The world is a wide, wild, open place for Aldous.
It is filled with adventure and promise. Danger and intrigue. He has been taught from the first that he was something to be feared and to not feel fear. He was the predator. It was the lessons his mother showed him when she helped him pull the poison from between his frozen scales. The lessons taught from his father when the fox fire illuminated his face in the dark. It was the lessons he learned in his young heart.
But he is not yet a predator.
He is just a boy.
Just a boy with a hunger for more in his chest and a desire to learn everything that he is and can be. A boy who leaves home to wander, to roam, to seek out the things that his parents do not immediately show him.
It takes him to the forest today and he shifts partially to leave dragon wings folded over his thin back. They are scaled but premature—not yet the behemoth things that they will one day be.
(Who is he to be? Who is he?)
He feels something race in his veins like adrenaline when he hears a branch snap and his head jerks to the side, both curiosity and fear lighting up within his breast. Another part of him shifts, upright scales racing down his back—fluttering slightly in protest. “Who’s there?” he demands, but even he knows that his voice does not sound imposing or frightful at all. It sounds like a boy. Just a boy.
@Malik