Avishraa Reloaded

• Age:
• Formal Name: Sriatha Vedetha Iliritha Karanutha avi’Pellitha tel’Sibratha
• Common Name: Ilirith
• Familiar Name: Iliri
• Mana type: Sapphire

A deep green over most of the body, shading to yellow on the belly and undersides of the tail, neck, and throat. The black marks of the Chosen appear in a pattern of small spots covering the top of the head and extending partway down the back of the neck. Eyes are a slightly purplish blue. Lean build, not for developmental reasons, but from exercise and restricted diet. Wiry in the arms and chest, but muscles in both legs are badly atrophied; this leads to a somewhat labored gait, and she has extreme difficulty running. She suffers periodically from spasms and convulsions, particularly in her limbs but occasionally through the rest of her body.

Ilirith’s innate magical abilities consist almost entirely of enhanced psychic powers beyond the Avishraan norm:

Her psychic perception is more sensitive than in baseline Avishraans. She can detect organisms at a lower threshold of mental complexity, and at a greater distance, than usual, though to detect them very far beyond physical hearing range she must be actively concentrating on doing so; if her mind is only passively “listening”, she is restricted to that range.

Ilirith is a skilled telekinetic. She can apply considerable speed, force, and precision of movement to matter without physically touching it. She uses this ability frequently while hunting, as it partially compensates for her inability to move quickly; she is capable of hurling objects, such as her spear or daggers, from a distance with far more force than unaided muscle power would allow, which makes her am extremely dangerous foe at range.

Her ability to affect objects heavier than a few tens of pounds is limited, but she is capable, at least at close range, of “hitting” even an adult Avishraan and at least making it felt. Likewise, she can deflect physical matter directed at her, subject to the same weight limits.

Different phases of matter respond differently to telekinesis; the less solid is the matter that one attempts to affect, the harder it is to “grip”. Solid matter is easily affected, liquids can be directed by are easily “spilled”, and gases and plasmas can only be imprecisely affected. Energy cannot be directly controlled at all, and is only affected by telekinesis via interaction with controlled matter (and then only weakly; for example, slowing the rate of heat transfer through a material).

In addition, she has several learned skills:

Ilirith is acquainted with several forms of flat-surface enchanting, and has particular practice with those designed to immobilize and trap via field effects (such as localized increases in gravity and/or surface friction, and force-barriers).

Ilirith was taught in the wart of Writing by her mother prior to the latter's death. Quantifying her level of skill, as with any Writer, is difficult; in her case, especially, she has not Written enough worlds to be judged well. The most that can be said is that she has a firm grasp of the principles needed to Write stable worlds, both in the act of Writing itself (i.e. description) and in designing a world to be Written (physical and geological elements).

If there is a gap in her knowledge and experience, it is in the realm of biology and ecology; partly this is due to the death of her mother before receiving extensive lessons on the subject, and partly it is due to a preference for Writing worlds that have a low chance of hosting potentially hostile lifeforms. Although it is entirely possible to Write worlds with complex yet relatively unspecified biospheres, most of Ilirith's distinctive works are those with minimal biospheres but useful and/or unusual abiotic properties.

She has a particular uncompleted book that is a long-term project of hers, but it is unclear what she intends to achieve with it.

Ilirith has spent over six Avishraan centuries in the deserts of Tarrabor either by herself with with her mother, who was little able to fend for herself for most of that period. She therefore learned from an early age how to support herself with little or minimal aid: how to hunt, butcher and preserve meat; how to manufacture and use simple containers, tools, and devices; the arts of physical and psychic stealth; how to anticipate weather and other natural phenomena and react to them accordingly.

Ilirith's parents were Pellith, a writer of linking books, and Sibrath, a student of climatology. The two were both a couple and a professional team, collaboratively exploring and studying Pellith's worlds. Ilirith hatched during her mother's work on Tarrabor; as soon as it was completed, and her parents began going on expeditions to the world, she accompanied them. Despite the relative peril of living outside of Udunshraa, it was not as unsafe for a child as many Davir Sria might have expected; Tarrabor was devoid of large fauna, the most dangerous organisms being the spiny but herbivorous ssathri, and the family's base camp, placed in an oasis, sat directly next to the linking book to Avishraa and was therefore only an instant from the safety of civilization.

