Willow

Her eyes are so kind, surely this is safe. She seems genuinely worried for your health, and the way she tends your wounds is so careful. When you awaken next, she is not there, and perhaps you feel you've dreamt her. In fact, you would be sure you had, if not for the footprints in the mud and the thin scar where once you bled.

Willow has always been a quiet dragon.

She was quiet when she was young, hardly ever asking for anything from her parents, or the other members of her clan. She had always seemed just a little out of place, no matter whether she was in her own den or out among other dragons. Even with the glowing markings that traced her face, her sides, her tail, she had a tendency to fade into the background, overlooked. The simple fact that she rarely spoke did little to help the problem.

Yes, Willow was a quiet dragon indeed. When she did speak, she did so in a tone so soft it was sometimes inaudible. Even her footsteps were next to silent--you could be walking alongside her and never quite realize she was there.

Willow was even quiet on the day that she got turned around in the woods, while accompanying the older healers of her birth clan on an expedition to retrieve some important medicinal herbs for a warrior, severely wounded in battle. She would have sworn she had seen something glinting in the dark space between the trees, and she had only been distracted a moment--and yet, when she tore her searching gaze away from the shadows, her travelling companions were gone.

She knew that if she began to search quickly, she had a higher chance of finding them again. Yes, they had not been following any clear path, but surely they could not have gone far? The lanterns they carried with them would cast light enough to be seen through the trees, surely? Perhaps she could take wing, search from above.

But she did none of those things. Why exert so much effort to reunite with a group that had never made the same effort for her? They probably didn't even know she was gone--and if they did, they hadn't come back for her yet.

Willow decided, then, to set off on her own, quiet footsteps barely making a sound on the leaves underfoot.

She did not have to wander long before she was found. Not by the healers she had been travelling with, no, but by a guardian, black and red, who cut through the shadows between the trees like a fish through water.

"Are you lost, my dear?" The voice was softer than Willow would have expected. "I have seen you wandering, heard you making your way through the forest, and if you should need help finding your way home, I know these woods well."

Willow hesitated a moment. This was her answer, this was how she would return to her clan--but the guardian's words echoed loud in her mind. I have seen you. I have heard you.

She did not need to speak for the guardian to understand her. "I see. Why don't you come rest at my den, for a while? As long as you need."

Willow was quiet, but now, she had a place where she felt heard.