Sorrow
(#91655468)
She hums a song.
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 48
out of
50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Earth.
Female Wildclaw
This dragon is hibernating.
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Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Effect
Scene
Measurements
Length
6.03 m
Wingspan
5.9 m
Weight
523.38 kg
Genetics
Midnight
Python
Python
Spruce
Constellation
Constellation
Slate
Flecks
Flecks
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 1 Wildclaw
EXP: 0 / 245
STR
7
AGI
6
DEF
7
QCK
6
INT
6
VIT
6
MND
7
Lineage
Parents
- none
Offspring
- none
Biography
its so pretty oh my goodness. ty pistis!! I loved seeing your wip's too :)
1700g
“They're back.” The call ran through the tribe like a rabbit ran through hilly plains and thorny bushes, until it stuck in Sadie's throat and scrabbled its way down, down into the broiling mess her stomach had become upon hearing those two small words. The hunting party returned. And everyone was starving.
Her father, finishing the marine beads with a glaze made from bug shells, hands shaking as he held his brush, wiped the excess on a rag and looked to Sadie. Her mouth was filled with water. She stood up and drew the coral and crimson-bordered curtains away from the only window in the lair, revealing a view of stone and rock as Clan gathered below the cave ceiling, waiting in anxiety for good news. He heaved his body towards the window and bumped the table in the process, the sticky beads shifting and surely ruining the setting glaze. She gulped the water from her mouth and helped him to the opening. A dissatisfied shout swept over the tribe as they came to the window. Sadie dropped her father's arm, shoving her face against the glass. Behind the hunters was a small mound of feathers. Five precious, starving days gone to swift winged hope, spent on a few ground birds. It wouldn't feed anyone but the hatchlings. She cleared her mouth again as dissension rose like a thundercloud.
“Enough, enough!” The strongest of them all raised her voice and mercilessly quieted the crowd. “Be calm. We will get more.”
Crane stepped forward, his short arms and hunched back resting on a beautifully carved cane. Heads turned towards him as he hobbled in front of the leader, his namesake wings spread in placidity. “We, too, have had enough. This experiment of yours has been tried enough. You must let us hunt for ourselves; allow us to go back to how it was. We will go up the long way and hunt as we are designed.”
The mighty members of the hunting party shifted, regarding the crowd with a wary eye and watching their skull-laden leader for any sign. She sighed, her lightning-blue crest of feathers flattening along her neck and spine. “You cannot. You will die, hunted hunters of the monsters above. It was only through careful planning and observation that we garnered game for the hatchlings. A success, over failure. My experiments are having an effect, should you have faith. Take what we have provided, and speak no more.”
He suddenly stood straighter. “I cannot abide this, Verlaine! We are starving!” He swept a claw and a wing over the crowd. “We are dying! We have had enough!” The crowd shouted assent, backing his voice and pounding on the doors to freedom. “And we will overcome! Even the monster can die, and even a Wildclaw will hunt as wildly as a Mirror in the face of death! Back away or perish, Verlaine!”
The hunting party raised their spears as dragons began pressing, shoving, and biting, wings outstretched like a parade of umbrellas as Sadie and her father stood transfixed at the window in the lair at the tiptop of the cave her clan now called home, while the bottom of the cave, like an earthenware pot, broiled with dragon stew. She should have felt shocked for thinking of her home and clan like they were food and cooking ware. But her stomach grumbled instead. As a near hatchling herself, she could have a right to a bird. There weren't many hatchlings left. Nobody would be hurt if she just took one and ignored the distribution line. The way the battle was going, a line might never form, after all, and no one could blame her. Her mouth watered even more, her snout tickling as sadness enveloped her head. She was so hungry that she was crying like she'd seen other breeds of dragons do, but she lacked the curiously salty tears that rolled from their eyes. Salt went well with meat, she recalled. In a spirit of inspiration, she dashed from her father's side to the kitchen and dipped her hand into the blood-red salt pot and stuck it into her mouth, the flavor rolling through her entire being as calm restored its presence in her mind. She stuck her other hand in, still sucking on her first, and brought salt to her father, grains of it scattering on her feet. He took the offering and brought it to his mouth as well, comprehension dawning in his eyes. For a moment, they stood there, enjoying the taste, as shouts and scuffles continued outside. Her father spoke, and his voice choked. “My wonderful daughter, what have you done? You have given me hope again.” He paused, resting his marigold-flecked chin on her head, before continuing, “This is much better than sucking on those marbles.”
