Tadia had been at house Domina for two years, before she saw her first dragon. Shortly after, of course, they started coming in droves. Cuesta's arrival was perfectly timed, just when her parents were moving and needed to make sure that she got anything she needed while they were in transit. Many letters were exchanged using the bright red flitter, much to the distress of some of the local owls!

She concentrated on learning every spell she could which would allow her to contain, entertain, aid and train magical animals. She started small, Cuesta didn't count, with a number of wood-boring irks. They were barely intelligent enough to really understand that she was offering them food, but they did learn how to sit up and wave their antennae in order to be fed. She moved up to Lattice Fungi, which she was somewhat successful in training to grow and flower based on verbal commands. She wouldn't have qualified that creature as an animal, but apparently whoever wrote up its taxonomy long before believed them to be snakes, and not plants... Tadia didn't even want to get into the fact that fungi aren't plants.

Red Backed Skitterflies were next, then Pondourous Slugs. Almost every other week Tadia was impressing her peers and instructors with some trick that the little creatures around the halls of House Domina could be taught.

One summer, her family brought her away from Domina and into the northern European domains. There, she saw up close and personal a real Earthly dragon. She was only fourteen, so she would hardly have been able to start training to become a Dragon hunter or whatever they called themselves. She didn't want to think badly of the people caring for the big shaggy-backed Polar dragons or the spiny fierce ones in the forests. But the dragons didn't look nearly as ferocious as they had claimed to be in the advert. In fact they sort of looked rather down.

Tadia thought the better of setting them loose before their keepers woke one morning.

Back to school she went, and up the evolutionary ladder as well. She had to get creative using her charms in order to keep the attention of one multi-headed hydra-creature. In fact that's why she became so good at them in the first place, exercising all her knowledge and poring over other books in the library to get whatever spells she could find. Cages, wards, floating lights, explosive runes. All of them geared toward keeping an animal's attention and keeping people from getting into harms way.

Tadia had mastered several flighted creatures - not just a couple owls from the owlery nests, but also little wyverns, a pixie or two, and a hippogryph who strayed too far from his migrating flock. That one she was most proud of. Even the local centaurs complimented her on bringing the fledge back to full health and setting him on his way later in the year to rejoin his family.

So why hadn't the dragons - now numerous enough to become a force in and of themselves at the school - decided to find a place for her to bond one of their kind? Or at least see some? Finally, shortly before she was halfway through her last year in school, one of Zora Domina's friends from her other school arrived. The woman was unnerving, the man even more so. They both had an air around them which any Magicop - or Federal agent - would claim to be 'evil'. But they did no harm, they merely walked among the students and made mental notations.

They both stopped at Tadia. "You're a very talented young woman," the man, Virus by name or perhaps by title, said. "I've heard Zora speak about your attention to detail, and your abilities with animals."

"Thank you sir," she said in slightly accented English. "And thank you headmistress, as well," she nodded toward Zora who gave her one of those waving-off-silly-don't-do-that expressions.

"One of my draconic companions has had a clutch," he said, and Tadia couldn't help but gulp and blink hard. "Would you like to see them?"

Though she tried valliantly to sound more casual, she blurted out, "of course I would! Oh thank you sir, that would be wonderful!" And a spilling of other statements to the same order in Spanish after she realized he was laughing at her eagerness. He really was rather too handsome to have a name like Virus.

She packed up and was ready by the evening. There would be others who left that day with the pair of otherworldly instructors, but it appeared that they were not sent to the same location. Tadia followed Virus to the courtyard and she looked back and forth at him and the large green dragon before them.

"This is not your bond," Tadia said, and at that, Virus let his handsome face quirk into a surprised grin.

"You are very observant," he said. "You are correct, this is my wife's bond." He paused and waited for that very-tiny check in her enthusiasm, but ... some day, he would meet Tadia again. "Mine, as I said, is tending her clutch and would rather wait there until all her children are spoken for. Uteneth here will take us where we need to be."

When they got to this other world, Tadia was out of breath. It had been chilly wherever they flew through. Not quite the same windedness as teleporting and certainly not as haphazardly thrilled as if using a portal. This place was... different. Dark, endless, chilled to far colder than any living thing could survive, but they were there only a split second.

To her of course it seemed an eternity. But Virus sitting in front of her was warm (and she couldn't help but think how handsome he really was, his wife was a very lucky woman indeed) and had warned her to hold her breath.

They landed and immediately their dragon companion vanished again, back to House Domina to take her own bond's selection where they were destined.

"Henshuth's is here," Virus indicated one oddly dark but glowing area. The glow, it turned out, was from ... dragons.

His sat back on her haunches, or perhaps she sat that way normally as she was clearly bipedal, more of a wyvern in shape than the four-footed dragons Tadia had seen. Henshuth glowed from within, a strangely greenish skeleton visible through her ghostly skin. But more importantly there were nearly a dozen gorgeous and glowing offspring on the grounds as well!

Some had already been spoken for, clearly. But one - brilliantly white and yellow like the sun - struggled to her feet and crooned directly at Tadia.

"That's for you," Virus smiled, and walked away.

"Her name is Alba," Tadia said, mostly to herself. She reached out and the dragon nearly fell into her arms. "You're the most beautiful dragon in the world," Tadia whispered. "Any world."

***

Alba Chxalli learned quickly the ways of magic. Though she did not perform spells so much as exert her will over things, it was clear that the brightly glowing creature could control most aspects of fire and light. More than that though, her willpower extended into the spirit realm. Perhaps because her mother was somewhat ... undead-ish, the spirits around her were almost always orderly and compliant with her wishes. Only one poltergeist dared try make any trouble around her and Tadia - only one. After that, none of the others even tried lifting a paper while the silver-white dragoness was around.

They would be able to play her off as some kind of variant or cross breed of firebird and dragon, Tadia realized she'd have to do something about the local authorities back home learning about her. Fortunately, the place that her family had moved that one year turned out to be more isolated and widely beautiful than Tadia realized from just hanging out during summers. Flying over it, she saw so much more!

**2025**

Tadia's abilities with dragons, wyrms, horses, dogs, and any given magically inclined creature were well known by the time House Domina had settled in their new dimension - the same one as that school where Virus and Ihrinna taught. A strange place, a place where animal-people lived and had evolved on 'the other sphere'? "Twoooooarth," Tadia slowly intoned as she spun the unusual double-sphered globe of their new world.

A whole host of other creatures were present - magical and mundane - and Tadia spent a good two years in the 'C-4' college, being taught by Virus's peers, becoming a magical vet and dragon specialist. If your hellhound has a toothache, if your winged snake has started molting early, if your dragon got its wingsail torn... Tadia has a cure, a gentle touch, a magical stitch able to fix them up quickly and proper.

She continues this practice from House Domina itself, serving not only as a magical creature community vet, but the instructor for those who have chosen a similar field.

And it wasn't really a surprise after this long, practicing with Lucas and the other shapeshifters, that Alba finally learned how to fully access her shapeshifting power. She is careful to 'read the room' first, never shifting while others are watching just in case they may become panicked at the sight.

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Lineage

Mates and Descendants