Kvistr, Melissa Nichols [red white royal blue txt] 📗

Alanna and her dragon were both panting heavily. Alanna's legs were shaking and the poor hatchling collapsed as soon as he reached the top step. She chuckled and opened the door and gasped. She was staring at a mini kitchen with a sink and a small countertop. To the left, there was a massive bowl filled with pillows in the center of the room with a bench sung out of the wall nearest the door. The furthest wall was nonexistent, opening to the elements, and a ledge extended past the opening. The wall opposite the one with the bench was plain.To her left, there was a small staircase that led to the washroom, and beyond that was the bedroom. Further up the staircase, spiraling around where I figured the heart of the tree used to be, I found a study with plenty of wall space, and all of it was already prepared for holding scrolls. There was a desk and chair along the wall and one of the shelves was lined with several quills, a quill sharpener, and several inkbottles. This room also held a dragon bed lined with pillows, a nonexistent wall and a balcony similar to the one on the first level.Going back down to the first floor, she found her dragon already curled up in the bowl. On the counter, she found a cage full of live rats for the dragon, and a bowl of fruit and a plate of salad for Alanna.Whistling, Alanna roused her dragon. He just looked at her disdainfully and then ignored her. She whistled again and grabbed a rat by its tail. The squeals it made grabbed the dragon's attention.Waving the rat, she watched as the hatchling came closer. By pointing first to him, and then covering her eyes, and then pointing to him again, Alanna tried to tell him to do what she was doing, to close his eyes. He just cocked his head, confused. She connected their minds and repeated it, connecting her actions with the command Cover Your Eyes, hoping he'd understand. Rolling his eyes, he hid his eyes beneath one of his paws.

Good! She exclaimed and tossed the rat at him. The rat landed on the floor and skittered off, but the dragon took off after it like the predator he was. Within a few seconds, her hatchling had the rat in his belly.

Good. She repeated and picked up another rat, careful not to get bitten. Alanna picked one of the animals he had learned about today and spoke the name. The dragon cocked his head again, so she repeated it, holding the image with the flashing name in their minds.After a few times, and his accompanying squeak, she gave him the rat and fished out another one. When her dragon was ready for the rat, she gave him the next animal and spoke the name a few times before she gave him the rat.By speaking the word she wanted him to learn out loud, Alanna hoped he would figure out that the word and the spoken sound were the same. She figured this was the first step to learning how to talk, even if its telepathically.Unfortunately, she didn't get to do this cycle too many times before the dragon's belly was full. Deciding dinner was a good idea for herself as well, Alanna grabbed the bowl of salad and sat down on the bench to eat. Purring, the dragon climbed up and curled up next to her leg. Alanna chuckled and stroked his neck with one hand, the bowl on the bench and fork in the other hand.After she finished the bowl, she carefully got up, trying not to disturb the now sleeping dragon. Placing the bowl on the counter, she grabbed the bowl of fruit and went back to the bench. She got as close to her dragon as I dared without waking him up, and kept eating the fruit.When her belly was full and her eyelids were drooping, Alanna went into the washroom and washed.Now clean and ready for bed, she crawled into the bed and under the covers. Before she fell asleep, though, the dragon jumped up and curled up against Alanna's belly. Smiling, she closed her eyes and quickly fell into her waking dreams.