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As quickly as it had begun, the skirmish was over, the hunters standing triumphant, if wounded, as the underfed second class cringed away into their lairs. Her mother, bedecked with hunter's furs and the skulls of her fiercest prey, sat down as soon as she was inside the lair. “Welcome back.” Sadie said, offering a cup of water and knowing her mother's weariness. Her father brushed past her, bringing a shallow tub and his medicine kit.
“Jerle, no. I can take care of that later.” Verlaine protested softly as he kneeled and began to clean her wounds with his shaking hands. She nodded in thanks when Sadie pushed the cup into her hands.
“Momma,” she questioned, acting childish in the hopes of keeping her mother still a little longer. “Would you like some salt?”
“Salt?” Verlaine replied as her crest of feathers rose, surprised. “What for, dear?”
“To make the hunger go away.”
Verlaine laughed as Sadie herself smiled. “No, I think I'm okay for now. We hunters need to eat to keep going after all, so why don't we save all the salt for you and your father?” She stroked Sadie's crest, fingering the flecked patches of her feathers. Sadie enjoyed the touch, leaning against her mother's powerful legs. She opened her eyes and noticed the dirt stuck to the dry, shedding scales and how her mother smelled like the dust of the rocky expanse above their heads. She observed how her foreclaw was almost dull, and her other claws were cracking and splitting. And she knew that her mother had not been eating any better than her, and her heart ached.
“Mother, why...” Sadie trailed off, unsure if she wanted the answer to her question.
“Ask, little hunter.”
“Why haven't you defeated the beast?”
“Well, there are many reasons.” She said, slowly. “I don't know if it's appropriate to tell you when the rest of the clan hasn't heard a thing. I'll tell you when we do defeat it, okay?”
“Haven't you even seen it?”
“Not exactly, pebble. It's hard to explain with words.” Verlaine put the cup down. “Alright. I don't have any more time, Jerle. The others will be coming soon to discuss what, in Earthshaker's name, we're going to do.”
She pushed her husband's hands away and tied the last knot herself, gripping the cloth between her teeth and pulling. She stood, and that was the last Sadie saw of her gentle, tired mother, replaced by the grim-faced warrior ruled by her duties. Jerle herded his daughter away from the group who rattled into the lair and kept her occupied with bead-making as string upon string joined the collection of color they already had. Her father stopped at last, mentioning a sore back and cramped hands, and she was left partially to her own devices.
She wandered the lair, its rooms and devices still somewhat new to her. The entrance room's art wall proclaimed her mother's victory over the previous chief, Crane. Woven tapestries of her mother's and father's colors hung in the corners of the room, while a rug with her colors lay on the floor. Streamers of brightly colored paper stood like still rain from the ceiling to the floor. A bead string of her father's design depicted a beautiful morning. And a pot made by her mother sat underneath her father's tapestry, to signify that it was he who lost her sibling to a rival when they were eggs, and to honor the child Verlaine didn't get to raise.
While she busied herself around the lair, murmurs drifted toward her. Finally, she abandoned the pretense of chores and eavesdropped bald-faced, her bright eyes peeping around the corner to watch her mother.
“There is simply nothing else we can do. That devil destroys us. Every time. We cannot bring back more food while it roams. With the nature of our clan, proud Wildclaw upon proud Wildclaw, with only a few other breeds, even to the point of losing our honor and fighting as a group, we do not have enough diversity and strength to defeat it. We will die trying.” Sadie knew the other dragons who were not Wildclaw well. Each served a vital part of clan life and remained friendly even during these starving times, although a few faces had vanished when they first came under attack.
