54

The day was going to be a long one. The bodies will be burned tonight and today Liz must make her decisions what she will do. To join us and have a chance to learn how to use magic or to stay in place with her family and follow the path already laid out in front of her. Either way she will be losing something. Both Corey and I have given her space since we don't want to be what makes her decision for her. At the end of the day it has to be what she wants and I've given her a lot of time to think about it since it's a life changing choice. This choice can alter her entire future, it gives her a choice to choose her fate and the path she wishes to take. It could also change the fate of the entire tribe, as it could cause issues if she says yes and leaves knowing she will no longer be a member of there tribe and part of ours instead which means her father will no longer have any control over her. Whatever happens will be what is necessary for what she wishes to achieve, but she also knows it's very likely even if she says yes that she won't be able to use her magic since she wasn't taught how to do it while she was young.

Corey is ok with that risk because it can mean that he will be able to stay by my side and might give us a hint into what happened all those nights ago when we slept together.

Well at least that is what I had thought up until earlier today when we went to see the bodies. He lied to me before. He said he was just doing business but that was a lie, he was seeing another girl instead of being with me. It makes me wonder what else he has lied about or not told me all together.

I know in there tribe it's common to be with more than one women but it's not that way with dragons. Males mate for life so there aren't other women. It's very rare for a dragon to mate with a second women even if there first mate has already died and women normally have four or five mates. It makes it so the men will protect the children and women because they don't know whose child she is carrying and even after birth it isn't always very obvious who the father is which means multiple of her mates might think the child is their offspring so they are more likely to protect and raise the child. The men are used as protection and as teachers for the young so they know how to hunt for themselves that way when they are out on there own they can fend for themselves. My mother wasn't this way. She had her brother and two mates, but it was only one at a time and she didn't move onto another man for at least 6-7 years because Ian is 8 years older than I am. I'm not sure how close my mom was to my father as I never meant him, but neither did Ian. It's possible my mom just used him to have another child to help insure her line survived since her brother refused to have children. We were once told that my uncle had a women who he mated with but the women died. She died before I was born so I never meant her. I was once told a story about him and that women having children. She wasn't a dragon but she was a powerful witch. They said she held light magic and could control fire as a dragon could, they said she was the closest thing to an angel left in this world. They had three children together and she was pregnant with a third when she died. They were attacked the day she gave birth so she wasn't able to help defend her village or help the people fight back in any way. Her children were all being killed so she used the magic she held to try and protect them, but since she was in labor she was already weak. She used the rest of her life force to try and save her children and it gave them a fighting chance but after she passed the magic wore off and with that they fell. They said the baby she was carrying she was able to give birth to but due to the amount of entertainment she used to preform her magic while in labor she drew from the child who was still inside of her as well. The consequences of doing that also drained the child's life force so although she gave birth to the child it's life was short lived. Newborns are weak as is but most of its life force was drained out of it before it was even born. They said the baby was so weak it couldn't even cry and died with her. There were very few survivors from the attack and the only reason any survived was because my uncle showed up. He just came to late. He saved the remaining villagers but couldn't save his family and with that vowed he wouldn't ever find another or have any other children. Instead he would stay by my mother's side and help her raise her children. He did that up until he died fighting by her side.

I hope my brother and I can have a relationship as strong as there's was and that my children are close with him and his children one day. It'll make it so our lives are much easier as the more people in the clan the more people who will help raise and protect the children. If our clan stays together we should all be safe and be able to have children to further our line and keep dragons alive. There aren't very many dragons left anymore due to hybrids who hunted us. There is only a handful compared to how it used to be in the beginning. There's still enough that we need to be wary of them but not enough that they are everywhere and the dragons that are left are either very strong or have a big clan because there is power in numbers or both.

When we die we burn the bodies to set our souls free of our bodies. That's tradition we are born of fire and can walk in fire so it is only right that fire is how we are freed from this world and the ashes help guide our souls to the other side so our souls can rest peacefully. It means more to us then it does to the humans. They are burning the bodies not because of tradition or any type of belief but instead because it is easiest and will help make it so it doesn't draw any predators to them. It has no meaning or symbolism to them u like it does to us. It seems weird that they can be so detached from people but it makes sense since most of them won't survive for very long.

The village did gather the things that belonged to the people who died and those who knew them best out things into the hut. Things that they could take to the other side with them. While some did that men who weren't participating in that were putting wood around the hut so it could all be burnt tonight and women were putting flowers around the outside of the gaps in the wood so it looked pretty. It was like a shrine. Even though they didn't burn them for the same reasons we did they did pay their respects to the dead in their own ways.

Life and death are connected and you can't have one without the other. All of us know that and don't fight it as we can't. No matter how much we want to it's one of the things that is out of our control. All we can do is hope for the best when people pass and hope they really do move into the next world or next life and can be happy. Everything happens for a reason and what was meant to be will always come to pass. Even though we often don't want it to. Our fates aren't set in stone and can be altered a little but we never stray to far from the path we were meant to be on.