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Blaze could confidently say that she was having one of the weirdest days of her life.
It had started as any other, with a sleepy grasping for blankets against the chill of the Ice Queendom’s midnight. The taiga had a way of sucking all the heat out of anything that dared step a talon on its soil, even from someone as wonderful as Blaze. However, this morning had exceeded the usual chilly-cold and was edging more towards the break-off-your-blackened-frostbitten-talons-cold.
A frigid wind was blowing through Blaze’s chambers, caused by a window shutter left ajar at the far end of her bed, making the woven tapestries on the walls shake almost as much as Blaze herself was doing.
She contemplated calling someone to close it, but she was still entirely too sleep-rumpled to be seen, so she bravely got out of her bed (taking half a dozen blankets and furs with her), walked to the window and (after a minute of fumbling with the needlessly complicated mechanism) closed it with a snap!
She sat down, chin high with pride at her self-sufficiency, though it quickly lowered back down with a shiver, as her breaths continued to fog in the air. A fire would reheat the place, but the last time Blaze had tried to make a fire on her own, she’d been forced to move to new quarters and she was rather fond of this place.
As the wind cleared, all the dunes and suns on her tapestries stilled, turning lifeless once more.
A familiar itching feeling filled Blaze’s chest at the sight.
Which is how she’d ended up winging through the horrid chill of the taiga’s night, toward her old home of dunes, cacti and entirely more reasonable temperatures.
A part of her knew what she was doing wasn’t going to help the talk of her intelligence—not to mention that the frigid air had almost convinced her to go back to her warm bed ten times over before she’d even lifted into the air—and that Glacier wouldn’t be happy when she discovered Blaze had left, but she could be back before anyone noticed! She just wanted to take a deep breath of warm air and then she’d be right back to her stronghold.
Besides, everyone loved an adventurous queen.
Her polar bear skin cloak (a gift from Glacier) clapped in the wind as she soared, the air already feeling warmer as the ground went from snow to grass to sand.
Musicians will write songs about my bravery today, she thought, with what would have been a smile had she not been so tired from flying. Staying in the fortress at all times may be safer, it didn’t appear to have done wonders for her stamina.
After a plethora of breaks and the sun rising (the Ice and Sand Queendoms were right next to each other, how could it take this long to cross between them?), she gasped as she spotted what looked like her old palace on the horizon, far-off dots of dragons zipping around it’s blood-soaked walls. She bet she could talk the soldiers into leaving Burn and giving Blaze her palace back if she really did her best, wouldn’t that blow Glacier away?
Inciting mutiny within her sister’s ranks could wait however, because she was beginning to tire again.
Blaze lowered herself back to the dunes, letting her wings droop onto the sun-baked sand to warm them. She spun herself in a small circle and let the rest of her drop onto the cosily warm dune with a contented sigh, sleepily admiring how the sun made her scales shine.
After a few minutes of sunbathing, her gaze strayed from herself and she spotted an odd dip in the ground a few dragon-lengths away.
Her curiosity got the better of her (and because those future singers needed a tale to tell), she heaved herself back up and wandered towards it.
Maybe it’s mother’s stolen treasure, hidden away for all these years! Blaze sped up as she imagined all the beautiful shiny things from her childhood trips to the royal treasury and leapt into the tunnel in the ground without a second’s hesitation.
Which is how she’d ended up where she stood now, surrounded by animal sounds, trees taller than a hundred Blazes and more green than she’d had ever seen.
Now, Blaze was a bit of an expert on the desert so she could say with certainty that this was a tad odd.
She shrugged. At least it was pretty here.
Taking a few steps deeper into the mystery forest, she grimaced at the rancid squelch of mud between her talons. The humid air was probably making her sail go all weird too.
She valiantly pushed on though. "Think about the singers, think about the singers," she grumbled to herself.
The singers were almost not enough to keep her here.
