Chapter 1205 — Pointing

In the hatchery, the two ravenous whelps had finally met the first meal of their dragon lives. Under Betty's direction, the sturdy attendants lugged over two great basins of freshly cut meat and two jars of clean water (bringing along, incidentally, a great heap of soft bedding enough to serve the whelps as a temporary nest), and the grave conversation among Gaoyang, Metzen, and Enya was thus temporarily interrupted. The delighted whelps drew every eye in the room.

The two little creatures, their scales not yet fully grown in and hardened, caught the smell of food and straight away abandoned the eggshells they had played with half the day, scrambling almost head over heels to the wooden basins of fresh meat. Gaoyang watched in astonishment as the young of a race at the very apex of the mortal orders flung themselves at the basins of raw meat — and then watched in still greater astonishment as they deftly snatched up slices of meat and tossed them straight into the air. The tiny whelps arched their necks, and bright red flames burst from their throats; the meat was seared half-done in the fierce heat, then fell into the gulping mouths of the whelps.

Sometimes, with a larger chunk, a single breath could not roast it evenly, and they would toss it up several more times, tumbling it until it was cooked through...

The whelps' manner of eating was plainly far more fastidious, and far more complicated, than Gaoyang had imagined.

"This is really... an eye-opener," Gaoyang, having watched slack-jawed for a good while, finally could not resist muttering. "They know from birth that meat has to be cooked before they eat it..."

"To humans, who cannot summon fire by instinct, cooking food before eating it is a complex and sophisticated way to feed — an important step in the history of civilization. But to dragonkind, born able to produce high-temperature flame, roasting food is merely an instinctive motion, even akin to part of the human act of 'chewing,'" Enya's soft voice, tinged with a smile, came from the eggshell, explaining with great patience. "This is the difference made by 'bodily gifts' in the course of biological evolution."

"...That really is quite reasonable." Gaoyang's expression went blank for a moment, and he muttered under his breath, while feeling a touch of emotion: a former deity was here giving him a popular-science lecture, guiding him to explain the behavioral laws behind supernatural creatures with scientific thinking — why did that feel so odd...

"After they finish this meat they'll likely demand more, but don't keep feeding them; the next meal must wait at least four hours," Enya's voice came again from beside him while Gaoyang muttered. "This amount is just right. In their first week of life whelps can't control their appetite well; feed them too much and they'll founder themselves. But you can give them more water — that's no problem."

"They won't go hungry, will they?" Metzen said with some worry. "I've heard young ones get hungry very easily. Can they really get enough to eat?"

"Rest easy, they won't starve — unless they get so hungry they start trying to eat their own eggshells, you needn't worry about their nutrition falling short," Enya explained with a laugh. "By the way, the eggshells must be kept — at least until the whelps are a year old. During this time the shells are their best toys and teething tools, and props that let them sleep at ease; they'll pick out the larger shell fragments themselves to use as pillows.

"But a whelp's skin and scales are still very fragile, so be careful that the sharper, more pointed shell fragments don't cut them — sand down the shells that aren't quite suitable. This is an important step in caring for whelps."

Gaoyang nodded rapidly as he listened. "Oh, don't worry, I'll have people see to it right away..."

"I meant Metzen," Enya cut him off before he could finish; her attention was fixed on Metzen. "Sanding down the whelps' eggshells and settling their sleeping place is the new mother's responsibility. In older times this was a skill dragonkind who hatched eggs by the ancient method had to master — and after seeing an adult sand down shells for them, the whelps will trust and rely on you all the more.

"Remember to leave a few shell fragments for Noreta to sand down as well, or the whelps won't acknowledge their 'other mother.'"

Metzen nodded again and again as she listened, and at the end could not help sighing with feeling: "So caring for whelps is such a learned business... I always thought..."

Gaoyang, listening nearby, looked equally moved, feeling that in this short while he had gained countless pieces of useless knowledge — though if one put it bluntly, this lore of whelp care would be priceless among certain scholars devoted to the study of dragonology. After all, back in the age when dragons had withdrawn from the world, they had managed to develop this discipline into seventeen or eighteen schools on the strength of fabrication and mutual flattery — and now the knowledge he was hearing came, genuine and true, from the mouth of a dragon god...

If nothing else, it was at least more reliable than things like the Compendium of Dragon Slaying.

Wild fancies flitted through Gaoyang's mind; meanwhile, seeing that the whelps could feed smoothly, Enya let out a slight breath of relief, and her attention returned to the matter they had been discussing.

"Judging by the state of Mossin Wildere as you describe it... he does indeed exhibit certain traits approaching those of the undead."

Metzen spoke without thinking: "But Chief Hragor has already confirmed it — Mojin really is a living, breathing person..."

Enya cut her off, a faint smile on her face: "The body is alive. What about the soul?"

Metzen fell silent at once, and she and Gaosong Tong both widened their eyes slightly.

"The soul knows no distinction between life and death, but it does pass through the stages of living and dying. For mortal races, this is very hard to discern with the naked eye — though not entirely impossible. Hragor probably just didn't look carefully enough," Enya said slowly. "Mojin Wilde is probably indeed a living person, but that does not mean he hasn't 'died once,' or 'died halfway'..."

Metzen sat frozen for a long while before she finally drew a soft breath and said in a low voice: "Speaker Anqian did say as much — they suspect Mojin Wilde has fallen into a state of being 'neither living nor dead'..."

"This will require you to send people to confirm in person, or at the very least to verify his identity first," Enya said, her "gaze" seeming already to rest upon Gaoyang. "I cannot return to Tar'lond now, nor is it convenient for me to contact the other dragons. This matter still has to be handled by you."