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It was a crisp spring morning beyond Winter’s narrow window. The faint chatter of Sanctuary’s distant marketplaces drifted into the study; with nary a cloud in the pale blue sky, it was, by all accounts, a perfect day for flying.
Winter was not flying.
...and Winter, you simply must tell me more about this dragonet of yours! She’s two, you say? Is she flying already? I don’t mean to brag, but my Peacemaker wasn’t even a year old yet when he spread his wings and took to the sky for the first time! Oh, it means everything to a mother. I remember it like it was yesterday! We were–
Winter pushed the letter from Foeslayer – no, Hope – aside, pushing aside the saccharine imagery of tree-hopping little airborne dragonets with it. Most dragonets learned to fly around the age of one – he knew that – but the word “most” was starting to feel less like a point of data and more and more like an excuse.
That thought didn’t exactly do anything to ease the tense frown from his silvery-white snout, and so Winter stood, stiff and groaning; a poor simulacrum of Icewing dignity.
Hope’s letter vanished among clutter as Winter turned away from the desk – writing implements, nice enough; a letter from Qibli, no doubt thoroughly irritating (and Winter really wasn’t going to read it this time); a scattering of familiar scrolls, all on dragonet-rearing; an advertisement for “Nebula’s Miraculous Dragonet Growth Formula!”, probably a scam; a Nightwing research scroll, Wing Splints for the Elderly and Disabled – and then his wandering gaze found there was a dragon standing in the doorway and his expression softened in an instant.
Moon.
Winter hesitated for a moment, before awkwardly stepping forward to bump his muzzle against hers. “Hello, Moon,” he murmured.
“Hi Winter,” Moon replied softly. “Peril’s almost here.”
“Right.” Winter pulled back to look her over. Oh, the glint in those wide eyes of hers, emeralds set in the finest obsidian; the way the light caught the white teardrop scales on each side of her face… three moons, she was as beautiful as the day she’d put that ring on his claw...
“You can say it out loud, you know?”
Winter shook himself from the traitorous thought. Moon was smiling at him, blushing faintly across her ebony scales – and a tiny hint of an undignified smile might have slipped onto Winter’s snout too. “Do I need to?”
“No.”
Winter realized he was staring, like some kind of dreamy-eyed dope, and the moment passed. Moon ruffled her wings, gesturing down the hall. “Come on. She’ll be here any moment.”
“Just Peril?” Winter asked, falling into step behind her. It was a modest house – a cottage, really, of stony construction; all narrow hallways and creaky floorboards and drab interiors. Moon was doing her best to cover the bare-wood walls in a layer of paintings and tapestries – inexpensive ones, though Winter still thought them pretty – but it was slow work, and the walls remained narrow either way.
Moon pressed a wingtip to her brow, concentrating. “Well,” she said after a moment, “Turtle isn’t with her. Just Peril and little Osprey.”
“But we invited all of them,” Winter said stubbornly. “The food I have prepared will go to waste.”
“You know how much Peril eats,” Moon replied lightly. “She cleaned us out last time, remember? You spent all night in the kitchen trying to keep up.”
“But I have cooked more this time–”
“And besides,” Moon went on, stepping deftly into the compact tiled kitchen, “Rhea told me she was hungry earlier!”
And then – as if on cue – a black-and-white blur shot out of the adjacent living area. It raced past Moon, past Winter, and out the front door, with the shrillest, most delighted cry of “Auntie Peril!!” Winter had ever heard.
Rhea.
She was two years old now! Well, almost – Winter stepped out of the stony cottage after his daughter, watching, as she scampered over the scraggly alpine grass in her mad race to beat Peril’s descending wingbeats to the open land beyond the sparse evergreens alongside the cottage.
Scampered. Not flew. Winter found his thoughts settling into a familiar groove. Not flying. Not flying. Rhea was almost two and she still wasn’t–
“She will,” Moon gently interrupted that thought, stepping out beside Winter. “She will. Soon.”
Winter made a noncommittal hum – and that was the end of it.
Peril touched down before Rhea in a wreath of flame. Fire licked over her copper scales; bushels of tufty grass burning, bright as a second sun, for one brief instant, before it all fizzled out and revealed Peril – fiery, awkward Peril – stepping out from the blackened patch she’d seared into the ground around her. “Um. Hi,” she called, with a stiff gesture of her wing – perhaps it could pass for a wave.
Moon elbowed Winter for that thought. “Be nice,” she hissed, stepping forward. “Hello, Peril!”
Peril opened her mouth to respond – and was promptly cut off by a smaller shape swooping over her shoulder! The pale orange dragonet bounded forward, into Rhea’s waiting wings, and bowled his larger counterpart over in some kind of highly enthusiastic tackle-hug.
“Osprey!” Peril scolded.
The young Osprey turned back at his mother’s reproachful tone, indignantly fluffing out the stumpy chest frill he’d inherited from his father. “Was just saying hi!” he bristled, as he picked himself up from a giggling Rhea. He didn’t look more than a year old.
