Dusty's Origin: Part One

Things aren't always as you would expect them to be, and that's saying a lot on behalf of my family. When Dusty came around, I can say that one of us didn't know what to think of a new addition to our family. I can remember when my brother, Solar Flare, didn't as much as go near her at first when our baby sister was born.

Mom and Sandy had just been married not so much as two months ago before Mom suddenly got that special feeling that every mother eventually gets blessed with time in marriage. In other words, my Mother was expecting with our little sister, Dusty, but we didn't know that at first.

Oh, but even with that, it took some time for Zack to get used to this …

"Oh, Mom, this is truly something," I remembered saying, admiring the shimmering beauty of my Mother's Silent Glade which now rested up in the home of Sandy's Clouds.

My Mom used to live down on the Earth in the exact wood where we had evidently got separated when Manny had changed all of us into spirits and eventually Guardians. Yes, I am a spirit, too, but my story is not important right now.

After Sandy was supposedly destroyed by Pitch during the battle of him and his nightmares, my Mom had flown home to her quiet sanctuary to grieve. That's what my Mother's Glade was to her – a quiet sanctuary that held the ultimate pocket of her strength. It wasn't just a sanctuary, though; it was her home, the only home she knew ever since she woke up as Windsong, Spirit of the Wind and Music.

So, that night when she was in grief about Sandy's death, Pitch had taken advantage of our Mother's sadness and had attacked her, almost destroying what he thought was the very source of her power – her wings. However, in the process, he had polluted our Mother's magic fountain in the process, too, but even that didn't prove to be our Mother's strongest strength. It was her heart that brought her back to us, she had once told me and my brother, and it showed her, also thanks to Manny's guidance, that she only had to believe in herself and enact on what she believed was right.

And when, thankfully, Narain and Toothiana, which of whom you may know as the Tooth Fairy, brought my Mom back to the Pole, she ultimately saw just how much important believing in yourself proved to be. When Sandy was lost, my Mom had then lost faith in herself, feeling that she couldn't call herself what Manny intended her to be all along because she couldn't protect Sandy. And, this led her to believe that she couldn't protect anybody else. I'm not sure if that was all that was on her mind, but Pitch, seeing through my Mother's doubt, took the advantage and tried to destroy her, too.

Unfortunately, my brother and I weren't aware of this disaster at first, believe me, but we felt it as soon as we saw Pitch and his nightmares leave the Silent Wood. Now, we didn't know that our Mother lived there, but we did sense its familiarity, especially when we touched down to see what happened. The Silent Wood proved to be the very place that I had last seen my Mother before I too succumbed to the smog that we all perished in. And, not too far from where my Mother and I rested, my brother proved to be there, too, with the last remains of the very torch he held in his tired hands when he tried to protect me and our mother. But, even as we awoke, we each proved to wake up in different places and each with a different purpose then the other.

It's true that me and my brother didn't reunite until a few months after we each individually became spirits, but we didn't find our Mother until that very night when we saw two other spirits carry her away to a place in we came to know as the North Pole.

Soon after exploring the Silent Wood and finally what we found out to be my Mother's Silent Glade, we had then immediately followed their trail to see if our hunch was right. And sure enough, it was. However, I have to say that our hunch didn't begin until my brother came across our Mother by mistake when he saved her from the icy winds of the Arctic when she was on her way to the Pole, but even then we didn't know for sure if it was her. We had been looking for so long, but we weren't ready to give up yet, knowing that our Mother was out there somewhere. And, even though we knew we had found her, Manny had instructed us that it was not yet time to reveal ourselves to her.

So, Mother didn't really know it was us until the end of the very last battle against Pitch and his nightmares. This was also the time when Sandy was brought back by the new belief that was bringing all of the Guardians' strengths back. You could imagine how much that made my Mother happy, but I couldn't have been happier when I saw that ever-shining glint in my Mother's eyes glow when we were reunited.

I have to say, that was the very first moment that our new life as a family once again truly begun. And, it all started within the next year when Sandy finally proposed to our Mother on the very day she became a Spirit, May 27, 2013, 357 years to the exact day Mom first became Windsong. But, their wedding didn't commence until the middle of July in the summer of 2013.

However, after a few weeks after saying "I do," Mom then began to experience a tiny surprise.

"Mom, have you told Sandy, yet?"

Mom giggled as she held a watering can to her glittering blooms. "No, I haven't told him yet, but you could say that I'm waiting for the right moment."

"Right moment for what?" I heard my brother ask as he came hovering in on his hoverboard. Turning my buttercup blonde curls to the garden gate, I, sure enough, saw Sandy come walking into my Mother's garden with a big and admiring smile.

"Oh … uh ... " Mom then chuckled nervously. "Ah, it's nothing."

"Nothing? There's definitely something with you, Mom, if your making something out of nothing," my brother said, surfing higher into the air.

Whisper and Skylight, another one of my Mom's Lyrical Wisps, hovered nearby giggling as Sandy curiously looked up into Mom's face with a puzzled yet amused face.

"Well, what is it, Mom? Quit keeping us all in suspense," my brother exclaimed excitedly, floating above Mother's head.

Sandy took one of Mom's hands as his head tilted to watch as Mom lifted his to her middle. Smiling down into his eyes, Mom watched as Sandy simply felt for a moment then listened. With his eyes widening, he smiled widely as Mom bent down to kiss his lips.

"What is it? Mom?" My brother said, stepping off his board to stand down next to me.

Turning to him, I said, "Zack, Mom's going to have a baby."

"What?" I heard him utter, while Sandy and I calmly sat Mom down next to her fountain to sit down.

"A baby?"

"Yeah, isn't it great?" I exclaimed, rising into the air upon my feathered wings.

Zack didn't reply as he quietly sat down next to his board on the ground. Mom and Sandy tilted their heads with concern as they watched him turn away.

"Zack?" Mom asked, rising to her feet.

"Zack, what's wrong?" I asked, landing behind him.

"Mom's having a baby," he murmured sadly.

Chapter One is done. This short will have a few follow-up chapters. I've just been thinking them out. :)

Please enjoy.