Archive of Our Own

A bit of silver lametta fell off of Turtle's wing as he ducked underneath the blankets. A hot moment of dread spanned a year, and then everything was calm. Turtle slithered out from beneath the heavy fabric, opened and closed his claw, took a breath. Nothing terrible had come to pass, not in the way it had in his head. Everything was calm, and everything was actual.

One more breath. Turtle was fine now. He had got his plan to mitigate the situation all sorted. It was the usual plan—withdrawal. He had been trying not to fall back on old habits lately, to take after his friends and press on no matter what, but this was a circumstance worthy of a retreat if ever there was one.

The problem was in two halves. The first was that Turtle wasn't going to go to the ball that everyone else was going to, the big glitzy one on the winter solstice. He hadn't really wanted to or expected to or anything, of course, it just would have been nice. The second half of the problem was much bigger—apparently not realising that he didn't really want to or expect to or anything, Turtle had asked Kinkajou to be his date, knowing full well that she was already going with Moon, and he had to admit that the asking was a little bit like pleading. She turned him down, and she had done it all sweetly and inoffensively, but it was still horribly embarrassing, and Turtle knew she wouldn't forget, not for a while.

He could. He had done it before—filled a span of time with enough empty space that he forgot all about what had actually happened. And when he did, things could go back to normal. That was the plan for the next couple of weeks, and to facilitate that plan, Turtle decided to take a nap.

Turtle closed his eyes, cast himself into cool darkness. It was like that for a while, until there flickered into being a band of white light. The light sounded like this:

"UGH!"

Turtle woke to find Peril in front of him, both glowing and glowering. She was coiled up like a viper in her half of the cave, letting off just a little more steam than usual. Something had been charred to cinders between her talons.

"What?" was all Turtle's sleepy tongue had to say.

She blinked at Turtle as she turned towards him. "You're here!?" she said. "I mean, I didn't realise you were still here. Sorry for waking you."

"Where else would I be?" Turtle stood up and splayed out his wings, bending down like a sea lion.

"You know, having fun, enjoying the season and all?" said Peril. "Not stuck in here like me?"

"Since when are you stuck in here?" said Turtle, a note of concern entering his voice. "Did something happen?"

"Something absolutely happened," replied Peril. "I got told that it's inappropriate for me to go to the dance with Clay! And for pretty much no reason, too."

"What? But you were so looking forward to it," said Turtle. He made use of his invulnerable scales to lay a wing over Peril's. "Is it just because he's a teacher?"

"That's what they say," Peril rumbled.

"You think there's an ulterior motive?" said Turtle.

"Um..." Peril's wings started to relax, furling back up by her sides. "No, I think they're being honest when they say that's why. But still!"

"But still." Turtle nodded sagely. "Well, we've the same problems, then. I, uh, didn't manage to find anyone willing to go with me."

"What, really?" said Peril. "No way. You're too charming for that. I'm sure there's someone in the Copper Winglet or something who'd love to go with you."

"You're right," Turtle said, though he didn't believe it, "but I don't think—"

"Wait a minute," Peril interrupted. She stepped back to squint at Turtle. "You don't have a date."

"Um," said Turtle. "Yes?"

"And I don't have a date."

"Yes?"

Turtle's confusion was feigned. He knew exactly what Peril was getting at, but he didn't want to acknowledge it.

"So, how about we be each other's dates?" She turned out her front claws, offering the idea. Turtle hesitated to take it.

"I mean..." Turtle had a bit of a quandary on his talons. He couldn't exactly hang his best friend out to dry—but this was something interesting, and something interesting happening made it way more likely that he would wind up remembering everything that happened this month.

"Yeah?" said Peril.

Turtle really thought about it, and then he felt embarrassed for having really thought about it, because he should have figured out a long time ago that he should be willing to inconvenience himself for his friends. "I don't see why not," he said.

The feeling came over him that there was a reason why not that he didn't remember, but he couldn't quite grasp it. It lay heavily in the back of his mind, but he was used to ignoring the dread back there, so he let it go.

