Opening post by Lady Wynafryd Hornwood · #1
The egg does nothing when you first place it in your keeping. It does not fly over a wall, frighten an enemy, carry a message, or make the next decision easier. It lies there, small enough to hold and important enough that you will be tempted to count its promise as though the promise were already a creature.
That is the first discipline required of a lord who has acquired one. An egg is not yet a dragon, and a dragon is not yet an answer to every problem that brought the egg into your hands. The thing asks for care before it offers strength. You must preserve it, give it the attention its condition requires, and leave room in your plans for a result that will not arrive merely because you are eager for it. These are not grand actions. They are repeated ones, and repeated actions are where young lords most often lose their patience.
An egg also asks you to protect time. That is different from merely waiting. Waiting is what happens when you have no choice but to let a day pass. Protecting time means refusing to spend every day on an immediate concern simply because the immediate concern is visible. A raid gives a report. A key opens a gate. A road places new ground beneath your horse. The egg gives none of these things at once. It occupies a portion of your attention while offering no satisfying proof that your attention has been well spent.
This makes it easy to neglect, especially when the realm presents you with a fresh trouble each morning. A lord can tell himself that the egg is safe enough for now, that he will return to it after the next journey, the next fight, or the next demand upon his household. In that fashion, neglect rarely arrives as a decision. It arrives as a series of reasonable postponements. The egg remains where it is, and the lord becomes accustomed to treating its future as somebody else’s concern.
The care it asks of you is therefore practical as well as patient. Do not commit yourself on the assumption that its reward will arrive before you need it. Do not make a battle plan that collapses if the egg remains an egg. Do not give away the stores, protection, or freedom of movement that your present position requires merely because you possess a promise of future strength. The egg should be included in your reckoning, but it should not be allowed to replace your reckoning.
There is an unpleasant truth here for anyone who prefers clear bargains. You may do what is required and still receive no immediate sign that you have done it correctly. A good choice does not become visibly good merely because it was made with care. You can guard the egg, leave it the necessary time, and continue to govern while it changes at its own pace. None of that guarantees that the moment of return will meet your need. The dragon may become useful after the crisis for which you wanted it, not before. It may demand further care when you expected a finished weapon. It may make new responsibilities visible instead of removing the old ones.
That is the cost I would rather not hide. A dragon is not a way to escape the ordinary burdens of rule. It does not excuse poor preparation, turn every enemy into a minor one, or make a lord wise by placing a rare creature near him. If you have spent all of your present strength waiting for the egg to solve your future, then the egg has not been an investment. It has been a reason to abandon the work that had to be done today. I have learned to distrust any promise that asks to be admired before it has been tested by use.
The return begins when the egg has become something that can act in the world, but even then the return is not simply the moment of hatching. A new creature has value because it changes what you can attempt, what others must fear, and what burdens you can carry. Its first gift is possibility. Its later gifts depend upon whether you have kept enough of a realm, a household, and a plan for that possibility to matter. A dragon kept apart from every purpose is a marvel. A dragon joined to a lord’s judgment is an instrument.
So be patient with the egg, but do not worship patience for its own sake. Give it what it requires, keep your present affairs sound, and judge its return by what it allows you to do rather than by the admiration it provokes. The egg begins giving back when its promise becomes usable, and not a moment sooner.
At Silverbrook, the river did not hurry because a child was watching it. The egg will not hurry because a lord is waiting.
Next, I will take up what changes when the promise becomes a creature, and why possession is not the same as command.