Wandering through the greenery, Blaze had all sorts of adventures, each more disgruntling than the last. She sniffed a huge flower, which smelled worse than Burn’s freak tower and she tried one of those ‘fruits’ that RainWings ate, but the sweetness of it was cloying enough to make her gag
Worst of all, it started raining.
It was something that Blaze hadn’t ever had to deal with before. It snowed occasionally on the taiga, but those artfully carved, crystalline flakes were nothing like this. Soggy drops beat down on her wings, worming their way between her scales and making every movement feel slimy and horrid. Not to mention, it making the fur on her cloak ugly.
She whirled around, ready to leave this place and never look back, when she spotted something that didn’t quite fit into this colourful world.
It was purely luck they she’d caught sight of it where it lay, near-perfectly hidden by rain-dancing ferns.
A black oval… thing, lay in a nest-like pile of leaves on the ground.
Blaze pushed aside the waterlogged greenery and picked up the strange object. It was surprisingly weighty and just big enough to have to be held with both front talons as she inspected it, tapping its surface with a wing and listening with vague curiosity to the strangely hollow-yet-not sound it made. Like a chick-filled ostrich egg.
Blaze gasped. She knew what this was! It was so obvious, she would be tempted to smack herself if she didn’t know how it might scratch her scales.
It was a geode.
She’d seen these being gifted to her mother by SkyWing ambassadors before the war, hoping to win her favour—tales of entire caves covered wall to wall with crystals in the Sky Queendom were well known. By the moons, Blaze owned a dozen of them herself, their shiny insides beautiful enough to make her wish her scales had the same crystalline construction.
Blaze held up the geode, oohing at the way the sun caught its ebony surface, making the rain-covered crust gleam softly. It was a lot more refined than those usually found in the wild, so it must have belonged to someone. She was tempted to crack it on a boulder herself to see what marvels it held within, but she was capable of being patient. A professional stone carved would cut it much smoother than she could and she needed her prize to be as exquisite as possible for when she regaled others of the tales of her daring at her next party—
A thick raindrop smacked her on the snout, making her flinch. Oh right, she hated this place.
She twisted her cloak around into a satchel-shape around her chest and placed the geode inside its polar bear embrace as she made her way back to the tunnel. "You’re going to have a wonderful new home, my little gem! Away from all this muck and grime."
The crisp air of the desert was a stark and wonderful contrast to the humid horror behind her and she smiled.
The sand scrubbed all the mud off her talons as Blaze ground them into the dune below her.
Shifting the geode around in her cloak to see, Blaze pointed at the distant palace. "Look, there’s my old home! We’ll go back there one day when I’m queen—I mean, I’m kinda queen already, but my sisters thinks they are too, so it’s, like, a whole thing. You’ll get to see it better then," she told the geode, then paused. "Oh, I’m Blaze by the way, future queen of the SandWings. Usually dragons already know who I am, it feels weird to have to tell you!"
She turned away from her palace and lifted into the air, talons holding her cloak to her body. She’d go back to steal Burn’s forces another day, but right now she longed for the warm embrace of the pillows and blankets in her chambers.
As she made her way back north (with an equal amount of pauses as that morning’s flight), she talked to her geode about anything and everything as her scales dried under the sun. Blaze told her (because there was no way her geode wasn’t female) all about her fortress, its other occupants, her childhood, Glacier, dried lizards and everything else that seemed important for a rock to know.
Blaze lowered herself to the ground again after the sun had gone down. "So I got Glacier these stunning earrings made from lapis lazuli and I have some similar ones, so now we match whenever she visits," she was telling her geode.
The cloak made a soft thump as she laid it on the ground, which was slowly turning less sandy as she ventured further north.
Blaze followed its example and collapsed on the earth. "I used to not like lapis that much, since it doesn’t have that much shine to it, but I’ll admit it’s really grown on me in the last couple years." Blaze moved her talons over her sail, trying to coif it back to perfection. "Not many gems look good on both Glacier and I because our scales look so different, but those gold veins some of them have…"
Her words slowed to a stop as she glimpsed the polar skin, catching sight of her geode. She lay in the nest of white fur, illuminated by the light of the full moons.
