Neytiri returned to the cave towards evening, carrying the usual piece of meat. As soon as his mother deposited it on the ground, Haku hurried to throw himself on the carcass and strip it as much flesh as possible, while he ferociously defended his share from his brothers and sisters' ravenous teeth. Eating was getting more and more difficult; Haku was certain that within two or three days at the most he and his siblings would have started fighting each other.
The tension could already be felt in the air: his frailer sisters looked fearfully at the stronger ones, who, on the contrary, looked down on them. It was clear that when the food would have been no longer enough for all of them, the weaker little dragons would have been excluded from the meals and would have starved to death, or worse would have killed each other to eat.
Haku had made the right choice to prepare himself for a not so much bright future. It was clear that difficult times lay ahead.
When he finished eating, Haku decided it was time to ask his mother for advice. However, he couldn't simply go to her and ask her directly how to prevent the food from decomposing, or he would have created suspicions and questions that he would hardly have been able to answer. So, after thinking it through carefully, he decided it was best to be vague: "Mom, how do you preserve all this food?" he asked, trying to make his voice sound as innocent as possible, as if his was just a curiosity with no practical intent.
It seemed to work: Neytiri was a little surprised by the baby dragon's question, but when she answered there was no sign of suspicion in her voice: "Well, I don't preserve it. I hunt it every day"
This wasn't expected. Haku understood that he had to insist. "Yes, but what would you do if you wanted to preserve it? Maybe in anticipation of a food shortage?"
"Mmm..." Neytiri didn't understand what Haku wanted to know, but she decided that most likely it was just another of the typical little dragons' curiosities. After all, she remembered that when she was just born she too was very curious and often asked the most absurd questions to herself or even to her mother. So she decided to answer to Haku. "If I wanted to preserve food I would put it in an area full of snow"
"Snow?" Haku was stunned for a moment, then he remembered that his mother had once told him about it: "That white thing that covers the mountains and comes down from the sky when it's cold? Why should the snow keep it?"
"I don't know exactly why, but it is common knowledge that cold is able to keep meat from spoiling" Neytiri replied. "Snow keeps cold, so if you immerse meat in it, it will freeze and stay fresh for a long time"
That information might have been useful to Haku in the future, but at the moment it was useless to him: he had no way to get snow, since he would have to climb an entire mountain to obtain it. "But what if you don't have snow available?" he tried to ask, hoping for an alternative.
Unfortunately, however, his mother's response was simply: "Then I would go somewhere where there is snow"
Neytiri didn't worry too much about famines. Having a large territory at her disposal, she had never needed to preserve food. And even if one day her territory became depleted, since she was a dragon she could simply spread her wings and go hunting elsewhere. This was another reason that had led dragons to decay: being proud and paying little attention to other life forms, they didn't care about tomorrow. This in past times had led to many dragons facing famines and consequently abandoning their territory, resulting in being killed by the newcomers or preyed upon by other stronger dragons.
Haku realized that he wouldn't have gotten anything else from his mother, at least on that topic. Which brought him full circle: he didn't know how to preserve the food he got. If his mother couldn't provide him with an answer, then Haku had no way of finding one. Perhaps the best choice was not to focus on how to preserve food, but to learn to hunt as much as possible. Maybe in that way he could survive with it. After all, thanks to his strong constitution he probably still had some time left before risking running out of food, so in that period if he had learned how to find and kill numerous prey he would still have had a source of food, even if fallacious and little safe.
To succeed in this plan, however, he first had to know a few things to ensure his own survival: "Mom, I have another question! Today I heard some noises and I looked out of the cave..."
"I told you to don't do it"
Haku saw his mother's gaze suddenly become severe and it seemed to him that the temperature in the room had dropped. He knew immediately that he had made a mistake and that his mother was angry. Neytiri, like all dragon mothers, didn't like to have her authority challenged. Fearing the consequences, he used the first excuse that came to mind: "I know, but I was afraid that something was about to enter the cave. I chose to face it while it was still climbing the cliff, when it was still vulnerable" he said trying to sound sincere.
Neytiri stared at him for a few seconds, which seemed like an eternity to Haku. However, in the end the great dragon had to admit that the reasoning made sense. "Okay, it doesn't matter this time. And what did you see?"
Haku mentally breathed a sigh of relief. "Under our cave there was a large animal, the one you said was called karkadann. White wolves came and attacked it. But something happened: the thorns and the horn of the karkadann became red and hot, and the wolves created some illusions to confuse him. What is it about?"
Neytiri snorted. "Oh, that. Well, what you saw is the use of the mana"
Haku was dumbfounded for a moment. "Mana?" he repeated, not remembering ever having heard such a word.
