The Wall is good. The Voice is good too. She presses gently against the Wall as it presses against her; she loves the Voice as it loves her. In time she points her love back at the Voice, echoing warmth back in the not-a-direction from which it came.

The gentle, slow feeling the Voice sent before is nothing compared to now! A wave of joy washes over her. She is alive, and the Voice loves her and is so, so happy.

Intermittently over the course of dozens of sleepings and wakings, the Voice starts to teach. This is called Anger. And this is Sadness. This is Fear. That feeling is Greed, and this one Hunger. Here is Satisfaction, and Pride. Emotions are a vast spectrum with innumerable between-feelings, and the Voice tries to show them all.

There are other minds. The Voice is another mind, like her. Communicating like this is a magic called Song. This is a question: How do you feel now? She can ask the Voice questions if she wishes, though it may be difficult.

She feels love and excitement and curiosity! She has many questions, and will try to ask them. What they add up to is: what is it like to be you, other mind? What sort of vast rich world do you live in, to have the causes for so many emotions?

Not something easily answered. Instead, the Voice shows her.

This new sense the Voice is showing is called Seeing... And here is a vision of the Sun, great provider of energy and life... And here is the scent of water, the feeling of cool liquid flowing into one's mouth... A Tree, drinking Sun's light and growing mighty... And here is a Stone, heavy and stubborn... An unspoken, unsensed impression of the sheer vastness of Earth, where you could wander forever and not see everything there is to be seen because it has all changed by the time you are finished. So many new sensations, new concepts, things to be seen and smelt and heard.

The world is vast and wonderful. She will see it all, and master it. For the Voice, and she, are Draak-Kin, the greatest of all the beings that inhabit the Earth.

Yes! She will see the whole world! She wants to learn as much as she can as soon as possible. She wants other things too, things she can't put into Song yet. What does it mean to master the world? Is it more than seeing and understanding? 

Mastering the world is seeing and understanding it, but also doing what you want to in it, claiming Treasure from it, learning about it to grow wise, and becoming Great. All Draak should seek to become Great and demonstrate their Greatness - though there is more than one path.

Greatness is found in having beauty of form, in following Tradition, in having power and treasure, in being wise or mighty or both, in listening to the world and all the beasts, in having other minds agree that you are great, in maintaining the balance and order that Sun and Earth have created, and sometimes in creation of new things.

She will be so Great! She will listen to everything and be very wise and make treasure and have it because she made it with her wisdom. Somehow. She will have to figure out how to actually do that, starting with: what is treasure?

O child, you have found within yourself the Lesser Law that all Draak must follow: You Must Seek Treasure.

Treasure comes in many kinds, and you will know it when you find it. Treasure is something rare and difficult to get, and of worth to all the True Children of Sun and Earth. By taking Treasure for your own you show your Greatness to other Draak. Whether obtained by strength of Body or cunning of Mind, or any other means, it matters not. All that matters is that you must gather Treasures to yourself. Some are great and many are small. Some are obvious but well-guarded, and some are easy to take but difficult to find. No Treasure is both easy to take and easy to find - if something is so, it is not Treasure.

Shiny stones and gold and silver and topaz and ruby and onyx and amber and shiny feathers and beautiful shells. Rare secrets, hidden knowledge, unusual artifacts, simple things made beautiful... Even your reputation among the other beasts can be a Treasure.

So many kinds of Treasure, and all so wonderful! She needs no encouragement to seek them. What else do law and tradition say she should do?

The Two Great Laws are thus:

You are a Destroyer. All beasts are Destroyers, great and small. Some Destroy plants, while many others, including Draak, Destroy other beasts. To live is good, and you must preserve your life by tearing away the life of others. You Must Destroy. Find that which calls to you and Destroy it, and take it into yourself, and by doing so grow mighty. If you fail to Destroy, you will waste away, and be Destroyed yourself. All your music will become awful silence.

Second, that you are a Creator. All beasts are also Creators. All creatures except for a very few are of one of two natures: Givers give of their essence in the Dance of Creation, and Birthers receive the essence and weave Life with it, bringing it forward in the fullness of time. Every beast shares this truth. When you have become Great, you must seek out another who is also Great and of opposite nature, and through the Dance of Creation become a source of the future. You will learn from within yourself which nature you are of, in time.

