Aster

He didn't know it, but from the day he was born, Aster was meant to be alone.

When he playfighted with his brothers, he was the only one whose ears would twitch when he heard some of the grown ups talking. They said some words. Words his brothers couldn't understand, but his wits were strong enough to make sense of it. His brothers were to be sold off for profit. They were imperfect, a hindrance to the clan's dignity, though he wasn't sure what dignity meant at the time. Even then, shivers of fear would run down his long, spiral body each time he settled with his siblings to sleep. They laughed at him for it, teased him for being as meek as a Wildwood Owlet. They didn't understand, didn't know, couldn't see. If they were going to be taken away from home, what about him? Was he imperfect?... Did mom and dad not care about him, either?

Aster never found out if he was right or wrong. It was on another, sleepless night where he came. He heard loud noises and shut his eyes tightly, knowing it was just his tiny heart hammering in his chest at the sound of the rumbling thunder outside. The moment, however, that he could hear the breath of something else, something much bigger than him - was the moment he opened his eyes wide.

The thunder crashed, brightly illuminating a towering Ridgeback in front of him. His eyes were a bright, sky blue - a Lightning dragon. But it wasn't the fact he was a Lightning Dragon that scared him. It was the look in his eyes. He was hungry- bloodthirsty to fill out some kind of vendetta, a revenge that he didn't even know about.

By then, his siblings had woken up, staring at the Ridgeback, frozen. It leaned over them, before opening up his massive jaws, picking him up at the scruff of his neck. Fear sped through the young spiral's body faster than it ever had before. He couldn't think - in fact, he could barely breathe as it was - and all he could do was let out a long, pitiful squeal, desperately reaching out his tiny claws to where his parents should be, near his brothers.

"M-mom, anyone, help!"

That was the last he saw of his siblings, their horrified faces. As for mother, her face was too obscured by the darkness for Aster to see anything. He didn't get to find out if they loved him or not. Not even a goodbye, though he wasn't sure if they loved him much.

The Ridgeback fled with him into the night, to the sound of the thunderstorm readily striking at any given moment. The rain poured down on his scales, and Aster felt the weakest he had ever been in his life. He was wet, cold, hungry, and scared. There was no telling what this Ridgeback wanted him for, or even where they were going. He would find out soon enough. Arcane. They were headed for Arcane Territory, a place he hadn't even learned about. It was there that the Ridgeback would talk to him, almost giving him another heart attack.

"You are a hatchling who got separated from his mother near the border with Plague. Are we clear?"

The Shadow dragon whimpered, forced to nod. He gulped back his anxiety, big, violet eyes focused on the dragon.

"What's your name?" The Ridgeback growled, leaning over him so close that he could feel his breath on his scales.

"I-I..."

"Name!"

"I don't know, honest!"

The Lightning Dragon let out a huff of annoyance, rings of angry smoke perturbing from his nostrils. He was so occupied that he didn't notice the flowers he had crushed over his massive claws until he looked down. Silently, the Ridgeback cleared a massive talon away, to show a beautiful, lavender-coloured flower with too many petals to count. Or rather, it would have been beautiful, had it not been squished and mangled to the point that it wasn't even a flower, but only a shredded mess.

"Aster. That's your name from now on, and don't you go forgetting it."

That marked his first day as the member of an Arcane clan. He couldn't get used to it. Not ever. All the dragons other than the Ridgeback he had encountered were kind - young Tiamat would ask him to help her with her research, giving him a soft, reassuring smile, while Liviel would always try to take him out on excursions around the Starwood Strand. But no matter what, he always ended up separating himself from all the others. He would sneak and slip away before they even noticed he was gone. He was even too meek for a Spiral at best, only highlighting his failures. Aster knew the truth at the start, having always felt it churn darkly in his stomach. Even with intelligence, he was the cowardliest dragon of them all.

See, it wasn't that he was truly alone.

It was only that he was too afraid to let anyone in.

---

He didn't know how he fell in love with Tanith, only that the Skydancer had always been there for him. For once, he could speak to someone who wasn't Typhon, for once, someone understood his loneliness. When night fell and most of the clan went to sleep, he'd curl his tail around her and wonder how she could have ever fallen for him - a coward, by anyone's terms. But even when he brought the term up himself, she would always be the one to tell him otherwise.

"You're not a coward, Aster. You're just confused, and that's okay. Once you find out who you are, you'll realize."

And he thought maybe, he had found out who he was. Something inside him felt stronger the more he was with Tanith. Raijin's steely glares couldn't penetrate him anymore - he could glare back, he could brush him off his shoulder like it was nothing. He knew his place and the Ridgeback couldn't change it.

"You know, my father - a Pearlcatcher - was from Shadow. With our mother he had me, Tiamat and our brother and sister, who stayed. Then we heard our brother had been sent away by the mirror who governed the clan. We were devastated. Tiamat won't stop trying to fix it, even to this day. But... Even though everything that happened is terrible, it's nice to think that things are better now. More peaceful. Don't you agree?"

Something in Aster's mind clicked. Far off in his distant memory, he remembered. The other Pearlcatcher, wherever he came from - the Pearlcatcher and his two children. The names were too fuzzy to remember, the faces blurred. But he remembered Onyx, and he remembered screaming.

"Aster?"

The spiral gulped, but nodded.

"Yeah," he said quietly, unable to say much else.

He knew where he came from now. And most importantly, he knew why he'd been taken.