Margaux

Aiedail:
I'm the the one that found them. Two pale naked children, human children, shimmering and staring, holding hands in the moonlight. The boy had finally blinked, turned to look at the girl in a panic, squeezed her hand, and then they both flashed back to their true forms: a Coatl and an Imperial.

I knew they were dangerous. I knew, from that moment, that they were. But I changed into a human to show them I was a friend, and they grinned. I couldn't leave them there. They were alone in the world. They could be persecuted for what they were. So I brought them home.

I had misgivings about bringing them here, but where else could I take them? I had to tell the clan leaders why I'd brought them, what drew me to them - they all already distrusted me, the whole clan did. If I brought them shapeshifters and didn't tell them, they'd probably think I was plotting against them. I just didn't tell them they'd turned into humans. No one's supposed to know what humans look like. I'm not sure how these dragons do - though I've had misgivings. What if they're not really dragons? What if that's a shape they shift into, instead of the other way around? Are those the kind of things other dragons think about me? I told the clan leaders that they'd been Centaurs when I found them. If they shifted into human forms, I thought to myself, I'd just explain that they'd seen me do it, and were mimicking my form.

I needn't have worried though. They didn't shift into humans. I haven't seen them do it since. They've shifted into other forms, but even that they didn't do in the presence of others until they were adults. At that point, they were acting as spies for us. Infiltrating Beastclans. They were always too cunning for their own good though, too clever. I remember thinking, when I first heard of the plan, that the clan was putting their trust in the wrong dragons. But hadn't they raised them? They were never going to think anything evil of two children they'd adopted and raised. They forgot. They forgot that these dragons lived a life before living here. That their past experiences, their first and most formative experiences, might taint them.

I should've never brought them here. I should've intervened, even once I had. I tried to be around for them, a mentor of sorts. I tried to be there for them to trust. But it was hard. They were always asking me questions I didn't want to answer. They were always wanting to watch me change. "Do it slower," they'd demand. "I don't know how," I'd tell them. They'd look at me with their piercing eyes. "Try harder," they'd tell me. And Arcanist help me, I tried. I wanted to teach them what little I knew. I wanted to help them. I wanted to save them. Save them from the stigma, save them from their past, save them from themselves.

Arcanist help me, I always knew I couldn't.

I knew that their relationship wasn't one of siblings, like everyone else wanted it to be. Even as hatchlings, it was always more than that. Then they became adolescents. I knew they were mating. Just because I'd never seen it didn't mean I didn't know. I knew a lot of things about them that I never said out loud, always afraid... of what? That it would reflect back on me, since I brought them here? That they would be mistreated? That others knowing their faults would only push them further into the dark, and out of my helping reach completely? How did I expect to help them? I never said anything. Not to them, not to anyone else. I turned a blind eye. But they knew I knew. They knew I knew everything. And they knew I would keep their secrets.

I suppose I thought the rest of the clan silly, to not see that their relationship was romantic. I suppose I thought it silly that they should even have a problem with that. It's not as if they're actually related, after all. They weren't even raised in the same family. So what was the problem? But they'd always acted like brother and sister. At least that's how the clan saw it. They'd always been called brother and sister. They always spent all day together. That was always seen as the reason why: that they'd been born in the same clan and were something close to related. That they'd survived the wilds alone together, and formed a special bond.

Well, they had. Just not the one everyone liked.

And everyone would have gotten over it. Everyone would've let it go and eventually called them childhood sweethearts and thought it cute. It's not that they fell in love. It's that they kept it secret. They made it sacreligious, almost as if on purpose, and then they had their children and dumped them and ran.

And now what to do with the children? They follow me everywhere. They're human more often than they are dragon. They hold hands and stare and don't smile, unless to do it wickedly. They've been called "sin itself." They've been called "product of the Shade."

But they're not. They're children. They've been whispered over and mistrusted and unwanted since hatching. If they're a curse, the clan cast it. If they're a threat, the clan created it.

If they talk to the things that go bump in the night, it's because the clan left them no one else to talk to.

So why do I blame myself? How is it my fault? But I blame myself all the same. I can't see the future, it's true. But there are things i know which no one else here knows. And I knew, I knew. A part of me always knew.

The things the Shade touches can never be made whole.