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She sat perched on the edge of a polished wood-stuff walkway in the heart of the Hive, her wings folded with such precise, geometric symmetry that she looked less like a living creature and more like a curated statue of the nobility. To any passing guard or high-ranking official, she was the picture of docile obedience, a timid, wide-eyed girl who blended into the amber architecture of the Hive, a ghost in the machinery of Queen Wasp’s empire.
They saw the stutter. They saw the way she tilted her head, looking as though she were perpetually confused by the simplest of instructions. They called her shy. They called her sweet. They assumed her silence was a symptom of a fragile spirit, a lack of ambition, or perhaps a natural inclination toward the subservient role expected of a HiveWing of her standing.
They had no idea that the silence was a fortress.
In the hidden, jagged corridors of her memory, Cricket remembered a version of herself that had been scorched away by the friction of social expectation. There had been a time, in the early heat of her adolescence, where she had not been a ghost, but a storm. She had been the one who spoke too loudly, who questioned the Divine Right of the Hive with a sneer, and who tore into her peers with a precision that bordered on surgical. Back then, she had moved through the world "too hot and too fast," treating other dragons as disposable playthings, stepping stones to be used until the intellectual stimulation wore off, and then discarded with a flick of her wrist and a scathing remark about their mediocrity.
She remembered the feeling of that power, the raw, caustic electricity of being the smartest person in the room and making sure everyone knew it. But that version of Cricket had been a liability. Every time she had spoken her genuine truth, the world had slammed a door in her face. Too aggressive. Too inappropriate. Too mean. The reprimands had come in waves: the stinging lash of a tutor’s tail, the cold disappointment of the Hive elders, the constant, suffocating reminder that her brilliance was a weapon that needed to be sheathed.
“If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all,” her instructors had droned.
So, she had learned the art of the Midnight sky void. She discovered that censoring herself was an exhausting, soul-eroding labor, like trying to hold a landslide back with a single piece of silk. It was simply easier to stop talking altogether. It was easier to play the role of the "bot," the mindless automaton of a citizen, than to spend every waking second editing her thoughts into something palatable for the regime.
Now, as she watched a group of fellow HiveWings gossiping nearby, heir voices a shrill, repetitive drone about the latest fashion in silk-weaving or the trivial dramas of the court, Cricket felt a familiar, simmering resentment. She wore the mask of the humble listener, her eyes wide and attentive, nodding at precisely the right intervals. To the other dragons, she was a comforting presence, a safe harbor for their grievances because she never interrupted.
In reality, Cricket had mentally checked out three paragraphs ago. While her body remained present, her mind had retreated into a vast, internal library where she cataloged their flaws, their predictable patterns, and the sheer, staggering boredom of their existence.
The volatility of her own emotions was a wild animal she kept caged behind a wall of courtesy. She knew that if she let the mask slip for even a second— if she allowed a single spark of her true ego to ignite; she would become spiteful. She would become the dragon who pointed out the absurdity of their lives with a cruel, precise laugh. She would burn the bridge she was currently standing on, and in the Hive, burning bridges often meant finding yourself cast out into the wasteland with no one to turn to.
Future me would regret the fire, she told herself, the thought a cold, calculating loop. I need these fools. I need their social credits. I need their networking. I need them to believe I am a harmless little thing so that I can move unseen.
She leaned in, her voice a soft, rehearsed melody of simulated empathy. "Oh, that sounds simply dreadful," she murmured to a peer who was venting about a broken wing-membrane. "How courageous of you to handle it with such grace."
The words were magical, not because they were true, but because they were exactly what the other dragon wanted to hear. Cricket didn't care about the injury. She didn't care about the social hierarchy or the endless, looping tragedies of the HiveWing nobility. She didn't care about the suffering of the SilkWings or the threat of the LeafWings, not in the way dragons expected, not with a bleeding heart, but with a cold, analytical curiosity.
Kindness, she had realized, was a currency. It cost her nothing to be "nice" as long as she didn't actually have to feel the kindness. The only cost was her own sanity, the slow attrition of her identity as she spent her days performing for an audience she despised. Internally, she was screaming for them to just shut up. She hated the smell of their overly-perfumed scales; she hated the rhythmic clicking of their claws on the wood-suff; she hated the way they looked at her with pity.
But the consequences of defiance were too high. She had seen what happened to the "wrong type of kid"—those who doubled down on their rebellion only to be crushed by the weight of the Hive’s bureaucracy. She had not learned the art of the successful revolution; she had only learned the art of the invisible survivor.
As the crowd dispersed, leaving her alone in the amber glow of the waning sun, Cricket let out a slow, shuddering breath. The mask didn't drop entirely— it never did— but it shifted.
Cold but courteous. Professional but distant. Polite, but never, ever a friend.