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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 14:01:48 GMT -6
He was able to keep them in check for now because they were so small, but if they got a little bigger... Well, even if they didn't, they were promising him some real trouble today. But the sooner he got started, the sooner this could be over with, he supposed.
Aster wasn't sure how much in the way of manners he'd be prioritizing with these guys. They were going to be fighters, after all. But he thought he might at least teach them their names to start, especially if he was going to be working with a bunch of them at once. That way he could get the attention of one or another of them when he needed it.
So he deposited his squirming cargo on the ground, let them sort themselves out for a moment, then produced a piece of meat. Immediately, all three of them snapped to attention. At this age, food motivation was great; they had a lot of growing to do, which was why they were so eager for it, he supposed; it was not unlike looking at a baby bird. Of course, they all came begging for it, which was about what Aster expected.
Which one to start with... "Roland," Aster said, singling out the gold hatchling. As a hatchling, with most of their markings not yet emergent, the two drakes of the lot looked pretty similar. But Roland was smaller, and a brighter, purer gold; Alioth was darker in color, with red socks and a dark red streak down his back.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 14:13:01 GMT -6
Of course, there was Abelia, who had come taking strongly after her red parent, her hide set vividly apart from the two boys. Not that she had any more decorum than they did at this age, despite that distinction.
After calling his name, Aster gave the goblet of meat to the gold hatchling, fending off the other two with his free hand. They protested heartily, but if there was one thing Aster knew by now, it was how to deal with baby Sarane. It was admittedly easier when he only had one or two at a time, but even so.
Roland bolted down the meat, then opened his mouth to ask for more. But Aster had an agenda, and it didn't involve feeding only him. Taking out another bit of meat, he called out a different name this time. "Abelia," he said. The words didn't mean anything yet, but he followed the name by feeding the red hatchling, who ate with, if anything, even more enthusiasm. It was a good thing they didn't need to chew since the meat was so small; otherwise Aster was sure they would have made a proper mess.
And now for the last one... "Alioth," Aster said, feeding the streaked hatchling, who was now growing quite impatient with his lot. He had seen the other two getting fed, but his own belly was still woefully empty until just then. Alioth lunged forward to snap up his reward, and Aster let him have it this time.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 14:18:35 GMT -6
They were all still clearly hungry for more, which was good to see, but Aster knew he could only do this so much before they actually got full, and he had to stop feeding them for fear of overfeeding them. Not all hatchlings would stop begging; and the younger ones were more likely to keep doing it, not having developed the capacity to know any better just yet.
For now though, he was free to keep going. Switching up the order, he called for a different hatchling this time. "Abelia." The little hen got her meat. And the second piece of meat went to her brother. "Alioth." Aster called his name, then gave him his portion. Finally, Aster went back to the gold hatchling. "Roland." Poor Roland was getting bodily shoved out of the way, so it took a little more work to get the meat to him, but equal portions and all that.
The difference in tiers was already showing, even at such a young age. Alioth was the largest, though Abelia gave him a run for his money by sheer gluttony and determination, which left poor Roland sidelined. Aster felt for the gold hatchling; Roland wasn't a runt by any means, and looked small only in comparison to his current company, but it reminded Aster of when Avander had been that age. Avander had genuinely been a small, unlikely-looking fellow, hatched from a small egg, a sickly pale color that had only started to darken as he got older.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 14:25:51 GMT -6
In the wild, Avander would likely never have reached his majority, let alone grow up to have offspring of his own. But then, in the wild, it was pretty unlikely a gold and green pairing would have happened to begin with. And despite having grown up to be a fighting drake, Avander had stayed small for his kind, though as an adult he made up for it with quickness. But there had been something about him even as a hatchling, and after Aster had taken him on, well...
This many generations on though, all signs of runty ancestry had been well and truly bred out of Avander's descendants. Now they were the ones bullying other hatchlings. "Oh, hold off," Aster said, stopping Abelia from snapping at Roland. "Roland," he said, and fed the gold hatchling again.
But all of them got fed in their turn. "Alioth," Aster called, and then, "Abelia." And so it went, with him calling each of them and feeding them in turn until he felt that they were full. Roland filled up first, since he was the smallest, but it didn't take terribly long for all three to get full. They ate a lot for their size, but they were still small.
