-1-
“Turquoise, it’s your turn.”
Her head shot up from where it was resting against a tree trunk to look her magic instructor in the eyes. He was a cream-white Wildclaw with the prettiest of blue trapped inside his wings, and he was looking down at her with a slightly bored but encouraging look on his face.
“Can I skip this?” the Coatl asked her tutor.
“No, Turquoise, you can’t. It’s a mandatory test, you know this.”
“Ilunis…”
He started tapping his foot on the soft carpet of earth below him. “Come on, Turquoise.”
Everyone else was staring at her by this point; all of the other hatchlings in the lair.
Clan Arcadia had always been known to have a higher amount of magic running through the stones, the trees, the earth itself, and it showed itself through the hatchlings born there. Each one of them had some level of magic; some could wield the Arcanist’s runes, some could make flowers bloom early, some could use illusions to hide themselves or change how they appear.
Turquoise couldn’t do that.
“Maybe she’s scared again,” a hatchling close to her jeered, he eyes a piercing pink compared to the Coatl’s own. They were stark against the slimy, moss green of her coat.
“I’m not scared!” she attempted to call back with a snarl, but it only came out as a whisper.
She knew they would’ve laughed if Ilunis hadn’t snapped at them to stop.
“Come on, Turquoise,” he repeated, his look as soft as the vest that hugged his body. “It’ll only take longer if you keep sitting there.”
At first, she wanted to stay huddled by the tree for a little while longer, staring off into space and wondering what lies beyond their knowledge, but she knew that she couldn’t do that, knew that she had to do the test in order to move on with the day. So she stood up slowly, a wave of mocking gasps rising with her.
She was before them all in the blink of an eye.
“What are you going to show us today, then?” her tutor asked politely.
“A stupid little ember,” Doppio, an egotistical Imperial male with the attention span of a sparrow, snorted, a few giggles rising with his immature claim.
Oh, I’ll prove you wrong.
“I’m going to show you an ember, yes,” she clarified calmly, “but it’ll grow. I know it will.”
Ilunis thrust his chin towards the crowd of hatchlings. “Blow them away, Tur.”
The Coatl female cupped her paws before her as soon as she was ready and muttered under her breath. To anyone else, it’d look like she was conjuring up a spell, but in reality, she was praying to the Arcanist to help her; asking for the power to wield the flame just like she’d seen those from the Volcano do during their festivities.
A warmth then grew in her paws, the cyan blue of magic-fuelled fire licking at her digits and palms like a puppy would when they wanted attention. All of the hatchlings around her leaned forward, either in anticipation or in irritation; in awe or in boredom. Some of them squinted, some of them had eyes wider than the moon, and all of them soon leaned back into their seats among fallen Starwood trees, groaning as it was snuffed out with a single
clap.
“That was it?” Doppio asked.
“Leave her alone, Doppio,” her tutor sighed. “She tried.”
“But that was awful!”
“
Doppio.”
“No, he’s right,” Turquoise muttered. She was ringing her paws around each other, the movements disturbing the tassels of her golden shawl. “It was really bad.”
Ilu gazed at her sadly. “There’s always room for improvement, my dear.”
“As if
she’s ever going to improve,” the Tundra of green from before taunted. “She might as well not have magic at all!”
Her eyes welled up. “That’s not true!”
“Is too!”
“It’s not!”
She started chanting then, calling her a failure at magic, and others joined in. The only one who didn’t was Ilunis,, yet even he looked like he agreed.
Maybe there isn’t
hope for her, his facial expression, his frown and soft eyes, screamed into the daylight, as obvious as a bell ringing out in silence.
The Coatl’s heart broke as she sped off into the surrounding woodland, ignoring the cries of her tutor as she knew he’d do nothing else to stop her.
He must've thought that she would return.
-2-
The pile of wood lit up in a burst of ocean blue under her gaze, its heat immediately turning the snow around it to slush, then water, then small wisps of steam. Over the years, Turquoise had grown stronger, more willing to prove those of her past wrong, and she finally could with her newfound lengths of magic. She could coat herself in flame as protective stance, could set her wings alight without so much as a second thought, could cause flame to enter her jaded pink eyes so that anyone who stared into them would immediately run away.
“Having fun?”
As much as she tried to hide her jump at the sudden speech, the other Coatl female still caught it and grinned mischievously. She was donned in a simple green drape, lilies laced into her belt of vine and more seemingly growing from her wings.
She blushed slightly but didn’t answer.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Well, you’re going to need to pay me,” the Coatl remarked, grinning as she held her paws over her own flame. “I’d say about a thousand for every minute.”
Cesara heaved a breath as she perched herself next to the roaring flame. “You ask too much of me, my dear friend.”
Turquoise just chuckled and forced her stare away from the other female Coatl, attempting to focus on the fire before her; on how it danced and twirled around her paws as if they were gentle slips of silk running through the gaps between each individual digit.
It wasn’t long before Cesara joined in.
“Cold?” Turquoise asked, still smiling slightly at how the Coatl was slowly but surely getting closer to her.
“Very,” she murmured back.
“Do you regret choosing to stay?”
“No, of course not! It’s just a lot colder than I expected.”
She snorted. “Should’ve worn your scarf, you silly little thing.”
“Oh my Deities,” Cesara cried playfully, “I didn’t think of that!”
The Coatl of blue just shoved her friend, sending her sprawling to the snow-covered grass as they both giggled. “Don’t be like that.”
“Can you help me up?” She was reaching up to grasp onto her headscarf from where she was on the floor, and she missed by a mane’s width every time.
“I don’t know… I’m thinking I should just leave you there.”
“Please?”
