ENTRY 2
08 - 01 - 17
08 - 01 - 17
Don't Let Me Down...
@ArgenteaMoon @Adriel @AerinCantator
If you think about it; the lyrics to Daya's song are quite accurate here.
The blue sky faded overhead to a luminous wash of oranges, pinks, and purples. With the skystar setting, it would be easier to fly without stopping once it's shape dipped below the horizon. Most the day had been repetitive flying from tree to tree looking at the surroundings every so often, for a search party or any indication that her pursuers were near. She’d been lucky so far, but she didn't want to risk it.
She continued her dodgy flight path until the sky finally began to shift purple and then to black. Her bright and reflective white scales made it hard to blend with her surroundings unless she flew so high above the ground that air was thin and hard to breathe. At least that was the case during the day. With the minimal light provided by the stars, she could fly just above the trees and quickly make it to the forest.
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Even with the speed boost provided by nightfall, it would still be a few more hours of traveling. Due to her larger almost body length wings, Petite could easily outfly most of the dragons in Anonymity. It felt strange to refer to her old clan by anything other than home. She pushed herself to fly almost nonstop until the tiniest glimmers of light began to appear on the horizon. At first slowly then quickly expanding in every direction in front of her a full band of glowing purple and blue flowers of The Starwood Strand. Many rumors passed from clan to clan, spoke of The Strand as its being. Saying that the magical forest was so breathtakingly beautiful that it stand among those mystic trees was like being embraced by an infinite universe. Some of the tallest trees in Sornieth grew in the forest, kept actively blooming all year round by that fateful reaction that created the Arcanist himself. The Strand had a very calm way about it; many bright young minds came here to learn and to grow their strength. So many were often lost in its depths as well, being too awestruck and losing their ways never to return. Most new clans started out on the Crystalspine Mountains away from the dangers of the forest and the floating islands of the focal point surrounding the Observatory. Safe. Petite felt anything but, so exposed on the mountainside. The area was great for learning and growing for sure, but for every thriving clan in them, there was an equal amount of abandoned ones. Those were the worst. Where obvious signs of loss had occurred, from mages too inexperienced with maintaining a clan. Dark places filled with disease and too many heartbreaks befell them until there was nothing left. Sap liquefied again, coffers full of rotten food, and worse nests that had not been tended to. Some still contained the lost offspring of long-dead mothers and fathers. | ~ |
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She had seen so many of these nests on her scavenging runs. Searching for artifacts or useful items to help Anonymity-ville thrive had been her job. Deserted clans were each a small treasure trove of lost things. She would make a point to avoid the living areas and stick to digging areas where they kept stuff, a treasure hoard of sorts; some even had vaults a more private area to hold treasures of real value.
They found the egg together, Leslie and her on one of their usual runs, just before the wildclaw had finally gotten her wish to learn the ways of defensive magics and healing for battle. She would have made a good mother. A fleeting nightmare rose in Petites mind; it always came back whenever she looked at the egg, or planned her new home, or even collecting food. When these memories came to her, everything around her became shaky edges too sharp, everything around her was just annoying! Walking, flying, hunting, it didn't matter. She could tell she was frustrated.
"But, why? what was the point?" Grinding her teeth while eating didn't do anything, stomping the ground was a waste of time and only helped to stiffen up her arms like the stinging she felt when she slept on her tail. Flying was tedious too, easy. Nothing had gone wrong with her journey, nothing to indicate that she had made the right choice or the wrong one for that matter.
She found herself half wishing that her pursuers would catch up to her or at the very least anything dangerous to make the traveling part more of a challenge.
“Challenge” that was it the word she had been struggling to remember, her life had just seemed like a complication these last three days or many complications that all came crashing together all with her as the pivot point. But it wasn't so much a complication; it was a challenge. She’d never raised a baby, she hardly even knew if they ate the same food as adults. All she remembered of her youngling days was a system set in place always the same day and evening. Eat, practice fighting, study tomes, eat, meditation sleep. Every minute planned and very very predictable. Unlike her life in Anonymity, that had been so strange for her after living such a controlled, planned life.
Everything about Anonymity was chaos that couldn't even be considered controlled. Dragons of all kinds and many different flights mixing happily, doing whatever they wanted, not sleeping for days reading, or only gathering certain items. And yet it worked together, a hive of free souls that all knew what their purpose was. All of them clutching the feeling of belonging to a family, No matter whose clan they came from. when she first arrived Petite had marveled at its ways. Sure she was terrified being in a new place being told that she would never return home.
But she had welcomed it and let herself be pushed along a crazed tide making friends, and finding how she fit into the puzzle.
Leslie hadn't been her only friend; She had wise, calm Trist and the elegant but nosey Reava. In all her time spent there, she never clicked with anyone, at least not the way she did when she met Leslie. She had been very different by dragon standards. Wildclaws were one of few species of dragon that excelled at running and melee attack. She was great at both amazing; she won many contests designed to both show off and hone their strengths.
The most interesting, drawing thing about Leslie was that she was not the type to be interested in her brute strength, she much preferred soft magics and calming meditation. To Petite, it had been confusing to her, it made her curious, and she spent every day trying to figure her out. The reason why a dragon with claws larger than her own and very skilled at using them wanted to be so gentle; but Leslie just was.
Everything about her was calm and gentle, from her arranging the flowers around Petites door, picking out clothing, drawing, humming. Sweet like candy. It didn't ever feel like Leslie would hurt a fly, even with her marvelous claws, which were always painted, she even joked a few times about running her.. Manicure. Petite had thought that word strange, and asked how she knew it was called that, of if she had simply made it up?
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“No, of course, I didn’t! I saw it in a book!”
She never was able to prove that particular fact, but Petite still believed her, she trusted everything Leslie said like a fact, even if she still made fuss teasing her about it. |
The moon was not in the sky this evening, or rather it was new, black. The only light was from the glittering starry canvas of the forest below, she touched down near to the wall of glowing trees, the difference between the crystalline mountains and the Starwood Strand was stark. The forest didn't blend or start slowly with a few trees distance apart from the group. It was a tightly packed wall of trees that lay in front of her, like an overgrown orchard.
She had been warned by her first clan that The Strand was a dangerous place for a young dragon and that she was never to go into the forest alone but as an adult. Petite scoffed, an adult. She was still a child in most respects, though her size indicated otherwise. Petite had only ever seen the forest in drawings and tomes, but now standing in front of it. She felt its power, and she understood what they had all meant when they told her to be afraid of its beauty.
She took a few steps forward, for the most part, the cold solstice made the growth barren, the trees, of course, were unaffected as always but it was very easy to see the forest pathways. All the underbrush had faded away similar to the foliage of the mountainside. She needed to rest; it wouldn't do good for her to wander into unknown territory this late as tired as she was. She found an open area not much bigger than she was, it looked to be an abandoned beast clans camp. Beastclans were a force she had not yet come into contact with, even without a size advantage, they still could prove to be a fearsome foe. They had a cunning and a well-practiced skill in outwitting a more careless dragon. She glanced around looking for any signs of them, but the camp seemed untouched for a long time and most of the ash from the fire had blown away leaving a charred stain in the middle of a weak pile of logs and twig. Petite laid down with a sigh, letting her body flop to the ground wearily, she had made it.