Was it a trick of the light or had the rock turned silver?
A light tug on the cloak revealed the geode fully and Blaze gasped, dropping the skin as she sat up.
And when did her dear geode break?! By the snakes, she thought she’d been so careful! Even then, shouldn’t the crust be made of stone? Why did she have those spiderweb cracks all over her?
"Goodness, I’m so sorry!" Blaze’s wings flared from distress as she lifted the object from the skin with more delicacy than she thought herself capable of. "If I’d known you were so—"
The cracks spiralled further as the stone twitched in Blaze’s talons.
Now, Blaze was also quite experienced on the subject minerals and gems, so she knew that rocks shouldn’t be moving on their own.
The offending thing didn’t seem to care though, as the crust splintered entirely and burst apart.
Inside was—
Well. No amethysts.
Inside the crust sat a tiny black dragon, small enough to fit between Blaze’s talons.
Her star-speckled wings moved awkwardly, trying to unfurl for the first time as she pawed at pieces of crust—eggshell—still stuck to her. Though the shell didn’t contain any minerals, the hatchling’s scales were as opalescent as any moonstone. Bright shades of green and blue painted her body one moment, only to turn back to ebony when the hatchling shifted, as though she was made of living labradorite.
Blaze didn’t think she’d ever sat so still in her life.
All she’d been planning on doing this morning was have a little adventure and now she was holding a newborn in her talons. How had this even happened? The little dragon looked like a NightWing judging by the starry wings (and everything else), but what would a NightWing egg be doing in…
...a mysterious, impossible jungle in the middle of the desert.
Now that she thought of it, that had ‘NightWings’ written all over it.
The hatchling opened its eyes and squinted up, up, up at her with a strange, pinning gaze.
Blaze felt the paralysis drain from her scales at the attention, re-folding her wings. "Ah! Well… hello," Blaze said, "I’m really sorry for thinking you were a rock."
The little dragonet shifted her eyes away from Blaze (which she tried not to be offended by) to look up at the moons.
Blaze noticed small, silvery scales that sparkled in the corners of both of the dragonet’s eyes, like opal teardrops.
"I thought the inside of the crust would be very pretty though.” She laughed and smiled her best smile as the hatchling pawed at the moons. "And it looks like I was right! You might actually have been stuck in a geode with how shiny you are."
She lightly booped the hatchling on the snout a claw. She received a chirp! in responce.
Blaze cooed.
Oh well, she supposed a queen needed an heir.
She looked down proudly on the hatchling, who was beating her wings with increasing confidence, barb-less tail swishing. Look at me, Blaze thought, working this political game like a true queen: first of my sisters to get an heir!
And a princess needed a name.
Blaze frowned. She didn’t know any NightWing names, so how could she—
Her eyes widened as she remembered Glacier telling her about a legend of an old NightWing animus. Right, that The Darkstalker guy! Might be a bad idea to call her that though, Glacier didn’t seem to like him, but maybe Blaze could use his name as an example.
Besides, ‘the Darkstalker’ was way too creepy a name for the sweet little creature in Blaze’s talons.
She grinned as she pet the chirruping hatchling’s head. Not even Glacier would be able to call it unnecessary when Blaze threw this little treasure a party.
Now, what’s something dark-ish and stalker-ish...
Queen Glacier could confidently say that she was having one of the most stressful days of her life.
Ruling a queendom meant managing a lot of things—ranking names with the gift of order every morning, dealing with the fallout of those discontented with their ranks, managing the war efforts with her generals—so there was bound to be stress.
Glacier did not expect that stress to be directly caused by Princess Blaze.
The SandWing had always been a consistent character. She wasn’t the brightest star in the sky (despite her insisting that she sparkled like one) and was easy to point to one direction or the other if you dangled a ruby on a stick in her face. At the very least, she was easy to manage.
Blaze was a dragon that made Glacier feel torn between annoyance and exasperated fondness. The SandWing’s blatant naivety and strange form of camaraderie were not things that Glacier frequently experienced.