In her earliest years, Ilirith saw Udunshraa and Tarrabor as near-equal seasonal homes. The family returned from Tarrabor regularly for supplies, and for social and family visits; during the worst of the sandstorm season they remained in Udunshraa for months at a time. It was during one of these sabbaticals that the Hzataalar Kaea progrom against the Davir Sria hit its stride. Amid the panic and emotional turmoil, and the bloodshed outside the Citadel walls, the family was among those lured into the open; Sibrath's brother and nephew had already been captured and tormented, and his mate and child, who had few mindlinks besides to him and each other, followed. Once outside, the parents were attacked and separated, and Ilirith fled with her father, who was cornered and violently killed in front of her. Pellith arrived too late to help him, but managed to force him away from Ilirith long enough to collect the child and retreat back to Udunshraa. Panicked and maddened by the loss of her mate, Pellith returned to the library and linked through to Tarrabor, taking her child with her.

The loss of her father, and the manner of it, was traumatic for Ilirith, but the exile on Tarrabor was not. She already considered it home - her only home, now. Udunshraa, whatever happy times had passed there before, had become a place of terror and death, surrounded by killers, and she had no desire to go back. On Tarrabor, at least, there was no living thing she feared; her mind was not fully developed, but she had long before reached an adult size that had allowed her to hunt and kill nearly any animal available. Her practice in doing so became important in keeping them alive, since without supplies from Udunshraa there was no other source of food.

As time went on and Ilirith began to mature, her role in their survival began to dominate in other ways as well. The events leading to their presence on Tarrabor had left Pellith emotionally shattered and mentally scarred, and she slowly but steadily worsened as time went on. Although she taught Ilirith about enchantments, Writing, and whatever other subjects she possessed knowledge of, she never managed to adapt to permanent life on Tarrabor, and required more and more care from her daughter as time went on; by mid-adolescence, the young dragoness was the sole source of support for both of them. It did not help either of their mental states that their mindlink, to some extent, allowed Ilirith to share in her mother's fears, memories, and hallucinations.

The both of them lived in mortal terror of what might follow them one day through the book to Tarrabor, still somewhere back in Udunshraa. Neither of them dared to go back and destroy it, and in any case the risk of separation was too great; Pellith was too confused to be trusted with the task, and if Ilirith destroyed the book in a fashion that left her unable to return, Pellith would be left to fend for herself. But life in the oasis, though not hard, was lived in the shadow of the link-in point from Udunshraa, and the possibility of an enemy appearing in their midst continued to hang over them.

As their time in exile approached four hundred years, Ilirith was old enough and hardened enough that she was able to range far away from the oasis. Exploring some rocky hills out in the wastes, she came across a cave that was difficult to see from the lands below, and - just as important - had access to fresh water from some reservoir far below. Realizing that it would make a far safer, if less convenient, home than the one in the oasis, she planned to move herself and Pellith there. Once the move was completed, she would only have to return to the oasis to hunt, and her mother could be at a sufficient distance from discovery that, perhaps, she could finally have a chance at peace of mind. She felt a sense of urgency in this; as Ilirith's education had arrived at some degree of completion, Pellith had been showing less and less interest in living. She ate and drank only enough to stall comments from her daughter, and wept on a near-daily basis.

Despite Ilirith's best efforts, her hopes of reversing Pellith's decline were in vain. Though most of their things were moved to the cave, Pellith's health failed before she herself could be moved. Ilirith helpless watched her slip quickly and quietly away, buried her as best as she could in their former home, and left, moving into the cave she had prepared. And there she stayed.

She thought that, before, she had felt alone and lost. Her mother had not been in a state to provide much company, and the years had blended into each other. Now it was worse. No one to talk to, the days filled up by the daily journey to the oasis to watch and hunt. What little free time she had was taken up by Writing, which she counted among the few joys she had left. There was nothing left to do, she felt, but survive, and watch, and wait… and contemplate what had brought her to this. What had brought all her people to this.

Ilirith survived. She watched. She waited. And she planned.

