Chapter Text
Moon had been waiting under a tree with her mother, trying (and failing) to convince her that leaving her on this windy mountaintop swarming with strange dragons was a bad idea. "I really, really don't want to stay here" Moon said again, no luck, Secretkeeper seemed intent on getting her away from the NightWing village. "I'll visit" her mother promised "you'll see me all the time. and you'll make friends here, I'm sure you will." Well, I hope you will, my weird little diamond.
Weird little-? "I'm not a weird little diamond," Moon protested, leading to another lecture on keeping her curse secret, and quickly a thought formed "So isn't this really dangerous? what if I make a mistake here, with all these different kinds of dragons around?"
"You won't, You'll be careful," Secretkeeper said firmly, ending Moon's latest attempt at escape. So they stayed a while longer watching dragons arrive at Jade Mountain. At one point they spotted the Seawing Queen with her were her two daughters and someone else… possibly a prince Moon thought, Followed very quickly by a Seawing barreling out the entrance cave Tsunami Moon realized.
She watched the Seawings catch up, apparently that other dragon was a prince and there were about thirty more, his name was Turtle and, oddly enough, Moon couldn’t hear anything going on in his head. Moon had expected some kind of reaction after Queen Coral casually commented about him and his brothers “who cares about them?, they can’t inherit the throne” even if he was used to it it would surely sting a little but no, nothing. Moon had only met a few dragons who could block her out even a bit, mostly only paranoid Nightwings, well, more paranoid than usual, then there were Rainwings Queen Glory was the best at blocking her out, it clearly wasn’t intentional but whenever she got uncomfortable some kind of wall would go up around her mind, an advantage of scales that link to your emotional state Moon thought, she figured Glory was the only Rainwing that could do this, that she was an exception to Rainwings, most of them seemed happy to let their emotions show and were easy enough to read but vaguely Moon had tagged a Rainwing off on in the distance that seemed to be trying to suppress their scales actively, and trying to read their thoughts felt like reading a scroll in a hurricane, a thought would pop up, scales would shift and then that thought would be violently thrown away and their scales would change to a completely different colour. Moon hoped this was another exception to the norm and not a phase Rainwings go through when learning to control their scales, for now she was trying to ignore it.
By comparison Turtle's mind was unnatural, there should be something but there wasn’t, no barrier or chaotic shuffling to protect secrets, just a serene stillness. How is he doing that? Moon couldn’t get her head around it, he seemed so placid and ordinary, then again, something Moon had figured out so far was that nobody was ordinary on the inside. Tsunami had rolled her eyes at her mothers comment and let Turtle know that she was glad he was here, “I want to see everything before I leave” said Queen Coral, as the Seawings disappeared into the cave, Turtle looked back at Moon, and suddenly she had a dizzy tilting feeling that the mountain was sliding down towards her. Darkness flashed before her eyes, and then a strange image, in bits and pieces like a puzzle whirling together. A beach. Sunlight. And Turtle pinning Anemone to the sand and the white-pink dragon writhed in pain. Then it was gone, and when she blinked, so was the Seawing family.