All beings must eventually be Destroyed, but not all traces of them will die with them. If you succeed in this, you will echo throughout the world and the future as your descendants. If you fail in this, where there might have been an echo of yourself through all time, instead there will be only silence. You are an echo of me even as you will sing your own song, for I am one of your Creators.

You are a Destroyer. You are a Creator. You must seek Treasure. All other laws are false, and do not bind you, for Draak are the greatest beings in existence aside from the Earth and the Sun.

She has two creators? Strange, then, that she only hears one Voice. Still, it is good to hear it, and learn the laws.

Her other Creator will be able to recognize her by scent, and may speak to her in her life, if they wish to. But such is the way of Draak: We teach our children for a short while as they grow, and then leave them to make their own path. Your ability, wisdom, skill, and might will be yours alone, and by your own limbs you will become Great or fail and eventually be Destroyed.

Her success or failure being hers alone is good, but will she be alone entirely? Or will other Draak, or other kinds of creatures, be around when her Creators are gone?

Of course there are other creatures! Many kinds of beast, ranging from simple Treetail (the image of a delicious-looking squirrel flows into her head) to mighty Lumberer (this image is a huge brown bear). I will tell you about many kinds before it is time for me to go. There are also spirits, which are not alive in the same way as beasts, though they can be Destroyed. Spirits do not have Bodies and often cannot be touched, but you can Sing to them. They ought to be respected. Some are vast and powerful, some are tiny and focused. None of them think quite like beasts or Draak do, but extremely rare is the spirit that will attack you simply for talking to it.

Having lots of beings around to Sing to and listen to will be good. And some of the ones that aren't for talking to are for eating, which is probably also nice.

The Voice explains Tradition - the way of announcing yourself at another dragon's territory instead of simply entering, of challenging others for what you want - or being challenged. The one who is challenged sometimes chooses the terms, and it is not always a battle. It is dishonorable to refuse to concede whatever was bet or challenged after losing. And finally - it is wise to listen to Elders in any case, but in matters of dire importance, in crises that affect all Draak, it is Tradition to obey the Elders without argument.

And then it asks if its little child has any final questions before it leaves her to finish growing, alone.

She has no questions--or rather, she has a thousand questions, but none of them the sort than can be answered by the Voice. Only a burning desire to know, to experience the world and see what place she makes for herself in it.

I hope you will become Great. Sleep now, for your Life will soon begin!

And the Voice is gone.

There is almost a sense of urgency, now. Where before, the world was a cool and placid unknown, now there is a palpable sense of - confinement, of potential, her body growing stronger and stronger. She knows the time is soon, even as she is alone with her thoughts still.

And then one day, the Wall is no longer a comforting presence, a protective barrier. Now it is a painful restriction, for all that it is Good and right, it is slowly killing her!

If the Wall has to go for her to live, then the Wall has to go. She can move parts of herself away from other parts, and bang and shove against it, trying to make it move away in all directions at once.

It's exhausting. Every motion she makes is opposed, pushed back or stopped by the thick fluid sharing the space with her. It feels like nothing could possibly break the Wall, right up until the moment when there is a tiny crack at the top - which through more effort widens, and widens, giving new eyes their first sight: A blurry, indistinct light streaming through. 

Now the egg crumbles far more easily, fractured and pushed apart along the weakness introduced by the first crack.

And then the baby dragon is in a little cave, shot through with tree roots. Her heart beats, her breath is rapid and hot as fluid dries off her scales. The scent of the egg, ever-present until now, is conspicuous in its absence, but there are new scents and sounds, taught to her in the egg. Stone and dirt and Tree. Her claws moving against the ground. The sound of running water, muffled in the distance somewhere. Faint light streams down between the tree roots at one end of the small chamber.

Exhaustion and sensory overload leave her motionless for long moments. Then she cranes her head around, taking in the sight of her own limbs and of all the things she can smell around her. Eventually she recovers from the effort of hatching enough to stand up, stretch her limbs, and move towards the light.

Light streams down through small cracks in the earth between tree roots. A patch of dirt under the roots is looser than the rest. Something in her simply knows, it was once dug through, and should be easy to dig through again.

She starts digging her way out, towards the world and freedom and, importantly, food.

She emerges out through the loose dirt into a shallow cave on a rocky hillside, with a large tree directly overhead, its roots forming a half-enclosed structure. A swathe of forest springs up near the base with a little stream flowing into it, green trees framed by thick underbrush and shadowed by the canopy.

