Auroraflame: Hatchling of the Cosmic Dawn

A Hatchling of Questionable Cosmic Importance

The first rumor about Auroraflame was that her breath could weave the fabric of reality.

This came as a surprise to Auroraflame, whose most impressive achievement with it so far had been warming a pebble. She had also sneezed sparks into her breakfast, but she felt the universe would need to lower its standards considerably before calling that creation.

She lived in the Cosmic Dawn, a high, enchanted realm of luminous paths, flowering lights and hollows where small dragons could sleep without floating away. The name made it sound very grand. Her particular hollow contained three interesting stones, half an eggshell and a leaf she had been assured was lucky, despite its persistent habit of sticking to her foot.

Beyond the familiar paths lay the Labyrinth of Serendipity. Travelers spoke of it as though it occupied half the heavens. The guides who actually maintained its waymarks described it as manageable, provided nobody mistook enthusiasm for a map.

Auroraflame possessed a great deal of enthusiasm.

Fortunately, the sentient quasars who tended the nearest crossing also possessed a map.

“Follow the blue lights,” they told her. “Rest at the marked hollows. If a path fades, come back. Do not invent a shortcut.”

“What if it’s a very good shortcut?”

“Especially then.”

They had asked her to retrieve the Guffaw Gem, which had gone missing during a gathering of the realm’s jesters. Missing was perhaps a generous word. The Nebula of Nonsense had taken it into the labyrinth and announced that anyone wishing to reclaim it would first have to demonstrate a sense of humor.

The quasars had tried a formal complaint. It had been returned wearing a tiny hat.

Auroraflame accepted the challenge. She was small enough to fit through the narrower passages, curious enough to enjoy getting there, and young enough to believe a roomful of professional comedians might eventually agree that someone else was funny.

She traveled in short flights between the blue waymarks. Her patterned orange wings caught the light; pink and violet swept through her crest whenever she turned. When her shoulders began to ache, she landed. It was irritating to discover that adventures included sitting still, but less irritating than falling off one.

At a crossing shaped like a great silver ring, the Sphinx of Saturn lowered its bright face to hers. That was the guardian’s chosen name. Auroraflame had been warned not to begin by asking whether it had ever been to Saturn.

“What force and strength cannot get through, I with my unique teeth can do. What am I?” it asked.

Auroraflame looked at its mouth.

“Not you?”

“The riddle is not about me.”

“You have quite a lot of teeth.”

“Nevertheless.”

She thought of the gate at the quasars’ storehouse, which resisted pushing, pulling and one extremely convincing speech about why she needed a second breakfast.

“A key!”

The Sphinx laughed, a bright, rattling sound that shook dust from its ring. Then it opened the crossing.

“An excellent answer.”

“Thank you. Your teeth are also excellent.”

“Nobody ever mentions that.”

Beyond it, the blue path curved toward the jester’s chamber. Auroraflame checked the map before proceeding. She felt this was a disappointingly sensible thing for a creature of rumored cosmic importance to do, but the path was easier to enjoy when she knew how to get home.

The Joke That Wouldn’t Do the Work for Her

The Nebula of Nonsense wore so many bells that arriving was less a movement than a public announcement.

It swept into the chamber, turned inside its own cloudlike coat, and produced a deck of quark cards. Each card held a picture that changed when viewed sideways. Auroraflame tried this twice and nearly fell over.

“Choose the card that answers the ultimate question,” the jester declared. “What makes the universe giggle with glee?”

“Does it have to be the whole universe?”

“Ambition, little dragon.”

“I’ve only just got comfortable talking to one sphinx.”

She drew a card. A shining egg bobbed above its surface.

Auroraflame considered several impressive things to say. Most involved words she had heard travelers use without explaining them. Then she remembered her own first morning: one claw through the shell, her tail under her chin, and the embarrassing discovery that she had spent a long time pushing against the piece she was sitting on.

“Perhaps the universe hatched from an egg,” she said, “and its first great mystery was how to get the shell off its bottom.”

The jester made a startled little squeak. One bell rang. Then the rest joined in.

“That,” it wheezed, “would explain a great deal.”

“It’s a joke,” Auroraflame said quickly. “I wasn’t there.”

“A distinction many lecturers could stand to make.”

The Guffaw Gem appeared above the jester’s palm: a bright, rounded stone with a gold-orange shimmer curling around it. Auroraflame touched it. The jester’s laughter sounded again, faintly, as though remembered by a shell.

She blinked.

“It makes people laugh?”

“It keeps an echo of laughter freely given. It can share the sound. The rest depends on the listener.”

“So I still have to be funny?”

“Tragic, isn’t it?”

The jester lent her a woven carrying sling and showed her how to secure it without catching her wing joints. The gem settled outside her chest in a small pouch, close enough to warm her scales. She lifted it out with one claw, watched the little light coil around it, and put it back. No hidden power entered her body. She had acquired a troublesome object, not a new set of organs.

On the return route she met the Oracle of Orions at the Corridor of Whispers. This guide tended a crossing to Terra, a lower valley linked to the Cosmic Dawn by a narrow passage of light. Travelers had embellished Terra into a whole distant planet in some accounts. From the threshold, Auroraflame could see a village, wooded slopes and washing that someone had sensibly brought in before rain.