“Papa says–”
“Says should say hi with words,” Osprey finished dryly for his mother, as though that was the most boring idea he’d ever heard. “But I see! Using eyes! This like how you say hi to Papa!”
“It’s not the same when you have firescales!” Peril protested, flapping her wings at him. “Shoo! Go play with your friend!”
Rhea tilted her little black-and-white muzzle back to Moon and Winter for approval – Moon nodded – and the two dragonets wasted no time skipping off towards the grove of evergreens along the cottage, chattering, no doubt, about how terribly unfair it was that they weren’t allowed to eat honey for dinner every day. Or something else of the sort – Winter had his suspicions.
Osprey was smaller than Rhea. Younger, by several seasons. And yet, as Winter watched, there he was breaking into little bursts of flight every few paces, like the earth itself repelled his talons – while two-year-old Rhea trotted along the ground behind him.
A familiar wave of heat pulled Winter out of those thoughts. “Peril,” he greeted stiffly, looking up to watch her careful, padding approach.
“Hi.” Peril stopped a safe distance from the couple. “Turtle couldn’t come. Sorry. He’s nesting – we, um–”
Moon gasped. “You have another egg!” she squeaked, catching the rest of the thought early. “Oh Peril, that’s wonderful! Congratulations!”
Winter stiffened. It felt like the ground had fallen out from under him. A-another?
“Well,” Peril huffed, poking at a tuft of grass beneath her claws, “I’m just glad the egg doesn’t have to be inside me anymore. Terrible feeling. We should put it in Turtle next time.” On cue, the grass burst into flames, and her gaze flicked up indignantly. “And I know that isn’t how it works, Moon! STOP MAKING THAT FACE AT ME.”
“That isn’t what you thought last time!” Moon squeezed out between giggles. “Last time you told me–”
“Well I know better now!!” Peril snapped. “I’m just saying that–”
Winter wasn’t listening.
Peril and Turtle were having another dragonet. The soggy fish prince and Scarlet’s walking wildfire! Their dragonet could fly. Their dragonet wasn’t stuck on the ground at two years old. What were they doing that he wasn’t?
What was wrong with him?
Winter’s chest felt impossibly tight all of a sudden, like his lungs had betrayed him. He couldn’t get enough air. He glanced at Peril, and then at Moon, dimly registering the light conversation the two were drifting into, and felt horrifyingly exposed out in the open landscape. The words left his mouth before he even understood what he was saying: “I have to go.”
Winter barely noticed that he’d broken up the conversation – he’d already turned tail and bolted for the safety of their stony cottage.
“Winter?”
A trembling heap. Silvery-white scales piled indiscriminately over the tiled kitchen floor. Winter’s consciousness slowly reformed into recognizable shapes around him. He was panting – hyperventilating – but his lungs felt empty no matter how hard he tried to fill them.
“Hey, Winter?”
Winter became aware of a familiar talon on his shoulder. He didn’t need to look.
“Hey,” Moon said. “It’s me. Focus on me.”
It was a long time before either of them moved. Winter’s head hurt – he could tell now – and then he found his claws were numb, and then realized just how exhausted he felt. He could feel the cold tile floor beneath him; smell the elaborate spread of roast vegetables he’d prepared; hear the cooking fire still quietly crackling; feel Moon’s warm touch on his shoulder; hear her steady breaths beside his frantic ones – and he focused on those senses and found his racing mind slowly, slowly starting to settle.
Eventually his breathing steadied. Moon’s touch was warm and gentle, safe and reassuring – until some part of Winter’s brain whirred back to life and remembered she wasn’t meant to see him like this. He finally stirred, if only to bury his snout in his wings and mumble about how sorry he was. Pathetic – that was what he was. Hopelessly, impossibly pathetic.
“You’re not pathetic,” Moon said gently. “Winter? What’s wrong?”
Face hidden among folds of silvery membrane, Winter couldn’t bring himself to say it. It hurt too much to put to words – but his thoughts crystallized around her like ice: Rhea.
For Moon, that was enough.
“Oh, Winter…” she cooed. “She’ll be okay. She’s a bright young dragonet. You know that. She’ll be flying soon. There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“Then there is something wrong with me,” Winter hissed into his wing. “With us!” He threw his head up and felt horribly light-headed, but fixed Moon with his harsh blue gaze regardless. “Moon, what am I doing wrong? The doctor says she’s fine. The scrolls say to wait. But...” A pause, anger falling out of his voice like snow from the bough of an evergreen. “Every other dragonet her age is flying,” he said, as though delivering a guilty verdict. “Icewing dragonets can fly by a year old. So do Nightwings. Skywings by half a year. Rhea is nearly two and she still can’t. I – I must have done something wrong, Moon. I’ve failed our daughter…”
Moon didn’t say anything. Not yet. She didn’t need to – she wrapped her ebony wing around Winter, and waited, letting him melt into her warmth. “You haven’t failed anyone,” Moon eventually said. “She’s just… a little late.”
“She’s almost a year late,” Winter mumbled. “A royal dragonet like her would have passed her first flying test in the Ice Kingdom by now. She should be practicing. She should be in the wingery tower before dawn, almost every day, learning to fly with the other Icewing dragonets, and–”
“That sounds brutal.”
