The newly born dragons resembled malnourished kittens, their skeletal frames so thin that only their necks, tails, and wings were discernible, as if they lacked torsos entirely. In one's hands, they felt almost weightless.
But when they spread their wings, the sight was striking. Their wingspan was three times their body length, each wing a translucent, intricately patterned membrane of vibrant colors, stretched taut between long, slender bones.
Daenerys had a difficult childhood. From the age of five, she wandered between the Nine Free Cities, living a life of poverty and hunger. Her stunted growth was compounded by her youth—at fourteen, she had no developed figure. Her apple-sized breasts provided utterly insufficient milk.
The hungry little dragons stretched their necks and cried out incessantly, their calls like the wail of a steam train's whistle. Wisps of scalding white steam occasionally puffed from their nostrils and mouths.
Daenerys tried placing dried meat, mare's milk, bloody raw flesh, and cooked meat before them, but the hatchlings would only sniff at the offerings before turning their heads away.
She grew frantic, and Jorah had no idea how to feed them either. Dragons had vanished from the world over a century before the three hatchlings were born. Their legends now survived only in the bedtime stories told to children.
During their first Fiery Bath, the Black Dragon struggled free from Daenerys's embrace and ravenously tore into a charred bone in the pyre.
Then Daenerys understood: dragons only ate fire-seared meat, and it had to be thoroughly charred.
They were still too young to breathe fire or roast their own food.
The first true proof that dragons were indeed magical creatures wasn't their fiery birth, but their astonishing appetites.
Daenerys had personally tested it: they could consume three times their body weight in a single meal!
(P.S.: This isn't just me making things up; it's the established lore in *A Song of Ice and Fire*. Without such voracious appetites, the White Walkers would have ended the world before Daenerys's dragons even grew up.)
Forget gluttons or foodies—compared to three dragons, they were mere amateurs.
This completely shattered her scientific worldview. Daenerys couldn't fathom where all the food went.
Once, she deliberately pressed her hand against the Black Dragon's belly to feel the food churning inside, and then...
Nothing happened. He just kept eating, his belly churning and churning, churning and eating.
Because they ate so much, their bodies visibly grew larger day by day.
Daenerys happily thought that she might soon be able to ride a dragon.
But to ride a dragon, the dragon first had to learn to fly. Daenerys's gluttonous dragon could barely get two feet off the ground before flapping its wings and face-planting into the earth.
It was a humiliating sight.
This day, as the sun, the color of egg yolk, struggled to rise above the horizon, Daenerys rejoiced that her dragon baby could finally glide like a paper airplane at low altitudes.
After each feeding, she would carry her dragon in a bamboo basket to an open field for flight training.
Golden-red morning light slanted across the land as Daenerys tossed her dragon baby upward.
The young dragon flapped its wings and darted forward. Then she bent down and scooped another one off the ground.
The fallen dragon would crawl back to its mother, lining up in a row and awaiting its next attempt at flight.
Often, a group of mud-caked children, wearing nothing but shorts, would hide behind distant hills. Their round, almond-shaped eyes wide with curiosity, they would "eavesdrop" on the scene, occasionally letting out satisfied gasps.
Around ten in the morning, Horse People women would shout loudly, calling their children home for meals and naps.
They would usually sleep until four or five in the afternoon, then tidy up and continue on their way.
Apart from Khaos and Kou, all the children born had mothers but no fathers.
Except for a few rare exceptions, most could not identify their fathers.
The Khalasar would raise the children, and as they grew, they would repeat the fate of their parents: the girls would bear children, and the boys would become warriors, following Khaos to conquer the world.
For thousands of years, the Dothraki had lived this way.
Perhaps the future would change; after all, change was already beginning to emerge.
Daenerys slung her basket over her shoulder, carrying the three little dragons, and slowly returned to her tent.
After scrubbing the dirt from her body with red sand and sharing some dried meat with the dragons, she lay down on the grass mat and fell into a deep sleep.
This time, the tent was built close to the low wall Daenerys had constructed, and Doreah was finally able to sleep soundly at noon.
Before, not even most of the Horse People, let alone this girl from Lys, could endure the sweltering heat and get any sleep.
Even though Daenerys was fulfilling her responsibilities as the leader of the Khalasar well, this was still the Red Waste, the Purgatory Plains.
On the evening of the third day, after the Khalasar had traveled for only half an hour, an old man suddenly slumped over in his saddle and fell from his horse.
Since Daenerys had established a strict system of ten-man squads, the news of the old man's fall reached her, positioned at the head of the procession, almost immediately.
Leaving Aggo and Rakharo to stay with her, Jhoggo led the majority of the Khalasar onward.
The main body could not stop; further ahead, scouts were still searching for water!
The fallen old man had a pair of pale blue eyes, like those of a dead fish. His skin was far fairer than that of the other tribesmen, and the roots of his graying hair retained a golden hue.