Ilirith's defining characteristic is what she calls “caution” or “prudence”, although the extremes to which she sometimes takes it might cause others to label it paranoia. She is old enough to have been alive the time of the Culling, the genocide of the Davir Sria and other Avishraans, and although just a child at the time, she appears to have suffered some amount of trauma at the time. The nature of her experience is not one she is eager to share, but it has left her with a fear of being tracked by the Hzataalar Kaea or other enemies, and (to a lesser extent) of falling victim to less sophisticated dangers, such as starvation, both of which have influenced her skill set. She is a planner by nature, attempting to be prepared for unfavorable outcomes far in advance (and becomes very flustered when faced with an unfavorable outcome she had no way of being prepared for).

This sense of caution, combined with a certain pragmatic attitude toward committing violence, developed in response to the harsh realities of desert survival, Ilirith is not welcoming to intruders into space she thinks of as “hers”, and will tend to be prepared to greet them with traps and weapons if she can at all manage it. Provided they can survive this sort of greeting, however, or if Ilirith can be pacified and made to feel comfortable with someone's presence (which can take some time), she can be fairly reasonable. Her long period of enforced loneliness has, beneath her paranoia, made her desperate for interaction, and although it will take quite a while after a resumption of social activity to polish a certain amount of brusqueness, she will in most cases mean well, provided the same can be said of those she converses with.

She values a willingness to judge honestly the strengths and weaknesses both in oneself and in others, and she attempts to practice this personally; she considers accuracy in this kind of judgment to be vital to one's long-term survival. She mistrusts undue humility as much as overconfidence, condescension as much as false praise, and if she believes she sees these things - particularly if they appear to be related to another's view of her - her view of them will suffer in turn.

Though her life up to now has not left her much time for it, she enjoys learning about the workings of the universe, especially as they might apply to Writing. She is also an enthusiast of the art of Writing itself and its products, and is protective of those she has made herself, thinking of them not merely as functional but nearly as works of art.

At the time of the Culling, Ilirith was 174 Avishraan years old - still a child, but old enough to remember in later life something of what had once been. She views those days through a lens of a happy childhood, and it would not be inaccurate to say that she has a love for what her people once were and what they were capable of. Nonetheless, as an adult she believes she sees in their culture the seeds of their own end. They were closed, inward-looking, overreliant on mutual dependence; and, though ostensibly dedicated to the Balance between Order and Chaos, they failed to relate to their Davir Kaea cousins or learn from their worldview. Therefore:

• In keeping their physical and philosophical distance from the Davir Kaea, they lost the opportunity for mutual understanding that might have curtailed the rise of the Hzataalar Kaea;
• In not paying attention to events among the Davir Kaea, they failed to anticipate or prepare properly for the antagonism of the Hzataalar Kaea;
• In maintaining a culture that, unlike the Davir Kaea, had unusually little space for independent identity or action, their response to the threat was both inflexible and prone to exploitation by the Hzataalar Kaea, who were able to use Davir Sria captives to successfully draw out their compatriots from Udunshraa.

(coming soon)

(coming soon)

Despite never having met one, either during her time on Tarrabor or before it, Ilirith maintains considerable respect for her peoples' Chaotic counterparts. Though ultimately a Davir Sria, in a philosophical sense she puts considerable stock in the merits of individualist thinking, a feeling reinforced by her enforced self-reliance during her exile, and believes better things would have come of the Davir Sria living in closer cooperation with them and learning from their ways. On the other hand, the reverse also applies: might the Davir Kaea, had they been less competitive and more cooperative with one another, have been less inclined toward becoming Hzataalar Kaea, and better able to fight them when they appeared?

(coming soon)

She understands little of how they came to be and why they did what they did, but she knows that they did it, and did it happily. Possibly, in the dark corners of her mind, she might be willing to admit the possibility that some Hzataalar Kaea, somewhere, had little to do with the Culling or at least feel remorse for it, but she doubts it.

She knows what they did. Some of it happened right there, in front of her. She saw one, and saw him do it, and do it happily. There was blood. There was so much, so much blood. It went everywhere. She had screamed at him, begged him, and he hadn't stopped, and there was blood, and it went everywhere…

Usurpers. Destroyers. Monsters. Murderers.

