"How do dragons turn rubies into dragon's dawn? Do they really just breathe on it?" Rose murmured quietly to herself, pausing in her homework.
Of course, no one responded—she was alone in her room—but the question carried more weight once she said it out loud.
"It can't really be a matter of simply breathing on it," Rose reasoned out. "If that was the case, then shouldn't all stones react the same way? Shouldn't gravel turn into dragon-something, or sand into dragon sand? What makes these special? How is it done?"
She knew she ought to go back to her reading assignment, but now that the question was out in the air, she found it hard to ignore. Dragon's dawn was such a pretty thing, and considering it had been made by such supposedly evil beings…
Surely something so pretty couldn't be made by something so bad?
Rose didn't think she was a bad person, but she wasn't raised as a dragon. She was raised as a human, so maybe that was why she wasn't like the dragons in the history books. She didn't love war or violence—quite the opposite, in fact.
Yet these beings who craved war—according to what she had read from her books—were capable of creating such a radiant thing?
Valerie Dawn, professor Mamta's old student, even married one.
If they're so bad—so awful they have to be banished—then—
None of it made much sense to Rose. She didn't understand why people disliked her for simply being a dragon. She didn't understand why the Community didn't allow dragons outside of Desoul except her. Why was she the exception? She especially didn't understand the conflicting information she had about dragons.
History books said they were evil. But if they were truly evil, then shouldn't Rose be evil?
Rose didn't feel evil. She didn't think she acted evil. But the books—
I don't really have anything concrete, Rose thought, trying to stop her circular thoughts. I've never met another dragon. Books can only say so much, I think…
So how does a ruby turn into a dragon's dawn?
The question popped back up in her head, like a persistent weed.
Maybe if I learn how—maybe if I understand this, I might understand dragons a bit more, Rose hopefully thought. It was a bit of a long shot, but it wasn't like she had a lot of avenues to go down.
Rose decided to broach the subject the following morning to her friends.
"Um," Rose began, hesitantly interrupting their quiet breakfast, "I have an idea for an experiment. Maybe. I mean, I have no clue how we would get the supplies, but, um—"
"What can we do for you, fellow scientist?" Keinan inquired.
"So you know how rubies turn into dragon's dawn with dragon fire?" Rose asked. "I was wondering—I mean if it would be possible—do you think I could do that?"
"That'd be interesting to see," Chester said with an easy smile. "I'll ask Mother about it tonight, okay?"
...🌹...
There was a knock on Rose's bedroom door the next Saturday night, so she said, "Come on in."
The door opened to Havi escorting Keinan and Chester—who were both carrying some heavy boxes—and the moment Havi saw Rose on her bed doing her homework, she beamed.
"Hello, little kingmate."
"We didn't see you at dinner," Keinan said, entering Rose's room and dumping the box on her bed, "so we brought the stuff here."
"I, uh—I prefer to stay in my room these days," Rose said, her eyes widening in surprise when dozens of little bags toppled out of the box and onto her bed. "What is all of this?"
"Mother and Uncle Andy sent us all the stuff for the experiment. You know, for the dragon's dawn stone?" Chester placed his own box on the bed, opening it up and pulling out a thick leather binder. "They want the results as soon as possible, so let's get started."
Rose hesitantly opened up one of the bags and let out a squawk of surprise when she caught sight of a huge diamond laying inside one. Her heart jumped upon seeing it.
"Wh-what the—?!"
"Pretty diamond," Havi commented airily. "I'm going to leave your door open since you'll be playing with fire, okay, Rose?"
"O-okay. This is huge! This must have cost a fortune, I can't believe—" Rose's mind was reeling. How much money did they spend on this? It's only supposed to be a little project—oh my gosh, are they trillionaires or something?
"Fortune?" Keinan and Chester repeated, incredulous.
Keinan tilted his head. "It's only a diamond. Dungeons are littered with non-magical stones."
"Only?" Rose wheezed. "In—in the human world, a diamond this size would be worth millions."
"Why?" Chester's nose crinkled, genuinely confused. "It's a rock without magic. It can't be used for really anything."
Rose merely shook her head, at a loss for how to explain to her two friends how diamonds were seen as precious gems. Especially since she didn't entirely know herself. Instead, she cleared her throat and put away her homework so Chester and Keinan would have room to sit on her bed. Both boys hopped on, and Keinan eagerly placed the diamond in Rose's hand.
"Try breathing on it."
Rose spewed a little dragon fire on it.
Nothing happened.
"So it's not just dragon fire that turns it," Chester crowed, elated, as he rapidly took out a pen and started scribbling furiously. "That's always been speculated, but no one outside Desoul has ever seen the process."
"Do you have any instincts on what to do next?" Keinan asked Rose, his eyes wide.
"Like what?"
"I'm not sure. I didn't really learn how to make webs, but I just kind of learned how to do it?" Keinan offered haphazardly. "Do you feel like you should do something else?"
Rose examined the diamond carefully, twisting and turning it in her hands. She didn't feel as transfixed by the stone as she did by the dragon's dawn.
"Maybe I should start with a ruby?" Rose ventured. ��I know what a dragon's dawn is supposed to look like, but I've no clue what a diamond should turn into."
Both boys fished around the bags before Chester procured a ruby the size of Rose's fist and gave it to her.
As soon as Rose touched the ruby, she let out a quiet 'oh'.
"What happened?" Keinan and Chester immediately asked her, leaning forward excitedly. Chester's pen quivered in his hands, he was that excited.
"I—I feel something," Rose admitted, uncertain how to describe it. "It feels warm in my hands, like a small heart. It's very soft, but I can definitely hear it. It's—it's kind of beating in tune with my heartbeat."