"Great!" exclaimed Peril. "Well, there is one thing. Can you dance?"

Was that it? No, whatever problem Turtle had forgotten about was something way less solvable than that. Or maybe it was exactly as solvable, and it just felt worse...

"No," said Turtle. "You've seen me try."

"I have?" said Peril.

"Case in point."

Peril laughed, a bit of smoke rising from her snout. "That makes two of us," she said. "Clay said he was going to teach me, but I don't know if that'll still work out."

Would Clay even know? Turtle struggled to imagine when in the adventures of the Dragonets of Destiny they would have learned how to dance.

"Why would that be a problem?" said Turtle. "He's just not allowed to be your date, right? It's not like you're banned from talking to him."

Peril paused. "You know how I said they earlier? When I was talking about being told all that?"

"Yeah?" said Turtle.

"Well, what I meant was he," said Peril. "Clay told me that himself. And when he did, I might have said some things I didn't mean."

"Ah," said Turtle. "I guess we'll have to wait for you to patch things up, then?"

"Patch things up?" said Peril, and she sounded honestly confused. "He totally hates me now. No way I could patch things up." Her voice wavered a little, and she shook her head.

If Peril ever somehow actually got Clay to hate her, Turtle was certain she would be way more of a mess, but he didn't contradict her.

"So..." he said. He considered just forgoing the dancing part of the dance altogether, but there was no way everyone else wouldn't notice, and laugh at, the only two dragons standing there staring at each other. "Do we know anyone else who can dance?" he asked.

"Hm." Peril sat back down, drumming her talons on the cave floor. "Do IceWings do that? Dancing?"

Turtle was always a little uncomfortable when faced with the gaps in Peril's knowledge, but he knew what she was getting at. "Winter would probably know at least a little," he said. "That has to be part of a well-rounded IceWing education." Then again, Winter's well-rounded IceWing education had been cut short by—well, by a lot of things. Honestly, you could pick any two tragedies, and Winter had probably suffered them back-to-back.

 "Yeah, okay," said Peril, turning her gaze upwards, "but he's always with Qibli these days. I hardly see him anymore! How are we supposed to get him to teach us?"

"By asking him?" said Turtle. "I don't think we have to coerce him or anything. Even if we do, he owes me a favour anyway."

"Really?" asked Peril. "Why?"

"I, um, think he would prefer it if I didn't say."

"Oh," said Peril, drawn out like she was suddenly comprehending. "Who's he killed? How? Why?"

"What?" said Turtle. "No, it's not—it's more embarrassing and less illegal than murder, and we should leave it at that."

"Got it," said Peril, and Turtle decided to ignore her grin.

When Turtle and Peril entered Winter's cave, drawn by the sounds of shouting echoing through the stone, they found him snarling about an inch away from Qibli's face, his arms supporting Qibli's underside while the SandWing's front claws were occupied on his shoulders. He stood up straight and let go when he noticed them entering, clearing his throat. "If you'll excuse us," he offered.

"He means hello," said Qibli from the ground, craning his head up to look at Turtle.

"I don't want to pry," said Turtle, "but what were you shouting about in the middle of... this?"

"Well, somebody insisted we get coordinated for the dance," Qibli flicked his tail up at Winter, "and now somebody's mad that I'm winning."

"Is dancing the kind of thing you win at?" asked Peril.

Winter and Qibli answered at the same time. "He thinks so," Qibli clarified as he stood up. "And I guess I have to think so too, if I want to be coordinated, but you can form your own opinion."

"Right." Turtle nodded. "We actually are in need of a bit of coordination, and we were wondering if he could help us out, but I assume he's too busy with you...?"

"I'm still here, you know," Winter cut in. "And yes, I wouldn't be keen to swap one incompetent student out for a pair of them."

"Of course," said Turtle. "Don't worry, we'll figure something out. Thanks—"

Peril jabbed him in the side with the end of her wing, producing a clunking sound like river rocks knocking together. "You have a favour!" she whispered in his ear. "Right? You weren't lying to me, were you?"