(coming soon)

                          ^ rational +
                          |
                          |         
                          | x Davir Kaea     
                          |         
                          |         x Davir Sria
                          |
  emotional - <-----------+-----------> emotional +
                          |
                          |
                          |
                          |
              x Hzataalar Kaea
                          |
                          v rational -

The cave was well-hidden. From outside, except from a very carefully chosen angle, it had originally seemed a mere crack in the rock; after its occupant had moved in – probably several decades in reality, but an eternity in her mind – the covering she'd erected over the entrance, nearly the same color as the stone around it, made even that identification difficult.

As the sun set over the dunes and gravelly wastes outside, painting the sky with yellow and orange, a sliver of light slipped through the tiny gap between covering and rock, piercing the cave's interior darkness. It fell upon a face of a sleeping dragon, whose owner twitched, cracked open an eye… and then, with surprising speed, rolled out of her nest, paw already gripping a homemade dagger, and landing in a three-legged crouch on the cave floor, her breath hissing through her teeth.

There was no one there.

Ah, but it was dark, even with the shaft of sunlight providing dim, dusty illumination. They could be in the shadows. With some difficulty, she shifted her weight to her hind legs, and raised her other paw up; a tiny but intense point of white light banished the darkness from the chamber. The dragon twisted her head around, this way and that, eyes probing for attackers.

There was still no one there.

She lowered the dagger, slowly and carefully, her breath slowing, and at last gave a brief snort of temporary satisfaction before setting it aside. Admittedly, she couldn't see into the shadows of the outer chambers from here, but if they were that far from her they would have a hard time getting close enough fast enough to surprise her. She laid the dagger down, sighing, and then hobbled over to her work table; there were several small crystals around its edge, which lit up as she brushed them with her claws, filling the cave with a faintly yellowish glow.

This was Ilirith, as she prepared herself for the day:

Her scales were tiny and, over most of her body, verdant green, though shading to yellow on her underbelly and the bottom of her neck and muzzle. On the top of her head and neck, and extending between the eyes onto her muzzle, were a series of unpleasant-looking black, burnlike marks, though they seemed to cause her no pain.

A vaguely wedge-shaped head, the terminus of a long, curved neck, ended in a muzzle that was narrower than usual for her kind; the corners of her mouth creased briefly but periodically. Blue-violet eyes looked this way and that, moving with a nervous energy. Some distance behind the eyes, extending backward from the head, a pair of long, fleshy antennae twitched and shifted in time to her mouth, both stiffening back and out when she “smiled”, one relaxing and one drooping when she didn't.

Her shape was, for the most part, streamlined and graceful – or, at least, that was how nature had intended it to be. One of her species with better genetic luck and a more bountiful diet would have had deposits of fat around the belly and base of the tail to fill out their shape; her own midsection was bowed slightly inward. Hers was not the bony appearance of a starving dragon, but the lean, slightly angular shape of one who combined a restricted and uncertain diet with regular exercise.

By the standards of her people, had they been around to judge, she might have been counted as attractive, in a hard sort of way; certainly she was luckier with her looks than some had been. But she had not escaped the muscular atrophy that the Davir Sria were known for, and it was entirely in her legs, thin, weak, and trembling. As she moved around her cave, it was slow and with care, and frequently resting part of her weight on her forelimbs, or leaning on her table, or gripping a groove that she had hacked into the cave wall for this very purpose. Each leg seemed to wobble as she leaned on it, stopping just short of buckling underneath her.

She fastened on a harness, to which a selection of pouches and pockets and sheaths were attached. A selection of metal daggers, much like the one she'd woken up with, went into some of them. Into others, small tools and useful objects. Into yet another, food, in the form of dried meat. In a larger pouch on the front, a pair of dried hollow gourds, filled with water from the spring that welled up from a hole in the cave.

Ilirith tied a large, wide bundle of leaves, rather like a palm frond, to the end of her tail, then donned a crudely made cloak and hood, a light tan in color, with flaps for her wings and antennae. Last but not least, she slung a bag over one shoulder, and in the opposite paw grasped a spear, its long, sharp blade apparently harvested from some spiny animal. She shuffled from her room into the outer chambers, where, spear extended in front of her, she glanced at the walls, floor, and ceiling, which were crisscrossed by deeply incised symbols; apparently satisfied, she went back into the inner chamber, extinguished the lights, and cautiously made her way out into the desert.