“Then what do you truly suggest we do?” A female, wearing a kind of skull Sadie did not recognize, lashed her feather-tipped tail onto the stone table. “Die trying, as you have said? If so, why do you speak? You do nothing but cause us harm with your coward's words.”
A sharp screech resounded as the original speaker scraped his claws along the tabletop. “I am not talking of cowardice. I am speaking of our own futility in the face of an insurmountable beast. And before you accuse me, restrain your words from argument and division. You are acting as if we were still above and in danger.”
“And who gave you the right to arbitrate?” One of the Wildclaws, who first raised his spear at his own clan, spoke bitterly and softly. “I recall Verlaine as our chief, not you.”
“If you will simply allow me to speak, I am sure our chief will have plenty to say afterwards.” Sadie glanced at her mother, who seemed far away from the conversation happening in front of her. “Now, we must bring help. Other clans can surely recognize our great peril and provide not only resources but comfort for the clan if we can open trade with them in return. Such a relationship would not only better us currently, but it would be in our best interest to forge relations with other clans once more.”
“How could any of us escape to find another clan? None of us, not even the other breeds, could sustain flight in our condition.”
A smallish member piped up next. “You only seek to disseminate us, to scatter us like birds fleeing a hatchling. These relations, as you call them, would open our weak-minded lessers to dangerous outside influences—”
The female with the skull slammed a fist onto the poor table. “Do not even finish that thought. How could you speak of our kinfolk that way?! Have you lost your pride as their protector? Perhaps you should be recalled to the lowest of us to remind you of why we have our hierarchy.” She gestured rudely.
“And that pride is exactly what will be our doom! We will stand in our pride as protectors against a devil who cares nothing for pride and perish!”
Sadie watched with wide eyes as arguments exploded across the table, wings flaring in a confusion of flapping as duels were issued with little regard to time and place, until Verlaine stood and brought her own wings to their full extension and cuffed the closest dragons to her on the backs of their heads as though they were hatchlings. Indignant screeches quieted quickly as she spoke, clearly and firmly, “Enough of this, each of you. Challenges will be carried out at a later time, when we are not all on the brink of war and death. If you insist, even now, in the safety of our home, to act like squabbling children, then I shall treat you accordingly.” She paused, then went on. “It is as though you believe the monster to be here with us.
“I realize, listening to you argue and squawk, that a kind of futility has come over each of us—some disease of hopelessness and strife. In your first encounter with the beast, did not each of you feel the chill of its breath? It lies in wait and consumes us whole, turning us against each other with its tactics and tricks, but now we are tricking ourselves.” She turned her gaze to each face. Almost pleadingly, she continued, “Do you not understand? This is its ploy. This fighting is our true doom.”
Wordlessly, the members of her hunting tribe looked at each other, decisions hiding behind their eyes. One by one, they issued their challenge to the leader. Their shrieks filled the air—an angry chorus of screams. Her mouth hardened into a thin line, and she retorted, “Very well.”
Sadie watched as her mother was torn from her position at the top, one bleeding gash at a time. She retained her honor and faced each warrior, refusing to back down. At some point, her father came and stood behind her, hands on her shoulders, as he watched, his face dispassionate and still. Her mother was strong. Even in her last fight, at her weakest, she scored her opponent thrice right between the wings before retaliation made her fall to the ground and lay still. Her position in the party dropped considerably, but she remained a protector and provider for them, and her father would not have to take up the mantle. Sadie knew this, but felt differently. When someone scored a blow on her mother, Sadie's heart jumped into her throat, pounding so, so hard as she waited for her mother to recover and strike back. She was afraid. She wished her mother would refuse to fight every battle. It would not be the first time she watched a dragon die in a duel.
She wished she didn't have to do anything but be her sweet, gentle mother.
