Vant

4.
That was how many times Vant had been abandoned. 4 different times from 4 different clans with 4 different ideas for what a dragon should be.
A dragon should be strong, with twenty-five years worth of pain and scars under their belt, a scourge on the battlefield!
A dragon should be pure, with no earthly ties to family or friends, so as to maintain an honored distance from all lesser beings.
A dragon should be beautiful, scales the same color as feathers and claws. One ethereal entity of one shade, sought after by all for their alluring eyes and exceptional coloring.
And a dragon should be popular - one of Lightweaver’s first children or the stoic Wildclaws of Nature.
None of the clans wanted a Ridgeback such as him: in fact, nobody had ever really wanted to keep Vant around.
He had been born to two parents who could have loved him very much, were it not for his unusual eyes. And although they separated him from his family and peers, the primal nature of his gaze was celebrated by the rest of his clan.
Yet, he was still not truly appreciated. Now he was boiled down just to the nature of his vision, the rest of his personality and dreams forgotten and destroyed. His peers often told him that his eyes were the only exceptional part about him, and that without them, he was just a small fish to be thrown back into a gigantic pond where he would not be noticed again.
Eventually his eyes led to his journey. First, he was traded, to try and find a forever home among connoisseurs of rare and unusual beauty. But his coloring, breed, and status always ended up with him being returned.
“No thank you, sorry, too ugly”, the clans would say, even through fake smiles and polite expressions. But Vant always knew what their refusal of him meant.
After many episodes of heartbreak, he had given up on finding a home, and instead began traveling to find what he was truly seeking - himself.
Vant braved the wilds of Nature, the barren terrain of Plague, and the otherworldly denizens of Arcane. He became friends with those from Water, who had also been abandoned by their father, and came to understand the world around him. He grew strong and sweet, his personality blossoming from the sad, lonely dragon who had once stood in his place.
All the while scratching together a list of friends who were equally underappreciated, and teaching them to find the beauty inside themselves. The other dragons would jeer and scoff, calling him ugly and telling him to go serve a deity, for he would fill no other purpose. But he had grown from his journeys, and was no longer listening.
What did the other dragons know? He had met a hundred amazing victims who had been tossed back for a hundred different reasons. Some of the most beautifully unique dragons that he had the pleasure of knowing had been called ugly because their genes were not acceptable.
Vant hated the old fashioned ideas of beauty. He had been fighting against society’s standards for as long as he had been born - at first, because society was fighting against him. But now, he did it for the other dragons like himself. The beautiful underdogs with eldritch scales and bright pink arcane eyes, bearing poison genes with an offspring list as far as the eye could see.
His primal eyes, unloved by most critics of what is beautiful and serene, had become a symbol of his rebellion. He felt a deeper and more intimate connection to the down trodden and ignored, feeling every surge of every abandoned voice in each beat of his ridgeback heart.
Vant had spent many moons finding the beauty in himself, and he never would allow his circumstances to happen to anyone else. Ever since abandoning the search for a trophy case to be pinned and displayed, he decided that he wanted to be loved instead.
And if being loved meant never being desirable in the eyes of collectors, then he did not care. Vant loved himself and he loved his new clan, and for the first time in years, he was finally happy.