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(Title TL Note: This title starts like a Haiku (a type of poetry focused on seasons/nature))

Rain frequently visited Mount Kuguse.

“It sure is pouring…”

There was a heavy sound of droplets. The deciduous trees whose leaves were on the verge of falling were probably finished off by this rain.

Kafal’s nest had good drainage, and there were no cliffs that could crumble nearby. It hinted at her precaution as someone who had lost her egg to the rain disaster before. She stood with her wings spread out. She was using her wings like a roof.

It seemed like Kafal didn’t mind the rain or wind at all, but she probably knew that a child losing heat would be dangerous. Thus she stood at attention, protecting Lucella. She was always like this when it rained.

“Don’t you get tired standing like that? A human would find it extremely hard to stay still like that during rain.”
“Ruh?”
“You wouldn’t need to do that if we had an actual roof though.”

Lucella looked up at Kafal after confirming the state of the dried fruits that were sandwiched between the pelts. Preserving food hygienically in this wind-swept nest was actually hard as is. If they got wet from the rain on top, everything would be spoiled.

—She did lose her egg in a landslide caused by heavy rain, after all. I doubt Kafal would be willing to live in a cave or something any longer. Then I guess there’s no other way but to build a hut here, huh?

Lucella really felt the need for habitat now that he started working on food preservation.

Having said that, he had no construction knowledge, and he only had Kafal, who he could barely communicate with, to consult… So he had to start by thinking about how to convey his intentions.

Lucella started devising a plan.

He pulled out a branch from the pile of foliage making up the nest and started drawing with it on the damp ground.

“Look, have you ever seen something like this? Humans call these houses. They build these houses and live in them. You can endure the rain if you have a house, and you can fend off the winter’s cold too…”

It wasn’t particularly good, but Lucella drew rain and a house on the ground.

Kafal observed the drawing with her wings still spread as a roof.

—I wonder if it’ll get across… I think she at least realizes that I’m trying to tell her something…

Lucella pointed at the image and supplied it with gestures. Kafal tilted her head for a moment. And after that, she roared.

“…Grrrrrrr…rooar!!”

Suddenly, the ground split.

The foliage gathered for the nest cracked and split apart, and a big boulder rose up from below it.

Lucella remembered seeing the illustration in some book before, there were apparently houses made with hardened clay in desert regions. This looked just like one of those, but it wasn’t made of clay but instead was a solid rock house that was smoothed and hollowed out.

It had one room, with an entrance with no door and simply holes serving as windows.

“I-I-I… If you could do something like this, you should’ve told me sooner!!”
“Ruh?”

The stone house suddenly grew inside the nest. She most likely used earth elemental magic to alter the terrain.

—Wait, could the reason behind the unnatural elevation of this nest also be Kafal’s magic?

He just noticed it, but the nest was on a well-elevated spot in an even area of the mountain, making it unnaturally aligned with Kafal’s wishes. She probably just made a convenient terrain for the nest with magic.

Lucella hurriedly headed inside. It was just a room with windows and an entrance, with no furniture or fireplace, but it was still enough for keeping out of wind and rain.

But then, the stone house shook. Kafal had shoved her snout through the entrance.

“…Gruuuu…”
“H-Hey, why do you look so sad…”

She blew air through her nose.

Kafal yearned for Lucella who holed up inside and tried to get as physically closer as possible.

“Right! Uhh, I mean… no need to get fixated on a human-sized one… Like, if you can do it, maybe…”

Lucella avoided the entrance where her head was stuck and jumped outside through the window. And then he drew a giant house on the ground, and drew a dragon and a small human inside it.

“Ruh!”

This time, the whole mountain shook with force.

Stone rode up from both sides of the nest and connected above Kafal’s head, making an arc that covered three sides of it. If you excluded the fact that it was made of rock and was gigantic, it looked just like a stone hut that children made during the snow.

She didn’t create it out of nothing, but rather, simply altered the shape of the terrain. The surrounding terrain was shaved off the same amount of materials that was spent on making the roof, and the area around the stone hut turned into a giant ditch similar to the moat of a castle.

“Woow… So cool!”

Lucella could only stand with his mouth open as he gazed up at the disorientingly tall roof. Humans also utilized magic to a degree when building big structures, but something this rough and strong was most likely a rarity.

“…Actually, if she could do this but didn’t until now, does it mean she really didn’t think about making a roof until now…”
“Ruh?”

Lucella couldn’t help but give Kafal an exasperated look.

She spread her wings to protect Lucella, but for a mother dragon… Or put differently, for the young dragon she protected, the rain only amounted to that level of threat. If they lived in a cave, she wouldn’t need to spread her wings, but that was it. Her standard was fundamentally different from that of humans.

Well, she understood what he wanted so all ended well.

Kafal crouched down under the roof and Lucella leaned back on her neck as usual.

“With this much space, the wind’s just gonna blow in… but oh well.”

Winter was already approaching. But the dragon scales were warm.

—I suppose I can handle winter like this…?

Storing the preserved food shouldn’t be a problem anymore, and the snow wouldn’t matter either.

With the stone dome this wide, he could just make a bonfire if it grew cold, and he had as much kindling as he wanted for that. Having grown quite used to fire magic, Lucella was confident.

But as he was getting relieved, he thought back on it.

—Wait wait, hold up. Should I really be so nonchalant about this? If I had a family or something, wouldn’t they be waiting for me to return?

He always thought about it but had pushed it to the corner of his mind. He spent days preparing for winter and took on the “teaching materials” (…hazardous materials?) that Kafal brought back. He was busy every day.

They were quite hectic but happy days nonetheless. Kafal sometimes did things the dragon way and it brought some risk, but it was because she was giving her all to raise Lucella.

Thus, he almost forgot about it. About his time before he became Kafal’s child. About the fact that someone somewhere might be waiting for his return.

—I feel like I had to return alive no matter what. I want to at least confirm why I thought that. If my investigation shows that I was actually all on my own, well, that wouldn’t be so bad either. At that time, I’ll just settle on this mountain for certain.

The downpour rain continued without an end.

Among its bustling yet calming sound, Lucella fell into a slumber.