Family

 

My mother's home cooking ranked second in the world, to me.

Well, not in terms of taste… in the toughness of the ingredients.

 

"I am… certainly not human. I'm not an elf, either, nor a dragon."

Gripping her own horns, Chryse pleaded with quiet desperation.

"Big Sis Rin… people who've spent decades traveling the world, travelers from countries so distant no one's even heard of them, they all say they've never seen anyone with horns like mine."

Ah. Of course.

This was the reason Chryse had insisted on coming along, overriding even Nina's objections.

It was just this. She simply wanted to hear the answer.

"Grandmother. If you would know… if a dragon who's lived for thousands of years would know… do you know what I am…?"

Mother met her gaze gently as Chryse stared up at her, earnest feelings hidden in her eyes.

"Chryse, dear. I'm sorry. I… don't know any way to answer that."

And with those words, Chryse's eyes clouded with disappointment.

"But, you know. You are that girl's… you are Nina's child. Even if how you came to be is different from the ordinary course of life. Wouldn't that be enough?"

Chryse closed her eyes, as though chewing over Mother's unhurried words.

"— Yes."

After a long pause, she gave a clear nod. One look at her face told me she wasn't truly convinced. But she'd managed to accept it, at least to a degree.

"Now then, it's your turn to tell me things. What has my son been up to all this time?"

"Leave it to me."

Mother brightened her tone as if to shift the mood, and Nina agreed without a moment's hesitation.

"… Go easy on me, will you?"

I said it with a wry smile, but Nina paid me no mind whatsoever.

And so my partner, who knew the better part of my life as a dragon, began cheerfully and thoroughly airing every last one of my most shameful moments.

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"Oh, that was wonderful. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun."

The following morning. We'd spent the night on Mother's mountain, and everyone was all smiles, having hit it off splendidly.

— Everyone except me, that is, utterly drained from having my entire history of embarrassments laid bare.

"Mm. That was fun."

"Me too!"

Nina and Chryse were equally delighted, having heard stories from before they'd even met me.

"Hey, can I come visit again?"

That Nina would go so far as to say something like that made my eyes go wide. It was rare for her to warm up to someone this quickly.

"That, I'm afraid, won't be possible."

But the answer that came back was a refusal.

"Why not?"

"Because I'll be leaving this place before long."

Nina clearly hadn't expected to be turned down. There was sadness in her voice as she asked, and Mother answered as though patiently reasoning with her.

"A dragon's territory is the area it can fly to and back from its den in a single day. For another dragon to enter that range is an act of hostility. However…"

"Our village is completely within your territory, Mother."

It was only minutes away by my wings, after all. Mother could make the trip in even less time.

"The dragons in this region are mostly greens and blues, and they can be rather dangerous to a young dragon."

"This is the first I'm hearing of this!?"

I felt the blood drain from my face.

Apparently, there are five types of dragons in this world: white, black, green, blue, and red, also known as ice, swamp, poison, lightning, and fire dragons respectively. White dragons are the smallest and weakest, while reds are the largest and strongest. That said, even a white dragon is more than enough of a threat to any ordinary creature.

"You'll be fine now. You've grown enough… by your reckoning, there's practically nothing that would challenge a fire dragon that's lived for a thousand years or so, including us fire dragons ourselves."

It struck me then, quite suddenly. Mother's frame was nearly twice the size of mine.

Put another way, I was more than half her size.

If we fought in earnest, I would lose nine times out of ten… But that meant I could win once or twice. At the very least, it would be a fight, not a one-sided slaughter.

And precisely because of that, no fire dragon, however greedy… no, because they were greedy, would ever challenge another. After all, there was no shortage of easier territory to claim elsewhere in the world.

"That's why I need to leave this place. Parent and child though we may be, overlapping territories cause no end of trouble for dragons. And what's more, that peculiar nest of yours is only going to keep growing, isn't it?"

"… But…"

It would be as if I were driving my own mother out.

"This is simply how it works. A fire dragon watches over its young until they've grown enough, then moves on when the time comes. I inherited this place the very same way. Now it's your turn. That's all there is to it."

Mother spoke to me as I stared at her, unconvinced.

Hearing those words, it hit me.

"… I understand."

I had always watched over the people of Scarlet, knowing that one day they would leave my hands.

But the same had been true of Mother all along.

I wondered if she was feeling now the same mixture of joy and loneliness that I had felt.

When we stepped out of the volcano, Mother's enormous body shot from the cave like a rocket. Even as I marveled at the firework-like beauty of the sight, something nagged at me.

"Take careeee!"

Chryse shouted, waving her arms wide, and Mother circled two, three times in the air as if in answer before flying off to the north.

"… Why was it so cool in there?"

But my attention was elsewhere, caught on that nagging feeling.

The great hall where Mother had been waiting was strangely cool. That's right, it should have been seething with magma, hot enough to be unbearable for any ordinary creature.

And yet it had been comfortable enough for Nina and Chryse to sleep through the night. There was no magma to be seen anywhere, though it had certainly been flowing there in the past.

— No. It couldn't be.

An ominous feeling passed through my chest. That couldn't be. Dragons weren't supposed to have lifespans. Surely that coolness wasn't a sign of Mother's decline…

The moment that thought took shape, I saw her figure far off on the horizon tilt unnaturally and—

A tremendous impact slammed into us.

The volcano before our eyes had erupted.

"Sorryyy!"

Mother called back over her shoulder, her voice carrying through the air with breezy nonchalance.

"I forgot I'd shut the valve on the volcano!"

"It's not a gas stove!?"

At that rate, she'd live another ten thousand, twenty thousand years without breaking a sweat.

I shouted back at her, desperately shielding Nina and the others from the rain of volcanic bombs with my wings.