Sahara

You catch sight of this tall, athletic Mirror on the outskirts of the clan just as she straps a bag around her torso and prepares to leave. She stretches, flexing her claws into the loose sand, bright eyes noting your presence with a grin. "Love to talk, but I've got a long run ahead of me, comrade. Catch you next time?" Another Mirror trots up beside her, and they give a nod to each other before taking off at a fast but steady jog into the open desert. Their silhouettes grow smaller and smaller before they eventually vanish over the horizon line.

______Sahara awoke to a loud whistling note, a dragon’s heavy footfalls making their way through the supply runners’ corner of the camp. Their tail thwapped against her tent before moving on to the next and next and next, calling out into the morning air. It was still dark outside, the only light coming from a few dimly lit lanterns buzzing with blue electricity. The storm that had been raging last night had finally passed, but she could still smell the rain and ozone in the air.
______ “You’re up, day shift! You’ve got an hour before sunrise and a lot of water to carry, so get moving!”
______She emerged from her tent onto rain-pocked ground, still moist and malleable beneath her. It wouldn’t be this way for long. It would all be dry soon after the sun’s rise, along with any water the others had managed to catch last night. They needed to get the rations distributed and stored before that happened, or there’d be Shade to pay. There was already a mad scramble to get to work.
______Their morning alarm came in the form of Hidebound, a small but burly old Mirror that’d been with the Order for a long time. The others had told her his parents were some of its founding members. His head was in another Mirror’s tent at the moment, bellowing. “We don’t pay you to sleep in, comrade! We pay you to RUN!” A clanmate came bursting out of the tent, stumbling over themselves and their (clearly inside-out) vest.
______Another Mirror bumped her in the shoulder, nodding good morning to her as they both picked up into a jog and started making their way to the bucket field. Sahara liked Moxie. Mox didn’t talk much, but she’d be dead in the ground before she left a job unfinished, and Sara respected that.
______There was very little about the Order that couldn’t be described as somewhat “piecemeal” -- from their armor to their tents -- but the bucket field had to be one of the jankiest bits she’d seen so far. The clan’s only official blacksmith was at the Agriden taking on more important work than making buckets, so “bucket” in this case referred to any object that was 1) capable of catching water within itself and 2) didn’t leak (excessively). A few fire flight clanmates had banged some scrap metal into several vaguely bucket-shaped objects, but the grand majority of the bucket field was full of things like overturned helmets, various sizes of turtle shells, jars, bottles, baskets lined with depin hide, and rocks that were more porous than usual.
______The day shift runners took over where their comrades had left off, several of them separating to different corners of the fields to begin filling waterskins, at which point others would swoop in to transport them to the clan’s mobile food and water stores in the hunter’s district.
______It took nearly the full hour to get all the water packaged and moved, at which point shots began to call from everywhere.
______”Someone load me up -- I’m taking the shipment to the hatchling tent!”
______”Hey! Hey! I need two runners to get a crate of skins to the Boreal hunting team before they leave!”
______”Black Moth Syndicate wants their ration now, I need a runner --”
______”Ay, ay! The Moths can wait their turn like everybody else -- I’d better not see any runner taking them their rations until AFTER we supply the General and Captains!”
______Through the chaos, another voice broke through. “Sahara! Moxie!” She turned quickly, catching sight of a small brown and sapphire Mirror named Nightshade. They’d only interacted sparingly before, if for no other reason than that Nightshade was stationed at the Agriden.
______”Woah -- what are you doing here? I thought you only came to the drop point --”
______Nightshade waved her off quickly, still catching her breath between words. “Not important. Hidebound authorized you and Moxie to be my runners -- we’ve got a problem.” Sara and Moxie’s heads tilted in tandem, curious and concerned. Nightshade took a deep breath, raising her voice to speak over the crowd. “I NEED A SLED STACKED WITH RATION CRATES FOR THE AGRIDEN, STAT!”
______General unrest spread through the crowd, but a few dragons split off to start fulfilling the request.
______She explained, “Sandstorm a few days ago broke our water system at the Agriden -- we need a few more days to get it working, but we can’t support that many dragons without it. Especially with the influx of hatchlings. They can’t last as long as the adults.” She flicked her tail towards the sled. “Hidebound says you two are the fastest they’ve got here. I’m counting on you both to get this sled to the Agriden as soon as possible, or else we’ll lose more than the harvest. You got it?”
______Sara and Mox shared a glance and a knowing look and grin. Now this was their kind of work.

Sahara had never been an incredibly emotional dragon.
That wasn't to say she never felt anything -- she did.
But in comparison to some -- most, even -- her responses to such things always felt... lesser.

