[Claim]
I haven't shared any of my dragons yet but I hope to get a fun little story out of this
IMPETUOUS
[The Progenitor]
"Impetuous is true to his namesake; impulsive and brash. It may one day lead to his fall."
Information:
Age: 175 Cycles
Sex: Male
Sexuality: Straight
Rank in the Hierarchy: Leader
Original Element: Lightning
Current Clan Element: Ice
Length: 7.42 Meters
Wingspan: 8.89 Meters
Weight: 787.71 Kilograms
---
LUNARI
[The Ancient One]
"Me? I have seen horrors beyond your nightmares, child, but I have also seen wonders greater than your dreams. I do believe that the wonders of my life far outweigh the horrors."
Information:
Age: 310 Cycles
Sex: Female
Sexuality: Lesbian
Rank in the Hierarchy: Elder, Adviser, Shaman
Original Element: Arcane
Current Clan Element: Ice
Length: 5 Meters
Wingspan: 3.46 Meters
Weight: 450.66 Kilograms
---
NIELS
[The Young One]
"Dedicated to your sweetheart, I can see that. Your love may be your greatest asset, young one, but it may also be your downfall."
Information:
Age: 50 Cycles
Sex: Male
Sexuality: Straight
Rank in the Hierarchy: Apprentice Guard, Father
Original Element: Shadow
Current Clan Element: Ice
Length: 3.59 Meters
Wingspan: 3.76 Meters
Weight: 497.5 Kilograms
---
MIYASI
[The Loved One]
"She's tough, that one. Fierce but tender, and beautiful beyond anyone's expectations... she may be too dedicated to the things she believes in."
Information:
Age: 50 Cycles
Sex: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual
Rank in the Hierarchy: Apprentice Shaman, Mother, Exile
Original Element: Light
Current Clan Element: Ice
Length: 3.74 Meters
Wingspan: 6.6 Meters
Weight: 554.82 Kilograms
---
AURE
[The Friend]
"Ahh... Aure. Eccentric and blind to negativity... Her love for the world and its wonders outweighed anything reason that might have been."
Information:
Age: 240 Cycles
Sex: Female
Sexuality: Lesbian
Rank in the Hierarchy: Deceased, Former Trader
Original Element: Ice
Current Clan Element: Ice
Length: 3.95 Meters
Wingspan: 6.43 Meters
Weight: 492.55 Kilograms
---
BOLBEC
[The Traitor]
"Fancies herself a princess, a mother, a queen. She is the storm to the light our world can bring, and yet... one cannot help but feel a certain pity for her."
Information:
Age: 75 Cycles
Sex: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual
Rank in the Hierarchy: Apprentice Guard
Original Element: Ice
Current Clan Element: Ice
Length: 2.87 Meters
Wingspan: 5.12 Meters
Weight: 436.31 Kilograms
---
CHAPTER ONE
[Prologue]
Lunari’s jaded gaze scanned over Niels with pity. She had helped him hatch from his egg when he was but a hatchling, had watched over him for his entire life from her cave at the edge of the clan’s camp. Never once had he approached her of his own accord, though Impetuous and the rest of the clan had once forced him and the other hatchlings to her den for their blessings.
His eyes were desperate, two vibrant purple orbs piercing into her own pinkish ones.
“Please,” he whispered.
Lunari slid thick dark green lids down, blocking her vision as she let out a small, broken sigh. “Niels,” she said softly, “regardless of what I tell you, Miyasi will still be gone. She is banished, probably long gone with the wind.”
”NO!” Niels burst out,
”don’t say that! DON’T!”
She couldn’t help but admire his resilience, his refusal to give up. She lowered herself onto her belly, opening her pink eyes again. Niels was fuzzy in her vision, from the cataracts that had long since taken up their residence within her gaze.
“You must sit if I am to tell you this, Niels,” she prompted him calmly, though her heart ached for the young dragon. She remembered watching them together, below the Black Tulip tree that branched over her side of the camp. It had been fall, the first time they met there, the black petals raining down around them. Niels had been a kaleidoscope of colors, all beautiful but clashing with one another. He held a hibiscus in his mouth, and had given it to Miyasi.
Miyasi had much more color sense than Niels; she was all golden that first day, marigolds if she remembered correctly… then again, however, they might have been daisies or roses. Her old eyes couldn’t really see much from that distance.
Niels dropped to his hindquarters faster than Lunari could blink. She took a small breath, and closed her eyes again, letting herself drift.
