FEB 18 Sunday.

I study the flow of the life magic inside of the gem seed floating in front of me while in deep meditation.

Meditation is a practice I've kept up for years now and it is second nature to me by this point. It's also been very helpful for relaxing and centering myself, even in more chaotic situations. It's not something all-powerful but it is a helpful thing and I've kept up my practice for good reason.

I've spent a good amount of time over the past few days silently meditating and intently studying the small flows of life magic inside these odd seeds. I went back to check on the roots, but they apparently died as well and now the seeds are unfortunately all that remains of the plant.

I was able to basically confirm they are seeds or at least offshoots of the plant that can grow on their own. The magical flows have a similar structure to other seeds I've found. I also experimented by very gently feeding the seeds magic and like other types of seeds they absorbed the life magic and became more active.

I've also tried to find out what type of gems the plant is made from, but my knowledge of identifying gems is shoddy at best. The clear outer layer looks like diamond but a few other gems are clear and see through so I'm basically just guessing here, and I have no idea what the core could be made from either.

The plant's structure is interesting and I think this specific specimen of this plant was young. The flower I grew was large for such a small plant and it seemed to still be growing out of its roots. Gems may be delicate but they are still strong and the fact I was able to break this plant from its roots so easily may be a sign it was young, but again I'm mostly guessing here.

What I have been able to study is the seeds, and they are a very interesting thing. The seeds themselves are around six inches long, and three inches wide, while being identical to a diamond shape. Not to be confused with a shaped diamond, it is also pretty heavy, a single seed weighs around seven pounds.

The clear gem makes up a very thin shell, maybe an eighth of an inch thick at most, while the rest is the same bright blood-red gemstone. They seem to be dormant, their flows of life magic moving very slowly to conserve themselves like many other seeds do to stay alive longer.

But what really caught my eye is the magical flows themselves. In all other forms of life, I've observed the flows make strands and streams that twist and turn throughout a living thing's entire being. They combine and separate and grow like wild untamed vines without limit or direction.

There is logic to the different flows, but it is very chaotic and disorganized, as is normal for all forms of life. The seed's flows are also disorganized and wild, but the form they take is vastly different from anything else I've seen so far. Instead of vines and streams, it looks more like a crystal lattice.

The flows follow straight lines that turn at even and consistent angles, like the life magic in flowing along carved-out channels in the seeds themselves. The flows are still messy, combining and separating at seemingly random while the flows change direction at different points, but it looks like the flows are almost being conducted by the gem to flow along a lattice.

It's odd to study something seemingly so alien. It makes me wonder what conditions are even needed for something like this to come into being. Was it just random chance? A fluke of evolution like so many other things? Or was it made in some way, but later deviated from what it was over time?

I simply don't know, but I do know that if someone made this they are far beyond me. I don't even know where to begin to make something like this, it is a thing of beauty and endless questions for me. So I've taken a good amount of time just studying these seeds to expand my knowledge of life.

I've not learned much beyond its flows and a few interesting observations, but I will be very excited to grow these properly when I'm ready to do so. On that topic I found out something interesting by accident, I was in my cave and brought a seed near the fire to see it better in the light.

The magical flows of the seed sped up slightly, not a lot but it was noticeable. Considering where it was living it makes sense that one of the conditions to grow it properly is extreme heat, and probably lava as well. I'll need to make a custom setup to properly grow this back home.

It shouldn't be too hard though, heating things up is easy enough with magic and I'll just need a source of rock to feed the thing. That's all for when I get back home though, for now I'm focused on studying these seeds and learning from Larimar, speaking of her our last few days of lengthy conversation have been particularly enlightening.

I've learned more in the past few days than I have while talking to every other Dragon combined. It's not a perfect satiation as some topics Larimar is not knowledgeable about, but it's still a massive improvement over the two weeks before our deal started.

I've learned a lot, and I even got her to spend the entirety of yesterday just teaching me the Dragon language. She's fully fluent in it and because I can't learn it in the next two weeks I've focused my efforts on recording it all for later. I can always learn from my notes later on, which will have to be good enough.

Beyond the language, she's knowledgeable about a lot of things, particularly the switch to the pony language. She lived through it and still remembers when all Dragons primarily spoke Dragon, she ended up basically stating the same reasons as Aurora as to why it died out for the most part.

It seems to have simply come down to practicality and advantage. Dragons who didn't speak Pony had a hard time trading with Ponies so learned to do so and just kept using it. In the end, it seems apathy and practicality won out, something I found interesting is that even Larimar had no real attachment to the Dragon language.

It seems to be viewed as a tool for the most part and a Dragon doesn't really care what language they are speaking as long as they can talk with whoever they need to. I still feel like it's very sudden and abrupt for them, Larimar said the change happened in less than a century.

