Creative Corner

@argenteamoon

In my next few updates, I was trying to convey a sort of struggles of single motherhood, that I really never elaborated on in my original, but that I really wished I had. Because when I wrote this the first time Petite was only like 3 months old.... Super young all things considering.

And them suddenly having a child thrust upon her, when she doesnt even know the first thing about children. xD

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[right][B]ENTRY 4 [/B] [COLOR=#DDDDDD]29 - 01 - 17[/COLOR] [/RIGHT] [center][size=5][color=#75008f]Tundra[/color][/size][/center] [center][size=1] @ArgenteaMoon @Adriel @AerinCantator @springwind[/size][/center] The storm started overhead and quickly picked up pace. Luckily enough Petite found a tree that had been downed for a long time well coated in moss and silver ivy. She and the hatchling hid underneath, the shelter kept the two of them well protected from the storm, other than Petite's long tail. The hatchling had woken up and began watching the rain fall outside the makeshift shelter, sometimes extending a hand towards the pellet like raindrops. Occasionally Petite would re-adjust herself and the hatchling in the burrow; as the ground around them became more and more saturated with water. The rain seemed to fall endlessly from the angry sounding clouds. Occasionally a loud crack of thunder sounded above them, and the hatchling grew frightened. Petite made soft, gentle shushing noises at the tundra girl and told her stories about the Stormcatcher; until the hatchling fell asleep curled against her side. [color=transparent]~~~[/color] [center][img]https://49.media.tumblr.com/9dc3e90ae09ad7d915c1ade3528a1a76/tumblr_n4een4vEpb1qk9powo1_500.gif[/img][/center] [color=transparent]~~~[/color] The Skystar had risen from its cosmic slumber, but no matter its strength, it barely broke through the trees of the Strand. Even still, I suppose you could say that the dawn, had woken both Petite and the newborn hatchling. The lights from the tree's had started to wane, but they were not all gone; some of the light still lingered in full bloom, as the light, tried to break through the layers of the Strand above. Petite hoped she would never get used to the view and that the strand would always be interesting to her. It was the first night in what seemed like weeks; that Petite had slept all through the evening. In fact, she didn't even remember passing out. When Pettie stretched out with a loud yawn; she felt the hatchling snuggle up tighter next to her her side. Clearing the clods of mud that clung to her face, she began looking out of their tree fort at their surroundings. Today's weather looked much more promising for making a permanent nest for them to reside. The hardest part would be to find a suitable location to build the nest, unlike Crystalspine; clans in this territory were far larger than even Anonymity had been, dragons in the lower hundreds. Petite wasn't particularly interested in crashing into one of those; new dragons were always sketchy. Even if she had good intentions, it took awhile for them to trust each other, a lone mother and baby lost in The Strand with no provisions, there would be far too many questions. Petite had to get farther away than the entrance of The Strand, especially on the side closest to her old clan. Ideally switching flight homes would be the best, there wouldn't be as many questions of where she and her baby came from in a new flight home. But with her new renegade status, meeting clans in a new territory could pose a whole slew of other problems. Besides Petite was born in arcane flight, she loved the Arcanist, grew up on the stories of the observatory, and his many findings. Every year for as long as she could remember when the leaves started to change colour all the flights would come together for The Starfall Celebration. She couldn't bear the idea of leaving and abandoning that warmest of feelings. But there had to be somewhere she could go. Besides, going to any other flight home meant traversing that rot infestation known as plague flight. Where sickness and bloodlust thrived; she felt and itching shiver in her spine just thinking about the Wyrmwound. Maybe if she had a better view of her surroundings, Petite could think of a better plan, The only way up with a baby on her back was to climb, so she started towards the largest tree she could find. The ground was still sodden and soaked with water from the storm, the bark of the trees had soaked up a lot of the water as well, and easily fell away from her grasp. The first few steps of the climbing were easy, but near in close to the top, the limbs were thinner and more fragile. Quite a few of the branches broke off in her assent when she finally broke through the upper part of the forest all she saw was a sea of trees. It didn't help her much, but now she could see the duo had however travelled farther in than she thought they had, some of the most characteristic peaks of the mountains looked small. No wonder dragons often got lost in the forest, without being able to see the astromap above with all the shining trees. Off in the distance, she could see dragons flying around, whimsically, like they were playing some game. Mostly fae dragons fluttering between cumbersome young guardians. Petite turned her eyes away from their playing towards the ocean, taking in a deep breath of chilled air. In the distance, she could see the slightest edges of the islands that formed the Frigid Floes. Of course, they wouldn't have to traverse the rotting infestation known as Wyrmwound to get to the Icewarden’s territory. Even her cute new baby was made to survive in that climate. But it wasn’t her home. Petite looked in the direction of the observatory. She had run away just before all of the flights, came together and celebrated Rockbreakers. Soon after that, it would be time to celebrate the Icewarden, she could use that excuse, as her reason for leaving the Arcanist. Surely lots of dragons did that. The idea of leaving home gave her pause. Petite gave a louder than necessary sigh; she felt a tugging on her back where the hatchling clung. She looked back at her, as she did she could see the hatchling reaching to grab some of the foliage of the tree they sat in. Petite pushed her back out to make it easier for the tundra to reach. The hatchling began using her teeth nibbling at an edge succeeding in pulling only half of a leaf from the tree and started eating it. “So you like plants huh?” smiling she watched the hatchling quickly eat the foliage. The hatchling responded with a confused look and attempted to reach another. Watching the hatchling struggle to pull off leaves half at a time was pathetic, and Petite only allowed her to gather five before she began to descend towards the ground. Where she would get her some real food. Climbing down was much harder than getting up. Petite had no way to look down at where her feet were going. The tree itself was too tall to make a graceful hover down. Much to the hatchlings protests as she wiggled trying to grab more leaves from the tree on one of the most excruciatingly long descents Petite had ever taken part in; Petite gave up when they were more than half way down the tree and fluttered slowly to the ground. [color=transparent]~~[/color] [center][img]http://orig15.deviantart.net/a13e/f/2017/029/2/b/tree_by_masq_d-dax7qfe.png[/img][/center]