“There is a fox there who could use your company,” the Oracle said.

“Is he lost?”

“Discouraged.”

Auroraflame’s wings drooped. “I’m rather tired.”

“Then you should eat and rest before deciding.”

This was not the sort of command or prophecy she had expected. It was considerably more useful.

By morning, curiosity had returned. The Oracle marked the crossing’s closing time on her map and promised to wait at the upper end. Auroraflame took the sloping path down. She did not plummet through an atmosphere. She slipped once on a damp stone, caught herself, and felt this was quite enough danger for an entrance.

The Trickster Fox sat outside a shuttered gathering hall, balancing a twig on his nose.

“What is the sound of one claw clapping?” he asked.

Auroraflame raised a claw. Nothing happened.

“A very small audience?”

The twig fell off his nose.

He laughed. The gem answered softly from its pouch, and Auroraflame laughed too. For the first time that morning, the fox got to his feet.

A Place at the Table for the Baron

The trouble in Terra was not that laughter had vanished from every creature. It was that the gathering hall had been closed, and the Baron of Boredom had made being cheerful in company unnecessarily difficult.

“He says gatherings are disorderly,” the fox explained. “People leave crumbs. Someone once moved a chair without asking. Last spring, a goose interrupted his speech.”

“What did the goose say?”

“It was not a detailed criticism, but everyone understood it.”

Auroraflame looked at the locked door. “Can the gem open it?”

“Does it have a key?”

She thought of the Sphinx and sighed. “No.”

They began outside instead.

The fox set out three stools. Auroraflame asked passing villagers whether they wanted to hear a joke. Some did. One woman had an appointment and went on her way. A tired man sat down without smiling, and nobody told him he was doing it wrong.

At first the little dragon tried the grandest introduction she could manage.

“I have traveled from the celestial reaches with the laughter of the universe!”

“Have you brought lunch?” asked a child.

She looked at the fox.

“It’s a fair question,” he said.

So they shared what they had, and Auroraflame told the story of the lucky leaf. She demonstrated how it had clung to her foot through three heroic attempts to shake it off. Halfway through the demonstration, an ordinary leaf attached itself to her tail.

The child pointed. The fox put a paw over his mouth. Auroraflame looked behind her, understood, and laughed so hard she had to sit down.

The gem caught the sound and returned it like a warm echo. It did not seize anyone’s throat or command anyone’s feelings. The tired man remained quiet, though he accepted another piece of bread. The woman returning from her appointment stopped to listen.

Then the Baron arrived.

He was not a shadow stretching across a planet, though he clearly wished to make that impression. He was a tall, severe figure in a coat with very serious buttons, and he had brought a document.

“Cease this foolishness.”

The fox looked at the document. “Is that the foolishness, or have you brought instructions?”

“Laughter has no place in Terra.”

Auroraflame felt the first prickle of a grand speech. She could announce that joy would conquer gloom. She could hold the gem aloft and hope it did something impressive. Instead, she noticed the Baron looking at the stools.

There were no empty ones.

“We can make you a place,” she said.

“I did not request a place.”

“All right.”

She moved a cushion onto the low wall anyway, then returned to the fox. For several uncomfortable moments the Baron stood with his document held in both hands. Nobody bowed. Nobody chased him away.

At last he said, “People laugh at things.”

The fox’s ears lowered. “Sometimes they do.”

“At people.”

Auroraflame glanced at her tail. “They laughed at my leaf.”

“That is hardly the same.”

“No,” she said. “I suppose it depends how it feels.”

She unfastened the pouch and set the gem on the wall. The light faded to a patient ember. The Baron watched, apparently surprised that she could choose to stop using it.

“You needn’t laugh,” she told him. “You can just sit.”

He did, stiffly, with his document across his knees.

The fox tried a small joke about a star that cracked up. The child groaned. Auroraflame said she had come a very long way for better material. The fox bowed so deeply that the twig, still caught behind his ear, fell into his own mouth.

The Baron made a sound.

Everyone carefully continued looking at the fox.

He made it again: a brief, unwilling snicker. This time it became a laugh, rough from disuse and entirely his own. Auroraflame smiled but left the gem on the wall. The moment did not need help.

Opening the hall took longer than laughing. There were questions about cleaning, quiet hours and the mysteriously mobile chair. The villagers insisted that the space belonged to all of them. Before Auroraflame left, the Baron brought the key and agreed to a first gathering the following afternoon.

“No goose speeches,” he said.

“We cannot speak for the goose,” replied the fox.

Auroraflame returned through the crossing before it closed, tired and pleased and carrying the gem in its sling. The Oracle was waiting. Above them, the blue waymarks led toward home.

Later she returned the sling and the Guffaw Gem to the quasars’ gathering place, where its little store of laughter could be shared rather than hoarded. She kept the map. There were people in Terra she would like to visit again.

Her breath still could not weave reality. Her wings still needed rest. Somewhere in her hollow, the lucky leaf was preparing another attachment.

But a hall had opened, a fox had company, and a very serious man had found a place to sit.

Auroraflame thought that was a respectable amount of cosmic importance for one small dragon.