Zella

Zella's parents did their best for her. They knew of the many-eyed beings of the wilds - creatures with immense magical powers who are as feared as they are respected. These terrifying entities of natural forces are all manner of creatures - seers, sentinels, weavers of destiny - so when they saw their hatchling emerge with many sets of yet-sealed eyelids, they didn't know what to think. Were they the chosen bearers of some new master of the elements? Would this child erupt with unkempt magical energy?

But Zella's magic never blossomed. Even the average dragon is more adept than she, as she is virtually without magic powers at all. But this didn't deter the other members of the clan seeing Zella as a danger, a freak, a horror. Barely out of her shell, and full-grown guardian giants regarded her with absolute abhorrence. They were scared of her. They didn't understand what she was and why she was among them. They were worried that even touching her would unleash some sort of doom upon their home.

Isolde and Swirl, however, outgrew their concern early on. At first, they too tiptoed around their hatchling, testing boundaries as if Zella was an alchemist's powder keg. They snatched their hands away as though burned when the child crawled over to cling to them. They lifted her with hesitant fingertips as they tried to live around her. Quickly, they realized that Zella was simply a normal hatchling. She clutched her siblings close as they dozed together, she gently gnawed the fish they shared. Nothing foul ever befell the family from her presence. Thus began Isolde and Swirl's struggle to defend their child from the fear of the clan and the hatred that it manifested.

She saw the way her parents pained themselves to shield her from the harsh prejudice of the clan, and she couldn't bear seeing them constantly putting themselves between her and the world's hatred. One night, as the air cooled with the promise of fall, her father stretched out his wing and grinned as he declared their bonds from the battles they'd shared, and indicated their new, matching tears - holes in the membranes of their wings from one of the clan's many attacks on their family - a scuffle from the night before. Zella's heart filled with sorrow, tightening her chest and giving her lungs no room to breathe. Seeing the tender, raw edges of the wounds in her father's wing opened her eyes as though she was slapped in the face. She finally saw his face clearly for the first time in years. His eyes were tired. His whole body spoke loudly of exhaustion, this desperate drooping shape mirrored in her mother as well - a cry for rest that they all continuously ignored. Zella had looked away from them then, and didn't set eyes on them again.

She snuck away that night. She'd heard others speak of routes, of destinations, of the outside world. She followed the vague, faded memories of their descriptions, resigning herself to a lonely, desperate search for... something. Her throat was thick with threats of tears as she forced herself not to think of the directionless and lonely journey before her. Hopes of finding a place to love and accept her were so distant and buried that she would not allow herself to consider them truly.

Now, on the lam, Zella hides her body. In the short time she's been away from her parents, she has begun to miss them desperately, but refuses to return to a life that would hurt them.

Perhaps she'll learn to love and accept herself, but she has yet to find a place for such. She lacks the power that usually comes with the All Seeing Eyes that disrupt her scales, yet can't find a place among the normal citizens around her.

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