Her father moved from behind her, and Sadie started. Verlaine lay on the floor in an unmoving heap. Jerle picked her up, hefting her body over his wings and pulling her arm around his neck as her head lolled over his shoulder. “Sadie, go get a bowl of water and my medicine kit and bring them to your mother's room, please.”
She ran off to fetch them.
When she returned, her father was talking to someone at the entrance, and a small portion of dried meat sat on the bedside table. She instantly had to stop and gulp the water from her mouth as the smell of food and blood overpowered her senses. She set the bowl of water down carefully, keeping her eyes fixed forward, and looked at her mother instead.
Verlaine opened her eyes, slowly reached for the dried meat on the table, and handed her daughter a piece. Mother's dark eyes had never scared Sadie before, but as she looked into them now, they terrified her because she knew the darkness could cloud over her eyes and Mother would be no more.
And Sadie wanted to cry again, to express the welling up of emotion within her, as she chewed on the tough meat slowly. Her mind had been made up. She would go to the wilderness and bring healing food to Mother.
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It was easy to slip past the guards at the entrance. A calamity of hubbub erupted all over the clan, with talk of her mother's fall and dragons shuffling from a bigger lair to a smaller one or vice versa, depending on their new position. Porters carried scrolls of victory art and colorful decorations back and forth. Each member of the hunting party dueled to determine the new chief, and it seemed the dragon who first raised his spear won the satisfaction of others. But the tunnel up to the surface was long—longer than she remembered.
To calm her nerves and spend her time, she sang a hunting song. She forgot the words and made up new ones, and it went like this:
Hunter, hunter,
Down by the plain,
Do you know what you do to me?
Hunter, hunter,
Hefting your spear,
Do you know how it troubles so?
Make it quick, don't let it be slow.
My hunger grows and grows.
Hunter, hunter,
Please won't you bring,
Something meaty for me to eat.
Glory and might,
The hunters life,
Make your family proud.
Trouble and strife,
The higher life,
Keep your clan around.
Hunter, my hunter,
Tell what you know.
What did you see in the plains below?
Hunter, my hunter,
Why don't you speak?
l will keep watch by the fire tonight.
For the echos of endless blight.
Glory and might,
The hunters life,
Make your family proud.
Trouble and strife,
The Wildclaw life,
Keep your clan around.
Hunter, hunter,
So it is I
Who knows what goes in the plains down low.
Runner, runner,
Soon, we will see.
Who waits, and who does the waiting now.
She sang it until she could smell fresh air, the last stanza inflating her with courage as she went, and then she ran up the remaining way to greet the sun.
Vermilion sun crept along the ground, just waiting to welcome her to the upside world, searing her sight and heating her body. She wandered the wilderness above, marveling at the colors. Lemon and gold dirt ran along her toes as she dug at the compacted rock. Juts of pure crystal caught the sunlight, casting misty purple and seafoam green shadows over everything nearby. A hot wind parted around her, bringing with it the slight sting of salt and a reminder of cool ocean waters. The ceiling above her was empty and sky-blue.
How she missed it all.
Dragonhome, ruled by the Earthshaker, creator of the Obelisk, the Dusthide, and the Snapper breeds, was most hospitable to rocks. A rock did not care if the hot sun beat down. A rock did not care if it was swept over by rushing waters and fish deep underground all day long. And rocks did not need to eat or drink. For Wildclaws, creatures of the Gladekeeper, whose domain flourished with sweet rivers, tall trees, and vicious animals to be slain and consumed, it was a harsh existence. Yet her clan survived—nomads following the underground caves and rivers, slaying animals that lived in the caves and rivers for their daily meals—until one day, a hasty decision to stay in a blocked-off cave system with only one safe route out left them trapped in place.
Then Mother challenged her way up to become chief. And she tried to fix things. There had been outrage the first time she banded Wildclaws together to slay the devil. To work in more than a pair at most was antithetical to a Wildclaw's very biology, against their own making and design, but it was needed, her mother argued. It was necessary. Wildclaws challenging this great beast as solitary fighters would surely perish. That had been tested already. But even when the parties left together, they seldom returned, until eventually there were no more animals to kill in the cave system, and then there were dragons who tried to escape through the raging river they drew water from, and after the stress and worry had set in, there were those who gave up completely and did not move. As though it were their final hour, her mother had gone as her chief up the long spiral and against the beast, but even then she had failed.
