Quad

Quad

Inventive | Quirky | Lonely

Calamity grumbled, loping across the tundra. But in his haste, he nearly tripped over a small, garishly colored Spiral clutching a tattered knapsack to his chest.

"Get away from me!" the Spiral screeched. "Don’t touch me— don’t—"

Calamity’s first instinct was to bat the spiral away, or possibly squash his bag, but the look of fear was so evident in his huge, clear eyes that instead the took two steps back. “What’s your name?”

The spiral blinked at him. “What?”

"Your name."

The dragon curled farther into itself, if that was even possible, not meeting his eyes. “You don’t have one?” asked Calamity, incredulous. Didn’t all dragons have to have a given name?

"I don’t have a real name. But they all called me Quad."

"Why?"

"I don’t know! I don’t know anything.. just let me go…" Quad squeezed his eyes shut and began to sob.

Something pushed Calamity to wrap his tail around the shivering, weeping, miserable ball of scales and lie down next to him. “Where’s your clan?”

"Don’t have one."

"Well, who gave you your name then?"

Silence, then, “Don’t make me go back to them. All they did was laugh at me. I hate them. I can’t go back.”

Calamity had no idea what to do. He wanted to leave, of course, but something urged him to open his mind’s eye and suddenly there was a burst of warmth, happiness like he hadn’t felt in what seemed like ages, in the middle of that empty tundra and Quad, small, shivering, bright-eyed, was shining with an aura like the sun, and Calamity knew the sound of his laughter without ever hearing it in real life.

"Come with me. I live in the Shifting Expanse, in a lab. I think you’d—"

"A lab? Really? What kind?" Quad’s head poked up from the tangle of his limbs and his grip on the dirty knapsack released just a little.

"Uh, Stormwalker Laboratories. We do genetics, biology, chemistry, there’s a few engineers and mechanics too—"

Quad’s eyes opened ever wider. “Please, can I come?”

"Sure, punk. Just… yeah."

The spiral curled up around Calamity’s neck, talking his ear off, and strangely the Imperial couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed.