Blistering Heat

It’s on her hurried return to town that she runs into the reason she’s been so absentminded today. Admittedly, she probably should have hung around town for longer this morning, if only to listen to gossip. The odd presence of something was distracting, but in a far-off, lazy way. She felt no need to get back to her mentor or their little inn room beyond the urge to stash her beach glass in her bags, and that false sense of security was what had her overlooking the very obvious disturbances in the sand.

The small sprays of sand sent up by wobbly flippers and swinging tails was masked by the fact that this nest of pukara was isolated from the main thrum of magic from further down the beach, and the green coloration of their hide. If it weren’t for the harsh clicking hiss from the adult present, she would have trampled right past the hatchlings without pause. As it was, the noise made her spin around, fear jolting through her fur and pulling it onto its end. In Vitrun, that sort of sound would be the warning of a terrifying assortment of snakes, rather than the large green pukara in front of her, and it took a moment to realize what was happening. Curse her pinpoint focus!

Still, with a few backpedaling hops, she crouched deferentially a safe distance from the newly hatched pukara young. She surveyed their movement with curiosity. She had seen the occasional pet pukara in Vitrun, but she had never seen them as babies, and she had to admit that they were quite cute, with oversized fins and heads. Still, she was quite happy to leave the new family behind and keep moving, lest the parent decide she was worth making an example of.

Then, as she simultaneously crested a small hill and rounded a bend in the beach, she nearly dropped her new prize in shock at the sight. Where this morning the beaches had been crowded with hundreds of Kyvalorians, now the throngs of people had been pushed to the edges of a mass of swirling colors. Hundreds, no maybe thousands of pukara swarmed over the sands as far down the horizon as she could see. It took her only a split second to realize she could even sense them, and likely had been all day, if not longer. She had probably assumed it was just the size of the city on her approach, but clearly the pukara had contributed their own mana to the sensation.

It was both beautiful and nauseatingly bright, a colorful lagoon pushing in from the ocean and reflecting the sun directly into her eyes. It didn’t help that the shore of that lagoon was just as colorful and fluid, filled with sparkling manabone and quiet displays of magic. It was a wonder she had missed the commotion this morning, and an even bigger wonder that so many creatures could fit on the sand between the city and the waves. The rocky beach behind her had been desolate by comparison.

For good reason, Aurore thought bitterly, turning her paw over to look at the healing scratch. With how clumsy the babies she had just seen were, it made sense that the pukara preferred the softer sands of the commercial district.

Damn, she should join the crowd. As fun as this vantage was, she wanted to see if she could sneak closer to the hatchlings if she blended in with the background of people. Maybe she’d get to see them eating or swimming or biting at strangers for the first time in their fragile lives! She had no idea how long they would stay on the beaches for, or what festivities might celebrate their presence. Perhaps she could find the old water mage who had inspired her before Tulisk decided they would move on.

And maybe she would get to bring a baby pukara with them from now on.