Stipe

Please don't exalt this dragon! If you no longer want them, please feel free to send them back to Pearl's exalt rescue lair!

She'd always had a fondness for the underdog, even as a youngling. Stipe was caring but fierce, and quick to pick a fight on behalf of dragons that were smaller or weaker than her. The habit was equal parts sweet and patronizing. Despite not being the most visually striking dragon in the room, she exuded a power and strength that always drew others' eyes to her.

It seemed so natural, then, that she would eventually fall for - and take on as a charge - a weaker dragon. Like a story of her destiny written before she was born, her eye was caught, one day, to the scrawniest male she'd ever seen. She towered over him almost comically. He had been sickly as a hatchling, he tried to explain, but Stipe could only think about how he was the most beautiful and perfect dragon she could imagine.

It was love at first sight - a feeling of it's him it's my charge stronger than a bolt of lightning. It felt too good to be true.

It was too good to be true. Though they fell hard for each other, Stipe's charge needed her protection, and some unseen things could never be protected against. She wasn't there, when he had the Accident. She was only there to find him - and defend his injured body with every ounce of energy she had, with every drop of strength and magic she could find. So fierce was her love that it manifested physically, the lightning she'd always felt when she looked at her beloved pouring forth from her eyes like tears, creating a kaleidoscope of physical power that she knew now would still, never, be enough.