"Amazing," Chester breathed. "A non-magic stone having a magical reaction."
"Well go on, then, breathe on it," Keinan insisted.
Rose spewed out a small fire. The stone immediately absorbed all of the fire, drawing it into itself like a sponge. When the fire was sucked in, the stone developed a small glow inside of it.
"Whoa," the trio said.
Rose breathed more fire onto it, and once again, the ruby absorbed it. It glowed a little brighter than before.
"Why is it working with the ruby but not the diamond?" Chester wondered.
"Keep blowing into the ruby, see if it gets any brighter," Keinan suggested.
No matter how often Rose blew into the ruby, the small light that glowed inside of it didn't grow any brighter. Chester wrote with great haste for another couple of minutes before he paused and said, "Is it only with rubies? Maybe it'll work with other red stones."
Keinan scrounged around the bags for another red stone. He pulled it out and examined it closely. "Red… cinnabar?"
Chester peered at it. "I… I think so. Do you have the book?"
Keinan pulled out at decent sized book that smelled musty when he opened it up. He flipped through some pages before stopping and pointing at something on the page. He held the book out towards Rose.
"What do you think, Rose? Does it look like a red cinnabar?"
Rose narrowed her eyes as she looked between the picture and the rock. She scratched her right cheek as she thought.
They all look the same, Rose thought quietly to herself. "Um. Yes?"
Keinan and Chester both nodded along and Chester handed her the stone. "Here, try on this."
Rose took a deep breath before spewing out some fire onto the stone. Like with the ruby, the stone absorbed the fire almost immediately, and a very faint and dull glow appeared at the center of it. The trio exchanged excited looks, smiles on their faces.
Rose couldn't resist sporting a big grin. Experimenting was fun, she believed. She hadn't been able to have a lot of fun recently, so being able to play with magic and pretty stones felt amazing.
"So we have similar results with red stones," Chester said. "We need more tests! Find all the red stones, and then we'll try a blue stone. I wonder… you have an affinity for Red and Black Magic, right?" At Rose's nod, he continued, "But you struggle with Blue, and considering your magic is partly sealed, then you'd probably have difficulty with White. Diamonds might be considered white… so I think that you'll be able to have some kind of reaction with black and red stones, but no reaction with white and blue stones."
"What about green, or yellow?" Keinan inquired. "Or purple? There are more different colors of stones than there are of magic types. The magic types are Blue for calm, Red for passion, Green for compassion, Black for illusion, White for acceptance, Yellow for arrogance, Purple for apathy, Gray for meta, and Brown for self-hatred." Keinan ticked off each magic types with his fingers.
"And Orange for chaos." He held up ten fingers. "But there are way more colors of rocks, right?"
"The colors might lean more towards one than the other, though," Chester pointed out. "Like a rock with multiple colors on it would lean more towards whatever color it has the most of. Or a teal-colored rock could lean more towards blue or green."
"I don't agree with that," Keinan said. "There are different types of dragons, right? Like a whole bunch, right? Fire, lightning, air, water, frost, ground, rock, ethereal, light, and so on, right? I think the rocks would have the better reaction dependent on the type of dragon. Rose is a fire dragon, so maybe red stones represent fire dragons."
Rose scratched her cheek again. "Am I a fire dragon? Yes, I breathe fire, but Doctor Basileus said my scales were a little odd."
"Fire and something else?" Keinan guessed. "Okay, I propose that Rose's fire will only react to red stones, and possibly one other color dependent on the type of dragon she is."
"I still think my theory on magic types still stands, but there's only one way to prove or disprove our theories," Chester said, a determined gleam in his eyes. Keinan grinned broadly. "Ah, Rose, do you have a theory?"
Rose thought carefully. She didn't want to disagree with either theory since they both sounded good to her. "I think it's a combination of both. Like a fire dragon who is good in Red and… Blue will have the strongest reaction with a red stone, but still have a reaction with blue stones, but on a smaller scale."
"You think it stacks?" Keinan asked to clarify. "Like, if you're a fire dragon, then that's one point for red stones, but if you have an affinity for Red and Blue, then that's one point each for red stones and blue stones. So, two points in red stones would guarantee a strong reaction, but only one point in blue stones would cause a minor reaction?"
Rose nodded. "Yes."
Chester wrote down all three theories while Rose and Keinan separated the stones into color groups—and they went by magical colors—with a separate group of stones that they couldn't decide what group they went to. By the time they were done, Chester had also drawn up some tables and wrote in each different kind of stone.
"Let's start with red stones, then blue, then black," Chester said. "We'll obviously test all of them, but these are the ones we each have an expected reaction for."
As it turned out, all the red and black stones absorbed Rose's fire, whereas the blue stones had no reaction. They moved onto the white stones and again, there was no reaction.
The green stones followed, but surprisingly, there was a reaction.
Chester's brow furrowed. "Do you have an affinity for Green Magic?"
"I don't know," Rose said. "We haven't done any magic in that class this year."
"Hm. Maybe we can ask Professor Mamta to test you?"
"Let's do that later. Try the gray stones next," Keinan said.
Gray stones had no reaction. There was a brief reaction with yellow stones, and both Keinan and Chester looked irritated.
"Your magic is still sealed away, probably by Yellow Magic, so that could be messing with the yellow stones," Chester muttered.
Keinan sighed. "It does look like magic colors are having an effect on reactions."
"Maybe. It'd be better if we had more than one dragon to test this with."
"It'd be nice if I could meet another dragon," Rose grumbled.
Both boys patted her shoulders.
Purple, oddly, had a brief reaction. Brown had no reaction, and the mixed colored rocks also had no reaction. By the time they were done testing all of the rocks, the trio were ready for a lunch break.