Solemate

I am Alcandal’Thanazzar – or just Candle, to the mortals who would later come to know me. I was born a prince, the eldest son and heir of the Fourth Co-Queen of Zoalbar, kingdom of the Drakkins. My hematite scales bear the iridescent sheen of nobility, fragmenting the light into radiant bursts of opalescent ripples of color as the sun or moon reflects off at different angles. This is the start of my wondrous tale, one of a bond between two princes from opposite worlds and of the events destiny held in store for us both.

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It was my frequent habit to leave our western, offshore island home to roam the skies as exercise, surveying the continents and watching for any new landmarks that the mortals may have created. Or perhaps I might find the destruction of old ones. Sometimes, the mortal men would make great war, and other times they would stop and build new and bigger cities that prospered between the wars. The changes were always interesting to discover, and I had already witnessed many such changes in my roughly half-millennium lifetime. This week, I had chosen to roam a bit further than normal, perhaps three-quarters the way to the eastern shore of my usual haunt, the nearest continent.

Earlier, I had spotted a mortal woman leaving a caravan of wagons, some of which were covered, some open, by going into a forest alongside the road while clutching her babe to her bosom. It was hardly a remarkable event and one ordinarily forgotten by the end of the day. However, not but a half-hour later did I see her emerge and rejoin her caravan slightly further down the road, babe-less. A man greeted her and helped her back into their wagon as it made its way southward along the one road between two prominent mortal cities.

Now, she and I may have belonged to two very disparate species, but this I knew: this should be a most uncharacteristic act of a mother, a person who usually tends to be protective and viciously defensive of her young offspring, regardless of race. Intrigued at what I might find out, and partly fearing the worst, I flew down, invisibility cloaking me until I could alight upon the treetops, at which point I transformed myself into my mortal seeming, (an average, adolescent human male with deeply tan skin and hematite-colored eyes and hair,) adding an illusion of clothing for any potential stranger I might meet, and I climbed down to the forest floor.

Mentally retracing the steps between the points where the woman entered and left the forest, I forced myself to walk and search the likeliest path from start to finish. It wasn’t long before I caught their scent; an unclean pungency of filth that pervaded the clean brown and green forest smells of fresh soil and healthy plant life. I drew toward the direction where the stench grew stronger, and I finally came upon the mortal child, a babe in dirty swaddling, sleeping in a bed of soft leaves.

Kneeling quietly, not wanting to disturb the child, I leaned forward to get its personal scent through all the cloying filth that surrounded it. Ah yes, there it is. Nearly touching his face with my nose, I inhaled deeply, and from that, I could tell it was a male child, one of a descent from the eastern part of the continent. This could be any number of countries along the eastern coast, further east then either north or south of here. I really should make a point of rememorizing the temporal mortal names for the ever-changing demarcations they give the various bits of land. A scent of something… Flame and Ashes! A soporific! … also accompanied his exhaled breaths. So, she had drugged him to keep him docile until she could make her escape. A coward’s execution attempt, this one. She couldn’t possibly have been this child’s actual mother. No true mother would do this to their own child.

He stirred under me, and I pulled back slowly, hoping to allow him to sleep longer. He kicked his feet a little, possibly due to a harmless beetle starting to crawl up one, drawing my attention down to them so that I could brush off the beetle. For the first time in my multi-centuried life, I was shocked into inaction for a moment. It was in this fraction of a second, the sub-infinity of time spanning the perception, recognition, and realization of the ramifications or possibilities of what I was seeing, that both our lives changed course forever. Never in a dozen lifetimes would I have imagined I would see an image previously only shown in our oldest recorded tablets: the sole of his right foot bore the unmistakable birthmark of a Soulscale – the sign of a mortal born with the capacity to mentally meld with that of a Drakkin! This boy descended from an ancient line of mortals thought extinct by my kind, yet here was proof they existed still!

A hundred thoughts and emotions flew through me just then, but ultimately, I knew what I had to do: I needed my own mother’s advice. I couldn’t just leave this important child here to become something’s dinner. I waited for nightfall, guarding him closely. When it arrived, I carried him to the forest edge where I transformed back into my natural self. Clutching the babe carefully to nestle within the talons of my enclosed back foot, I launched into the night sky and invoked a quick spell for speed, hoping to reach home by dawn. Occasionally, I would breathe out and downward little bouts of whiteflame to warm the air as it flew past my head to my feet so that it would keep the boy warm during the flight.

For the first time ever, contrary to probably a dozen laws and possibly earning me one of as many punishments, a mortal would be coming into Zoalbar, and may my mother forgive me the transgression at least long enough to see why. May it also justify not sending me into exile as a result…