Sadie began to ponder what she could bring back. A large game bird would be perfect, but she would bring back lizards if she could find them. She didn't know much about hunting in the above-world. She remembered being taught stillness and something about keeping the sun in front of her when flying.
A chill fluttered down her wings. Her breath caught in her throat, and Sadie knew the devil had found her. She couldn't say how she knew or what caused her shivering, as the temperature stayed the same. And that was when she realized.
She had no reason to return.
Sadie could be free. Here she stood, enjoying the sun like none other below her, alone and filled with sights and wonders. She could find her own food. Her stomach gurgled, content with even a small meal. The adults only cared about themselves and what they thought. If they weren't right, everyone else was simply wrong. She didn't need to listen to the teachings or instructions her mind was flooded with. They were all lies taught to her to keep the adults above her. She was now above them. Why should she go back? The 'clan' they told her about and raised her in accomplished nothing but driving her mother towards ruin and pain. Clan didn't matter anymore than the stirrings of the grass or the whistling of the crystals, unless she gave herself over to it and decided it mattered to her. It was useless, a tool abused by the strongest of them to lay down their rules and their ideals. She should have the space to make her own rules. She had the space now. She made the rules. All Sadie needed was to walk away.
Part of her cringed in confusion. These ideas did not seem like her, nor did they feel good to have in her mind. They slipped like fish through the current in her head and utterly refused to let her get a grip on them. She wondered what she should do.
Mentally, she told herself to stop, but her mind did not obey. The sun beat down on her, and she remembered where she was, as well as the presence of a monster somewhere around her. She didn't like this. She was scared. She should run.
“Stop it.” The words drifted out of her. “Stop it!” She repeated them because it felt good to do something. A power she didn't know filled her from the inside—a still power carrying a heavy weight behind it. It flew from her in one more yell of, “ENOUGH!”
And nothing happened. She needed to leave, to go, to escape. She was—she was going to die.
Sadie opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again to say, “Stop. Just stop.” But her thoughts wouldn't stop. They had no reason to stop, no reason to be denied. So she began to think of them, to think of what was important.
Mother was important. Mother would be sad if she didn't come back, and so would Father, so she couldn't leave, even if she wanted to, because she had to say goodbye. Everything she did now was for Mother's sake—to try to help her as she tried to help the clan, who did care. They cared about Mother, or else why would Crane and the others have fought to do what they thought could help? Clan tried to help, Clan gave up the last of their preserved food on a small plate. The teachings of the clan were as true as they knew them to be, and she could still find good advice among the bad.
She had many reasons to return. And she wanted to return.
Something heavy and cold fell on her; something sharp pricked her back. Her chin slammed into the ground. A wing bent awkwardly. She gasped and struggled, scraping off some scales. But she emerged whole and mostly unhurt. She looked at what fell on her. The creature was undoubtedly the beast. She shook herself from the feeling of it on top of her and mechanically turned to go.
The entrance gaped ahead of her, a giant hollow eye watching as she tramped toward it.
Down, down, down, she went along the path to her clan, who would be so happy to learn the monster was dead. Down, down, falling down like warm words whispered. She slid deeper into her shell, struggling to climb out and operate the puppet strings of her body, drowned in blue beads. Her steps were wooden, and her wings ached. Music floated to her ears—the music of argument, hatred, and discussion.
Crane waited, with his namesake ebony, bone, and scarlet wings spread wide in challenge for a duel. His cane was nowhere to be seen. And on the other side stood Mother, being held up by Father. The clan circled them, leaving a gap for the entrance where Sadie stood. Some heads turned her way as they noticed her presence, but most eyes stayed fixed on the battle. Secretive words lisped among the crowd. Sadie didn't catch them; her attention was glued.
