THE SEED OF RAPHAEL Part 1THE GIFT The blood was still wet.Ansel crouched and touched a drop with two fingers. Warm. Whatever bled here hadn't gone far. He should have turned back right then. Instead he found himself following the trail deeper, one drop to the next, his own breath loud in his ears.The trees opened up. He stopped walking.It filled the whole clearing. Scales like old armor, one wing bent wrong and torn clean through, wet and dark where a spear had gone in deep. Its chest rose and fell, slow, ragged. Each breath sounded like it cost something.His legs wanted to run. His feet didn't move.He thought of his wife at home, boiling the same thin soup she'd boiled the night before, and the night before that. He thought of walking back to her with nothing, again, the way he always did. Somehow that scared him more than the dragon did.So he raised both hands, slow, and stepped into the clearing."I'm not going to hurt you."His voice cracked on the last word. He hated that it did.The great head turned. One eye found him ,gold, wet at the rim, the pupil narrowing as it took him in. His whole body went cold waiting for what came next. A breath. A claw. Nothing came. It only watched him, chest still heaving, and something in that stillness felt like permission.He knelt beside the spear first. His hands shook so badly it took him three tries to get a grip on the shaft. When he finally pulled it free, the dragon made a sound so low, awful, almost human, and his own throat tightened at the sound of it, tears stinging before he understood why he was crying at all."I know," he whispered. "I know. Almost done."It wasn't almost done. It was three days of carrying water in cupped hands until his shoulders screamed, three days of pressing crushed leaves into a wound bigger than his own head, three nights sitting close enough to hear that terrible breathing slow, just slightly, just enough to let him sleep an hour at a time.He gave it the last of his dried meat on the second day. His stomach cramped with hunger that night. He pressed a hand against it and thought of his wife's face, and did not regret it.On the third night, the dragon spoke."Fifteen years married," it said. "And no child."The words landed somewhere under his ribs. He didn't ask how it knew. He only felt the old ache open up again, the one he never let himself touch in daylight ,fifteen years of Maren's eyes going somewhere far away every time a neighbor's child ran past their gate."You have been kind to me," the dragon said. "I don't forget kindness."It opened its mouth and drew out a small black seed. When it dropped into his palm, it was warm ,warm like something with a pulse, and his hand closed around it before he'd decided to."Give this to your wife. She must eat it whole, at the next full moon. Tell no one until the child is born." The gold eye held his, and something in it felt almost gentle. "This will not be an ordinary son. One day this kingdom will face a disaster. He is the answer to it. But that won't wake in him until he turns eighteen. Until then he is only a boy. Raise him well. Everything he becomes will come from what you give him now."Ansel's eyes stung again, for a different reason this time. "Why me?""Because you knelt beside a dying beast with nothing in your hands but kindness," it said. "That is rare."He ran the whole way home. His lungs burned before he was halfway there and he didn't slow down once.Maren his wife was at the well when he came through the gate, gasping, sweat-soaked, the cloth-wrapped seed clutched to his chest like it might fly away from him.She dropped the bucket. Water splashed cold across her feet and she didn't notice."Ansel; what happened, are you hurt…"He couldn't get the words out fast enough. They tumbled over each other, the dragon, the spear, the three days, the seed, and she stood there with her hand pressed to her mouth, not laughing, though it was the kind of story that should have made her laugh.When he finally opened the cloth and showed her, the small black seed glowing faint as an ember in his palm,she went very still.Then her hand covered her mouth harder, and her shoulders started to shake, and he realized she was crying before he understood it wasn't from sadness."Fifteen years," she said, voice breaking on the words. "Fifteen years I stopped letting myself even hope for it. I told myself I was done hoping. I told myself that lie so many times I almost believed it."She ate the seed at the next full moon, standing in the doorway with moonlight on her face, her hand trembling so badly Ansel had to steady her wrist.Nothing happened for weeks. Ansel would catch himself watching her across the room and feel a cold drop of doubt settle in his stomach ,what if I dreamed it, what if grief made me see a dragon that was never there. He never said it out loud. He didn't want to be the one who took the hope back out of her hands.