"I wasn't," Turtle whispered back, "but I think we should just—"

Peril took a step forward, raising a claw to hush Turtle. "Qibli," she said. "We have a spot of private business with Winter, that's... really urgent. Could you leave the cave for a bit?" Her voice took on an authoritative tone that Turtle figured must be her impression of Scarlet; the image held even though the words were reasonably polite.

"Sure?" Qibli said. He shot Turtle a wondering glance as he slipped by him, and Turtle could only shrug in response.

"Alright, Turtle," said Peril once Qibli had gone. "Tell him! Tell him all about the sordid mess he made, and what he needs to do to make up for it."

"I swear I'm not telling you," said Turtle. He turned to Winter. "But, um, I never did ask for anything in return, you know, so if you could just—"

"This is low of you," interjected Winter. "But fine, yes, okay, just so long as it's quick."

"I don't think you realise the gravity of the situation," said Peril. "We're the ones with the cards here. We're the ones who make the rules, and you had better follow those rules, or else we're gonna go out and tell—"

Turtle loudly cleared his throat. "Thank you, Peril," he said, and gave Winter a placating smile. "It is kind of a big ask," he said, "but so was what I did for you, so..."

"Right, right." Winter waved a claw in the air. "I surrender. I'll give you a pointless little hour of my life."

Turtle smiled genuinely. "Thank you—"

"But," Winter continued, "you're going to have to listen to me. Even if you don't want to. Do you understand?"

Peril scoffed. "Why would I not listen to you when I want you to teach me?"

Winter glared at her. "Because I don't think you really want it. Nobody does, not at first. It's not natural. It's not kind. Qibli and I gave it up, in fact, for a more hospitable practice."

"...what are you talking about?" said Turtle. "To clarify, we're talking about learning how to dance."

"As am I!" said Winter, affronted by some implication Turtle hadn't intended. "But forgive me. I had assumed you were already familiar with the IceWing Dance of Death."

"Terrible," said Winter, a little under his breath. "Just terrible." 

Turtle halted his clumsy spin, tucking his wing away. He had to be careful not to scrape the tip against Peril's throat, which Winter had insisted he threaten. "Come on," he said. "We're doing our best over here." He gestured at Peril with her eyes closed, still balancing in the weird air-grasping pose Winter called the Ringing of the Bells.

"Why did you stop?" Winter exclaimed. "That was brilliant!"

"Or was it terrible?" said Turtle. "I could hear you."

"Are we stopping?" Peril opened her eyes and blinked a couple times, still not lowering her arms.

"You are terrible," said Winter. "Beautiful and terrible. Look at you! Look at your fierce countenances, the dark sentences written on them! You look exactly like the kind of dragons who would destroy the mighty and the holy."

"Um," said Turtle. "Thanks?"

"What are you acting all confused for?" said Peril. "I knew I looked terrifying. Didn't you?" She struck another pose, the Staring As Though the Responsibility Lay Solely Upon You, baring her fangs and making Turtle jump as she leaned in.

"But do we want to be..." Turtle exhaled. "The most terrifying dragons in the room? I really just wanted to, you know, not be standing there."

"Then you shouldn't have taken up the Dance of Death," said Winter. "The tradition takes only ambitious comers."

"But I'm not—"

"I know you're not," Winter interrupted with a sneer. "Wet fish of a dragon. But you're skilled nonetheless."

"You got that right!" Peril pressed Turtle to her side with her wing, which, while not deadly, wasn't the most comfortable thing either. "Why don't you want to be all terrifying?" she asked him. "Seems like it comes naturally."

Turtle wriggled out from the heat and the pressure. "Nobody else is going to be terrifying, are they?" he said. "We'll be the odd ones out."

"Yeah, 'cause we're the coolest ones there!" Peril exclaimed. "Nobody's gonna pick on you for being terrifying. Dragons who do that don't live long. I would know."