A clan of gossipy dragons is hardly novel and is a most natural occurrence, but a clan caught in the straits of a war stretches thin over its gossip as dragons become their more solitary and independent counterparts who have forgotten the security and intentions of a clan and will drift apart on its suppositions and assumptions to become just a bunch of dragons who have decided they no longer agree and do not care to make up. That phenomenon happened to Sadie's clan around her very body, and if she could have taken notice of it, she might have saved them with the announcement of the beast's death before any fighting began.
Sadie watched Verlaine breathe. It was hard to tell at this distance, but the rise and fall of her chest synchronized with the sound of her own heartbeat and felt like the realest thing in the world, more than the ground under her talons or the murmurs and jostling of the dragons around her. So long as that heart pumped and struggled to survive, so did Sadie.
She didn't want to ask the question, but it reared its head and gripped her soul between its teeth. Sadie wondered what she would do without her mother.
And the answer shook while her father stepped forward and accepted Crane's challenge in her mother's stead.
Crane couldn't refuse. He bowed his head, the picture of humble forbearance, and then he shot upwards and dove, aiming for Father's throat. He stood his ground and scattered a handful of leaf green beads, and a gust of wind, his inborn element, hurtled toward an airborne opponent. Crane snapped his wings open to ride it but failed as his right wing cracked horribly against the far wall. Her father moved quickly, and he stood over his opponent, flinging bloody scales onto the crowd, which erupted with cheers or condemnation alike.
“The monster is dead!” Sadie screamed, realizing it was too late. “The monster is dead!” Her voice may as well have been silent, for no one heard it.
She kept screaming, but as Crane twisted underneath her father's knees and whipped his tail upwards, catching the horns of her father's head, the crowd only grew louder.
Jerle's mouth moved before he raised his foreclaw high, poised for Crane's throat. Crane tucked his head in, and her father scratched the sole of his foot along the sharp horns of his crown.
And the crowd finally surged forward. It started with arguments, loud and caustic, as dragons accused each other. Some said the devil above was a good thing, a natural predator they should respect and be wary of, made by the Eleven themselves, and others called it a product of the Shade, defiling all it touched. A few denounced everyone else but themselves for daring to argue with their betters. The situation devolved so rapidly that Sadie did not have time to process it before dragons began attacking their opponents to prove through might what words could not accomplish. It reminded her of the skirmish this morning, which felt so long ago. Except this time, she wasn't watching from a window.
Somebody bumped into her, and as she stumbled, someone else's foreclaw rattled over her crown of horns. Dragons were flooding the air, and their shrieks burst inside Sadie's head. She tramped through the throngs of duelists, dazed by the sound and the blow over her head. Her head swiveled toward any speck of marigold or lightning blue.
She blinked; she saw demons. They killed and maimed, teeth sharp and claws glinting, right before her eyes. Dragons fought, and they egged them on. This war was a celebration for them. Sadie stood there, waiting for the alarm to go up, and for the dragons to turn upon their common enemy instead of their kin. The devil was dead, but there was more than one. Something gashed her thigh. She gasped, bowing her head to the floor. Hands pushed her forward; she limped obediently.
To tell you the truth, Sadie did not remember what happened after. The whole period of time became a blotch in her memory, a permanent stain of suffering and fear over her life. Somehow, Verlaine found her and brought her away, and later, she remembers her father appearing too. They moved territories, drifting through her father's homeland, until they came to the place where the sun shone the longest. Her family stayed solitary, the experiences of their last clan making them wary of joining another.
Sadie took up her mother's furs and spears and hunted monsters till the day she died, rows of skulls clattering, announcing her to the clans she visited. Over time, her legend was forgotten, but the song she hummed, so others might remember the indescribable beast, became known as Sorrow Song.
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do I know what I'm going to do with you, girlie? No. Not a clue. Does it matter to me? Not at all, I love your colors and matchy eyes. I also seem to be collecting G1's with your scheme as well. Welcome to the family black and blue.
Name Einar?
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