Work Text:
“You’ve managed to make a garden party sound like a massacre,” Hawkwasp remarked, his voice dripping with a clinical sort of boredom.
He didn't look up from his own parchment. His dark brown eyes, the color of scorched earth, remained fixed on his work, though his expression was one of profound unamusement. He sat with a rigid, military posture characteristic of the HiveWing nobility, his golden-yellow scales shimmering under the harsh lanterns of the study hall. To him, Cricket’s enthusiasm wasn't just tedious, it was an anomaly that needed to be corrected.
Cricket didn't stop. She couldn't. The ideas were buzzing in her mind like a swarm of agitated wasps, demanding to be transcribed. Her wings fluttered in a rapid, nervous rhythm, a blur of translucent gold and black that betrayed her excitement.
“But look at the arc!” Cricket insisted, leaning forward so far that her snout nearly touched the communal table. “In this version, the protagonist finds the antidote before the clock strikes midnight. No one dies! Not a single scale is lost. I’d say that is the very definition of a happy ending.”
Hawkwasp finally looked up, his gaze flat and unimpressed. “No dragon dying is not a ‘happy idea,’ Cricket. It is the bare minimum of narrative competence. Preventing a fatality is not a plot twist; it is the baseline expectation of a functional society.”
A sharp, clicking sound echoed through the room—the sound of chitinous scales rubbing together. Fire Ant, perched on the edge of a nearby bench, chittered in smug agreement. He leaned into the circle, his eyes narrow. “Exactly. Your ‘happy’ ideas are still draped in misery, Cricket. Everything you write feels like it’s being told by someone who’s seen too many disaster reports. It’s all twisted. Morbid. Messed up.”
Cricket felt the air leave her lungs in a slow, defeated sigh. She slowly retracted her pen, the nib clicking against the mahogany table with a hollow sound. For a moment, she just looked at her notes, her amber eyes clouded with a mixture of frustration and lingering curiosity.
“Well,” she muttered, rolling her eyes toward the vaulted ceiling of the college hall, “I’m not exactly the ‘sunny meadows and rainbows’ type of dragon, am I?”
“That’s the problem,” sneered Rhinoceros. She was lounging back in her chair, her wings folded with a calculated arrogance. She looked at Cricket with a predatory sort of pity. “Don’t unhappy people usually write happy things as a form of escapism? You’re doing it wrong. You’re just writing sadness with a thin veneer of hope. It’s transparent.”
The silence that followed was heavy, filled only by the scratching of other pens and the distant hum of the Hive. Cricket felt a sudden, sharp pang of regret. Why had she agreed to join this College Writing Club? She had imagined a sanctuary of intellectuals, a place where the curiosity of a scholar would be met with equal fervor. Instead, she had walked into a den of critics who viewed her passion as a quirk to be dissected.
She looked around the room. There were twenty other HiveWings here, all of them draped in the same yellow to red hues, all of them operating under the same rigid social hierarchies. She felt an isolating vacuum open up between her and the rest of them. No other HiveWing truly liked her ideas because her ideas required them to think outside the hive-mind, to question the nature of fate and suffering.
Then, a soft voice broke through the oppressive atmosphere.
Ruby-Tail, who had been sitting quietly in the shadows of the far corner, shifted his weight. He didn't look at her directly, his gaze remained fixed on the floor, his posture hesitant. . .But he spoke loud enough for the group to hear.
“I think they’re okay,” he offered. He paused, his voice trembling slightly. “And... I usually don’t like scary stories. But yours... they make the scary parts feel like they’re leading somewhere. I like that.”
The reaction was instantaneous. Rhinoceros arched a brow, a look of utter disgust crossing her face, and let out a loud, theatrical groan that echoed off the walls. The dismissal was palpable, a physical wave of judgment that nearly knocked Ruby-Tail back into his shell.
However, Cinnamon, sitting to Cricket's left, leaned in. She didn't say anything at first, but she offered a small, tentative smile. It wasn't a grand gesture, but in a room full of sneers, it felt like a lifeline.
“I like them too,” Cinnamon whispered, her voice like a soft breeze. “Though, sometimes they are a bit... much. Maybe a little less blood in the second act?”
Cricket looked from Ruby-Tail to Cinnamon. Two. Only two dragons out of a room of twenty-two found value in her imagination. The math was bleak. The social cost of her creativity was becoming an expensive debt to pay. She looked back at her ink-stained parchment, the words blurring together.
She wondered, for the thousandth time that hour, why she even bothered to try.