Which meant that it was time to call it quits for the day. Aster really didn't feel like he had accomplished much, but this was just laying the groundwork. It was a little too soon to see immediate results after just a few repetitions.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 14:34:33 GMT -6
Aster kept feeding them in this same fashion, however, and soon enough he really did start to see results. The hatchlings began to recognize their names when used, and seemed to have some rudimentary understanding that it indicated them--- or at least that they, specifically, were about to get fed. The relevant hatchling would become more engaged and energetic when called. And, though this took a little longer, eventually the other hatchlings subsided somewhat when they heard Aster call out a name that wasn't their own. They seemed to be reaching an understanding, too, that when they weren't called, they wouldn't be getting food, and it was therefore going to be a waste of energy to try and gun for the meat at those times.
That made the feedings easier, and not a moment too soon either. Those first few early feedings, before they had completely cottoned on, could get to be a real mess. It was a good thing they weren't any bigger, and their teeth and claws weren't more developed, or they could really have hurt one another.
When Aster took them afield, he did more of the same. These weren't necessarily feeding sessions, but he did keep little treats on hand, just to reinforce behaviors. He would call out the name of a hatchling, and when they looked up or looked to him, he would feed them. In this way, he slowly acclimated the lot of them to paying attention to their names outside of feeding time as well.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 14:44:55 GMT -6
Aside from their names though, there was also the matter of teaching these guys some manners. Aster wasn't expecting any of them to be model citizens or anything, but if they were going to be manageable when they got any bigger, Aster would need to be able to at least tell them no and have them listen to him. And it was a lot easier to establish those boundaries when they were still small enough that he could bodily stop them if conventional means of deterrence failed. Or, put another way, at least now they still saw him as a credible threat, as terrible as it was to say it that way. It was a lot harder to convince a full grown drake you meant business. It was possible, but doing it now was just so much easier.
Aster didn't want to say no to them willy nilly though, so he watched them while they were outside playing, for any signs of troublesome behavior before he stepped in and intervened.
He found he didn't really have to wait for long. There was a lot to disapprove of. The hatchlings liked to fight, and sometimes things would get a bit too rough too quickly. Aster decided that was a good place to start.
"No," he said sharply to the whole tangle of hatchlings. Roland was, as was to be expected, on the bottom of the pile. On this occasion, Aster's voice was loud and sharp enough to startle them into stopping, which they did.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 14:52:01 GMT -6
So that was that. Aster was ready to leave them to their own devices again. Except it wasn't really that simple; as soon as he began to back off, they began to start it up again, so Aster was forced to intervene a little more.
"No," he said firmly. This time, however, they didn't pause very much; he had used his voice the once, and it had lost a good deal of its intimidation factor as far as the hatchlings were concerned. They twitched, but didn't stop. Aster sighed, disliking what he was about to do, and said, "No," one more time, this time backing it up by tapping each hatchling on the nose in quick succession.
That got their attention. And while they were paused, he untangled them from each other and deposited each one separately on the ground. Under his watchful eye, two of the hatchlings found something better to do. Abelia, who was perhaps becoming a bit of a bully, tried to turn around and snap at her brother again, so she got another firm, "No," from Aster, and another tap on her snout for her troubles. Thus admonished, she stopped in her tracks, and eventually found a beetle to chase through the grass instead.
By that time, Alioth was up to no good himself. Or, well, maybe it was fairer to say that he was doing something inadvisable. The bug that he'd set his sights on was something Aster recognized as having a nasty smelling deterrent.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 14:56:31 GMT -6
The hatchling wouldn't die if he ate it, but they were in for a nasty time if he pounced on it, so Aster decided he might as well nip this in the bud too. "No," he said to Alioth, and bopped him on the nose for good measure. The hatchling was startled, and stopped in his tracks. Aster redirected his attention away from the bug with a treat, though he didn't feed Alioth this time; he only meant to keep Alioth's attention off the bug long enough for it to wander elsewhere, which it eventually did.