“I believe we must begin with my first friend,” she mused, sucking in a breath at the pain that rose within her chest at the thought, “Niels, you best strap in for a long story.”
CHAPTER TWO
[Youth]
Her large paws made very soft thumping noises as she padded softly along the very outskirts of their land in the Snowsquall Tundra. They lived near to the Cloundscape Crags, one of the places that she felt most comfortable. Small as she was, she couldn’t help but enjoy the thrill of climbing and launching herself from the highest peak she could safely reach.
Her pearl bounced lightly against her chest, where she had strung it into a necklace of sorts that helped her carry it on these expeditions. She was an outlander, afterall. The one of her clan who travelled far and wide to collect items and information about anything and everything that she deemed important.
She crested a small rise, flicking her ears mildly. They pricked up in confusion, and interest, as a sound began to vibrate towards her.
“Goods! Goods for sale, cheap and high quality! Goods, goods!”
This might be interesting.
The dragoness followed the sound for less than a half a mile before she stumbled into the… shop of sorts. The female who was sitting, surrounded by various goods, was another Pearlcatcher.
“Hey there! I’ve got some goods for sale, are you interested?”
The female’s icy gaze was bright with excitement and positivity, and the darker pearlcatcher felt herself cringing away from the sheer waves of energy rolling off of her.
“Who are you?” The female asked with a broad smile, “I’m Aure, travelling trader!”
She raised her gaze. “My name is Lunari,” she offered reluctantly, “Outrider to the Winter’s Rose Clan of the Southern Icefield, faithful servant to the Icewarden.”
“I know where we are, silly!” Aure trilled happily, “And if you cared to look, I am also under the Icewarden’s protection.”
The female turned slightly, stretching one eye wide to show the almost clear crystal blue of her iris. Lunari flattened her ears.
“Just because you were laid in the Icewarden’s realm doesn’t mean you serve him,” she said hostilely.
Aure gave a little trill of amusement. “No, I suppose it doesn’t!” she laughed, “but what reason have I to lie to you?”
Lunari contemplated the question for a long moment.
“None that are plain to me,” she answered, her veil of aggression beginning to fade, “but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a reason that I don’t see.”
Aure smiled broadly. “You’re a funny one, Lunari,” she chirped, “I think I quite like you.”
“You’ve barely known me ten minutes.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t like you,” Aure said reasonably, leaping out from her cluttered stand, “I’ve met so many dragons in my short cycles, I can tell that you’re not a bad one.”
---
Lunari plodded along beside Aure, who was making small whirring sounds to her right.
“Do you
have to have those stupid gears on at all times?” she asked irritably, turning her gaze over to the poison winged pearlcatcher.
Aure, who had recently acquired a full set of ‘Steampunk’ gear, turned her innocent gaze to Lunari. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because they
whir and whir and it drives me insane.”
Aure got a small, slightly mischievous look on her face and pressed against Lunari. “You sure it isn’t just me that drives you insane?” she purred with a minor tone of seductivity below her voice.
Lunari flushed, groaning as she pulled away from her longtime friend. “You’re terrible,” she scolded Aure half heartedly, “You
know how irritated the clan is about us! You can’t be showing it so much in public.”
Aure flapped her wings with a giggle. “Who's here to see us, Lunari? We’re hundreds of miles from the Southern Icefield, and even if we weren’t…” she turned her piercing silver-blue eyes to Lunari’s pink ones, “they had better get used to it. You’re their only Shaman, they can’t afford to lose you for any longer than this trip!”
That sent a small thorn through Lunari’s heart. She lowered her eyes, the pained reality of the fact that she would not be able to see Aure for months at a time curling through her brain.
“You promised to write,” Lunari murmured.
“And I
will.”
Lunari gave a small, pained sigh, and lifted her head again. “We need to hurry,” she mused absently, “it’s still another hundred miles to the Sunbeam Ruins.”
---
“It was what Aure told me before I departed at the border of the Sunbeam Ruins that led to the chain reaction of events that has led to Miyasi’s exile,” Lunari murmured to Neils softly.
“A sacrifice of eggs, it was rumored to be,” she turned away with raised mane, “could lead to the blessing from a god. It could lead to a queenship, and a blessing of motherhood.”
“I suppose, however,” Lunari sighed, “that does not suffice as an explanation.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Niels said weakly, “I don’t know what any of that means.”
“Who says it means anything?” Lunari murmured, her glassy pink eyes rolling upwards to the roof of her cave, “I told you at the beginning that I did not believe Miyasi could be saved.”