He was not a Dothraki, but a slave from Khal Drogo's Khalasar.
When Daenerys took control of the Khalasar, her first act was to remove the slave collars from their necks, granting all slaves the status of "tribesmen."
This old man, who had just broken his left arm, was among the first beneficiaries of this new system.
Daenerys held a skin of mare's milk to his lips and asked, "How old are you?"
After checking him for signs of heatstroke and dehydration, she noticed his mouth.
Not a single tooth remained in his mouth.
"I don't remember, Khaleesi," the old man said, his voice raspy as he drank the fermented mare's milk and slowly came to his senses.
"Where does it hurt?" Daenerys asked again.
"My... my hand," the old man groaned in pain.
Daenerys frowned. Of course, she knew his arm was broken, but she wanted to know why he had fallen from his horse.
She spent about twenty minutes cleaning the shattered arm and setting the fractured limb with two wooden splints.
Even with a comminuted fracture, there was nothing more she could do. Without medicine, a doctor was no better than an ordinary person.
She instructed Avanti, the horse herder, "Lift him onto the wagon."
Avanti was the commander of the old man's decurion, leading a group of elders responsible for herding and guarding supplies.
Two elders removed several tents from the cart, clearing space for the injured man, and hung the tents on his saddle.
The caravan continued on its way.
"Khaleesi, we should leave him here. His time has come," Eli, the maid beside Daenerys, announced in a tone that carried to the whole group. "No one should live longer than their teeth."
The other horsemen murmured in agreement.
Daenerys disagreed. "Have you considered this? The Khalasar doesn't keep useless people. Why has he lived so long? Khaos must need him. I suspect he possesses some extraordinary skill."
"Perhaps medical skills, or literature," she said, then immediately shook her head. "No, not literature. Maybe his herding skills are exceptional. What do you think, Avanti?"
Avanti, riding behind Daenerys, skillfully maneuvered his horse to her side, maintaining a respectful half-length distance. With exaggerated admiration, he exclaimed, "Khaleesi, your eyes are as sharp as a hawk's! Nothing escapes your gaze."
Though the flattery was a bit stiff, it was a compliment from a Dothraki! It was as rare as seeing a penguin in the Arctic.
"What's his special skill?" Aggo asked curiously.
"Watson is proficient in the twelve Spring Cry Arts."
"Ah, the Blue-Eyed Valyrian is Watson," Avanti added.
"Spring Cry Arts?" Daenerys frowned. "What are those?"
"Tch, those stone-dwellers are so particular," Avanti said, waving his hand dismissively.
Daenerys's cheeks flushed as she immediately understood: he was referring to secret techniques for making love.
"What kind of special skill is that?" she felt her face burning with embarrassment.
Avanti, reading Daenerys's expression and sensing her unease, grew flustered. He desperately recalled Watson's past boasts and said, "Khaleesi, even the renowned Kaiyuan, the World Slave Training Center, only knows seven Spring Cry Arts. But Watson... he's a Volantene. He knows techniques that only the Dragonlords of Valyria used before the Doom. Though only five have survived, they are enough to make him the greatest in the world."
Volantis was the sole city to survive the Doom crisis that devastated the Valyrian Freehold, and it is now one of the Nine Free Cities.
The ruling class of Volantis consists of Valyrian nobility as legitimate as the Targaryens. The Targaryens, you see, were once exiles.
"Even if he's the best in the world, what use is he at his age? Why does the Khaos keep him?" Daenerys asked, puzzled.
"He's Haggo Khaos's father," Avanti said solemnly. "The Khaos cannot abandon his father."
"Haggo Khaos? Was Haggo the Khaos of another Khalasar before?" Daenerys grew more confused.
"Not the Bloodsworn of Drogo Khaos, but Blue-Eyed Haggo from twenty years ago. Our current Khalasar is so small, yet at least three children are named Haggo."
"So that's how it is. This Watson is no ordinary man," Daenerys nodded, pulling her white lion cloak tighter across her chest. "A slave's son, and yet he became a Khaos."
"He was a half-blood. Haggo's mother was Dothraki. Because Watson served the previous Khaos so well—he was a master of twelve village cry arts—his valiant son became a Kou."
"Later, Blue-Eyed Haggo became Khaos himself, carving out a fearsome reputation across the Great Grass Sea until he encountered the father of Drogo Khaos," Avanti said with a wistful tone.
Daenerys nodded inwardly. A person's value wasn't solely measured by martial prowess; the wisdom and rich experience of the elderly were also precious treasures.
"Khaleesi, do you know that Drogo Khaos was once stolen as a child?" Avanti suddenly asked.
"I do. Cohollo risked his life to rescue him. That day, Cohollo gained two deep, bone-revealing scars on his face, but he also became the Khaos's most trusted companion, and later Drogo's blood oath brother."
As she spoke, a sudden thought struck Daenerys. "Could it have been Blue-Eyed Haggo?" she exclaimed.
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