Turquoise groaned mockingly and grabbed onto the reaching paws. She was pleasantly surprised by how smooth they were, how they fit in hers so simply and wonderfully, how Cesara herself had the lingering scent of poppies and roses hanging around her as she sat up. The orange-speckled fur was soft and covered in tiny bits of snow that hadn’t yet melted, and the guise that hung loose over her body was now shimmering with specks of white and blue thanks to being shoved.
Gorgeous, she thought,
but utterly frozen. “Come closer,” the female invited, “I’ll help warm you up.”
“Good,” her friend stammered, “I’m so cold.”
It didn’t take long for them to curl up together in front of the flame of blue, the heat brushing its hands tenderly over their frozen joints as they watched the snow come down like confetti around them. It was a gorgeous sight to behold, but she couldn’t help but gaze at the Coatl sat next to her, her eyes fixed on her warm smile and rosy cheeks and curious gaze.
I wonder if she knows how beautiful she is.
“Huh?” Cesara inquired, her attention snatched away from the twirling twinkles.
Oh shoot, did I just..? “I didn’t say anything.”
“Are you sure? You m-must have said something. I heard you talk.”
Yep, I said it out loud. “Just muttering to myself,” Turquoise beamed. “Just focus on warming yourself up, you can’t even Sorniethan at the minute because you’re so cold.”
It took a few seconds for Cesara to respond, but when she did, the blue female sighed internally with relief. “Okay.”
-3-
The water was up to her hips now.
Just two hours before nightfall, both Cesara and Turquoise had flown over to the shore by the Starfall Isles, embracing the day they had off before Atasna’s—Cesara’s brother’s—wedding. Her lover had finished growing the needed flowers for the bouquets earlier than they thought, with the petunias now well on their way to the desired location in the midst of the Sunbeam Ruins, and so the two Coatl’s had spent the entire day reading beside a fire, snuggled together under a thick, cotton blanket, waiting for the warm air of late daytime to befall the Arcanist’s shores.
And now here she was, wading into the star-speckled water with the hopes that the moon rising above them would inch just a small bit closer.
“Don’t go too far out, will you?” Cesara called from the shore where she was curled up, book in paw and Turquoise’s shawl around her shoulders.
“I’ll be fine, Ces! Stop worrying so much.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t as light as a feather.”
Her memory flashed back to a day only two weeks ago, where Cesara had managed to managed to pick Turquoise up with little to no effort at all and caused an endless stream of jokes and remarks to follow her around all day, every day as she stalked the lair in search of something to do when Ces was busy.
The torment she received was awful.
“Stop teasing me about that,” Turquoise moaned. “It’s mean!”
“I love you too.”
The female just stuck her tongue out at her lover, who returned the gesture in an instant before smiling to herself and going back to her book about a world that went to war.
How a whole world could go to war, Turquoise had thought to herself,
is beyond me? Surely someone had common sense?
She stood there for a while, gazing up at the silver disk of a moon that rose slowly above her. Craters of near-black were stark against her glowing body of grey, hairline cracks running around her from the abuse she’d taken from the Shade before the Deities kept it at bay with the help of volunteers amongst dragonkind. It’d been a dream, when she was younger, to go off and fend for her world, but now that she had a lover to consider… well, that dream changed.
After Deities knows how long, she turned around and wandered up to the shore, spying Cesara attempting to make a fire with a couple of jagged rocks she’d found along the coastline, where the crystalline blue lapped up near her feet and swept specks of sand away with it. Beside Cesara sat a basket with a blanket, another book and food inside. Her female lover had even considered packing another blanket to be used for drying, and a spare change of clothes for both of them in case they needed it.
Turquoise definitely did.
“Back so soon?” the orange-flecked Coatl mused happily, her voice like a song amongst the birds that nestled here.
“Of course,” she said proudly, “I can’t leave my helpless girlfriend to fend for herself, can I?”
“Says the one who weighs next to nothing—”
Instead of asking her to stop, Turquoise shut her up by shaking the water clinging to her clothes, mane, fur and wings onto Cesara, making her shriek and squirm under the unexpected shower she was being given.
“Turquoise, stop!” she cried, giggling.
She did, but not without a final flick of her tail; one that threw a small droplet of ocean onto the tip of her lover’s nose and caused the blue female to trot a few steps away from the Coatl’s clutches.
“Honestly, you big
spoon,” she groaned in spite of her smile. “I’m soaked, now!”
“Aww,” Turquoise cooed, “does my lover want me to be the big spoon tonight?”
It was meant to be a joke until Ces smiled up at her, her eyes soft and inviting. “That’d be nice, actually.”
“O-oh,” she murmured, shocked and blushing slightly. “That wasn’t what I was expecting, but alright.”
The other Coatl laughed and patted the sand. “Come sit down with me, hon, I’m getting lonely.”
Turquoise did as she was told, the sand beneath her shifting out of the way so that she could perch herself next to the love of her life with ease. It was soft, almost like one of the ivory-laced cushion back at their place—Cesara’s favourite one, considering she hogged it constantly—with the sand slithering over her feet and paws with grace and elegance. Or most of it did, anyway, with small bits of it clinging to the dampness of the cloth she wore and her limbs.
The female beside her sighed wistfully. “Isn’t the sky beautiful?”
“Well, kiss me if I’m wrong, but—”
Her lover merely pressed her lips against hers, cutting her sentence off with the how gentle and how soft they were compared to Turquoise’s chapped ones, and just as quickly as it had started, it was over, leaving a confused female to stare into the gorgeous Arcane eyes of a certain nature-wielding female.
Cesara grinned at her. “You’re normally wrong.”
She just smirked back. “I don’t think I’m wrong about you being the most beautiful thing I’ve ever set eyes on.”
