"Kaiya had once heard a saying, 'Play fetch with a dragon and he comes back with a tree.' With Mabonth, it wasn’t exactly true, but there were some instances when it came pretty close."
Sea-green Mabonth loves playing fetch, and comes back with random things.
(See the end of the work for notes.)
Mabonth really, really loved playing fetch.
Kaiya had once heard a saying, “Play fetch with a dragon and he comes back with a tree.” With Mabonth, it wasn’t exactly true, but there were some instances when it came pretty close.
Throw a stick, any stick, and Mabonth would give chase… then come back with something completely different. A rolling pin. A chair leg. A support rod off of the fireheights. A limb from one of the Headwoman’s rosebushes. One time, Mabonth came back with what looked like a human bone, freshly dug up from some smelly place in the midden. The local Harpers were still trying to figure out who or what it really came from.
As expected, Mabonth’s unusual fetch finds did not go over well with the owners of said finds. Headwoman Second Nelya, Kaiya’s mother, was adamant that Mabonth not play any more fetch, lest she make off with something important.
So it was with foreboding that Kaiya saw her little brother Halante pick up a stick and skip over to Mabonth.
“Halante…” her younger sister Ashi said warningly.
“Fetch, Mabonth!” Halante called out, throwing the stick. The stick whistled as it flew through the air… and landed in the lake with a plop!
“Oh no,” Kaiya mumbled as Mabonth rocketed off, crashing headfirst into the waves. “And after I just bathed and oiled you!”
A minute passed, then another. Mabonth didn’t surface.
“What’s she doing?” Halante asked.
“Looking for that dumb stick you threw!” Ashi snapped.
Kaiya stared out at the water, brow furrowed. Mabonth? You okay?
I’m looking, Mabonth replied, and seeing how long I can hold my breath!
Mabonth! Forget the stick and come back up before you run out of air! Kaiya looked across the lake worriedly. She had been very reluctant to go near deep water again since almost drowning at the Hatching. But if Mabonth was in trouble, she would brave an ocean to save her.
Another minute passed, then Mabonth’s head burst through the water. She paddled over to the water’s edge slowly, then emerged onto dry land.
“Mabonth!” Kaiya ran over to her as she took several wobbly steps, then sat down.
Dizzy! Mabonth said with a weak but delighted hum. The world is spinning around and around!
Kaiya sighed. “You’re dizzy because you lost too much air!”
Don’t tell Vanzanth!
“Don’t do that again!”
Look what I found! Mabonth opened one of her claws and something small, shiny and definitely not a stick fell to the ground.
Kaiya picked it up. It was a silver key, tarnished from being underwater for a long time. It had an elaborate design, with the outline of a dragon etched onto it. Its eyes were tiny emeralds, glinting in the sunlight.
“Perhaps it’s one of the Weyrwoman’s,” her mother said later when Kaiya showed it to her.
“It looks much older than that,” Kaiya pointed out, “It’s covered in tarnish!”
Nelya smiled. “You always had an unusual eye for detail.”
“Like how Mabonth has a knack for finding unusual things?”
“If Mabonth could switch from finding things to finding people, she could be a Search dragon!”
How about that, Mabonth? Kaiya asked.
Mmm? Mabonth gave a sleepy and satisfied reply. Kaiya sensed her outside the weyrling barracks, soaking up the afternoon sun.
Instead of finding things that might belong to other people, you can find people who can Impress dragons!
That… sounds fun… Mabonth mumbled. A second later, Kaiya could feel her mental snore.
Kaiya looked at the key in her hand and smiled to herself.
This was the result of brainstorming, "what would a dragon with a happy-go-lucky personality do for fun?" I figured Fetch would definitely be something she'd do. Then the next question would be "what would happen if a dragon played fetch?"