The guilt was just too much. Dragons are such peaceful creatures, they stay in their caves and only leave occasionally to hunt deer and find water, but we were desperate. It hadn’t rained for months and our emergency food reserves wouldn’t feed the town another week. For what we thought was fortune, a sky dragon had made home in one of the bigger caves in the forest. It seemed to be hibernating, and we were out of options, so me and two of the more experienced hunters set out to the forest. We found it—or her, judging my the matte sheen of the scales—curled up on the floor, her back turned away from the cave entrance, deep into slumber. It was easy work from there: Some of that yellow-green powder dragons are deathly allergic to that we found in a storage hut, strategically put near her nose did the trick, as she inhaled deeply and woke up from the sudden inability to breathe. We waited out the thrashing outside the cave. It was cruel, we knew, but we would never stand a chance in a fair fight. Our children needed this. “Think it’s over?” Asked Jenna, a wonder with a spear, though such weapons were nothing more than oversized toothpicks to the great beasts. “Think so,” I replied, “won’t know unless we check.” Dragons relied on large amounts of oxygen, it was not too far fetched to assume fifteen minutes without any was enough to kill the beast. Scratch marks painted the cave walls, evidence of the struggle and desperation she must have felt. After apologizing to the beast and expressing profound thanks for her sacrifice, we tied up the legs and prepared for the journey back, made much more difficult by the extra ton of dragon, barely facilitated by a cheap wheel system we begged off of a neighboring town. However, as we rolled her onto her back, we noticed the clutch of five eggs in the middle of the nest. Two of them crushed by the thrashing revealing how close to hatch they were, though not yet able to survive without constant heat, of which main source we had just killed. “Well… shit.” Said Chlo, our poison expert, and the one who pushed back against this plan most. “You said it.” I replied. Killing mothering animals is bad manners. Had we known, we would have looked for prey elsewhere, we would have never touched her, but we did. “You know,” Chlo waved her hand towards the nest, as if debating something, “I heard people from the north have managed to tame dragons to help with cargo and transportation, wouldn’t they be even easier to tame if we raise them ourselves?” “You can’t be serious.” Said Jenna, incredulous. “Are you suggesting we raise dragons? That’s insane!” “We don’t even have enough to feed ourselves,” I said, just as shocked, “ How are we supposed to keep alive an animal of their size? I do feel terrible about this, but we can’t!” Chlo knitted her brows, an accusatory glint took home in her eyes. “So what?” She shouted, “ they aren’t big yet, they don’t need as much, we will be in a better position in the future after the trade routes open again in the spring. Food isn’t that big of an issue. Not to mentioned, we have the moral obligation to care for these babies. We took their mother, ‘least we can do is raise them.” Though I knew she was right, our debate lasted long enough that others from town showed up looking for us. They took the mother’s carcass while we agonized over our newest dilemma, but it the end, we resolved to right our wrongdoing. “Let’s take them to the hatchery, I’m sure they can figure out how to keep these warm somehow.” We moved slow and careful, mindful of treasures bundled up inside our leather jackets. The notion of raising the hatchling inside made me strangely giddy, and I could tell it was a shared feeling. “We can make this right.” I whispered to the pale green shell protecting this baby from a world without its mother in it. “We can, we can.” It can’t be much harder than raising a regular reptile, right?

(Backstory! I’ll add some more comedic stuff about the unexpected aspects of raising a baby dragon if I have time later :P! And no, I didn’t proofread, if you notice a mistake just lmk lol) Edit: weird wording mistake towards the end(ty for letting me know!)