That's not a lot of time for that level of social change, by Pony standards, let alone Dragon standards. I didn't point it out to her at the time because I wanted to think about it more, but she told me about several other changes to Dragon life that took far longer than a century and had way less impact than changing the primarily used language.

I have no idea what happened at the time as it was centuries ago but it still seems odd to me. But I don't think Larimar or any other elder Dragon will have any good answers for me, they just accept it as the way things went and stop caring. I do enjoy how unbothered Dragons are about a lot of things, but by magic, they are also so fucking lazy.

I don't like straight-up insulting them, but come ON, you can't just see something like this happening and not care. Dragons seem dedicated to just that though. The young Dragons don't care about listening to adults or elders ramble on about seemingly useless things, at least useless to them, and the same can be said about the adults and elders themselves.

Moving on, I've learned a large amount about two interesting subjects. Mating habits, and raising young Dragons, let's start with the latter. Raising a Dragon is actually much simpler than you may first assume, but like many things, Dragons tend to prefer simple.

Most hatchlings are fed a mix of gems and meat and taught to an extent by their parents. This teaching mostly consists of play fighting with siblings or other Dragon hatchlings, being taught how to gather food, and knowing where to sleep. Then later in life, they are taught about social interactions, and that brings up The Dragon Hierarchy.

The Dragon Hierarchy plays a small but interesting part as a social structure and concept that Larimar took a great deal of time to explain in good detail. Depending on several factors, age, strength, hoard size, family size, and relation, along with past achievements you may end up in different standing.

It's not a firm structure and tends to change often, and many Dragons ignore it entirely. The basic idea behind it is that depending on those factors you may be seen as a more powerful Dragon, many care about this perceived image of power and many others don't.

It depends on the individual a lot. And for those that do care about The Dragon Hierarchy, it often varies by age. A young Dragon, they may only care if another Dragon has powerful family members or are powerful themselves. For adult Dragons it seems to be something of bragging rights and can be important to get a mate, many fight and compete at this age because they want to show themselves as more powerful than others.

For Elders it is more about what they have done in their lives, their achievements, and such, they rarely tend to fight each other and leave the fighting to the younger Dragons. Interestingly this social structure is mostly relevant to larger or more powerful Dragon families, most Dragons outside of that could oftentimes not care less.

It's like an odd form of royal houses and nobles, but very importantly these families only have power in the tangible sense. There is little to no social power from it and what little is there is often ignored by everyone but the adults. And they have no political power of any form outside of their family, the Dragon Lord holds all of that power uncontested.

This means little to me, I just don't need to attack a large family and it won't matter, and I do mean the entire family. Attacking one member is considered more a personal issue than a family issue, and conflict between families is pretty rare in general due to how individualistic Dragons are.

Like I was told a while ago you really have to wrong a Dragon to get their family involved. Now, moving on to the second thing I learned about, mating. That is actually far more simple and more complex, it really depends on the Dragons involved in the process and how they pick a mate.

It mostly has to do with hoards. A mate will normally offer some of their hoard to a potential partner, and that potential partner either accepts it and they become mates or they don't, that's the simple part. The complicated part is what hoard is best and the other potential factors involved.

Gold and gems are pretty much universally liked though and are always preferred, that's another reason they make hoards, beyond their greed. Hoard size is one of the most important factors for attracting a mate, gold being very flashy and shiny makes a very attractive hoard.

Interestingly it's more common for a dragoness to approach a drake and make the first move by offering some of their hoard to a drake. It goes both ways but it seems dragonesses are more inclined to actually seek out a mate, and often are more driven to make a larger hoard to do that.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, Dragon greed isn't something I've asked anyone about. That is something else I should talk about with Larimar, Dragon greed is an interesting thing, and there is the entire thing with greed growth.

I check the time and see it's near sunrise, time for me and Larimar to meet again, perfect timing. I stretch a bit and Entropy jumps on my back to ride along. "Feel up to meeting Larimar Girl?" I ask as I have the past few days. I'm hoping Entropy can relax around Larimar after enough time and not be so afraid.

She shifts on her feet for a moment and shakes her head. "No." I don't push her and get to pet her with a reassuring smile before grabbing my things and making my way out of the cave. But as I'm walking out I quickly spot something, a Dragon outside of the cave.

I was too focused to notice them, but it was only one Dragon, a young Dragon at that. Sunlight is barely streamed into the valley so I can't see them very well.

They aren't that large, smaller than me by a fair amount, and they are sitting down looking at the floor while scratching the shield and looking thoughtful. I knew someone would find this place eventually, it's not massively hidden after all, either way, it seems I have an uninvited visitor.