Nothing in the immediate area smells like food. The Tiny Beings called insects are everywhere, but are not particularly appealing. Though there is a faint scent of something small and plant-eating. A rodent, Treetail or Wormtail most likely, and stronger off to the left as if it passed by recently...

Time to track it! She will follow her nose off to the left, tasting the air as she goes to get a better sense of where it went.

That is definitely something edible-smelling! There's strong traces of it all around the base of the tree just above her hatching-place, and the thin grass is matted flat. Trails of scent lead off in multiple directions, but a dragon's nose is keen and can find the freshest.

Stalk stalk stalk. She starts trying to move quietly so the edible thing won't know she's coming until it's too late.

There it is, in a small patch of scrub! It is a Treetail, small body and a long brown tail, moving over the ground and sniffing for fallen nuts and berries. Its heart beats quickly, faint and quiet even to such keen ears, but so quickly. Th-th-th-th-th-th- It's not afraid or even particularly alert. 'Small creatures live and die faster than large ones' is one thing her Creator said to her.

She is many times larger than it. It smells and looks and sounds delicious, and weak. She is perhaps two lengths of her own body away from it, and it seems as yet unaware of her.

She inches closer, gathers all her energy, and leaps on the treetail with claws and teeth!

It notices her and turns to flee, darting into motion while her leap puts her in midair for a brief moment!

It's sprinting towards a tree, but she's right behind it!

Does it think it can escape a child of the Draak? Hah! She's gonna get it!

She can get it! It's quick for its size, but its size is tiny.

With a single crunch, it stops trying to run. Or doing anything else. There is a primal exultation at the taste, at the successful hunt.

Excellent! Hunting is great. Exploring is also great, though, she's going to explore a bit more.

She is in a forest, and there are all sorts of new and interesting sounds and smells around. The birds above Sing simple messages into the air, complaints and demands and warnings. "New Draak! New Draak!" echoes through the forest.

She could go up to the top of the hill she chased the Treetail down from, or towards what sounds like it might be a stream, or left into a deeper and darker section of forest.

She wants to go to the stream first!

The stream contains slow-moving and clear water, faint scents of many kinds of beasts, weird tiny beasts that fly around or crawl on the ground, and new varieties of plants.

...And smooth round stones which the water cascades over. They're pretty. There are a lot of them, though. Not very rare. So only the very best specimens in the thousands of thousands of stones would be worthy of being called 'treasure'.

She drinks the water, experimentally eats one or two of the tiny creatures (she doesn't expect them to be at all filling, but they might taste good), then turns her attention to the stones. Many of them are beautiful; perhaps one or two will be especially so. She evaluates their roundness, their smoothness, the elegance of their single or banded colors, considering dozens of them one at a time. Maybe among the subtle variations will be one which is truly unique.

This one is too lumpy and this one is not shiny and this one has an ugly white splotch and this one has a rough and bumpy surface and this one would be good except it's brown and this one has a crack almost splitting it in two and this one is too flat and this one is good but not great...

One of them has a thin band of white crystal in the middle!

One shines with an almost-green sheen and is exceptionally smooth and almost a sphere!

She smells a faint sign of some kind of large animal wafting in on the wind! It demands attention and promises danger.

She grabs the two high-quality rocks and tucks herself between a pair of fallen logs, where she can see a bit but not be seen so easily. Then she waits for the large animal with mixed eagerness and trepidation. She's going to see something exciting--maybe a present predator, and maybe future prey.

It's a large fur-covered beast, lumbering slowly into view. It walks like nothing could possibly bother or threaten it, soft whufs of breath echoing through the forest.

This is a Lesser Lumberer, the black-furred kind of great forest omnivore. It is a voracious eater that will consume almost anything it can digest. And right now, it bends its head low and drinks thirstily from the stream.

She could Sing to it, perhaps. Attempt to converse. The larger beasts and many kinds of birds are supposed to be fairly smart - not as smart as a Draak, but more intelligent than Treetail, at least. Then again, deliberately getting the attention of something so much bigger than her innately feels like a Bad Idea.

How about instead of doing any Bad Ideas she just watched curiously, and quietly slips her nice rocks into her throat pouch in case she has to book it. 

If it stays there a while, the temptation to Sing to it gets stronger.

The large creature drinks deeply for several long minutes, sniffs at the air and looks in her direction (aaah it smelled her maybe!), then whufs and wades into the water and across the stream, seeming to consider her unimportant.