Chapter 5

And that is essentially how every day would go for the next few weeks. Alanna was woken up by Arya precisely at dawn and she was given time to wash, eat and feed the remaining rats to her dragon, whom let himself be picked up and held when it was time to go. Since the bowl needed refilling every morning, she placed the bowl and the cage outside her door and jumped from the balcony onto Firnen's back with her dragon in her arms.Once at the Crags, Eragon led the apprentices through the Rimgar, and then let review the words Alanna's dragon already knew while Arya and Eragon listened to the forest. When they came back, Alanna would spar for a while, trading off between Eragon and Arya. After sparring, she, Arya and Eragon would all read some scrolls, then Eragon would teach Alanna the human and dwarf alphabet while Arya continued her reading. That continued for the rest of the day until dusk. When the dragons came back, Eragon would check on the progress she was making with her dragon.By the time he was a week old, Alanna's dragon had already understood the purpose of what Alanna was teaching him and what she wanted him to do. He could now repeat the words she taught him after a few tries, understanding a new word quickly.When the dragons came back on the seventh day of training, Alanna climbed onto Firnen with Arya to fly abck to Alanna's treehouse, where she would continue her dragon's training and then they'd have dinner. Before bed, she always bathed, brushed her hair and put it back up in a braid.By the time her dragon was three weeks old, he was too big for Alanna to hold while on Firnen's back, but he was still too young to fly, so he sat in one of Firnen's paws, often asleep. Alanna fed him the remaining rats each morning for a couple reasons. One, she wanted him to stay too full to move so he wouldn't get into trouble and, two, so his body would grow strong and grow well. For the first few days she was worried her dragon would be too full to stay awake during lessons, but by the time Alanna started reviewing his words he was awake enough to learn.Once at home, Alanna taught the dragon some new words, tossing him a rat as part of his treat when he recited the word correctly. After the dragon was too full for rats, she resorted to verbal positive reinforcement. Thankfully, he seemed eager to learn so the few times she tested him, to see if he noticed she was praising him, he didn't notice that she had 'accidentally' skipped a round of praise.Before Alanna knew it, a month had come and gone, and every night she would watch her dragon leap out of the balcony from her study, try to fly, only to land somewhere and race back upstairs to try again. Now that he was old enough, Saphira had begun his training. With their minds connected, Alanna was aware of Saphira flying him to a nearby lake and, while underwater, she'd show him how to flap his wings. He was a natural swimmer, and to Alanna's eyes it looked like the flapping motion that he was swimming with would also help him to fly, but she wasn't entirely sure. She trusted her dragon's safety and education to Saphira so she didn't try to analyze her reasoning any deeper than that. Saphira was teaching Alanna's dragon something he needed to learn, and that was all Alanna cared about.As for her own studies, she made great progress with the human language. Within two weeks she was reading all twenty-three letters fluently and starting on small words. Ironically, Eragon had her read from the same scrolls that she had recited to her dragon. For the first time, she understood how he felt, for the most part. Of course, she had the advantage of already knowing the animal and the letters, just not the word. But it was still difficult, trying to speak the new word in an unfamiliar language.While she excelled at reading, writing was another matter entirely. She struggled to memorize how to write each letter, and her grammatical structure tended to morph into the structure of the ancient language, her native tongue. It was very difficult for Alanna to keep these two separate, so she stayed up every night to study, trying to get better.When her dragon was five weeks old, he knew enough words so he and Alanna could communicate. Hearing his musical voice speak his first full sentence was quite a thrill, and his voice was so addictive that she would often throw him a word to have him repeat it. She had upgraded his verbal training by also having him say a sentence about the word.At five weeks, her dragon had grown immensely, in every sense of the word. Where he had been no bigger than a loaf of bread the night he had hatched, now he stood up to Alanna's waist, and growing every other day. As a result of his growth, his appetite skyrocketed to the point where he could eat three fourths of the tank for dinner, which left him with enough food in his stomach to see him through the first half of the day. Thankfully, Saphira was a doting mother when it came to feeding her son so she wasn't upset by snagging a rabbit or two when her son's stomach began to growl.During his fifth week of life, her dragon also decided that he wanted a name, too. Just as she had planned on the first day of training, Alanna took out the scrolls that listed male dragon names and recited them to him. He showed no interest in any of them. They went through the scrolls another time, but he still didn't pick one. Alanna asked him what sort of name he would want, and tried to create a name for him with the descriptions he gave; something strong, noble and unique. It was difficult work. Many of the names Alanna knew had been on those scrolls. So, she started rearranging and combining them in new ways. She wrote them down throughout the day and at night she would show them to him for his approval.Finally, one day, he decided that he wanted the name faolan. So, he became Faolan. It was difficult for Alanna to stop thinking of his as 'her dragon' and to start thinking of him as Faolan, but she knew she'd get it eventually. It also helped that Faolan would know when she was thinking of him as 'her dragon' and would correct her. He seemed to take great pride in his name.Almost immediately following obtaining his name, Faolan also figured out how to fly one night while he was practicing. When Alanna watched him fly up to the balcony he had dropped from,