Over where Roland was, Aster used, "No," to keep him out of some spiny weeds. He used the same strategy of the word, the nose boop, and then the redirecting of his attention. The hatchlings were curious enough that if he didn't redirect them first, he found that they often went right back to whatever they had been doing before. The same could be said of their fights, though he attributed that less to curiosity than competitiveness. But if he could stop them from doing that, all the better; he didn't want them to grow up jostling for power, and probably putting down poor Roland in the process.
They'd have to be separated eventually when all of them were grown, but until then, it would be nice if they could play together, and without the threat of serious maiming for anyone involved. It would save Aster the hassle of having to entertain them all separately, if nothing else.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 15:02:22 GMT -6
Now that the pattern had been established, it was pretty easy for Aster to keep consistent with it. If he saw a hatchling or, gods forbid, multiple hatchlings, doing something he didn't like or something obviously risky, he'd call out 'no' to them, tap them on the snout, and then distract them until they lost interest in whatever they had been doing before.
He did this on all their excursions out, and in their pen too if he caught them fighting too rough. It didn't take them long to cotton onto the idea of stopping what they were doing at the word, especially once they realized that if they did this, Aster wouldn't go as far as to tap them on the snout on top of it. It wasn't painful, but it wasn't pleasant either, and Aster had successfully used it as a deterrent on generations of hatchlings before them. Worked like a charm every time.
It took longer before he stopped having to distract them, but eventually they got the gist of that idea too. Roland took to it the fastest; as they got a little older and stopped being little eating pooping sleeping machines, Aster found that Roland paid the most attention to Aster and his signals. Aster didn't know if the gold hatchling was smarter than his fellows or just more attentive, but he definitely picked this up the fastest. With enough repetition and consistency, the other two eventually followed, and at length, a simple spoken 'no' was enough to get them to stop what they were doing.
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Post by Noa on Jun 3, 2020 19:29:37 GMT -6
It still felt a little foolish to be taking three hatchlings down to the river, but they did know the meaning of the word 'no' now, and at any rate, it wouldn't hurt them to get a little life experience further afield. The early bullying that had marked this particular trio's interactions had finally died down to a manageable level, and they were beginning to seem like friends rather than just competitors for food. If little Sarane could be said to be friends, anyway. When they were older, they certainly wouldn't be, since that was the way it was with their kind, but for now they could play together and squeak at one another, whatever it was that hatchlings did for fun amongst themselves. Sadly, even Abelia wasn't quite exempt from their fate as adults; lesser hens from lesser lines might live all their lives getting on well with one another, but a third tier hen was almost as aggressive as a drake about most things, and they generally had the prowess to back it up.
Aster wasn't looking forward to breaking any of them, but it felt like an especial shame that he would have to go through it with Abelia too. Aster was no stranger to the process of breaking by this point, but he had never had to go through it with a hen.
Those were thoughts for another time though. For now, his chief concern was getting the lot of them down to the water's edge in one piece.
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Post by Noa on Jun 3, 2020 19:30:28 GMT -6
Or, well, in three separate pieces, if you wanted to get technical about it. It would be pretty gruesome of the three hatchlings fused themselves together. That was no way for them to live. Fortunately, such flights of fancy stayed just that; the struggle was not so much with them becoming one as it was with them struggling out of his arms. The single fishing pole that Aster owned was strapped to his back, so at least he didn't need to worry on that front, but it was a small blessing indeed when there was so much else to concern himself with. Just because they were getting along better than they had been--- which, to be fair, had been 'not very' in the beginning, so that wasn't necessarily saying much--- didn't mean that the hatchlings wanted to be all smushed together in the arms of a man who wasn't taking a very smooth trip down to the edge of a river. The slopes were inclined to be a little steep even in the most manageable of places, and while there were stairs at intervals, even navigating these with an armful of struggling creatures was proving to be a bit of a hassle.
Maybe he ought to have taught them to walk on a leash before he had attempted this. Well, it was a little too late for that now, he supposed. He was already here, and they were all already struggling, so all he could do now was make the best of it.