“It means something,” the grey leopard dragon said firmly, “I refuse to believe that you would lie to me or trick me.”
Lunari gave a weak smile. “You are the most trusting young dragonette I have met,” she mused tiredly. Her dulled eyes turned back towards a wall, and she sighed. “Then you must learn of our progenitor, and the world from which he originated and tried to recreate.”
CHAPTER THREE
[Royalty]
Sparks flew from Impetuous’ feet as he paced in his den. Lunari sat on her hindlegs nearby, her pearl held gently between her front claws.
The dark green Pearlcatcher studied her leader with appraising eyes. A natural grey Coatl, the striking male had been cast out of his home not long after he was hatched, left to wander the wastes of The Shifting Expanse. He had made his way to the land of the Icewarden as a way to deny his ancestry any sort of homage. Ice was about as far from fire as you could get, and lightning didn’t mix well with it either.
“They have to be almost finished hatching by now, right?” he muttered anxiously to himself, continuing to pace.
“Be still, Impetuous,” Lunari murmured, “the hatching process may take many hours, sometimes even days.”
The grey Coatl turned a slightly distraught face towards the Pearlcatcher female. “How long has it been then?”
Lunari sighed, already at her wits end. “It’s been less than a quarter turn of the sun,” she informed him, doing her best to keep her tone even.
Impetuous’ mate, Vereen, had been brooding over a large clutch of five eggs for several weeks. She had alerted the young apprentice smith who had come to feed her that the eggs had begun to crack just minutes before, and since then Lunari had been left to deal with Impetuous’ foolhardy panic.
The leader let out a flurry of distressed hums, presumably the ones from his original language. They grated on Lunari’s ears, and she flattened them with a pained sigh. “Impetuous,” she said firmly, “I need to go inspect Vereen and the clutch, please do not assault everyone else with your humming.”
She turned and walked out of the cave on three legs, her fourth holding the pearl that was her greatest possession.
The hatching went as well as it could. Four of the hatchlings were Skydancers, and one a Coatl. The Coatl was a male, as were three of the four Skydancers. The only female was a tiny thing, with awkwardly large wings. Her wings were three times the length of her body from tip to tip, and she was primarily white and black in color.
Impetuous’ pride was painfully obvious, as was his bias towards that one female. Vereen cared for all of the hatchlings with equal love and care, but Impetuous had eyes for only his daughter, whom he named Bolbec.
As Bolbec aged, she became more and more entitled. Though the many dragons within the clan did their best to temper her wild demeanor, Impetuous’ complete devotion to the young dragoness led to her becoming insufferable.
Her father called her “Princess”, and that is exactly what she thought she was. There was nothing anyone could do to prevent her from attempting to rule a clan she barely knew.
---
“C-Can you fix it?”
“Of course I can fix it.” Lunari’s voice was short, snippy. She had recently reached the 250 cycle mark, and her usually sharp eyes had begun to dull, along with her patience. In her 250 cycles, only fifty had been lived outside of The Southern Icefield. She found herself wishing more and more that she could have left in her youth, when her eyes were sharp and her heart warm. Now, she could barely fly for the arthritis in her wing joints, and her eyes that had once been able to see nearly a league could barely see a mile. She would never survive on her own, outside of the limited protection that her clan could offer.
The past ten cycles had been trying on her emotionally and physically. She had seen her dearest Aure for the last time, the once striking Pearlcatcher’s scales dulled by the loss of magic. She had passed nearly nine cycles ago now, and still Lunari was bitter about it. In the far back of her cave, wrapped in a soft nest of Day Lilies and Broadleaf’s from the Plantains, Aure’s pearl rested even now. It had lost its bright sheen, though Lunari did her best to keep it clean. It was the only bit of Aure she had left, afterall.
In the 200 cycles she had lived as a part of this Clan, she had seen hundreds of dragons exalted to the service of the Icewarden, and half as many simply exiled from their clan. She kept her thoughts about Impetuous’ actions to herself, though sometimes she felt like waddling her ancient form over to him and cuffing him over the head.
”Don’t you know how it feels?” she wanted to scream,
”Don’t you remember being chased away from your family? Don’t you remember how that feels?”
But she knew that even as the clan’s only shaman, she would not be allowed to remain with them if she did such a thing. The world was a harsh one, it took its toll on even young dragons, as it had on Aure.
Her claws were deft as she pinched Bolbec’s wing tissue back into place, lacing it together with thin but strong gristle, dried and salted for strength. She had already numbed the area, but still Bolbec struggled, making it hard for Lunari to properly set the wing.