“It’s the Icewing way!” Winter said desperately. “For every day I’ve been exiled, Moon, I’ve lost more and more of what it means to be an Icewing. Each morning I wake and can’t help but wonder how little I even have left. What is my heritage worth if I pass none of it to my daughter? What is my culture to her dragonets, when she has them, if I have lost it all myself?”
“Winter–”
“And look at what it’s gotten me,” he whispered. “A soft dragonet who can’t fly. No Icewing parent would ever love her.”
Moon’s response came impossibly soft: “But you do.”
“Of course I do!” Winter cried, and hid his face in his talons, breathing shaky. “My parents wouldn’t so much as feed me if I didn’t perform to their standards. It was the Icewing way, and… I-I won’t do that to Rhea. I can’t. But it’s the only parenting I know, and it worked, Moon. Whatever I’m doing now isn’t. I’m not fit to be a parent.”
“Winter,” Moon reminded gently, “you’ve read every scroll on parenting we could get our talons on.”
“Yes, but–”
“And you’ve talked to everyone we know who has a dragonet,” Moon pressed. “I’ve seen the letters from Hope. I know you and Turtle talked, when he was here the other season after Osprey hatched. I know you write him.”
“Turtle and Peril waited,” Winter sniffled. “Longer than we did. What if we’re moving too fast, Moon? What if we aren’t ready for a dragonet?”
“Should’ve said something two years ago,” Moon said dryly.
“Moon!”
“No, Winter, listen.” Moon pulled him close with her wing, rubbing her warm claws into his shoulder. “I barely even saw my mother when I was a dragonet. I brought myself up in a jungle. At least you had parents. I didn’t. I don’t know how to do this either.” A pause, thoughtful. “But I’m doing my best, Winter. So are you. We’ve read the same scrolls. Talked to the same dragons. And maybe I don’t know enough about Nightwing culture to pass it on either, but… maybe that’s okay. We aren’t living with Nightwings. We aren’t living with Icewings either. Maybe it’s okay if Rhea grows up a little different. There’s nothing we can do now, except try our best for her.”
“What if our best isn’t good enough?” Winter said miserably. “Moon, what if she never flies?”
“We’ll love her anyway.”
“But what if–”
“Three moons!” Moon gestured bluntly out the open front door. “Look at Peril, Winter! She was raised by Scarlet. She was fed coal and lied to and forced to fight in an arena from the day she hatched, and if she turned out fine–”
“That’s debatable…”
“–then you just have to do better than Scarlet, and Rhea will turn out fine too,” Moon finished, continuing over Winter’s mumbled protest. “Promise.”
Winter sighed. “That is not a very high bar…”
“I believe in you.”
Moon had a good-natured grin about her, by the time Winter looked up, and he sighed again. His gaze followed her wing, pointing out the wide-open door, and alighted on Peril playing with the dragonets.
Rhea, ever the tenacious climber, was perched on a high-up bough of one of the great evergreens along the cottage. Osprey hovered nearby, and Peril was twirling a burning branch over her head all the while. She looked tremendously pleased with herself, and from the pair of awestruck expressions she was earning, Winter surmised this was also just about the coolest thing the dragonets had ever seen. He didn’t even realize he’d sat up until Moon settled herself beside him, wrapping her wing over his back like it had never left.
“She’s good with dragonets,” Winter said, eventually. “Rhea loves her. Osprey too. She’s a good mother.”
“You too, Winter,” Moon told him. “You’re a good father.”
Just then, Rhea looked up from Peril’s fiery display, spotting her father sitting in the doorway. “Papa!” she cried, springing to her talons on the branch. “Look! Look! Auntie Peril’s–”
And
then
she
slipped.
For a horrible moment, Winter looked on as his daughter teetered on the edge of the bough. It felt like time had stopped. Winter was on his talons in an instant.She couldn’t fly! He bounded out of the door on exhausted limbs and instinct alone – and yet, as he watched?
Rhea flung out her ebony wings, tucked herself forward, pushed away from the branch instinctively – and flew.
Peril dropped her fiery stick. Winter skidded to a halt. Moon threw a talon over her mouth.
Rhea was flying.
Sure, it was a messy flight – a glide, really, with rough, clumsy flaps of her wings, all mistimed and probably hindering more than helping – but she was flying. Sun filtered through her dark membranes, glinting off the constellation patterns beneath her wings – it was the most beautiful thing Winter had ever seen.
Rhea alighted in front of Winter with a surprised little squeak, crumpling into a messy ball as the ground jolted the momentum out of her – but then she sprung to her talons and beamed at Winter. “Papa! Did you see that? I flew! I really did!”
There were tears in Winter’s eyes – and this time? As he reached out and swept his daughter into a hug; as Peril rushed over stammering that it “just happened” and she “didn’t do anything”; as Moon joined them and wrapped father and daughter alike in her wings like a protective cocoon?
Winter didn’t care if every Icewing alive declared this an undignified display of emotion.
His daughter could fly.
And right then, for him? That was perfect.