Chapter 5
Fwoosh!
On the eastern outskirts of a rural village, an extremely large silhouette briefly covered the sky as the villagers peacefully slept.
Gently, the figure landed on the ground so no one would notice their presence.
This was Aasterinian; she had flown from the cabin where she, Io, and Chronepsis had been to this rural village.
She had stayed in this village for a while in the past while hiding her features and identity.
It was a fun thing she did to kill some time, while she got to study mortals from a mortal's perspective as a part of her learning experience.
Slowly and silently, she walked up to the house of a couple she believed would take good care of Draco.
“Till we meet again, Cutie,” Aasterinian whispered before leaving Draco along with a note and something extra.
………………………
Draco soon woke up to the biting cold of the winter wind; his lungs felt like it would freeze over with each breath he took.
His only saving grace was that his body was stronger than the average baby and his natural resistance to the elements.
A normal child would have already died from the freezing cold that he was feeling.
‘Where am I now, and how long was I asleep,’ Draco pondered as he tried observing his surroundings.
Looking around, he realized that he was outside in a basket filled with thick clothing.
To his left, he could see that he was in front of someone’s house.
‘What the heck happened while I was asleep, where are the dragon gods that I met a while ago, why did they leave me here,’ Draco questioned.
But there was no one to answer his questions.
“Abaabababa,” Draco tried babbling to draw the attention of the house inhabitants.
Sadly, the heavy winds drowned out his voice, but he didn’t give up and kept trying.
Soon, he exhausted himself and began feeling sleepy.
Growl!
His stomach made a grumbling sound signifying that he was hungry.
‘Draco, come on, you can endure this, stay awake,’ he tried psyching himself up.
He knew that falling asleep in the cold meant death.
He couldn’t afford to lose his new life so soon after getting it.
His body had been wrapped in thick layers of clothing but sadly his face wasn’t.
He almost couldn’t feel his face now as the freezing wind blew against it.
He didn’t know for how long he endured the cold, but soon the wind died down.
Click!
The sound of locks opening entered his ears.
‘Finally, someone ca………zzz,’ Draco thought before falling asleep; he had reached his limit.
Upon opening her door in the morning, Chise was shocked to see a large basket in front of her door.
She had just woken up to get more dry firewood from the shed as the ones inside had been exhausted.
Curious, she looked into the basket only to see a baby wrapped in thick clothing and strange bumps on its head.
Upon touching the baby's skin, it felt cold. Quickly, she picked up the basket and rushed back inside towards the fireplace.
“Who would leave a baby for so long outside like this,” Chise muttered a bit panicked.
She began unwrapping the thick clothes that Draco was covered in.
“Aaaah,” Chise suddenly screamed, releasing Draco from her hand.
Luckily, she was from the cat people race and had fast reflexes.
She quickly caught Draco just before he hit the ground.
Mark, Chise’s husband who was still asleep, was startled when he heard his wife suddenly scream, so he rushed towards her.
“Honey, are you ok, what happened?” Mark asked in concern.
“It’s alright, I am fine,” Chise replied.
She was startled when she saw Draco’s tail, thinking that it was a snake because it felt and moved like one.
“It's great that you are ok, but whose child is that?” Mark asked curiously. But before Chise could reply, Draco began crying.
He was startled by a sudden scream; then when he woke up, he suddenly found himself falling to the ground head first.
His mind almost blacked out due to the fear of death.
As soon as he realized that he wasn’t dead, his emotions and something extra burst to the surface.
“There, there, I am sorry for dropping you,” Chise tried consoling the crying Draco. But no matter what she did, he didn’t stop crying.
Soon Draco tired himself out and fell asleep. Chise then wrapped him in a fresh pair of clothes since he has drenched himself.
After which she took him closer to the fireplace to warm him up.
“So can you explain what’s going on?” Mark whispered to Chise, trying not to wake Draco up.
Chise then explained to Mark what had happened.
“I see,” Mark muttered; he then glanced at the basket in which Draco came in.
‘There might be some clue about the child in the basket,’ Mark thought.
Following his gut, he searched the basket and found a note along with two vials of a strange liquid.
“Chise, look what I found,” Mark called out to his wife.
“Shh,” Chise replied; he was being a bit too loud. She didn’t want Draco to wake up now.
“Sorry,” Mark whispered and showed the note along with the vials to Chise.
“Please, I ask of you to take care of this child, he is the last of his kind. I would have loved to take care of him myself but can’t due to certain circumstances,” Mark paused while reading the note and looked at Chise, who suddenly began crying.
“Should I continue?” Mark asked; Chise nodded in reply.
“I will not ask you to do this for free, I left two vials of an extremely rare special potion made just for you two as I promised in the past, from your friend Asta. The child’s name is Draco,” the note ended.
The rest of the note was just an explanation of what the vials did, how to use it and a serious warning not to tell anyone about the vials.
“Is this really from Asta?” Chise questioned. Asta was an alias Aasterinian used when she stayed in the village.
She had already made preparations in the event that she wasn’t allowed to take care of Draco herself.
“I think so, sounds like something she would do” Mark replied.
Mark was from the Chientrope race and Chise from the cat people race, making them quite the unusual couple.
Crossbreeding between different Demi-human species was almost impossible.
It was extremely hard to produce offspring between the two. They had been married for almost 4 years now with no child.
“I thought that she was joking about that, but did she really find a solution for us?” Chise questioned.
“I thought so too,” Mark replied. The room soon became quite as they both appeared to be lost in thought.
“So what should we do, we can’t abandon this child,” Chise said, while cleaning the tears off her face.
She didn’t know why she felt the need to cry when she heard that the child was the last of his race.
“I think so too, we should adopt him,” Mark muttered while eyeing the two vials in his hand.
“Mark, thank you,” Chise whispered with a smile as she tightly cradled Draco in her arms.
Despite the fact that they both deeply loved each other, having no children weighed heavily at the back of their minds.
They had gone against their parents to get married despite knowing that having a child would be hard.
They were young then and didn’t think much of things, but as the years went by, their way of thinking had begun subtly changing.
Now, here they were with a solution, if the vial worked as Asta said, that was fine, and if it didn’t, then they still had their newly adopted child.
“I will go inform the village chief when the sun rises,” Mark replied with a smile.
He then walked back to their room with the vials in hand; carefully, he placed them inside a box.
They would be using it quite soon.