Perhaps she wouldn’t set it right. The elderly dragon knew it would be wrong, but there was a foolish part of her that wanted to prove to Bolbec that she was not invincible.
Still, the old Pearlcatcher set the wing right, and sent the pretty young Skydancer on her way. Only fifteen cycles old, and she was already injuring herself trying to do what the older dragons could.
Lunari watched her leave, and then set off towards the nesting grounds to check on their brooding females. The day was still young, and there was work to do. There never seemed to be any break.
---
“But why was Miyasi exiled?” Niels pleaded, his dark purple eyes wide with confusion and worry for his best friend and love.
Lunari’s eyes had closed as she spoke, and she opened them to survey Niels’ gaze. She sighed, and glanced back to the back of her cave. She stood, creakily walking into the back before she returned with a simply massive pearl. She settled back onto her haunches, hugging the orb to her chest and eyeing Niels again.
“Do you know what this is?” she asked him finally.
“It’s your pearl,” she said, as if it was obvious, and she gave him a broken smile.
“But do you know what a pearl
is to a Pearlcatcher?”
The young Skydancer shook his spotted head, his patched mane bouncing from side to side.
“It is our essence,” she explained, “the culmination of our being. It is all we have experienced, and all we have learned.”
Niels stared at her in confusion. Lunari’s lips curled into a smile.
“The final part of this story you must hear,” Lunari rumbled, “is this pearls most recent coating.”
The pearl, when she held it in the right light, glinted with vibrant reds and blues, mingling together against the opalescent backdrop.
Niels turned his piercing purple eyes to Lunari’s.
“Tell me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
[Betrayal]
[TW: Blood, Death]
Crickets chirped in the cool night, and the skydancer’s footsteps were imperceptable below the din they created. She made a soft clinking noise as the walked, a bit like a wind-chime. This was fault of the silver jewelry she wore, each piece polished to a gleaming shine.
The orb on her forehead hummed with emotion as she neared her target, the swell of protectiveness and love, paired with anxiety and worry… things she would never get to feel herself.
Bitterness curled around her heart, tightening and threatening to send her over the brink.
”Your eggs will never hatch”
“Stop it,” she hissed, arching her back instinctively as the intrusive thought curled into her mind, “
stop it.”
”You cannot bear live young…”
The young dragoness dropped to her knees, clamping her paws over the sphere that resided between her eyes, squeezing her eyes shut. Her breathing was fast, ragged.
She rose back onto her feet, her icy eyes wild. She stumbled into the nesting grounds with her feathers raised in a threatening way.
Sacrifice, she thought within the fog of her thoughts,
sacrifice and he shall bless you.
You are a princess, and you will be a mother
---
Lunari stared miserably at the corpses that littered the ground at the alter to the Icewarden.
She clutched her pearl to her chest in dead silence, reaching a single claw out to caress a tiny, partially formed hatchling, expelled from its egg too soon.
Her breath clouded in front of her face, and she closed blurry eyes, and rose onto her feet, approaching a cream, young dragoness who was crouched over a slightly cracked egg. Her breath was fragmented, her eyes unseeing as tears ran down her face, freezing before they even left her cheeks.
A few feet away from her, a white and black form clinked slightly in the fearsome winds as silver jewelry was disturbed. Bolbec’s body was stained with blood around her throat where Miyasi had lunged to protect the eggs she had recently laid and begun caring for. Of the four in her clutch, the only one left within its shell was she one she crouched over, a single jagged crack running down its face.
Frantic humming came from behind her, where Impetuous had gathered a small group of the elders within their clan. His body was quivering as he hummed in his native language, tears streaking his grey face. If possible, he looked more ashen than before.
Lunari flattened her ears painfully against the sound. This was a hellish sight if there ever was one, and Lunari’s wings drooped in defeat.
“I cannot save her,” Lunari did her best to explain with a stable voice, “she is already gone, Impetuous.”
The Coatl’s wings flared and he snarled at her, hissing and popping in some broken tongue before he finally dropped his wings with a distraught sound.
Lunari did not flinch back. His grief was warranted, even if the picture seemed very obvious to her what had happened. It was his daughter lying dead, after all.
The grey Coatl raised his sickened face to Lunari’s and spat in the common tongue, “She leaves.
Tonight.”
Lunari’s puzzled face matched that of many of the other bystanders. He whirled to face them, his voice sharp and furious.