Bastet had taken it all the hardest.
(She always did, poor thing.)
She hid her tears in piles of herbs and salves
behind the wounded and dead in need of tending to
and buried them beneath mountains of work left to do.

Some dragons were just made that way.
As though there were pits and grooves in their bones than held sorrow longer and deeper than others.
It was easy for her to grieve for parents she didn't remember.

Sekhmet was not fragile in that way,
but neither was she safe.
She took the full brunt of all her emotions
with no barriers to protect her.
Like strikes that passed through armor,
everything she felt, she felt entirely unmitigated.
Love.
Anger.
Sorrow.
Each was a colossus compared to the last, felt with full force.
Her immense capacity for love was matched pound for pound with a capacity for violence, and the same was true for tears.
Feelings were like flus -- something that just had to run their course in her before she would be alright again.

The knowledge that what the letters said was true was all it took
to conjure all of these within her.
She spoke in depth of a plan
to search the Hewn City for any sign of them
Or anything that might be left behind.
It interfered with her concentration.
So many feelings, such complex blends of shock and sorrow, pain and confusion.
She got very little done
those first few days
after they'd gotten the news.

She was a romantic.
It was easy
for her
To picture them
as the heroes
they wanted to be remembered as
And miss them as such too.

It was easy
for her
to grieve.

Sahara, though.
The eldest sister;
Guide. Rock. Center.
Falling apart wasn’t an option.
It had never been an option.
For the sake of her sisters, and her clan.

Someone was always counting on her.

She had grieved with her sisters --
They needed it.
More than she did, she thought.
It was hard to grieve for dragons she felt she had lost before even getting to meet them.
The picture felt incomplete in her mind
having only their responses to letters
she didn't remember writing.
She cared for them, undoubtedly.
She mourned them, too.
But knowing only half the conversation left her...
Lost
At a time when she couldn't be.
There was work to do.
A home to rebuild.
There was no time to linger.
Part of her was ruthless like that. It had to be.

But something caught her eye that morning.
She'd been gathering water and caught a glimpse of her own face
in the glassy surface
when it struck her
Suddenly
Without provocation
That she didn't know
what her mother looked like.

Her eyes traced over each curve
and angle
the shapes
and patterns
and colors
that defined her visage.
It was one she shared with her sisters.
Like triplets, they'd always been almost
Indistinguishable.
Her mother must have looked something like her, she reasoned. Her father too.
They must have inherited their colors, after all.

But was that all? It couldn't be.

She saw pieces of both of them in her sisters
Through their letters
Through their words
Through what little information the three had left

Lifa. The mage. The gardener. The mother.
Einar. The wanderer. The warrior. The father.

Bastet had inherited her mother's gift for plants, if not her magic.
Though
she seemed to have inherited their father's sentimentality
in equal measure
At least by how often he was mentioned crying
over their letters.

She wondered if her mother's tail flicked around
when she was nervous
the way Bastet's did.
If her father rarely wrote to them himself
Because he poured so deeply over each word
trying to make it sound right
The way Bastet did.

Sekhmet seemed to take more after their father --
A warrior. If not much of a wanderer.
She wondered if he had been like her. If his brow scrunched
the way hers did
when she fought.
If his warcry rallied his allies
the way hers did.
If his heart broke so easily and often
as hers did
At least
before immortality began to wear away at him.

Wanderer was a good word for Sahara.
She supposed she got that from him too.
But she wondered if she took after her mother more.
If she had her mother's eyes
Or smile.
Or something else entirely.

The words of the final letter had stuck with her.
Admittance
that their parents did not love them
the way they should have.
Admittance
that they couldn't.

An amusing distraction.
An ease to boredom.
Deserving of better.
Deliverance
Of an apology. Of guilt.
But not remorse.

And yet, she understood
in some sort of way, at least.
The pride.
The spite.
The sacrifice.
The burden of the duty-bound.
Knowing it had to end there, with all of them.
The capacity in them to give everything they had to end it all.
The capacity for total annihilation
to achieve something living could not.

Part of her was ruthless. It had to be. And that part understood.

She wondered if she got that from her mother.
If she too was ruthless
Because she had to be
Or if callousness was a byproduct of the Shade's nature
Twisting
and corrupting
a pair of dragons that could have loved her and her sisters more fully
in a different life.

If Sahara's own cruelty was symptomatic
Of the toll it had taken on her parents
Passed down indirectly to her
And lingering
Even after the memories had been taken from her.

If what remained most prominently of them
In her
Was the manifestation of thousands of years
Of duty
and damage.

She lingered in this moment for some time,
staring down at the face in the water
that must have bore some resemblance
to the familiar strangers that had written those letters,
but it wasn't long
before she knew she had to carry on
with her duties,
leaving the reflection behind
And the questions it brought with it.

Part of her was ruthless like that.
It just had to be.