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Chapter 9 - Befriending the Stray

Luna woke up to sunlight striking her face and her back aching something fierce. Confusion dawned on her as she opened her eyes to see a cave roof overhead, why was she in a cave , before she could get her thought into order a sound came from behind her and she turned her head only to come face to face with a tiny dragon looking right at her. She froze in fright before the events of yesterday suddenly crashed back into her mind. Tears started falling, she pulled her legs up towards her and buried her head into her knees as she started to sob quietly to herself.

She felt something cool poke into her side and heard a gentle coo, her sobbing halted for a moment and she slowly tilted her head to see the baby dragon looking up at her with confusion? Compassion? In its eyes? Before she could even process of what she did would be smart or not to do she reached out and hugged the tiny creature.

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Violet awoke as usual when the sunlight streaked through the cave signaling the start of the day, she did her usual routine of stretching out and taking a drink in her pond. Happy to find that her leg which she had broken last night was now fully recovered! She was about to start heading out when she heard some movement from the cave behind her. Quickly turning around and getting ready to fight she paused as she realised that the noise came from the sad small thing that had followed her back last night.

Feeling herself begin to relax Violet slowly walked over to the girl. Once she noticed that the girl was waking up she made some noise by swishing her tail along the floor to get her attention, seeing as that did the trick the looked into the girls eyes and saw her emotions flicker from fright to recognition to a sudden and profound saddness before she burst into tears and curled up into a ball as she started to weep.

Now dragon naturally have quite a high capacity for understanding emotions, especially in recognising them in others so whilst Violet didn't quite know how she knew these things she as usual only gave it some thought for a couple of seconds before deciding that she should try to comfort the small sad thing.

Now whilst dragons might be good at understanding emotions that doesn't exactly make them an expert in knowing what to do when comforting a child that just lost everyone she ever knew so Violet slowly extended her neck and gently poked the girl in her side with her snout. This halted the girls sobs which made Violet happy as she thought she had solved her problems, however, looking into her eyes she still saw the sadness and utter lack of hope. Feeling that familiar and uncomfortable feeling of pain in her chest she didn't know what to do and was thus very surprised when she was suddenly grabbed and pulled into an embrace by the small thing.

At first she wanted to strike out at her attacker but realised that this was not an actual attack but a desire to not be alone. A feeling that whilst Violet hadn't really considered all too much she had some familiarity with, after all she had been alone ever since being born with her only company being beasts that want to kill her.

So despite her first instincts to escape from the embrace she decided to lean into it and accept this moment of comfort. She didn't even notice that she began to purr softly, the light rumbling seemed to slowly calm the small sad one, so once she noticed that she was purring she allowed herself to continue.

She allowed the embrace to go on for around half an hour but by then she was beginning to get hungry so started to squirm her way out of the supprisingly comfy embrace. It seemed the small one had calmed down by this point and she let go of Violet once she realised that she wanted to get free.

Once out of the embrace Violet poked the girl in the side with her snout before walking over to the long and taking a quick drink and then stared at the girl. After a moments hesitation she moved up besides Violet and cupped some of the water in her top limbs, 'no they are called hands I think?' And brought it up to her mouth to drink. 'Ohh they look useful I bet she can hold all kinds of things in them!'

Once the girl had drank her fill Violet bobbed in satisfaction before turning around and heading towards the cave entrance. She heard the small sad one make a noise and chased after her, looking at her she tilted her head in confusion at the noise. The small sad one pointed at Violet and then outside and then tilted her head, she did make some noises with her mouth during this but it didn't make any sense to Violet. Her gestures however did make sense.

So Violet opened her mouth and then snapped it shut showing she was going out for food. The silly sad small one didn't seem to get this obvious answer so huffing Violet raised her forlimb and gestured at her mouth and made eating motions before miming swallowing. The silly girl finally seemed to get this and nodded, before pausing and then gesturing at herself and then at Violet before moving towards her with a hesitant motion.

Violet thought about her request seriously for a decent amount of time running over the pros and cons of bringing the small sad one with her before coming to a conclusion. And so after 4 seconds she bobbed in agreement and turned back around to head outside.

Luna was truly amazed at the apparent intelligence of this baby dragon, considering It couldn't be older than a few weeks maybe a month or two at most. She followed after the dragon after asking to follow it on its mission to get food. She was quite hungry herself seeing as she didn't get a chance to eat last night before the attack. A shiver went down her spine and she almost started crying again before she shook her head and gently slapped her cheeks to shake off the emotions.

No she couldn't afford to be weak right now, she needed to survive and following this surprising friendly dragon seemed like her best bet.

She still couldn't quite believe that she has just hugged the little one for so long long when she woke up, although she had to admit it helped calm her down quite a bit. Walking slowly behind the dragon she realised that she was already feeling quite dependant on this adorable blue and pink dragon and was quite unsure how she felt about that.

Before she could ponder this any further her eyes widened as shadows seemed to swallow the baby dragon, she almost screamed out in supprise but realised after a moment that the dragon was controlling the shadows! How has such a young creature managed to gain control over a fundamental mana type, only the previous clan head had a basic grasp of a fundamental but it seemed that this baby dragon had already surpassed his control!

As she pondered this she watched as the shadows seemed to stretch out towards her and before she could react the shadows engulfed her too. Surprisingly though she could suddenly see clearly all the details within the nearby shadows including the smug looking dragon that was glancing at her. Luna could only sigh to herself at that before smiling back at the dragon and giving it a thumbs up.

Violet was confused why the sad small one raised one of the digits on her hand at me but she assumed it meant a confirmation or a praise of some kind. I mean what else could it possibly be she had just demonstrated her awesomeness with magic!

Continuing on Violet decided that they wouldn't go too far today as she didn't want to push the clearly still troubled girl.

With that in mind they roamed around looking for some prey, to violets delight they didn't have to wait too long before they came across a lone Wild Boar, halting in the shadows Violet glanced back at the girl who was looking at the boar with a mix of surprise and a slight bit of fear. Snorting at the thought of being afraid of a stupid boar, especially one on its own Violet decided to show off some more.

She gathered her mana and gently poured some out using shadow bolt as a guild and then used shadow manipulation to add more mana into the ball, slowly reshaping it to match her arcane spear once she was satisfied with it she launched it toward the unsuspecting boar and managed to strike it in its side, piercing quite deeply and causing the boar to let out a squeal of pain, the shadow stuff clung onto the side of the beast and seemed to eat away at whatever it touched causing a nasty would to appear where the spear of shadows struck. She quickly followed this up by summoning duel bolt spells, one arcane and one basic shadow bolt.

BOOM. WHOOSH

they both struck true, her arcane bolt issuing its usual explosion whilst the shadow bolt seemed to impact and then spread out and then dig into the creatures side, it looked quite painful. Violet decided she really liked that spell!

The boar was surprisingly still alive but was clearly injured and it turned towards its assailant spotting Violet it let out its squealing battle cry and charger at her. Snorting at its predictability she summoned her Arcane spear and launched it as soon as it finished forming.

THUD. BOOM. THUD

The spear struck true and landed right between the beasts eyes before exploding from within its head. This instantly killed the boar and its body collapsed to the floor and sliding till it arrrived right in front of Violet. Feeling very pleased with herself she turned around to look at the small sad one and was even more gratified to witness the look of absolute supprise and amazement that was plastered over her face.

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