Come on wuss it's just a door

[poll_the_stars]

Avetlarinyarenesaar... Is currently trying to force herself to walk another few steps. She hasn't managed it, yet. Her reason for stopping was perfectly ordinary - check the address, make sure it was correct, be sure she was in the right place. She'd been quite sure, but there wasn't any downside to double checking, so she double checked. And triple checked. She stopped herself from quadruple checking, but she wanted to anyway. To - be sure that she was right. Yes. Not because she was procrastinating, or nervous, or thinking what am I going to say? She wanted to be sure that she was right.

Well. She's right. She checked three times, there's no doubt to it.

"Look," she mutters to herself, "I get it, it's scary, but deal. You are not allowed to - to -" To what? Go home? Maybe try to work up the courage later? Maybe try and avoid the shren house like so many other dragons?

It was a door. It's idiotic to be afraid of a door. Sure, there were shrens on the other side of it, but there could conceivably be shrens on the other side of lots of doors, some of them were in hiding, hair dye existed. Subtle colors existed. She could have been near shrens any number of times.

That - did not actually make her fear go away. Instead it makes her want to curl up in her little apartment and not go outside again.

Great. Okay. Stop that train of thought, it's not useful. If she stands here any longer, people are going to stare. (Is that person over there staring? Probably. Damn.) Just - door. Go. Walk.

She forces herself to walk to the door, somewhat stiffly. And then she is at the door. ... Does she knock? Does she just open it and go in? She has no idea. It's customary to knock, so... She takes a deep breath and does so. Resisting the urge to flee and teleport away (or scamper into the bushes) isn't easy, but she manages it.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

Yep!

[poll_the_stars]

< Exactly as expected. Thank you for your time! >

"Have a lovely dinner," she says out loud.

[alicornucopia]

"Thanks," says the wife from the stove.

<Luck!> says the telepath.

[poll_the_stars]

< Thanks! >

And off she teleports.

Parunia, or Dragon Island? Island or parunia?

... Her stomach growls.

Right. Food. Food exists.

Food, then Dragon Island, then parunia if she doesn't get any obvious leads from Dragon Island. She makes a quick sandwich and eats it while she writes an equally quick letter to Ehail. Explaining her observations, and explaining where she's going next to figure out what exactly is going on. Hey, she said she'd keep her updated, and she's damn well going to. Write write. Nom. Nom nom. Write write.

She runs out of food before she runs out of letter, but soon one is consumed and the other is sent, and then she's off to Dragon Island.

[alicornucopia]

Dragon Island is large and has dragons on it.

[poll_the_stars]

Yep. It is all of those things.

She shifts to dragon form, and then goes off to find birth records.

[alicornucopia]

There is a genealogist and her assistants in the office, sorting mail and updating family trees.

[poll_the_stars]

"Excuse me," says Avet. "I'm Avetlarin, I'm a wizard working on figuring out why baby dragons die and if there's a way to fix it. May I look at your records?"

[alicornucopia]

"Of course," says the head genealogist, a red. "Thyell will help you."

Thyell, a white opal, puts down what she's doing and says, "What in particular are you looking for?"

[poll_the_stars]

"Thank you," she says.

To Thyell: "I strongly suspect that the problem with babies has something to do with a lack of dragon magic. I know an analysis that lets me look at it. But - before specifics, you know the records better than I do, what's the general population density of unusuals, uniques, and ordinary dragons? If I remember correctly it stays around the same?"

[alicornucopia]

"There are fluctuations, but yes. In general uniques are so called because on average there will be one per color group around at a time, although there may be two of one, none of another for centuries on end, etcetera. Unusuals are usually present at a rate of between ten and twenty per color group."

[poll_the_stars]

"Are there records of how many, er, attempts there have been to have baby dragons? If it's a population plateau I could understand it. Or - percentages, do we know what percentage of baby dragons die?"

[alicornucopia]

"We don't require reports on attempts when none survive. Of surviving babies it's a fairly flat distribution of number of deceased clutchmates, zero to three, with a bit of a dropoff at four because clutches rarely exceed five and sometimes two will live from a clutch. Seldom three."

[poll_the_stars]

"Mm. I don't know, maybe we've hit a plateau, but you'd think that we would have at least a slow population climb."

[alicornucopia]

"The dragon population's been basically static for as long as we've been keeping records," blinks Thyell.

[poll_the_stars]

"Well, yes, but I mean - in other species, they don't do that. Fairies and merfolk have high infant death rates, and while they have a lot of them at a time, you'd still think that there would be some change with dragons."

[alicornucopia]

"I'm not sure I follow. We don't have nearly as many children as the average fairy, even particularly unlucky families."

[poll_the_stars]

"No, I - yes we don't have as many children as the average fairy. But populations do a thing where they snowball. One family has three kids that survive and those three kids manage to have five between them and so on and so on. I don't know. Maybe I'm hilariously wrong about how it works, it's not like I'm an expert on the subject."

[alicornucopia]

"Well, the dragon population has held pretty steady."

[poll_the_stars]

"Even with - have there been any - I don't know, dragon plagues? Dips in the population due to extremely inclement weather or large flaming scoot accidents or angry people with pointy sticks or something?"

[alicornucopia]

"Well, that plague that left all the vampires so religious got some of us in natural form, and when south flu appeared back in lost Egeria likewise it didn't go well for dragons who caught it natural-formed, but we bounced back soon enough."

[poll_the_stars]

She blinks.

"That. Doesn't make sense."

[alicornucopia]

"Hm?"

[poll_the_stars]

"If it were a natural plateau, due to what percentage of baby dragons die, it wouldn't - we wouldn't bounce back quickly. If we bounced back at all it would take a while."

[alicornucopia]

"I can look up hatching and survival rates from one or both of those periods if you like?"