Mercedes Lackey - Elvenbane

There had to be something back there in the lair. Mother was as bad a collector as a miser-mouse. While he thought, he scratched at an itchy spot on his ankle; the skin around his joints was dry and had been bothering him since he came out to the pen.

The itch became a torture, and he scratched harder.

The skin on his ankle finally broke and tore along the claw-lines. He peeled the strips away and got at the new hide beneath with a sigh of relief, scratching the delicate skin lightly with just the tips of his talons. The new scales had to cure for a bit before they were as tough as the old hide, and until then they were easily damaged.

It just figured he was starting to shed. He could never think when he was shedding, he just itched all the time...

He stared at the shred of metallic-blue skin in his claws, something tugging at his mind. Slowly it dawned on him that he was holding the answer to the problem of Shana's protective garment.

Skin. Shed skin. It was supple, soft, yet so tough it took his claws to tear it. It was proof against everything. Hoppy wouldn't eat it, and wouldn't be afraid of it either. The one-horns didn't like it, but they were back in their own pen now that Alara was in the lair. Keman didn't need them to guard anymore; Shana's presence was no longer a secret, and no one seemed inclined to object to her or threaten her or Keman, given Alara's "ownership" and Father Dragon's unexpected interest in the mite.

This newly shed skin wouldn't do...the pieces shed at joints were much too small, and he wouldn't be able to peel off the larger pieces for about a week. But that didn't matter; Alara's hoarding extended even to something as "useless" as shed skin.

He sprang to his feet, leapt the fence, and hurried back into the cave complex, hoping Alara had left a light in the storage area in the back of the caverns. The last thing he wanted to do now that he had his solution was to disturb his mother's uneasy slumber. The new baby was being a pest...or so Keman thought privately...demanding food at all hours, and fussing when she wasn't eating.

He was mortally certain that he had never caused Alara half the problems this new baby had. Furthermore, he'd been perfectly capable of caring for himself and the lair while she was gone, and he was taking care of the human cub she'd brought home, without any help at all!

The storage caves were dimly lit; once he got beyond the bright glow of the "mountain rock" he saw the pale, weak yellow light of a guide-globe just barely visible against the darker stone ahead. That was really all anyone needed for the storage caves; the things kept back there were generally the kind of useless items most dragons brought back from forays into the world beyond the desert. Things like Alara's fabric collection; she couldn't use them in draconic form, her scales would slice them to ribbons. But they were pretty, and she liked occasionally to shift form and play with them and in them, and even to sleep on great piles of the costly stuffs.

Alara was unusual in that she saved bits of her shed skin, and Keman's; the tough hide made good pouches, though the pieces were never big enough for more than that unless you patched them together. She needed a lot of pouches to keep mysterious things, in her capacity as shaman, and she told Keman that nothing worked better for that than her own skin.

The Kin shed their brightly metallic, multicolored skin once every five or six years when they reached their full adult size, and once every couple of months when they were youngsters and growing. Even on a baby, the hide was very thick and tough, and a dragon grew an entirely new set of scales with the new skin forming beneath the old. That was one reason why a dragon needed metallic salts; when he was growing new skin and scales, the metals went into the scales, making them a lot tougher than the simple scales of snakes and lizards, very hard, and yet lightweight. For that reason, the shed skin stayed colorful even after shedding. Keman thought it was rather pretty, as attractive as some of his mother's fabric collection, and sometimes spent an idle afternoon laying out patterns with the smaller scraps.

His own skin from the last shed should be soft enough to use on Shana, he thought, groping his way across the smoothed floor and hoping that his mother hadn't left anything lying about that he was likely to trip over. And Shana would be used to the color and smell. So would Hoppy.

His eyes adjusted to the dim light fairly quickly, and by the time he reached the globe itself he could see reasonably well. He passed several caves filled with oddments from Alara's travels. The riot of fabric spilled out onto smooth stone of the floor, the colors wildly bright even in the dim illumination. Next to the fabrics was a niche filled with elven-made books. Next to that, various small bits of furnishings; chests, oil lamps, cushions, boxes, all piled onto one another in total confusion, the results of raiding a caravan that had taken a wrong turning in the desert and perished there. Beside that, a cave as organized as the former was chaotic: the storage place of Alara's herbs, bones, shells, all the raw materials of her shamanistic calling. Then another, equally well organized, containing dried and preserved foodstuffs against need or famine. Keman passed them all by, heading for the rear. The skin was kept in a tiny cavelet in the back of the storage area, and Keman was surprised to see how much had accumulated that was his own blue-green-and-gold coloration.

He rooted through the pile of scraps, which were soft and pliable; just as supple as he'd hoped. It was going to take some hunting, though, to find pieces big enough to make a whole garment for Shana, even as tiny as she was. When skin was ready to be shed, it split along fold-lines and scars, and it itched terribly. Most dragons tended to just shred it with their claws, and then spend the next several days peeling the strips off.

This time he would have to make sure he got a couple of big pieces, he told himself, as he pawed through piles of long strips, none wider than two of his talons put together. He would have to watch where and when he scratched, and he would have to be careful peeling the patches when the skin did come loose. Oh, that was going to itch...

Finally he managed to find a couple of wider bits; just enough to piece together a kind of miniature tunic. At least it would keep Shana's torso from being scratched and sunburned; her arms and legs would just have to toughen up.

He bundled up the entire lot and wrapped the end of his tail around it...his normal choice for the means of carrying something, when it didn't matter if he dropped it...and headed back out into the menagerie.

The sun hit him like a rock between the eyes when he first ventured out into it, and it took him a few moments before he could even see. He frowned; hopefully Hoppy hadn't perversely decided that she was going to have another sunbath while he'd been busy. If she had, Shana might be well on the way to a serious bum.

He speeded up to a trot, and sighed with relief when he rounded the edge of the rock fence, looked over the top, and saw the two-horn dozing away in the shade at the rear of the dusty pen.

He laid down his burden beside the tiny human, who was fast asleep and didn't even stir. Hoppy looked at him with a lazy shake of her ears, then her lids dropped over her eyes and she was off again in whatever dreams two-horns had.

Keman flung himself down on the straw, and stared at his foreclaws, doing his best to feel the power his mother said was there to be drawn upon. He concentrated so hard that he began to feel a headache coming on; glaring at his foreclaws, trying to will them into another shape, feeling his back itching horribly and the dry air making his eyes burn and his vision waver...