“Miyasi is forever
banished from the land of the Icewarden. She has committed a mortal blow to our clan, not only killing hatchlings before they left the shell, but also killing my daughter and the future of our clan.”
Lunari’s mane rose in fury.
“You cannot be serious,” she spat, arching her back, “these are Miyasi’s eggs that were shattered! A mother would never harm her own chicks.”
Impetuous towered over Lunari, stepping forwards threateningly. “She leaves,” he spat, “tonight.”
CHAPTER FIVE
[Epilogue]
Niels’ voice shook. “E-eggs?” he asked, his purple eyes stricken.
Lunari was gentle as she lowered her pearl to the ground, nodding at Niels. “Your Miyasi had just laid them a week or two before,” she explained softly, “I do believe that they were yours.”
“B-but…”
“How do I know?” Lunari asked evenly, tipping her greying face slightly.
“Yes,” Niels murmured, his eyes filled with unshed tears.
Lunari smiled at him weakly. “Meet me tomorrow at dawn,” she instructed him, “I do believe that I will be able to
show you then.” She watched him as he went to leave the den.
“Niels,” she called after him, waiting until he turned to look at her, “do not tell anyone about this.”
He nodded his head, and was gone.
---
With dawn came Niels. Lunari led him out the back of their camp, a rarely used path that led to the thick herb fields, only a few miles away. Lunari walked slowly, and Niels tempered his pace to the best of his ability. She had her pearl slung around her neck in a bit of dangling fabric.
As they neared the herb fields, she swung a hard left, heading towards the edge of an ice cliff that led to nothing but water.
“W-where are we going?” Niels asked in confusion.
Lunari cast him a sideways look, and did not respond. As they reached the edge of the cliff, she simply leaped off, spreading her arthritic wings wide, and gliding. Neils gave a shriek as she did so, as she dropped a few feet before the wind caught her wings, scooping them up and helping her glide. She didn’t turn her head to see if he followed as she dipped one wing, sharply turning back towards the cliff.
Niels shrieked again. “You’re going to collide!” he cried, before Lunari disappeared.
It was only then that he felt the small pulses of emotion behind the sheet of ice.
He dove.
Lunari was already gone when Niels landed on a slight outcropping of ice, the entry to a gaping cave below the polar cap. He could hear her speaking softly to someone deeper within. He ran.
As he turned a corner, her came across a scattering of herbs and nesting materials. The voices were clearer now, and he gave a happy trill.
He heard the returning sound, and skidded into a small, warm nesting cave where Miyasi rested on one side, cradling something against her belly. He dropped down beside her, pressing his head to hers with small, hiccuping laughs. “You’re alive, you’re ok…” he chirped, “you’re here…”
She simply made chirping noises in response, joyous sounds.
Lunari seemed to be inspecting something, and Niel’s turned in confusion. “W-what are you do-”
He was stopped in his tracks when he saw what Lunari was checking up on.
“Miyasi,” Lunari said evenly, “your daughter will survive without complication.”
In her large paws was a tiny, but healthy Skydancer dragonette. Her body was spotted and rosetted just as Niels’ was, thought it was light creams and goldens, as Miyasi was.
“H-how…?”
“Miyasi managed to save one egg,” Lunari reminded him, “the crack was thin enough that I could weave a mesh of spider silk around it, and… well, with a little extra warmth from mom, your daughter hatched peacefully last night.”
Niels closed his eyes, small tears of joy slipping down his face as he snuggled against his mate.
Lunari eyed them sadly, though a small spark of hope was curling around her jaded heart. It would not be easy, but she would help them as long as she could. Maybe, eventually, she could edge them back into the clan, but even if she couldn’t… she had no fear that Niels and Miyasi could form a wonderful clan together, somewhere far away from the horrors that had transpired here on the ice caps.
That night, the pearl glistened with a fresh coat of bright pinks and greens, even hints of gold and bronze. It rested back in a nest of leaves and mints, alongside a smaller, duller pearl from Lunari’s past.
The shaman of their clan was not going to die today, but even if she had she knew that today would not have been a bad one to leave on.
The bittersweet evening was bright with stars, and she could almost feel Niels and Miyasi’s love for one another, a love so similar to one she had once known that it was painful.
The Pearlcatcher laid down in her nest, and rested her head on her paws. A single ray of starlight drifted into her den, illuminating the pair of pearls in the back of the room. Lunari closed her eyes, and could almost feel Aure’s essence filling the cave.
Goodnight, once more, my love.