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Post by Noa on Jun 3, 2020 19:31:35 GMT -6
They did manage eventually, by some miracle, to make it all the way down. Aster had never doubted that they would, but he had thought at several points that it might come at greater cost to him than it ultimately did. There was always the matter of going back home again, of course, but that was a problem for another time. For now he was simply glad to be standing on the bank of the river, where he might loose his restless charges, and find a little time for himself to relax... Or so he hoped, anyway. Having begun the process of teaching them what to stay away from, as a parent might, he had hoped they would get a little better in being sensible in their entertainments. Those hopes had yet to bear any fruit though, and the respite he got was generally only the physical kind, of not having to carry them any further, nor suffer the scrape of their fledgeling claws against his skin, nor the unbalancing influence of their attempts to escape him and the concentration required to keep them from succeeding at it. Which, to be fair, was in itself a relief. None of those things had been very pleasant to deal with.
The hatchlings, for their part, seemed just as happy to be freed. They wasted no time in getting away as soon as Aster set them down, scrambling this way and that, at first apparently just to stretch their legs after having been held so long.
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Post by Noa on Jun 3, 2020 19:31:51 GMT -6
Looking at them, and at the way they carried on, one would not be hard pressed to think that they had just been released from some horrible situation, rather than simply the makeshift transport of being in a human's arms for a bit as he walked. But then, hatchlings could be a little melodramatic. Everything was a big deal when you weren't very old or very big, and the sum of your life experience was still found to be wanting, for breadth as well as variety.
Aster couldn't help but wonder what they would think of real restraints. The time would come for all of them, if Aster wanted to keep working with any of them once they reached their full growth. It was hard not to think about with Sarane, even as it did make them useful as personal guards and fighters. The assurance of loyalty only to their handler was a big part of their appeal for him, after all.
Once the hatchlings had gotten all the wiggles out of their systems, however, they began to explore in earnest. And Aster was relieved to see that they had more or less regrouped to do it, which was fortunate, since it would save him the trouble of having to look in three different directions at once. He supposed that he deserved it if they did choose to do that, since he was the one who had made the decision to take all three of them together, but even so.
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Post by Noa on Jun 3, 2020 19:33:05 GMT -6
It wasn't as though they were thick as thieves just yet, but maybe now that all the initial competition and hierarchy establishment had been dispensed with, they sensed that there was some merit to the idea of safety in numbers. While they were this small and still vulnerable, it seemed like a sensible evolutionary tactic, at the very least, to stay close to your clutchmates. Or, as in this case, your foster clutchmate, with the addition of Roland. Aster figured that as a drake, he would have to break Roland too at some point, so he might as well get trained alongside the other two of Avander's blood. And if he was going to train the three of them together, then it was easier for everyone involved if he just raised the three of them together full stop. The hatchlings might sense that he was the weakest out of all of them, but they wouldn't know any further than that. Sarane were not clever, cerebral creatures, even if many of them had a certain predatory cunning. A hatchling who saw a different hatchling in the same nest as themselves every day would think of that hatchling as a clutchmate as a matter of fact, even if their colorations would suggest otherwise. And in this case even that wasn't an issue, since Alioth and Abelia both had a healthy measure of gold or orange on themselves.
Which was funny, considering Avander hadn't looked very gold at all. The most he had been was a pale yellowish at the belly.
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Post by Noa on Jun 3, 2020 19:33:54 GMT -6
And Avander had been half gold too; the gold in the blood of either Abelia or Alioth were several generations removed. It was interesting that they had shown again so strongly in Avander's subsequent descendants, when Avander himself hadn't visually presented much gold at all. The pale yellow of his belly might conceivably have come from a very light brown parent, really, and yet Albion had come out such an interestingly vivid shade of orange once he had attained his full growth. Even Axchel had some of that to her, though she leaned more heavily towards the darker greens that had featured in Avander's dapples. The three of them didn't much resemble each other, and neither Axchel nor Albion resembled their mother either, who was a very homely, very plain, very ordinary brown hen.
Aster wanted to call it a running trend, but it had in fact skipped a generation. Arnica especially looked like her father's child, which was to say Albion's; and even Aurelius, on whom the gold made a roaring comeback, did take noticeably after his mother, who had been a black hen. But then there had been Alioth, out of Arnica, fathered by a red drake and looking more like the son of a pure gold than Avander had done. If it weren't for Roland standing beside him right now, offering himself as a point of comparison, Aster would have thought Alioth the spitting image of a regular gold whelp, aside from the single red streak he had down his back.
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