In the fading light, her cloak the color of the very sand, Ilirith was difficult to see. Only a few flashes of her green body were visible: her muzzle, poking out from beneath its hood; her paws, steadying her bag and holding her spear, still pointing ahead of her; and the leaf-bedecked tip of her tail, sweeping back and forth across the sand behind her to obscure her tracks. She crouched low to the ground, as much from the weight of her supplies as for aid in concealment.

The oasis was nearly two hours' walk from the hills that hid her cave, at least at her pace. She had never been fast, even at the best of times; but she was quiet. Slow, silent, safe: that was how she survived. Only the faint sound of leaves, and the even-fainter sound of feet and paws touching down, were heard on the sand, and they blended in fairly well with the noises of the other creatures of the desert night: insects buzzing, lizards scuttling. There were few animal species on this world, most of them Avishraan transplants, but nearly all of them preferred to come out at night, rather than the blast-furnace that was daytime. Ilirith had profited from their example.

As she approached the oasis, the light of Tarrabor's tiny moon glimmering on the water's surface, the dragon stopped moving toward it and began circling carefully around it. Slinking from one dune to the next, she peered over the edges at the pool and the plants that surrounded it, trying to distinguish the shapes of the animals that had gathered to drink and feed, whether on the plants or on each other. She sought most carefully of all for more familiar shapes, like her own. Those were most important of all: the appearance of her own species meant, depending on who it was, either relief from her long loneliness, or relief from life itself.

Circling in closer, with mouth, eyes and antennae all twitching nervously, she made her way through the foliage to her usual hiding place, and hunkered down there, facing the water. Across the shimmering pool, almost an alien intrusion into the desert scene, was a black stone pedestal with a slanted top; resting upon it was a book. She stared at it, as if waiting for it to do something - which, in a sense, she was. The pedestal was the entry point described in the book's counterpart, on Avishraa, in the library in Udunshraa. Anyone linking through from there would appear here, just as one linking from here would appear there.

Ilirith had thought, sometimes, about going through, trying to find the book on the other end. Maybe she could hide it. Maybe she could destroy it. It was risky, but not hard; hold a book over a flame or a bucket of water when you linked, and it would drop in. The pages would burn, or the ink would run, and the swirls and shapes would fade, taking the link with them, and no one would follow unless they were very, very quick in saving the book. Then, maybe, without danger of being followed, she could rest peacefully for once…

She gave an internal shrug. Not worth the risk. If someone was still there in the library, they might find her, and the odds were that they wouldn't be friends. The other Davir Sria were gone; her mother had been sure of that. And, too, Udunshraa held memories for her, however dim, which she had no desire to revisit. She had seen things a child should never have to see, and they were little better when recalled as an adolescent. Anyway, she now had other plans for severing herself from her homeworld, and from the possibility of pursuit. Her mother had taught her much, before she'd run out of time to teach, and her own experiments with Writing had helped fill in the gaps… and, indeed, given her some new ideas. Oh yes, she had plans, if she could survive long enough to finish them.

The moon moved steadily across the sky. Ilirith continued to watch, sweeping her head slowly back and forth to watch the oasis, keeping her mind open for the psychic scent of sapient thoughts.

She wished that she'd been able to place a trap at the link-in point here. Put the right carvings around the pedestal, and someone linking in could find themselves in a difficult situation indeed. Alas, even around the oasis, the ground wasn't firm enough to trace the symbols in reliably; one errant scuffing and it would fail. As for the pedestal itself, its builders had already used it as a surface for enchantment; it was covered in intricate patterns, framing the curved letters of Avishraan writing. Mother had said that most of them were preserving the book and pedestal themselves from damage. Ilirith knew, from observation, that the enchantments even warded the local animals away; none of them went too close, at least not voluntarily.

