The skies over the Midlands are clear and blue. The humans think that they stretch forever, but Scarlet knows better. Nothing stretches out forever, not even the lives of her kind.
Once the skies were filled with those like her. They were the true Lords of this world, the ones who rained down death from above, perilous and merciless, above it all. They lived far longer than the pitiful human lifespan, and saw such wonders, ones that the ants below could not possibly comprehend.
And yet it is these ants, these insects who think they own the world now and call themselves Lords of it. Lords, when all they do is scratch at the earth and stain it red with each other's blood while Scarlet's kind pass into legend.
The red of Scarlet's scales is far more brilliant than any blood they could spill, and her flames light up the evening sky more brightly than any sunset and more deadly than any dawn. But the time for soaring has ended.
She longs for it, the sky. Longs to surge upwards to where the earth is but a dim memory and the clouds stretch out, soft and feathery, rolling like the ocean's waves. Up there, the air is thin and cold, and the only sound to be heard is the beat of her wings, the panting of her mighty lungs. Up there, beyond the sky, it is the stars that stretch out forever, and Scarlet's kind are lost amongst them.
She cannot join them, not yet.
The skies over the Midlands are clear and blue, but they do not stretch as far as they once did, not for Scarlet. Scarlet is chained to the earth now, tied down by the creatures that crawl on their bellies there, the ones who will never soar, never see. They envy her freedom - long for her cold, brilliant skies - and, twisted and made mad for it, have taken her child.
The skies still call to her, the stars' twinkling a siren call of longing, but she is bound to the earth now, tethered there by the ties of love and hate, of rage and regret.
Scarlet longs for the skies, for the stars, for her kind. But it is nothing to her longing for her stolen child.