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@MasqD Interesting entry!

Also, I see that you've shrunk the text next to the picture? What's that for? changing the formatting makes it look like it's separate from the main text. I notice it actually is part of the picture as well? so maybe you should size all the text up, and take a paragraph out to stick underneath? If the picture simply is sizing weird, I advise finding an entirely different way to get it to work. I have heard columns exist in the forum code, so maybe use that?

@argenteamoon

I tried for about 6 hours to get the columns code to work, and finally caved to doing the wrap around in ms word. Mostly because I really liked the idea of the text around the tree. The site has paddimg around the bottom of the columns so they don't run into the standard text. So the closest i could get to stacking was about a 5 pixel buff. I will try to fix the sizing tonight.

Column code actually does make the text slightly smaller, I noticed it when I used it for my left and right images in entry 2 and 3. But, the shrinkage is rough especially on mobile; so I do want to rework it. I just don't quite know how.

@MasqD yeah I know nothing about code, I just know columns are theoretically a thing

[right][B]ENTRY 4 [/B] [COLOR=#DDDDDD]05 - 02 - 17[/COLOR] [/RIGHT] [center][size=5][color=#75008f]Abandoned [Part I][/color][/size][/center] [center][size=1] @ArgenteaMoon @Adriel @AerinCantator @springwind[/size][/center] Faes were a breed of the Arcanist, small insect-eating dragons some no bigger than her own head, their way of making nests was to magically cure the sap, which was how Anonymity was build, a bunch of magically crafted bubbles rooted into the mountainside. Being that Petite was Imperial, a breed of the lightweaver, she had no ability in making magical nest type. What Petite was after were fundamental and structural ideas for making a nest, that did not utilise this style of nest making. For the most part, the nests around the area were very similar. All the designs rooted with sap cured supports or weaker natural supports with protective shields. Most commonly with combinations of several other nest types attributes, but all of them contained the fae nest style. The larger clan sizes of the Strand made it where the clans had to consider many different types of dragons. Not just the faes, however, it seemed that the breed was far too predominate in the region for her to get any decent ideas of nests without them. Petite began to grow frustrated; until she came upon one particular nest that was very well made and looked to be the work of a clan that used to belong to the Viridian Labyrinth. Nature dragons, of course, were very well known for their winding and twisting of vine work and tree bed canopy style. Nests that never touched the ground were quite safe in the harsh wilderness filled with a plethora of different and also dangerous fauna of their natural home. She studied the nest making mental notes of how they layered the branches. After awhile of looking at the nest, Petite began to wonder on the idea of just taking up residence in this nest. It still looked rather new and had received little damage and wear down from having been lived in. Or even the lack thereof maintenance after it had been abandoned. In her strolling, she found the area where the necessary provisions to maintaining the clan were stored. Petite began leafing through scrolls indicating requests to have children and treasure markers, and water gullies: areas where water could be easily sourced from the ground. To even more of her fortune, she found a set of travellers satchels and began happily stuffing all the papers she found, some even had unintelligible wording that would need some study to understand, but this clan was abandoned after all no one would need them. Tying the bag around herself carefully in hopes of not waking the hatchling, who merely stretched and rolled over to a more comfy position. Petite continued on her walk through the clan; upon inspection, she realised that even the coffers were well maintained and