Duarte

Duarte: The wanderer, The curious one


Duarte is Asima's second child. A quiet dragon, it was believed that he was mute like his father until he suddenly began to speak at the age of four.

They quickly learned that he had just been waiting for the perfect subject to talk about.

His first words came during his sister's first flying lesson. Asima stood nearby, images of tiny broken horns and teeth flashing through her mind, as Amethyst held Sapphire above his head. Not confident that her tiny wings would work as intended she resigned herself to holding on to her father's horns in a deathgrip and refusing to flap. She'd fallen off the kitchen counter before. She knew gravity's tricks.

Duarte was not yet aware of gravity's tricks.

Frustrated with his sister, he decided that he was gonna be a big boy and be the bestest fastest flier ever with no help from anyone! He had been studying the mail dragons for weeks and after watching fully grown professionals spiral and speed through the sky (especially Spitfire, he was always impossible to move from the doorway if Spitfire delivered a package) , his tiny baby brain was one million percent positive that he could do it too. So he climbed a nearby tree and with a high-pitched "Mom look at me!" he jumped.

To his credit, he managed about 3 seconds of gliding before he plummeted into the thorn bush below.

The older hatchlings called him little baby butt-scars for weeks.

He didn't really care because he was too busy trying to get back into that tree.

He's now an excellent, if somewhat overenthusiastic, flier and has grand aspirations of traveling the world and being a mail carrier himself. The fact that they can travel from territory to territory having adventures, meeting different cultures, and generally being free from any god's alliance fascinates him to no end. The quiet young guardian can talk about flight territories for hours, complete with excited hand gestures and the occasional pause to catch his breath. The rest of the clan humors him as best they can and really he's so enthusiastic that it's hard not to get excited about frozen wastelands and fields made of strange pulsing guts right along with him.

He spends most of his time these days taking language lessons from Wave and collecting maps.