't just an emotion for the weak, that kindness could be shown without making one any less of a man. Perhaps doing something good could yield rewards, too, although unfortunately such emotions did not come naturally to the colt and never would. He was still bad at heart, yet the warmth he'd shown towards the dying green had given him what he'd craved his whole life.

The memory zoomed forward a couple of days, and the boy was back in the forest, his egg cracking and wobbling in front of him. A red muzzle burst out of the shell, followed by a pair of wet crimson wings, until finally the whole baby dragon tumbled unceremoniously onto the ground. He was powerfully-built, with thick limbs and a long, dexterous tail ending in a sharpened fork, and his eyes were a paler version of his scales - red. He was magnificent, and he was Volterra's.

The boy would never forget the moment he felt the tiny draconic consciousness in his mind. He would never forget how it felt to be whole, as though the red had been missing from him this whole time, like the piece of the puzzle you don't realise you've lost until you find it. In his boyish mind, he decided to give the strong creature a strong name - Vérzés, which meant 'bleeding' in the language taught to him by Mother. When his adult self looked back, he scorned this younger version for the name, but at the time he'd thought it the height of cool. He fed the hatchling meat that he had caught himself, and revelled in the emotions and feelings that rocketed through his mind.

Then, in the distant corners of the memory, she arrived in her raven form - young and nubile and beautiful with a question on her lips about the red's name, not knowing that she was about to weave herself into the threads of the little black boy's life. Kis hollo. Perhaps that was what made this memory stick so greatly in Volterra's mind, because it wasn't just the day he first shared his soul with another creature.

It was the day he shared his heart, too.

The blackened colossus shifts, and on his back Vérzés does, as well. Gone is that little hatchling - the red is a fully-grown adult dragon now, a killing machine, master of frost and claw and tooth. But Volterra still thinks often of that day, that beautiful, wonderful day, when the ruby dragonling deemed him worthy to bond to.

Vadir is nowhere to be seen - it is almost as if she knows this is a sacred moment between her red brother and their bonded, and even a queen like her knows when it is best not to intrude.

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OOC: If chosen, Vol would love some armour that collapses into something small when not in use, and ideally something dragon-related to fit with his memory. An idea I had was maybe armour made from the bones of the wild green dragon that he sat with when she gave him Vérzés' egg? Other than that, I'd love the admins to decide something :D Sorry for the length! TL;DR Vol is remembering Vérzés' egg finding and hatching.