I sigh a bit but put on a small smile and turn to Entropy, "Shadow please." I whisper to Entropy and she bobs her head, immediately moving into my shadow. I walk through the dark and move up the tunnel while also paying attention to anything unexpected.

I walk closer and as the outside brightens with the sun rising a bit higher I make out the Dragon while walking towards them. :Huh, that's suspicious: To my surprise it's Smolder, looking both bored and intrigued while inspecting the shield by placing a hand on it. "Hello again," I say evenly while still a good few feet away from her, I don't want to get close and then startle her.

Her head snaps up to look down the tunnel as I come into the light for her to see. After squinting a bit her eyes widen much more before she stands up and takes a step back. "Oh, shit!" She mutters seemingly caught off guard by my presence. "I, ahh. I'm just leaving?" She offers with some slight hesitation.

I stop and give her a more relaxed smile than the last time we met. "It's fine, you've done no harm," I say with a somewhat reassuring tone. "I'd ask you not to tell others I am here, I don't want to have to deal with that red Dragon again." I take a pretty relaxed and chill tone as she's done me no harm and is just a child.

She blinks slowly after a moment and nods. "Ok? Ugh, your way more, calm?" She asks in an odd way before shaking her head a bit. "I-I mean, ya, I won't tell." She quickly adds after a moment. "You're ah, not going to stick me to a wall or anything, right?" She asks slightly nervous.

I shrug. "Not unless you attack me. That red Dragon got a little too aggressive, not entirely his fault, messing with him was fun though." I admit, deciding not to lie when it comes to her brother. "Anyway, I got things to do, have a good day." I walk closer to the shield and she moves to the side so I can pass.

She breathes out a bit of smoke, seemingly in relief while I walk past her. "Hey?" I turned back to her with a raised brow, "Ugh, do you, want to talk?" She asks, gaining a bit more confidence after seeing my relaxed attitude. "I mean, I've never seen someone do THAT before, and you got me curious so..." She trails off as I stare back silently.

I'm a little suspicious that she may have tracked me here in some way. But honestly, the worst she could do is bring a parent, which is unlikely, or Garble, who I can deal with easily enough. After a few seconds, my curiosity wins out, "Sure, but I got someone I'm meeting, and you'll leave when we get there." I say in a firm tone before continuing to walk into the valley.

I hear her steps quicken to catch up to me after a moment and she walks up beside me. "Cool, so, what is a Pony doing, well in a cave? No wait, what are you doing here at all?" She asks with more energy and calm than I expected. She's going with the flow as it were and just acts like she wasn't scared of me a moment ago.

I shrug again. "I'm camping. And a few things, mostly trading and learning." I answer without really answering. "So, who is the red one?" She tilts her head a little. "I never got his name, he decided to mess with me, so I did the same thing." I give her an actual reason for why I antagonized Garble a little and try to get some more information.

She chuckles a bit, finding humor in the memory. "I know, he wouldn't stop complaining about the weird Pony." She laughs but trails off quickly and looks at me again. "Ugh, not that you're weird or anything." She adds with a slightly wary look, but I just shrug once again. "So, what did you do to Garble? Ya. that's his name." She asks curiously.

I chuckle as well. "I'll admit I am a bit odd, weird might be a bit much though." I take her words with some humor, enjoying being able to speak without being as serious or focused. "A basic Sticking spell and a Floating spell, any decently skilled Pony can do that." I half-lie as the Stasis spell is a bit different, it really isn't that impressive when you think about it.

She snorts at that and shakes her head a bit. "Really? You just left him in the air for, I don't know how long." She laughs a little more. "Wait, what else can you do then? Is that not, like, impressive?" She asks curiously and I think for a moment on how best to prove my point.

She might not tell others where I live, but I see it as likely she'll tell others about our talk, and that I can work with. I motion to a large boulder a hundred feet away. "The spells are easy, it's how you use them that really matters. As for impressive? You see that boulder?" I ask calmly while we reach the top of the valley.

She looks at it and nods. "Ya, wh-" She's cut off by a loud cracking sound as an overpowered Lightening Strike spell deafens both of us for a moment. The spell is overpowered more than necessary and slams into the boulder in the blink of an eye, blasting some rock away in a shower of dust and cracking the boulder into several large pieces. "The fuck!"

She jumps back and her eyes go wide as she stares at the bolder mouth agape in shock. "That is something more impressive." I smile at her reaction. "Not the most impressive thing, but it's up there when it comes to attack spells." I keep walking as she looks in between me and what remains of the boulder.

She stands there for a moment but quickly catches up again. "That, was, awesome! You can just do that?!" She gains a slightly excited tone but her face looks thoughtful after a moment. "Oh, you can just do that." She mumbles after a second and looks back at me. "You really let him off, really lightly."