The fact that Peril hardly ever made her cavalier attitude towards violence apparent these days made the times she did that much more jarring. "I guess," said Turtle. He looked to Winter. "What's next on the docket, then?"

"You're getting out of here, for one," said Winter. "It's been over an hour, and my debt is repaid. But after that—we'll see. I may have to force you to let me keep teaching you. And I'll be watching during the ball." He narrowed his eyes. "I expect to see results."

Turtle shivered lightly, the glowscales on his wings dimly flaring up. He said a silent prayer of thanks he didn't have to deal with actual teachers like Winter any more. "I guess we have a new hobby, then," he said to Peril as he turned to leave.

"Oh, that's one more thing," Winter called out. "Practice, or you're dead to me."

It was difficult to dance without music. Winter had supplied some humming during their lesson, but since then, Peril and Turtle had just been shuffling alone in their cave for apparently no reason. The silence started to grate quickly, and they had to fill the dead air with words.

Peril didn't bring Clay up once in these conversations, except to say she didn't care about him, and it was only now that Turtle realised the seriousness of their rift. He was conflicted about whether it was a good thing for Peril; she might have been getting over her obsession with him, or she might have been in danger of losing one of her only anchors.

In the end, he, as always, decided to play it safe. He brought Clay up the day before the dance, when he and Peril were resting and he was idly touching up an essay. None of his subtle options worked, so he decided to just say it: "Have you made up with him at all?"

"What?" said Peril. "Why would I?"

"Because he's your best friend?" said Turtle. "And you've saved each other's lives, too, haven't you?"

"You're my best friend," said Peril. "And that's enough for me! Honestly. I get what you mean, and maybe I'll talk to him later, but it really doesn't need to be, like, now. You know?"

Turtle didn't reply. Peril fell silent, looked away. He traced her gaze to the floor of the cave, studied the way her wings and tail were folded into a nice compact space, and beneath the battle-hardened gladiator covered snout to tail in flame, he saw the exact same type of sad little coward he was.

"Peril," he said. "I'm not going to say patching things up isn't scary, or even that it's necessary—but I am going to say that it's not as bad as you think. If he's anything like he presents himself and how you say he is, there's nothing you could do to get Clay to hate you. He'd be ready to forgive you if you killed someone. Cursing him out is nothing."

Peril kept staring in the other direction for a long, long time. Turtle hoped he had chosen his words right. He had just said what he figured he would want to hear in this situation. Moons, had he misjudged the whole thing? Maybe the ex-gladiator thing mattered more than he realised.

"Fine." Peril turned around. "I'll go and try to patch things up, or whatever, on one condition."

Turtle smiled with relief. "And that's?"

"You have to tell me what you did for Winter."

"Oh, come on," said Turtle. "You were literally threatening to blackmail him."

"I was?"

"Yes!"

"Huh. Well, I wouldn't, I promise. Especially now that we're doing the Dance of Death," Peril imitated Winter's accent, "under his supervision."

"I'm going to hold you to that promise," said Turtle. "But, you know, I have been wanting to tell this to someone."

"Oh, it's that kind of favour, is it?" said Peril.

"Maybe?" said Turtle. "Like, look. You know how Winter and Qibli are together?"

"No," said Peril.

"What—seriously?" said Turtle. "You really didn't notice?"

"How did you notice?" said Peril. "They just look like really good friends on the outside."

"I—well, that's the thing," said Turtle. "I do have a bit of inside knowledge on the matter. Winter wanted to make his feelings known, and he's an IceWing, so he wants to do it with poetry. But he's Winter, so he thinks he can't come up with something good enough. He knows I'm a writer..."

"Oh, I've heard this one!" said Peril. "Osprey told me—Osprey, the old dragon who would talk to me back in the Arena. You told Winter what to say, but you ended up falling in love with Qibli yourself, right?"

"No," said Turtle. "Winter fell in love with Qibli, and Qibli fell in love with Winter, and I stayed out of it."