"Yes, mana" Neytiri repeated, and then she explained herself better: "Mana is an intrinsic energy that is found everywhere in the world. No one knows where it comes from or what produces it. Some believe it comes from underground, others from the soil... however, every creature in this world knows how to use it. Every living species has learned to use it in certain ways"
"Certain ways?"
"Yes. All creatures' instincts allow them to know what they can and cannot do with the mana at their disposal. White wolves, for example, can use it to create multiple illusions of themselves to confuse their prey. And the karkadann use it to warm up their natural weapons and increase their regenerative abilities, to better defend themselves"
Did mana have that many uses? Haku was ecstatic. If he had learned to use it, it could have revolutionized his hunting skills! "Can we dragons use mana too?" he asked hopefully.
Neytiri nodded with what looked like a smile. "Of course. You are still too small, but when you grow up you will unlock your domain"
"What is a domain?"
"The domain is a trait that every dragon receives around the age of ten, right after their wings grows. Essentially, it is granted to them absolute authority over a certain element. In lesser words, a dragon can use any spell or magic based on their element without any restrictions. For example, a fire dragon can use all fire spells, a water dragon can use all water spells, and so on. The color of a dragon's scales denotes their domain"
Haku's heart leapt at that prospect. Even though he was very disappointed that he would have to wait until he was ten, knowing that he could gain such power was extraordinary! He could already imagine the countless applications that the ability to manipulate mana could have in hunting or even in a physical fight. However, he didn't want his mother to know this, so he kept these thoughts to himself and limited himself to pretending to be excited and curious about the discovery that had just occurred: "So you, who have red scales, are a fire dragon?" he asked looking the color of his mother's scales.
Neytiri seemed to shrug. "Almost. I have two domains" she said with a hint of pride in her voice.
That information made Haku's heart beat even faster! "Can a dragon have two domains?" he exclaimed with glittering eyes.
"Yes, if he lives long enough. Every 400 years a dragon unlocks a new domain. I'm 412 years old, so I unlocked the fire domain when I was ten, and two years ago I unlocked the water domain as well" Neytiri answered.
"So there can also be dragons that have dominion over all elements?" Haku was excited. His mother had two domains and was already very powerful; how strong could a dragon that possessed control over all domains be?
"Well..." Neytiri didn't know how to answer. "It's complicated. To unlocked all the domains, or at least the ones of the four principal elements (fire, water, earth and wind), a dragon should live at least 1,200 years. It's a very long time and many things can happen during it. There are stories about dragons that lived that long, but I've never personally met them. The oldest dragon I've ever seen was 605 years old"
Before the supernova and the mass extinction it wasn't so uncommon for a dragon to attain control of all domains and be over two thousand years old, but now things had gotten much more complicated. The older a dragon got, the more they needed food and therefore an increasingly large territory; and eventually, one way or another, they ended up coming into conflict with the newcomers, thus signaling their own demise. And even if a dragon managed to find a territory large enough, they wouldn't have survived long: a dragon with three or more domains didn't go unnoticed. The newcomers wouldn't have risked that one day he would have turned against them, so as soon as they discovered their existence they would have organized a large expedition and killed them, even if that dragon was peacefully in their territory and had no warlike intentions. In this new world, no dragon could get too old.
Haku however still didn't know about it and he didn't care anyway. He was much more interested in confirming that he could manipulate mana like his mother did, rather than worrying about why no dragon, which his mother said was the perfect predator, was unable to survive so long. Unfortunately, his young and easily distracted mind was too excited about learning about this mysterious power to notice such details. "What will my domain be?" he asked curiously.
"You'll know when you get one. No one can predict exactly which domain a dragon will get. It's just random" Neytiri explained patiently.
Haku was a little disappointed, but not too much: the uncertainty and future surprise made the situation even more exciting for the baby dragon. "So I'll have to wait until I'm ten years old? After I'll sprout wings too? Does that mean I'll be an adult by then?"
"Oh, no. We dragons become adults around the age of twelve, when we unlock the ability to reproduce. Basically, we become adults when we become capable of begetting offspring"
"And will I be as big as you by then?"
His mother laughed. "Of course not, you have a long way to go to get to my level. We dragons experience an explosive growth during our first twelve years of life, until we reach a length roughly equal to the distance from you and that rock" Neytiri explained pointing to a stone placed about thirty meters from Haku. "After that our growth slows down, but it continues forever. If you want to be as big as me, you have to wait at least another 400 years"
Becoming powerful and big like his mother was possible! Haku considered that result to be acceptable, even if he would have had to wait more than four centuries. He couldn't help but wagged his tail happily. "Very good! Then in 400 years I'll show you that I'll be bigger than you!"
"Heh heh! We'll see..." Neytiri laughed, amused by the baby dragon's naivety. Haku still didn't realize that in 400 years his mother would grow up too...