I shake my head a little. "Spells like that are a lot less common to see in use, but yes I can do that. As for Garble?" I ask and she nods. "Not really, he got humiliated and had to spend a while in the air, that's enough. He was never really a threat so no reason to really hurt him." I am blunt and honest with her as I don't want her to think I'd have actually hurt her brother.

She looks down at the ground and we walk in silence for a while, but I stop after spotting Larimar lying in the valley. I see her look up confused but watch her eyes go for a third time after seeing Larimar waiting there. "It was nice meeting you, but I have things to do, and it's time we part ways." I give her a polite but firm dismissal.

She looks between me and Larimar for a moment before nodding. "Ok, and hey, umm." She seems to struggle with her words. "Thanks, for ya know, not blasting him." She surprisingly thanks me and I'm reminded of a time still yet to come.

I nod with a smile. "He didn't deserve that, and there is always room for a little mercy and restraint. Have a good day, and if you stop by again, knock, it's only polite." I give some random advice to be nice before turning and walking away before she can say anything else to me. She was interesting, and even now I can see a little of what she may one day become.

She watches me walk away and turns to leave after a moment, again looking thoughtful about something. I nod to Larimar when I get close enough and start to take out my things once again to start another conversation with her. "Hello Larimar, doing well I hope?" I greet her in a friendly manner.

She looks behind me a little and watches Smolder in the distance. "It seems even with me here all day you find time to talk with others. I am fine, you?" She asks back as more of a formality than anything. Over the past few days, I've noticed that she's gotten a bit more relaxed and less uptight with me.

She's not all friendly or anything, but things are more relaxed on both sides by this point. "They found me actually, and I'm fine. Anything interesting to talk about? I never really asked what you all consider interesting news or events to be." I commented while bringing out my notebook and flipping to where I left off.

She moves her legs a bit to cross them and nods. "If a massive tree counts." I nearly tense up at hearing that but stay relaxed and react as expected by looking up at her with a raised brow. "Apparently it appeared out of thin air. An elder actually ended up just taking it, it is interesting." She comments slowly as if pondering it.

To the best of my ability, I'm pretty sure she isn't suspecting me. She is just sharing some interesting news, it's hard to tell though. "Really? Big by your standards or mine?" I fake ignorance but not my interest as I am curious what they figured out. "And what do you mean by, appear? Does that just happen here?" I add some more questions to throw any suspicion off.

She blinks slowly, still giving no indication she suspects me and acting like normal. "Just that, you passed the land bridge, yes? Did you see anything like a few hundred-foot-tall tree?" I look more confused and shake my head. "Either way I saw it myself when a different elder dragged it back home. And no, it is not something I have seen before."

I pretend to think for a moment. "I observed several Dragons from the edge of the Dragon Lands for a week before heading inwards. I don't remember a tree like that, I guess Ponies aren't the only ones with weird events. One for the history books then." I joke a small bit and start to take notes on it as further cover.

She snorts a bit. "I am most likely older than any history book you have read." She says back plainly. It is nice that she's more relaxed, or at least very good at pretending to be relaxed, it's hard to tell. I'm just not sure how genuine she's being with her small talk. "News that interesting is not so common."

I nod and look over my notes for a moment to think of a good question. "Actually, while on this topic, do you know of any interesting plants in the Dragon Lands? I've come across some but they are few and far between." I ask while thinking of the crystal plant I found recently.

She thinks silently for a moment. "A few I think, plants are not a common interest for Dragons." She answers bluntly. "I think a few are magical..." She goes silent again and thinks more while looking off into the distance. She does this often with more obscure and complicated knowledge, she goes silent and thinks before answering me.

"I can't seem to recall, I think there is one that is prized?" She seems to draw a blank before looking back at me. "You're better off trading with another Dragon for that, plants are not my interest." She advises simply and I nod before making some notes. Larimar is knowledgeable but even she doesn't know everything.

"Are there any plants you eat that you can think of? I haven't seen any in a market but with how long you all live it seems like a good thing to do with your time." I reason out as it is true.

She nods. "I know of one, Burn Weed. It's a rather strong spice, I think a few grow it, not sure though." I quickly make a note to try and find some of that plant. I look at my notes for a bit and decide it's best we move off of this topic, no need to raise any suspicion now.

"Ok, let's work on Dragon words then, you still know more written words, right?" She nods and brings a claw forward before she starts writing in the loose soil and rock as we've done before. I smile at her slightly, "Perfect."

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :)
Current year is 996

Not too much here, hope you like it and I hope you all have a good Thanksgiving. I'll see you all Saturday.

PS. I'm posting this before I go help with preparations of my own, I probably won't be responding quickly, and I'll also probably be fixing any mistakes later. It really depends on how things go though.