A lesson in hording (1/3)

The morning was bright and the sky was clear when Hecate finally pulled herself up from her morning soak and narrowed her eyes as the distant, more frequently as of late, observer.

Well, not of her, she reminded herself - But of her horde.

She'd been keeping an eye on the other dragon for months now, and while he never approached her cove - especially having kept his distance after watching her near roast a stranger for even coming close to touching her gold - she couldn't say she approved of him hovering the way he did.

Her cove was a small thing really. It was just about big enough for her to curl up inside and was directly next to the lake, a part nearer the river that fed the enormous thing along with the rain. The rocks were a brownish color, lines of different hues threading it through millenniums of oxidation and erosion. The inside was dark, barring a small oil lamp Bran had given her, which she lit herself with small puffs of flame when she wanted some more light in the darker days in winter, or when her less night-vision-friendly guests were over.

Her horde, a large, bulky hill of golds, jewels and treasures any dragon could be proud of, was down a small tunnel that led under the ground a little ways. Some of the larger, shinier pieces were just about visible from outside the den, which seemed to be what had attracted both the dragon's, and Speedy's attention back in the day when she'd started collecting.

She'd since put up boulders and rocks as a kind of barrier, big enough for her to slip through with only a little trouble, but small enough for her to block and defend easily with her head poking out.

She vaguely knew the dragon, too, but who exactly he was slipped her mind most days. Today it clicked though as she was having a rare, rare, rare talk with Bek over dinner - a dead whale he had found and brought back to feed in the lake for his kids and his mate, and as it happened, Hecate, for whatever reason. Egg. The other dragon's name was Egg. One of Speedy and Bek's clutches. Seemingly another one she could actually tolerate that wasn't Bambi.

She flicked the water off of her tail, before she started to make her way towards him. She had a goal in mind. She didn't want him hawking her treasure, but... if he wanted some of his own, it was only her natural right to show him how as their self appointed Aunty.

She was Speedy's best friend, after all. She was possibly the closest to the role then any other dragon could be.

She just hoped he could talk.

This was a spot Egg often found himself at, peering at the strange green dragon's den where he could see the glint of whatever was there but never actually tell what was there. He was always far enough away to where he could just see and never any closer. He had seen the dragon before his fascination with her den led him there everyday, his mother Speedy spent a lot of time with this stranger and perhaps he had been introduced but he couldn’t quite remember.

She sometimes would stare at him, making him feel strangely uneasy but whether he actually knew that was the feeling was unknown because he never seemed to move. Today was different however, today the other dragon slinked into the water and moved towards him, today he shifted slightly back, his head lowering itself further into the water until his eyes were partly submerged in water. Other than that, he made no further movement. He was deathly still.

Hecate slithered across the bank, half getting in and out the water, before she came to a stop about five feet from the other dragon. She reared up her neck to appear bigger than she was, before she let out a soft snort, a flicker of flame exiting with the breath. It almost seemed resigned.

"You. You're Egg. Son of Sobek. Correct?"

Egg watched curiously until Hecate was her distance away and listened. The water rumbled around him as he gurgled out his answer. He paused for a second before lifting his mouth out of the water, nodding.

“Y…es.”

She rumbled softly, studying him for a long moment, before she snorted for a second time. Did she want to do this? Yes. Did she want to deal with the aftermath? Probably not. At least this one could speak.

"Why do you stare so much at my cove?" she asked, raising a brow at him slightly. She knew why. But she still wanted an answer

He rumbled as she asked her question, pondering. There were a few reasons he was often found staring at Hecate’s hoard. What all was in the hoard? Why was she so protective over it? What are those shiny things that glint, the ones that always caught his attention? Did she want all of them? Or just one?

“Can see shiny from far away. Why do have shiny thing? What is shiny thing?”

"That shiny thing, Egg, is called treasure. Every dragon worth their scales should have some kind of treasure they keep close to them. Your mother has a horde, as does your father from what I hear. You are young. So i shall forgive you for not knowing"

Treasure...treasure. Shiny is treasure, treasure is shiny. Hoard? Whatever that was, he wanted it. “How do...yo..u get hoard?” He tried to flesh his sentence out a bit more than he had to, almost as if he was attempting to sound a bit like Hecate. Intelligent.