The green dragon swept her gaze again across the pedestal… and stopped, and squinted. There was… debris surrounding the pedestal, half-buried by sand and barely visible. A semi-circle of… something wrinkled and shriveled. Ilirith's antennae twitched upward in surprise, her mouth opening slightly before clapping shut again. She glanced around, and then, spear at the ready, padded carefully through the vegetation, circling around toward the unpleasant-looking heap. Emerging from the ferns near the pedestal, she crept up to the thing and, unusually, sat down in the open beside it. It looked like a corpse, the mummified body of some alien creature; she recognized it as the remains of a structure, a living thing made to be a shelter. In its current state, it would have been a difficult identification even for its makers, but Ilirith was quite sure what it was.

Once, it had been home.

She ran her paw through the sand inside the semicircle, idly thinking about the sandstorm that had come the previous morning. It had nearly caught her before she'd reached the cave; it must have uncovered the long-dead shelter, which had been buried by yet another storm, many years earlier. As her paw continued through the sand, it brushed against something, hard, smooth. Ilirith carefully moved aside the sand to see-

She stared, antennae drooping. There was too much to uncover fully, but in the wan moonlight she saw the dull white of bone surrounding an empty eye socket.

Ilirith laid down her spear, and placed an trembling, outstretched paw on the skull, gently rubbing back and forth. She opened her mouth, and, with hesitation, gave a dry, rasping croak. “Avi… ereta'seh ssi. Nyath'seh ssi…” She trailed off, her mouth still open, making a low keening noise. She was as good a Writer as she ever was, but when spoken the words now came only with difficulty, and there was nothing more that could be usefully said. She had many wishes; but even used all together, they would never bring back Pellith daughter of Nureth.

She dragged her paw away from the skull, and as it scraped across the sand it touched another object, curved and pointed. The green dragon held the tooth up to her hooded face, turning it this way and that between her fingers, and then withdrew it into her cloak to place it reverently in one of her pouches. She sighed, then picked up her spear again, and began slinking away from the site, antennae slowly rising back into alertness. The eastern sky was beginning to lighten, and the animals around the oasis began to depart for their burrows before the burning sun caught them. She should be doing the same.

Ilirith slipped away across the dunes, following a small tapirlike creature that was heading in the same general direction as the cave. Once away from the oasis, she drew it close with a psychic lure, then ran it through with her spear before continuing on, dragging her newly-acquired meat with her.

The covering of the cave mouth, fixed in place top and bottom to minimize its motion in the wind, showed no signs of having been disturbed during the night. Ilirith was careful not to stand too close. Though the growing light of dawn was mostly hidden behind the hill, there was always the chance that an enemy lurking inside would make out her shape. She stood quite still, staring, listening, sensing with her mind.

Nothing.

At last, she stalked through the tiny gap in the covering, light flashing to life in her paw, and scanned the outer chamber carefully with her eyes; she then hobbled into the inner chamber to do the same. Finally satisfied, she lit the crystals on her worktable and set down her burdens one by one. The heavy bag she'd had slung over her shoulder - which she had never opened during her time outside - was placed carefully on the worktable. The cloak was hung from a bit of rock that jutted out from the wall, and the spear rested beside it. The harness, with its pockets and pouches, was carefully laid down on the floor by both of them, and one of the daggers removed.

After a pause to stretch and get her breath back, Ilirith took her kill to a sandy-floored corner of the inner chamber. Here, something like a ceramic oven had been set up, with two doors in it, top and bottom; when the meat had been sliced thinly, the fat cut off, drained, and salted, she opened the top door briefly to place the strips on a shelf inside. She then opened the bottom door, where a layer of rough crystals lay, and examined them critically. Their mass was still reducing faster than she'd hoped; she'd stopped using them for everything but drying meat, to preserve them for as long as possible, but it appeared that another trip to Gwaai for more was inevitable. Call it another ten days or so.

She extended her paw just inside the door of the over, closed her eyes, and concentrated. What passed from herself to the crystals was mostly invisible, but an observer might have seen faint traces of blue fire flowing across the gap; the crystals began to glow furnace-red, and heat radiated from the oven. Ilirith sighed, looking suddenly weary, and she closed the oven door, dragging herself to the worktable. Unlike the crystals she used purely for light, the ones in the oven were not particularly efficient at converting energy into heat, and they were a drain on her magic that she wished she didn't need… but without them, she'd have to use fire to dry and preserve meat, with all the dangers that associated smoke would bring. She'd built a solar oven once, before writing Gwaai, and used it for many years, and then hidden it away once she realized how easy it could be to see from any spot where it would get sufficient sunlight… but maybe, she thought, it would be worth the risk of detection not to have to exert herself.