the food contained within was not yet spoiled… Almost as if someone could still be living here, but to her, it seemed highly unlikely that every member of the lair had all left at once. The snap of a twig echoed between the branches, someone was coming. And she had nowhere to hide. Petite looked frantically for a place concealed from the direction of the noise. Her head whipped from left to right, until her eyes came upon the nesting grounds of the encampment. [columns][size=3][size=4]Most dragons never scavenged through those, she raced over towards them and hid behind the crystal outcrop that guarded a nest of three lost eggs. She heard strange noises a sort of clopping like a dragon with long nails walking on rock. But the ground was dampened and soft, she dared a peek around the crystal that hid her.[/size] [nextcol][img]http://flightrising.com/images/cms/familiar/art/6337.png[/img][/columns] The figure was not a dragon at all, it was a beastclan archer, with a long bow stretched around its centaur body. Petite ducked back behind the crystal and waited for the noise to disappear. It had felt like hours before the scout finished looking around the area. Typically Petite would have just slain the creature, a natural enemy to The Arcanist and all dragons. With the hatchling tagging along it wasn't worth the risk. She dared another look, he had wandered to the other side of the field at the centre of the clan. Petite slowly walked backwards deeper into the nesting grounds. Careful to remain out of his line of sight until she found enough space to take flight without making a tonne of noise. On one of her backwards steps, her foot came down on something ice cold and hard. To her horror, she realised that what she had stepped on was the mangled form of one of this clan's former residents. Petite forced herself to hold back a scream as she looked around and saw the nesting ground littered with dead forms of all kinds of dragons and eggs purposefully smashed; the most horrifying were the youngling dragons no bigger than her own hatchling. She gulped quietly, walking slowly through the piles; until she came across and open area amidst the macabre scene. [columns][img]http://orig10.deviantart.net/9a7d/f/2017/036/d/5/ded_by_masq_d-day0mw2.png[/img] [nextcol][size=3][size=4] Petite took off as silently as possible too horrified to stay a moment longer, praying he hadn't seen or heard her quick ascent. Even if she could out fly the land bound beast, it wasn't worth testing how good of an aim the archer was. [/columns]The take off woke the young dragon nestled between her shoulders, and she made squeaking noises that sounded like she was having fun with the wind blowing in her face. Petite began to head towards the Frigid Floes of the Icewarden. She then heard the sound of a war horn being blown. Looking behind her she could see her take off had not been as graceful as she had hoped, either that or the beastclan scout had a more impressive hearing than she gave him credit for and had heard the frantic squeaks of the hatchling. He was galloping at full speed on the ground below aiming his bow at her. Even in motion, she could tell that his arrow was dead on target. As he let it loose from his bow, she attempted and ill-shaped manoeuvre to avoid it by beating her wings quickly downward, giving more distance between her and the arc of the projectile, she tucked and twisted off to the right side. Petite felt the sting of the arrow graze her left wing. She gave a few more powerful strokes despite the pain to give her enough height to avoid the arc of further arrows. She hoped the centaur would give up instead of chasing her down before she would have to land and take care of her wing. The close encounter had Petites heart almost beating out of her chest. She stayed up much higher than necessary for normal flight; Occasionally she saw dragons pop up above the trees playing or scouting for their clans. For the most part, none of them bothered her on her wayward journey. After she began to feel safer about the trip she reached to pull out the pages she had stowed in her bag.

