2024-07-15 - starlight, starbright

There exists a moment in time when Tasted Fire learns the meaning of directed Heat, and that’s when the eggs bear the full brunt of the sun upon their shells. It shivers in delight beneath the shell, safe in its eggy membrane. The heat the sun gives is almost as brilliant as Gwillanth’s, almost as brilliant as Tasted Fire’s (though it cannot be more, because it is not, as Tasted Fire understands it currently, physically tangible).

Night falls as it had every so often (Tasted Fire had never counted how many times night fell before), and yet this time, Tasted Fire made a revelation. There were smaller suns at night! The heat wasn’t as intense, or actually it wasn’t there at all, but that was the most interesting part. It was strange how different the night and the day was when the egg wasn’t sitting safely inside the hatching sands.

The hatching sands that were no longer there.

It wasn’t the daytime that caused marvel to swirl around Tasted Fire’s mind. It wasn’t even the imposing wind, which the eggs had probably heard only in passing and sometimes howled around them. It was the nighttime, with its infinite possibilities, that captured the egg’s attention. It knew dragons basked in the day–often, the minds of dragons who basked and loved the sunlight leaked into its daytime thoughts–but something about the night called to it.

What were the stars like?

The moons?

Why couldn’t it hatch now and gaze upon the night sky?