Llewellyn opened his mouth and my mind immediately went to Lumos.
"We can't name him Draco. Or…" What was it? "…Norbert. Or Toothless," I added after a moment, remembering the shelves in his room. I mean, he was a black dragon, but he had all his teeth. "…Not Dvalin either," I said after a pause, thinking of the swords on his wall.
Llewellyn closed his mouth.
To be fair, Dvalin would've been great, but I felt like we had to come up with something better, that was specific to him.
Maybe this was bringing out my Innishean instincts.
Yun Seojun had tried to introduce the idea that naming something meant blessing it and that names had to be chosen with care.
It hadn't exactly taken at first, or at least, not as much as he'd hoped. Old Innishae was a land of sailors and shipwrights on the coast, and mostly farmers inland, and wasn't that sophisticated or concerned with words in general, let alone foreign ones.
Still, once King Eoghan started renaming places, some of that sentiment had seeped through.
People had been happy enough to drop the island's old Inishmore an Mhuir name and be "blessed" with the name Innishae, for example, in the hope it brought them luck since the waters of the Bay of Biscay along the coast of Innishae were so treacherous. But for the longest time, they'd actually kept using both names interchangeably without batting an eye, leaving King Eoghan to headdesk about his dreams of a cultural renaissance by himself.
King Eoghan was nothing but determined, though, so many locations had been renamed throughout the land in the follow-up decade. People generally didn't mind going along with it; they just weren't particularly concerned with naming anything themselves... unless it had anything to do with ships.
After a while the idea of naming as blessing had somewhat taken. Many new surnames had been created this way too, including mine—which had the same "hae" (해, 海, "the sea"—but also 해, 日, "the sun") as Innishae.
There was also some debate regarding whether anything Yun Seojun had introduced was in any way faithful to Korean traditions, or whether he'd just tried to influence Innishae as he thought best based on his tastes, his travels through Asia and Europe and… whatever King Eoghan was into at the time.
Well, anyway. Even wanting to honor this blessing practice, this was somewhat a moot point now, since neither of us could come up with anything.
Penguin chirped a few times, but it didn't seem like he had any ideas either.
Ah, choosing names was difficult.
"Can we think about it?" I asked the dragon. "I want you to have a great name, but we can't think of anything right now."
The dragon seemed happy with this.
"I'm not in a hurry," he said. "I'm still me anyway, whatever you call me."
That was definitely very wise of him. Very Innishean, too.
"Do you have names?" the dragon asked after a moment.
Oh. He was right. We hadn't introduced ourselves either.
"I'm Ryo," I said. "That's Llewellyn. And this is Penguin."
Penguin chirped.
The dragon seemed satisfied with this, his small ears twitching.
It was getting colder and colder.
"Should we check out this temple?" I asked Llewellyn.
The longer we spoke, the worse I felt about leaving this dragon here by himself.
By the look of it, he just wanted to make friends and chat.
Hell, he'd been ready to strike up a friendship with an airplane—and we were about to leave him here alone. I didn't feel good about it.
Besides, it would be pretty dark here at night too, right? There was likely no illumination whatsoever because there was nobody around for miles and miles.
Of course, the good thing was that nobody would be scared by the sudden appearance of a dragon. And I suppose he could easily light up a fire, if he wanted. However…
Llewellyn sighed.
"I know what you're thinking," he said. "But we don't have many options. He'll be safe here, once he gets used to it. I'm fine with checking this temple, however. I also think this would be a good idea."
"Right," I said. Well, it's not like he was wrong. "Let's make sure he's settled before we leave, at least."
Llewellyn asked the System for a map and we set off in the direction indicated.
The dragon walked beside us, the shard floating next to him.
"Is it far?" he asked after a while, lowering his head to our level as we walked.
"I don't think so," Llewellyn said, checking the map again. "Maybe fifteen minutes on foot."
The path was rough and overgrown, clearly not used. Penguin had turned into a sugar glider and climbed up to my shoulder, occasionally chittering directions.
"How did you end up in that airport, anyway?" I asked the dragon. "Where did you come from?"
The dragon shook his head.
"I don't remember."
Huh.
"Do you have System access?" Llewellyn asked. "Are you able to see the interface?"
There was a pause.
"Oh," the dragon said. "I do now."
He did? Well, that was good.
"Then you can chat with the System," I said. "You could also tell the System to reach out to us, if you need us. We could come and visit you."
The dragon perked up at that and started to mess around with the interface.
I don't know why, but I felt responsible for this creature.
Out of time, appeared in the middle of a Distorted Realm, couldn't even remember his name—and we were about to leave him alone?
Yeah, there was no way anyone would feel good about that.
What was he going to eat? Did he know how to hunt? He looked very young. And was there anything to hunt up here at all?
"There," Llewellyn said suddenly, pointing ahead.
A massive cave opened into the mountain, right on our left. Morning light streamed in through high gaps in the ceiling, giving us a glimpse of the space within.
At its entrance, the Temple of St. Caerwyn looked ancient, its gray stones covered in moss and lichen. Two tall statues of... dragons, of all things, stood on either side of the doorway, as tall as the dragon next to us.
Well, that had been unexpected.
The cave was so huge that the temple filled only a small part of it, and space continued all around and behind it.
Maybe it was the morning sun, but despite looking somewhat mythical, there was a certain… warmth to this place—there wasn't any other way to put it. Even the dragon statues looked more curious than menacing.
"It looks very welcoming," Llewellyn said after a moment.
He was not wrong.
The space behind the temple seemed to go on for a while, mostly dark but, from what I could tell, surprisingly huge and cozy.
Definitely big enough to house a dragon and keep him sheltered.
In fact, it was big enough to store a whole mountain of gold, too.
For a moment, I mourned the non-existent storage room in my flat. Maybe I should move into a cave, too.
Anyway.
I looked up at the dragon statues. I suppose the System did know what it was doing after all.
I watched the dragon walk up to the statues, looking excited.
"They look like me," he said.
Which… well, they did.
The itch in my chest scraped a bit. This place was full of magic.
"Let's take a look inside," I told Llewellyn.
If we had to leave him here, I wanted to make sure it was safe first.