The frosty mountains had always been her home, from the very moment the shell of her egg cracked and split asunder, when her tiny claws and wings had scratched their way to frigid freedom.

Amongst the ice elves, she was regarded with some measure of silent respect. Granted, she appeared to be just another elven dragon, but in her veins ran ancient blood: blood that contained powerful magic, inherited from generation after generation of the original elves, blood she shared with one of the most famed ice elves of time, the Lady of the Lake.

Her mother’s legend was once one of the most renowned tales of all time. Yet over millennia, the stories had twisted and turned this way and that, obscuring the grand truth that was buried all those years ago. Yet blood never lies, and even the most proud and hardy of ice elves would be wary of the magic that emanated off dragons who hailed from such a pureblood line such as hers.

Her magic was unlike anything they had ever witnessed in their lives, it was primal and yet forceful enough to be a threat to the most talented of the tribe’s wizards. Truly, she was the flesh and blood kin of Nimue, they said. No one else had the sheer power to conjure up ice blizzards with a sweeping motion of her claws, no one else could command the icy elements like she could, apart from Nimue herself. Even amongst her magically-inclined siblings, she stood out like blood on the ice. Where their magic was focused, precise to the very last millimetre, hers flowed from self to environment, twisted and spiralled out of her control. It was wild, untamed, but undoubtedly devastating force, if only she could harness it.

“Learn to control it, and you will do well.”

“But what if it controls me?”

“You must not let that happen, or one day that power will wreak havoc upon all you know and love.”

These were the words Nimue and Pellias spoke to their daughter. While not unkind, they could not begin to fathom the depths of potential she held within her body, neither did they know how to help harness it properly. All they had were words and exercises, and those did no good when the magic simply blasted the obstacles away with sheer power. What could they do with her, what good was an ice elf who could not learn to control her own ability? To them, she was simply a child waving a mighty wand, incapable of mastering herself, but all too capable of creating a disaster.

And she knew it.

No matter what she did, it seemed that nothing could curb the monstrous might that surged forth from her clawtips whenever she tried to focus on channelling the ice element. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to be so powerful, but she was so utterly lacking in skill that it was practically an embarrassment to the rest of her family. Watching her siblings weave effortless patterns of icy frost in midair was something she soon tired of, and one day she’d had enough.

Why not go someplace where her power would be more appreciated?
If the ice elves were rigid in their discipline and relentless in pursuit of said precision, then why not go the other way, to place where there were others like her?

And so she left, on a freezing winter night, with a last goodbye to only her parents.

As it turned out, joining a fire clan proved to be one of the best decisions of her life. Here, she stood out because of her ice-touched wings and scales, but here as last her raw magical energy was a thing to be celebrated, admired. Their nights were spent in competitions, where the younger dragons would puff searing streams of fire into the night sky just to see how high they could go, and now, if you were to look closely, you’d see a spiral of frosty breath, winding higher than any of the other dragons could blow.

Not every dragon’s birthplace is their home. After all, hers was right here: amidst a clan whose warmth resembled the fiery flames they produced, far from the icy wastelands of her birth.

Lore by @rei711

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