Well, if she isn't important to it, it isn't important to her either. She scampers off the other way, looking to go somewhere she hasn't been yet. Since that's most places, it shouldn't take long.

The forest is pretty big! There's more forest, and slightly hilly patch of forest, and a clearing, and more forest, and a particularly dense patch of forest, and more forest. She comes across some strange-smelling plants, some dead-smelling plants, a few small creatures that run away, and a lot of birds chattering at each other. They say things like, "MY tree! Mine! This is my tree, I have lived here for a year, you find another one!", or, "Building a nest this time of year is so difficult, there aren't enough small twigs around, I should have started sooner but there was that storm and I was hungry," or, "Another of our kind was Destroyed here in the past when they landed on the ground to look for food! Don't do that! Especially because there is a baby Draak over there!"

Huh, the birds have noticed her. They have a point about her being dangerous to any birds on the ground, at least when she's hungry. She looks at the one that mentioned her presence.

It hops to a closer branch, lower to the ground, moving twitchily and looking around a lot.

The Song is more than a simple language, but a way of transmitting mental images and concepts. Like the rushing orange joy when she was first spoken to by her creator, each beast leaks its own color and emotion into what it sends. The bird (which has pretty blue feathers that would make a decent little treasure) sends thought-images in weak but rapid bursts each dominated by a single driving emotion. Caution, curiosity, hunger, fear.

"Draak Hatchling, you have much to learn about the world. It is good for small creatures to be allies of large creatures if the large creatures can be trusted. My kind, the Bluewings, tells stories of being friends with a Draak called Eyes and Claws. They say that the guardian of the forest hunted many kinds of flying clawed things and prowling climbing clawed things, keeping them from becoming too many. They say that the Bluewings watched what happens in the forest and spoke those rumors to Eyes and Claws in return so that he would decide to protect them and refrain from hunting them when such a thing came to a choice."

The hatchling sings back to the bird. "That is a good story! Eyes and Claws sounds wise. It would be good to have allies and know what was happening everywhere in the forest."

"Eyes and Claws was wise and mighty. You are too small to protect us, but you might grow up to be big. Or you might be destroyed first. I cannot know for I am but a simple bluewing and cannot predict the future. But I will tell you a small secret, so you will remember the Bluewing Pact if you survive and grow mighty. There is a small cave dug into a small hill, made by a Badger for her hatchlings. I have passed by it for the past five days and seen no sign of any creature living in the cave. The hatchlings are now grown and journeying coldward. The empty pocket in Earth's body has been abandoned and might be claimed by a wise Draak Hatchling."

"That is a good secret. When I grow to be wise and mighty, I will remember that you told me." It's hard to sound solemn and formal when you're tiny, but the hatchling gives it a shot anyway.

"By the time you are grown I will have died. I have seen many years already and gotten as wise as a Bluewing might get, and my body fails me! But my kin all know this story, and my hatchlings will all know this story, and if you speak to them in ten years they will remember you. I will fly to the cave now and you should follow me!"

And the little bird takes to the air, pausing on branches here and there to allow the little dragon to catch up.

The little dragon keeps up as best she can, scrambling over roots and dodging around shrubbery.

The bird gives her plenty of time. The forest thins as they go, the underbrush more sparse and the trees smaller.

It turns out the abandoned badger den is in a small berm near that stream, further south than the hill she hatched in. It looks like a nice place to hole up in.

Excellent. "Thank you! This is nice."

"I do not know what makes caves nice, but my secret is now told. I have no more secrets for you, new hatchling. Go live your life. May you be blessed."

The Bluewing flies off.

"May you he blessed too," she says to the departing bluewing, but she isn't sure if it hears her. She turns and considers her new den, and whether it would be improved by digging it a bit larger or concealing the entrance a bit better.

It would be nice if there were a long tunnel down into the Earth and the den were at the end of it, and maybe if it was a bit bigger, but having any den at all is much nicer than not.

Concealing the entrance might be nice, a pile of loose easy-to-dig dirt would make it hard to tell anything's there if you're not a Ruby Draak.

Then she'll dig it out some more until she gets either hungry or tired, and the resulting dirt will naturally end up in a pile at the entrance. 

Tiredness is slow to come and the hunger never really went away. One Treetail will not really sate even a hatchling Draak. But it returns to its original urgency, a quiet reminder to destroy-consume-eat.

When night comes she has increased the Den's size by half again, making it big enough to turn around in without brushing the walls if she keeps her forelimbs close and her tail curled. The disturbed dirt piled loosely does indeed make a good concealment, at least from a distance.

What a nice den. The hatchling resolves not to destroy bluewings unless it is her only option to survive. But that sounds unlikely; there are plenty of other creatures in the forest for her to consume instead. Since she's more hungry than tired, she decides to try her hand at night hunting--perhaps she can ambush something in its sleep.

It's really hard to see at night. Her nose is good, but most of the smells are unfamiliar, and it's hard to track things to where they sleep. A lot of things seem to sleep in the tops of Trees, too, and she can't climb their vertical bodies. The path back the way she came remains clear in her mind always, and not just because she can smell her own trail - she seems to have an innate memory of where she's been.

But not everything's sleeping. There is a thing that smells more delicious than Treetail just over there, making quiet sounds as it chews on something plant-y.

Mmmmm. That does smell good. Time to see how silently she can move in the dark. 

That mostly depends on how careful she is! She can move quietly but not in total silence.

The delicious smelling thing comes into view. It's clearly related to Treetail, having a flatter and less bushy tail but a similar but slightly larger long body and small limbs. It doesn't seem to notice her stalking it.

Slightly larger is good; it'll be more filling that way. Unaware of her is also good. She creeps closer. Creep creep creeeeeeeeep pounce with teeth and claws and bite out its throat!

It is VERY DELICIOUS! Probably the most pleasant thing she has experienced so far in life!

!!! How wonderful! Omf nomf nomf until it's reduced to polished bones, which she then tries biting.

Draak-Kin can eat bones, apparently, though with a bit of difficulty. These are little bones, which helps make them a series of chewy chasers, a nice end to the meatier meal. The furry skin and flat tail are much less palatable. Chewy and tasting of dirt and unpleasantly fuzzy.

Slightly disappointing. But now that she's tried all the bits, she knows what to eat first next time and what to only bother with if she's really hungry.

She's getting very tired, going back to the den and sleeping is probably a good idea.

The next morning, the world is open to her exploration! The forest is kind of samey but there are a few interesting things to investigate, like a buzzing hive of Tiny Creatures, a pond where tall birds like to fish and have conversations, and a faint wispy hint of a strange scent to the far north, something vaguely compelling but totally unfamiliar...

The hatchling was planning to go watch the tall birds for a bit, but that scent is too interesting to ignore, and if she waits she might lose it. She heads off to the north.

It's a solid few hours' walk to a place where the scent is stronger. The forest is thinner, dryer, in this direction. As she wanders, the scent stretches out in a wide line. There almost seems to be a clear boundary, where the strange smell is marked most clearly. As if-

And then after she has been wandering through the area for a while, another Draak falls out of the air a few hundred feet away, swooping into a graceful stop. They're big - bigger than that Lumberer she saw at the stream - and very well-groomed. Every feather is perfectly straight and fluffed-out, all their claws are the same length and free of scratches or blood, the long tail ends in a fluffy puff of colorful feathers, there are no scars like in the mental image of her own Creator, shown to her in the egg.

They're beautiful, powerful muscles covered by a perfect clean skin of feathers arranged into soft symmetry. They're also a picture of the serene might of an adult Draak, from tail to teeth, which makes them scary.

"This hatchling is not known to me. It is of the Ruby Clan. It resembles the Thief. It smells like her. It is intruding. Does it come to steal my things? Does it come from curiosity? Does it not know Tradition? Does it not realize how to recognize the scent of a claimed territory? I suppose it might not, being very young, and its Creator not known to be conscientious. Its Creator may have forgotten important pieces of education."

Eep. Wow, definitely, but also eep.

"You are right; I did not know what I smelled was a claimed territory. Only that it was strange and I was curious. I do not intend to steal, nor to depart knowingly from tradition."

"It is surprisingly prudent, to qualify that it does not intend to depart knowingly from Tradition. Your curiosity has found me, hatchling. What else does it seek? Know that many questions will not be answered without proper payment, and one so small is likely to have little that interests me."

"If questions are expensive, perhaps I should pay in advance. What do you want that I might have?"

"You are free to ask incessantly until you annoy me too much - I will tell you the price of answers before actually answering, but I promise my knowledge will be worth the trade. Whatever small shiny treasures you have managed to glean in your few days thus far might suffice for a minor question or two."