Aztec

"Ah... all right," She swallowed nervously and took a hesitant step forward, "I will be making my parents proud, at least." She muttered.

"Pardon?" Niamh said, glancing up from her preparation of the bell and charm. The bell's clapper made a muffled rattling noise as the skydancer bound the bell to the charm. On the charm a name had been randomly chosen by the older dragon and written in a neat script from one ink-dipped paw.

The whole device was meant to help the trainers keep track of exaltees amid the broken ground and hostile illusions of the Ghostlight Ruins. The charm, inscribed with a name, any name, kept her soul safe from spiritual contamination or outright possession during the preparation process. It was the first time the guardian had seen one up close and, with a squint, had made out the word Aztec which the skydancer had written with a practiced claw. The paper was still moist in spots, the dove's blood ink dried slowly in the humid air.

The guardian pinned her ear fans back, startled at being overheard. "My parents," She started, but swallowed into silence as the skydancer took flight, circled around her neck with a few graceful strokes of her wings and hovered before her. The little bell attached to the loop that settled around her shoulders The bell bobbed and made a faint, crystallne tinkle that seemed a little too loud amid the other trainers getting ready to take her to the haunted ruins for her rite of passage.

"My parents, they... " She began again." The Windsinger was their first god," She remembered her manners then and raised a foreclaw to give the smaller dragon a place to land, Niamh instantly took the offered perched and cocked her head to the side as she listened. "I think they like that my sister and I have come home, as it were-?" She paused as the skydancer's jaw went slack, her violet eyes widening.

"What?" Niamh said, her claws froze in place. The half-attached charm slipped from her talons unnoticed. The skydancer suddenly narrowed her eyes, "You parents' first god?" The question seemed strangely insistent to the guardian, "What do you mean by that?"

And Aztec told her the story of her sire and dam, their meeting, their parting and Lilly's return, delivered anew by the gods again. Niamh's wings fluttered and she pawed at the air to pause the story. "Wait," she said, half rising, "the one who was here before you, with the purple belly scales. You seemed close?"

"My sister, we-" Amd anything more was cut off as Niamh launched herself from the guardian's raised paw with a shrill cry of dismay. Her body a slim blur of black and gold and white as she tried to race against the inevitable.