"Oh," said Peril. "Well, why didn't you fall in love with him? I think I would."

"You know," said Turtle, "if I were hearing this for the first time, I would absolutely figure that's how the story ends. But as it turns out, I can't imagine falling in love with someone who thinks anything I write is romantic."

"Really?" said Peril. "But that's most dragons, right? You're a good writer."

"But I'm not a romantic by any means," said Turtle. "I had to write to my mother to get her to send me some of her love poetry. I'm as seductive as a clam by myself."

"But I think..." Peril trailed off. "I don't know. Just, like, don't be too hard on yourself, alright?"

"This is justified," said Turtle. But he saw a glint of concern in Peril's blue eyes, and something finally clicked in the back of his head that he was disparaging himself out loud. "But, um, you're right," he said. "Sorry."

And next to that glint—what was that? Turtle couldn't make it out for the life of him. All he knew was that it was something that he, very vaguely, felt as well.

The Great Hall was dressed up in red and white baublery for the season, and Turtle was having to shake more tinsel off than ever. It was the early hours of the morning, and nearly nobody was here quite yet. Instruments had been stood up on the dais at the back, and the space in front of it had been levelled out into a smooth dance floor.

Turtle was pleasantly surprised by how maturely Peril had apologised to Clay, and he felt proud knowing some of that maturity was his own doing. The two of them were getting accustomed to the floor, gradually tightening the grand, sweeping movements of the Dance of Death until they were reasonably sure that nobody would be incinerated.

"Dragons will avoid us regardless," he said, ducking underneath Peril's wing as though avoiding a blow, "so I don't think we have to be too restrained."

"Which means I get to do this." Peril slid her arms beneath Turtle and scooped him up, flipping him over and hoisting him into the air. She wasn't carrying him for long, but it was just long enough for Turtle to realise what the problem he had forgotten was. When Peril let him down, he stopped where he stood and looked up.

The ceiling was full of seaweed. The seaweed was mistletoe. 

"We're going to have to kiss..." he said.

"If you say so," said Peril. "Why?"

Turtle blushed as he looked back at her. "Well, no, we don't have to," he said. "But it's how these things end. Everyone kisses under the mistletoe—under the many, many mistletoes." He gestured upwards. "I guess... honestly, we're going to look weird enough as it is that we can just not do it. Never mind, don't worry about it."

"But I want to," said Peril.

"Beg your pardon?"

"I want to!" Peril had no problem repeating it. "I've never really done it before, and it sounds fun. Don't you think?"

"I..." Turtle was really expecting to have a stronger aversion to kissing Peril. There was definitely something off about it, but he found himself not caring. He wanted a first kiss, too.

So he had to come up with something he would care about. "Hold on," he said. "Let me recite one of those poems I wrote on Winter's behalf. Really quickly, I promise."

"Sure?" said Peril.

Turtle cleared his throat. "I've been doubtful of everything all my life," he said,

"but now I believe, instantly and forever:

"a trail has been blazed ahead of us,

"and no one can ever obscure it.

"Let's avoid a lot of useless words.

"We'll drink the blue waters of purity,

"and names will never hurt us."

A moment of silence elapsed. "That's great!" Peril exclaimed. "Beautiful, honestly. I mean, I don't really know many poems, but even if I did, I'd think that was good."

There it was—Peril was a boor who liked the poetry Turtle knew was terrible. All the reason not to kiss her right there. Except—Turtle already knew that. Peril's lack of education was one of the first things anyone learned about her, and Turtle knew firsthand how much she adored anything he wrote. Not only had this not made him want to kiss her any less, but...

Why did he feel so happy knowing she liked his poetry?

"It's not that good," he said. "It's dull and flat. Clichéd, actually. I still think that anyone who finds it beautiful is—no offense—a bit of a..."

He couldn't actually come up with an insult that would cause no offense. But surely Peril got the picture, right? If she believed he didn't want to kiss her, she wouldn't try, and he wouldn't have to do anything to stop it from happening.

