I skipped down the marbled hall of my familly villa and turned the corner, running smack into my uncle. “Fonfin!” I exclaimed as I waved the letter in my hands. The delicate vellum carried the words every teenager wants to read. “I’ve been accepted! I get to go to the next hatching!”

He lifted me up in his arms and spun me around in a great big hug. Of all the members of my family I could have met up with, his cheering smile was the best. “That’s great, Itzaeya! I’m so happy for you.’

Fonfon, my father’s eldest brother, placed me back on my feet. “When did you get so big?” He took the vellum from me and read it, his mouth forming the words as he did. “Itzaeya? It says here the next hatching is due at midsummer! That’s in two days? Do your parents know?”

I looked down the hall at the throng milling about. “If they didn’t,” I saw a page disappear at a clip towards the assembly room, “they will in about… three… two… o..”

“Itzaeya!” I cringed at my father’s roar.

“Time to pay the piper,” Fonfon said.

Two days later, I sat at the edge of the hatching sands, waiting to be told that I could advance. There were litteral thousands of eggs, with only a few known for certain to be female. I wasn’t watching the squeeling girls as they watched the pearlescent eggs hatch one after another. Most were my age, maybe a little older. Out of those eggs queens may be hatched. Queens to keep the dragons’ population growing.

Not all the dragons would fly. Some would never grow bigger than your arm span. You were still a rider, only because there was a chance, just a chance that the dragon would grow again as it aged.

There was a myth about how a dragon bonds with one while young, a second as an adolescent, but the adult dragon? That would give a rider lifetimes to live.

I wanted that, but that life was nowhere near the hatching grounds.

I was facinated by one that had been point out as probably barren. It was a smaller egg than the rest. Most had bottoms the size of two cupped adult hands. This one was half that. My one hand could have held it.

Other eggs rocked. One tumbled out of the clutch pile. It bounced down and with a clatter, shattered into bits. Out popped a blue cream dragon, it’s wings still wet and unfurled. It looked around and squawked.

One of the girls ran up to it and the lock on was instant. “Minra” the girl’s face lit up as the connection was made.

One by one, eggs hatched and bonds made. Joyous candidates walked off the sands as riders, carrying newly hatched dragons in their arms or on their shoulders. Golds. Reds. Greens. Blues. Black. Bronze.

I walked up to the egg. It felt warm to the touch. It moved under my fingers. There was a dragon in there. I tapped the egg, and a crack formed where I tapped. I tapped another spot. Another crack. My fingers dug into the hole to break the shell and tear at the membrane.

Soon, a silver darling dragon lay curled up in my lap. I was lost in the blue of her eyes.