Some times, despite her flaws, Blaze felt like a breath of fresh air among the scheming aristocrats of the IceWing court.
Today was not one of those times.
Glacier had awoken that morning—a deceptively lovely morning with a fresh breeze and sunny skies—to a messenger barging in, declaring that: "Queen Blaze has gone missing!"
What seemed like half of the IceWing army had immediately been summoned and proceeded to comb every inch of land around Blaze’s stronghold for even a scale of the SandWing. They hadn’t made much headway all day and night, except some evidence of a dragon’s flight south, which might have belonged to Blaze, but all evidence had been blown away by desert winds by the time the ground transitioned to sand.
The royal counsel hadn’t been doing much better.
The chamber echoed with voices as counsel members argued over one-and-other, doing little in the act of counseling as they bit at each other long into the night over who was responsible for Princess Blaze’s probable kidnapping.
"Blister is the most likely culprit, I do not believe Burn would be able to keep it hidden if she knew where—"
"Then how do you explain that flight path to the desert? Burn must have hired someone to capture her, we must send a team back to—"
"Sending our own into Burn’s territory is much too dangerous! We need to—"
As the counsel argued on, Glacier had the brief, un-queenly desire of pleading Jerboa to let her live out her life as a recluse alongside her.
Sighing internally and promising herself a nice temple-rubbing later, Glacier squared her shoulders and inhaled, ready to give her final verdict—
The door to the council chamber flung open, silencing its occupants.
In the entrance stood a young, satcheled IceWing, his spikes rattling with exertion as he panted softly .
Every pair of eyes in the chamber locked on him and he visibly composed himself at the attention.
He bowed to Glacier. "Your Majesty, there’s news on Queen Blaze. She has returned to her fortress unharmed."
Glacier felt the urge to melt into her seat with a sigh and could see the same fantasy in the eyes of the others in the chamber. Ignoring the thought, she nodded at the messenger to continue.
He unlatched a satchel tied around his neck, fishing out a small scroll. "This letter is addressed to you, Your Majesty, from Queen Blaze’s own quil."
The master of coin snatched the parchment from him. He retreated from the chamber with a bow as the lady hurried to pass it to Glacier.
She opened the sun-emblazon wax with a crack and read the letter. The chamber was silent as Glacier took in the words.
After reaching the bottom of the page, she turned over the parchment, scanning for anything useful.
"Your Majesty...?" Narwal asked tentatively as the silence stretched on.
Glacier read the letter again.
The paper did not reveal anything new.
She breathed in.
Put the scroll down.
And breathed out.
She lifted a gaze to the rest of the chamber’s occupants, their dark eyes pinned on her expectantly.
"I believe this meeting is over," she said calmly, "Queen Blaze has been found, so bid those who partook in the search back home. Let us all get some well-deserved rest and discuss further in the morning."
"Your Majes—"
"Dismissed."
Now, the IceWing Queen lay in her bed, head too full to get the aforementioned rest.
Glacier never would have expected one of Blaze’s parties to be her most anticipated event in the near-future, but she supposed life never runs out of surprises.
My dearest Glacier,
It’s been far too long since you’ve visited! You would not believe the day I just had (and I don’t mean that as an exaggeration, I mean it sounds like I’m lying it was so crazy) and I’ll tell you all about it when you come over to my stronghold for the party I’ll be hosting soon! The details and dress code are on the back of this letter (spoiler alert: everything is moon themed!!) I would do it today, but—again—I just had the wildest day and feel like I could sleep forever. Plus this is the kind of party you want to prepare for, considering its importance.
Now, I know what you’re going to say: ‘we don’t have time for that,’ but this isn’t just any party.
This is a celebration for the hatching of my first daughter!
She’s the most darling little geode (that’s inside joke between me and her, but when I tell you about it, you’ll agree that it’s so funny) and she can’t wait to meet her auntie Glacier!
We're both greatly looking forward to your attendance,
Queen Blaze and Princess the Moonwatcher