Ilirith opened up her bag, and carefully slid out a small selection of books onto the table and arranged them neatly. Ilirith had several dozen books, far more than would fit in the bag; most of them resided on a shelf in the cave, particularly the mundane ones that were guides to physical laws and ecological relationships. Those were valuable, in their way, and she would hate to lose them, but others on the shelf were more valuable yet, because they were her own work, and, like Gwaai, her gateways to resources that couldn't be had here, however rarely she dared to seek them. The ones in the bag, however, were most valuable of all. She didn't dare risk being separated from them.

She opened them, one by one. All but one were simply made, and contained rapid, flowing handwriting, and rough sketches of arcane symbols. Here and there could be seen phrases like “…sandstone, subject to erosion by…” and “…dense biomass, vertically layered…” and “…geological province, defined by the coordinates…”. There were dense mathematical expressions, some of which contained decipherable tidbits such as the law of gravity or formulas relating to electromagnetic propagation.

In the midst of them was the remaining book, rather larger, and better and more durably made. It was, unlike the other books, mostly empty; again unlike them, the handwriting was excessively neat, the glyphs surrounding it carefully formed. On the first page of the book, in a space devoid of writing, was a space that was… not blank, exactly, for there was something there, but it was curiously faint and ill-defined. Somewhere there, seemingly on the edge of vision no matter how hard one stared at them, were moving shapes, spirals and circles and many more. Each day, they got a little clearer to the eye, and a little more coherent in their movement.

Ilirith's antennae went rigid, one of them twisting slightly; it was a cheerful, almost loving expression. She had little joy in life, but she at least she could Write. At least she could Write this.

She pulled the large book toward her, took out her pen and ink, and then, dutifully consulting her notes every few minutes, carefully forming the letters and symbols of her craft, she began to Write.

The pen put down, the book closed. Another tiny milestone passed on a long, long road. Ilirith stared dully at the cover, her mind clouding with weariness, before easing herself back onto her trembling legs and shuffling over to the drying oven to take out the newly-made jerky. As she put the dried meat into a jar, the dragon felt her arms begin to twitch. Hissing in growing pain and irritation, she jammed the remaining jerky into the jar, then backed away from it toward her nest; there was nothing breakable there, at least.

She jerkily grabbed a sort of leather strap that she kept there, already covered in tooth-marks, and jammed it into her mouth. As the spasms became more severe, she squeezed her eyes shut and bit down hard on it, letting the action take imperfect place of actual relief, and struggled not to cry out loud. Her legs twitched out from underneath her, and she fell to the floor, thrashing uncontrollably for many breaths, emitting quiet whimpers.

After what seemed like forever, the spasms became weaker and less frequent, before subsiding at last. Ilirith spat out the leather strip and panted, waiting for the echoes of muscle strain to drain out of her. When she finally felt able to stand, she dragged herself back to her jar for a handful of dried meat, hastily downed, and retrieved a sip of water from the well. Then she took the dagger she'd used to butcher her kill and carefully cleaned it, before making her way back to the worktable to put her books back in their bag.

She wondered, sometimes, how long it would take to finish it. She hoped she could manage it before she died. Once, she'd thought she'd have time enough for that; she wasn't so sure these days. Perhaps she could find someone to pass it on to, though teaching them how to Write would itself take decades. Would they be able to learn? Would they understand what she was trying to do? …It didn't matter. There was no one here. Where would she dare go to find someone? If only there'd been someone here with her, maybe her own age…

Ilirith stared at the wall, rare, confused thoughts of love and family flickering across her mind; antennae drooping, she shook her head. She extinguished the lights, and then shuffled toward her nest. The light of day, reflected off the rocks outside, shone dimly on the blankets; as she lifted them up to crawl underneath, the dim light fell on them, showing innumerable slashes and holes. She stared at them, and then at the dagger in her paw, and then, shivering in a way that had nothing to do with cold, buried herself in the musty cloth and tried to sleep.

Dusk would be all too soon.