Theme: Home Flight Pride
Dragon's Name: Starseeker
Entry: Arcane flight pride in a Water lair
Optional: Why this dragon/outfit? Warning - story time!
Starseeker, while still a hatchling, was on an excursion to the inland-most parts of the Starwood Strand when her group got ambushed by a hunting-pack of Plague Mirrors. She does not know what happened to the others, but she herself was kidnapped and kept as a sort of entertainment. The Mirrors were amazed that such a small and fragile creature could ever survive and thus took her with them all the gruesome way through the Wandering Contagion, around the Abiding Boneyard and to the other side of the Plaguebringer's territory, the shores of the Sea of a Thousand Currents. All the way the Mirror-pack was harassed by two very persistent Streaks, one blue and one magenta, who defended Starseeker against any attempts by her captors to nibble at her growing wings and fins or otherwise threaten her. When the pack reached the shores, the Streaks flew off over the water, and Starseeker's heart sank. Now she felt truly abandoned.
As night fell and the pack receded from the waters, where they had been feeding on fish and shrimp, Starseeker looked up to the sky, lost and hopeless now that the two Streaks, the last remainder of her home, had left her to rot in this ghastly place. She was angry at these stars then: had her parents not always taught that no Arcane dragon would ever be lost under the starlight? That her god would always be with her, in the light of the stars? She unfolded her wings, spread her frills and let out a frustrated shriek, filled with all the little magic her young body could muster in this foreign domain. A little cloud of glittering light was all she managed, useless to her just like the stars above - even magic failed her, or so she thought.
As the Mirrors burst out in frightening cheers and roars about her "display of the great power of the Arcanist" and showered her with taunts and ridicule, they were completely distracted from the fine humming of big wings cutting the air above them, the quick vanishing and reappearing off starlight blocked by huge airborne entities and the soft rustle of feathers on the nightly breeze. The Mirrors only realized their mistake when three gigantic dragons barreled down from the darkness right into their midst with the force of a Tsunami.
The confrontation was short and ugly, and ended with the pack quickly being chased off into the Boneyard, never to be seen again. Starseeker had balled up under an overhanging rock, sure that the packmembers were fighting over the right to finally devour her, when she heard a well-know squawk beside her hideout and looked up to see her Streaks had returned and apparently not alone: the largest dragons she had ever seen in her young live stood around her, looking down with their gigantic eyes the size of her entire body. Two of these eyes were blood-red and glowed with a fierce passion. "She is weak, she will die. We should just leave her." A cold voice, rough, hard. "No, Dreamseeker, she is one of me, she seeks like us. Now we found her, no harm will come to her, she is home. She is safe." Another voice, deep, calm. The words were odd, but the voice alone carried protection. "She is beautiful, she glows like the stars. Don't fear, little Starseeker, you are with us now." The third voice, warm, decisive.
Starseeker was offered a huge paw by the source of the second voice. It felt natural climbing up the strong limb, armored with thick scales and plate-like fins. And as Starseeker settled down all the way up between the giant guardian's mighty horns, for the first time in her life she felt completely safe.
As time passed she got over the trauma of her captivity. The two Streaks never left her side and became her closest companions. She found pride in her heritage and the fact that even when she stopped believing in her Flight, the Arcanist never stopped believing in her: the starlight never faded, the Streaks got help and her glittering cloud of magic distracted the pack and lead Truthseeker to her position. As her connection to her birth-flight deepened, the starlight-glow given off by her wings and frills intensified and she now proudly carries the emblems of the Arcanist. Her studies of the universe's mysteries even attracted a companionable comet to her.
If Starseeker would be into mottos, her's would be: "Hope might fail you, but the stars won't."