@MasqD cool :3

[right][B]ENTRY 7 [/B] [COLOR=#DDDDDD]12 - 02 - 17[/COLOR] [/RIGHT] [center][size=5][color=#75008f]Abandoned [Part II][/color][/size][/center] @ArgenteaMoon @Adriel @AerinCantator @springwind ----- Note from the Editor: The Fae she meets in this chapter is a dragon I hatched way later than the two dragons in this part of the story. I originally had him appear in a separate part, but due to some changes in details between this and the original. I decided to add him here as a position finder of sorts. ----- The babble she had attempted to read must’ve been beastclan language. She would have more time to study it when she landed. The map, however, would be of much more use to her, she put away the other pieces until she had only the map in hand. Studying that map, she saw lines indicating waterways, as well as mineral deposits, and even topographical markings to indicate mountains hills and valleys. At one point it became very apparent that she was being tracked by a small blue fae. Petite had seen him out of the corner of her eye one too many times. As if being this obvious was somehow beneficial to him. She stopped short and began to hover. And made a low growl to alert him she didn't want to be followed as he kept eyeing her injured wing. “What happened to you?” The boy’s speaking was hard to understand it was like hearing two people speak as he tried to remember how to speak dragon tongue and not just fae speak which involved erratic flicking of their crests. “I got shot at by a beastclan archer. It's nothing.” Petite gave a look of anger and annoyance at the boy for his uncouth questioning. “Doesn’t look like nothing to me.” He raised an eyebrow at her twisted face; either deciding to ignore her anger entirely or just not being bothered by it. Of course being the size he was even the tiniest nick or tear on the wing would be the end of him. Fae wings were made of a frangible membrane and delicate cartilage. Petites wings, however, were made of thick, durable leather and bone, she could get hit by several arrows and only feel the sting of them later. Now that it was on her mind she did feel a bit of intense discomfort coming from it. Rolling her eyes, “So what brings you up this high in the air?” “Me?” the fae was confused by her remark, “Just Flying, enjoying the sunshine.” he paused noticing the grey lump of fur adorning Petites back. "Whoa! A baby, how cute! You look nothing like your mother, baby... You probably look like your dad, tundras are everywhere, Imperials like your mum are harder to come by…" “There is no father!” Petite spoke hotly and ground her teeth. Who did this little fae thing he was following her and making up assumed stories about her like he knew anything about her? She got angrier the more he babbled on. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you mad. It's just weird to see a lone dragon flying so high above our clan. Usually, when dragons head towards the Celestial Star it's a whole group of dragons.” “Celestial where now?” “Celestial Star, it’s an island on the edge of arcane territory. It's the travellers stopping point before switching to the Iceflight. Because it's so gosh darn cold over there, dragons usually stay there to get acclimated to the climate especially dragons without fur like yourself…” The faes voice had gotten very defensive and scared of Petite he trailed on and on jumping from topic to topic, his frills erratically twitching to mime his speaking in fae, in no doubt he could hold a conversation just by himself. He almost seemed starved for attention or someone to talk too. Petite decided it was a good idea to play along with the fae boy; hoping to get some information out of him. “Are you a loner dragon or something? You seem way to excited to meet a total and complete stranger.” She held the note on the way to make her serious question seem more comical. She hoped that her new line of questioning didn't appear too forced. He didn't hint that he even noticed her change in dialect. Still, it made him pause for a moment as if considering how to answer a complete stranger. He responded much slower, and less surely, “Well most dragons in my clan don't like me because I'm supposed to take over the family when my dad finally passes, see he's an Ancient you see… and well they don’t think too highly of me because most of them are years older than me, some are even ancients just like him. So I just kinda don’t, or well stopped talking to any of them, and I study things. So one day I can be one a great leader like my father.” He seemed proud of his response like he had practised it a million times in a sparkling pool of water. “It must be kinda lonely huh?”, “Not really, I like being alone.” He smiled, but it didn't touch his eyes. She could tell that they were two different things to him. Being alone, and being rejected were far different. Petite began to feel a different sting altogether more painful than her wing. The reason for her own journey, The reason she was now alone. She quickly changed the topic back to her destination sensing he didn't want her to pry. So, which way to this um... Celestial Star you called it? “Hmm… about three days travel by air, seven if you decide to walk, but you’d have to fly at a certain point because the beach runs out.” He kinda looked down and his frills flattened as if he wanted to ask a question, or maybe he was trying to think of how to say what he meant. He looked away, towards what Petite assumed was his clan, and then back to her. “Was it scary? When you decided to leave your family?” Petite was taken aback by the comment, this fae knew nothing about her departure, and yet he seemed to understand by her dodginess that she was not leaving her old clan good terms. “Why? why do you ask that?” “I… it's just… my father… well but… uh never mind, forget I asked.” and before she could question him further, the fae flew away back to the forest from whence he had appeared. Petite continued to hover looking back at the expanse of trees where he had disappeared. The more she played over the conversation in her head the less real it seemed. She slowly turned and began the long flight towards the Celestial Star. [center] [img][/img][/center]