"You really think that?" she said. Her voice had a sharper edge to it than usual. "You really think I'm an idiot for being your friend? Like, I don't know, you can feel however you want about what you make, but acting like something's wrong with me is just..." She exhaled through her teeth, and her claws dug into the stone floor. "I guess you feel like you're being humble, or whatever, but you're just being rude. And for what, too? If you keep thinking that anyone who likes what you do is an idiot, you're going to end up all sad and alone like that. I don't want you to be sad and alone. And I really don't want you to keep acting like you're better than me for being bad at something."

"Um," said Turtle. "Right. Sorry." It was supremely uncomfortable to be on the other side of a talk like this. "Thank you for... for never being nearly as critical as I expect you to be. You're a very smart dragon, too. I see a lot of myself in you. That might be why I, um..."

"Hey!" A voice was calling from the other end of the cave. Qibli stood there, the band starting to file in past him. "Somebody's here early!"

"Yeah?" said Turtle. He ambled quickly over to Qibli, the combined embarrassment of the past two minutes all catching up with him at once. "What are you doing here? You're not with the band, are you?" 

"No, no," said Qibli. "Just conveying a message from Winter. At the climax, they're gonna start playing real music, he says," he indicated the band with his tail as they started setting up on the dais, "and that's when you're supposed to perform the most important technique. No idea what that means."

"You don't?" said Turtle. "I thought you were also doing the Dance of Death."

"Oh, no," said Qibli. "He tried for five minutes before giving up. I think he was afraid I would poison him with my stinger. So we're just doing normal, marginally more safe IceWing dancing."

"I see," said Turtle.

"The band's probably going to practice the set soon," said Qibli, "including the new climax, so, you know, this'd be a pretty good time to practice that most important technique."

"Mhm..." Turtle looked back at Peril. "Thanks."

"No problem." Qibli vanished back through the hall.

There was twenty minutes of tuning, and then forty minutes of dancing, during which other dragons started to enter sporadically. Turtle was not focused on them whatsoever—any worry about how he would be perceived had melted into the rhythm of the dance. The bandleader had the courtesy to tell him and Peril that they were about to shift into real music.

The descriptor wasn't entirely wrong. Only when he heard it did Turtle realise that the sinister dodecaphonic screeching of violins that ensued was the only proper backing to the Dance of Death, which seemed almost like an anti-musical form of dance. As it started to ramp up, and Turtle's thoughts turned back to the mistletoe, he knew it was time to transition into the most important technique.

The problem was that Turtle also didn't know what Winter meant by that. He assumed that it might have been the one with the longest name, the Killing All the Soldiers to an Old Song of Peace; A Whole Sea of Normal Dragons Sings As One; But Even One Hundred Thousand Voices Can Be Wrong, and he whispered an abbreviated form of that to Peril.

She got the message. The tonal atonality reached its terrible peak, and they stopped dodging each other's wings and arms and teeth. They collided. Peril's scales hissed against Turtle's, the killing fire dulled into a deep hum. She was so heavy. They intertwined until they were inseparable, wet and cold merging with dry and hot, an alien landscape of scales coming into being.

In the power of the movement, the world went black, and the music deadened to a note. There were no other living beings, not in the future, past, or present, but Turtle and the flicker of white light before him. There was silence and strength. Turtle neared the light, neared it and neared it and he tasted something warm and sweet all of a sudden, and the light became the world.

There was union.

Or something like it. Turtle wasn't sure exactly what happened that moment, other than, obviously, that he had kissed Peril and nothing bad happened. And when they did it again during the actual dance, and it went exactly the same magical way, Turtle had to accept that there was something about the Dance of Death that just did that to you, that made you very briefly, and in his case a bit clumsily, become the centre of reality.

"I was afraid for my life," was what Winter had to say afterwards. "Genuinely. Just seeing glimpses of you out of the corner of my eye. And I didn't see anything when you kissed, of course, because I was occupied—but I heard it. I heard a little click. And I knew one or both of you had died."

And been reborn!