Overview
The Presence-Carry Dragon Kin is the heavy-jawed line of the moor — broad through the shoulder, the neck thick, the hands long, the whole of it reading as one word that does not need to be finished, because the room already knows it is being said. It is the second of the Dragon Kin a stranger meets on The Drakemoor, and the one the moor keeps for the word no one else is heavy enough to carry.
Habitat
The Presence-Carry Dragon Kin keeps the open ground of The Drakemoor, the ash fields between the shares where the scale-stone shows grey and the sky is the widest it gets. It needs three things: a ground open enough for the presence to land, a view of the sky wide enough for the instinct, and a share close enough to keep the grudge. The kin-shares of the open moor are small and scattered, four to a dozen to a share, and the share is the point, because the Presence-Carry line is the line that every share on the moor feels, and the feeling is the presence, and the presence is the word.
Appearance
Males stand 1.91 m tall, 98 kg, broad through the shoulder, with the jaw heavier than the mortal ideal; females stand 1.86 m, 89 kg, quicker, with the presence still wider than the body. The skin is warm ivory to pale golden-cream, the cream of the moor's old light, and the distinguishing mark is the fine scale-patch, a wash of deep umber along the spine, the umber being the presence made skin, and the depth of the umber is the weight of the word. The throat patch is burnished gold, and the gold is the one part of the umber the strangers see first, because the throat is where the word is kept.
Behaviour
The Presence-Carry Dragon Kin moves heavy-strided and certain, 8 m/s across the scale-stone, and it does not hurry, because the presence is the only thing on the moor that is worth the landing, and the landing is never in a hurry. It reads the room before it enters it: the shape of a share by the ash it stirs, the heat of a stranger by the air that goes wrong around them, the fall of a scale that has hit the ground and not been picked up, all of it arriving before the step is made, and the arrival is the presence.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the presence, and the presence is the promise: the Presence-Carry dragon-kin carries one word, and the word does not come back until the season is done, and the landing of the word is the grudge made certain. The second weapon is the hand, because the word is not always the presence, and the hand that is a little too long for the body is the word the presence is too heavy for. The defense is the scale-patch, because the deep umber takes a blow the way the scale-stone takes a word, and the patch is the one part of the body that has been hit the most, and the patch is the part that has never given.
Magic Alignment
The Presence-Carry Dragon Kin stands in the service of the line's own dragon, the dragon the blood remembers, and its magic is the carrying of the word — the power to make the presence into a weight and the weight into a landing. Draconic Presence is the primary gift: the word before the word, the room knowing the dragon-kin is there before the dragon-kin moves, and the knowing is the presence, and the presence is the landing.
Society
A Presence-Carry Dragon Kin lives in a kin-share of four to a dozen in the open ash fields of the moor, and the share is run by the one who carries the heaviest word, because the share is the only room in the world where the carrying is the law. The hierarchy is by the weight of the presence: the one whose word lands deepest eats the share's best, and the one whose braid is thickest keeps the presence-ward. The young of the share share the chamber and share the carrying, and the carrying is the only school the share has, and the school is the moor, and the moor does not grade, the moor only lands.
Culture & Lore
The Presence-Carry Dragon Kin keeps its lore in the carrying, and the carrying keeps it better than the grudge does, because the carrying is the only book in the world that gets heavier when someone dies. The old say the first Presence-Carry dragon-kin was a word that learned to stand, and the moor gave it a body because the moor had no other way to keep the landing.
Home
Its home is The Drakemoor, a moor of black scale-stone and ash, its surface a constant grey shimmer, its silence broken only by the kinship and the grudge. The Presence-Carry Dragon Kin is the moor's second voice, and the voice is heavy in the way the ash is heavy, and the heavy is the one thing the moor cannot lose, because the grudge needs the presence the way the word needs the landing. The share is kept by the heaviest word, the ash is kept grey by the scale-stone, and the presence is kept long by the line, which is the one law the moor does not break.
Relations
The Presence-Carry Dragon Kin keeps a heavy, word-kept peace with the Ancestry-Sense line of The Drakemoor, a peace of the carried word and the read line that has held as long as the moor has been landing. To the line's own dragon, the Presence-Carry line is the first blood made heavy, and the line keeps a single deep umber scale at the presence-ward for the dragon, which is the one offering the dragon has asked for and never taken, and the asking is the keeping.
In the Story
In the story of the six who arrived, the Presence-Carry Dragon Kin is the second quiet test the moor offers, the landing that asks which of them the word will carry and which of them the word will spend. It is the figure that carries the word while the oaths are made on the ground, and the figure whose carrying is the map the war is landed by, because the presence has landed every approach the warrens have taken, and the presence has kept them, and the presence is the one page in the world the war cannot close.