Dragons Change

Edit (5/24/19): So... I just realized that I had accidentally replaced this prologue with the wrong document...oops. XP

Sorry about that. Were people as confused as me when I clicked on it and saw the wrong thing? It's quite embarrassing, so you have my sincerest apologies for that. I feel so bad...

Anyway, i realize that this next chapter is taking a long time, but I WILL have it out before the end of the month! Mark my words! Until then, may your road lead you to warm sands. ^O^

AN: This is the (very) short prologue for my new story Dragons Change. It will end up as a Moon x Winter fic for reasons I will explain at the bottom along with my general inspiration for why I wrote this in the first place. You don't have to read it as it is quite long, but if you do read it, Thank You. I hope you all enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Wings of Fire. If I did, Moon would have ended up with Winter instead of Qibli.

Warning: Rated T for occasional bad language and future references of physical abuse. If you think I should raise the rating, do not hesitate to tell me. Warnings such as these will displayed before chapters that contain them.

Prologue:

Winter sighed as he finally finished his latest report on scavenger behavior. It had taken a lot longer than he had originally anticipated. As a result, it was now almost midnight and he was unbelievably tired. It was a good thing he had finished the paper, but he was unsure why exactly he had stayed up to finish it tonight. He could have finished it tomorrow or the next day…or the next day…or the next. After all, it's not like anyone actually takes my work seriously. Nobody really cares if I finish it or not.

He leaned back after that particular thought and reflected on what his tired mind had told him as he looked around his office. Winter was no stranger to thoughts of self-depreciation and other such unsavory topics, but it had been a while since he had had one. As his mind drifted to the past, his gaze slowly went to the silver bracelet with skyfire embedded in it that she had given him after she ran off with Qibli. He kept it on as a constant reminder of his past mistakes, but six years can change a dragon. For him, he was lucky enough to find a friend that believed in him and his work. Some people aren't lucky enough to have such loyal support. Even if it was from a Mudwing. I owe Flint everything. For helping me start the sanctuary, for helping me overcome my self-doubt, and just for being there for me.

Winter went to stand up to finally go to sleep as he was not willing to listen to his tired mind's self-loathing tangents when the shutter on his window suddenly blew open because of the storm that had been going since around noon yesterday. The extremely hard and cold winds common to Ice Kingdom storms had blown out the candle and scattered a bunch of papers which caused him to stumble around in the dark before eventually stumbling and falling. Perfect. This is JUST what I needed right now. Eventually he was able to get up and shut the window shutters tight. When he picked up and lit the candle again, he was greeted by the sight of all of his neatly organized piles of paper thrown about the room. And these weren't small stacks either, no. These stacks had several dozen papers each in them and there were at least eight stacks. In layman's terms, a LOT of papers.

Winter just stared at the mess, not able to decide if he felt enraged or resigned about the large mess he had to clean up before he could sleep. Then again, I could wait until tomorrow. He looked around the room again. Though I should just suck it up and get it over with. *sigh* Another sleepless night. Flint is NOT going to be happy with me doing this to myself again, but it has to get done either way. Better to just get it out of the way.

His mind made up; Winter set to work. The most infuriating part was that many of the reports had multiple pages, so picking up the pages was the easy part. That only took about thirty minutes. Next, he had to sort them. And THAT was not going to be fun. Two hours and a string of unintelligible curses later…and he was only about halfway done. It turns out there were a lot more papers than he realized and that was saying something.

Winter was tired. So tired he was past tired. So tired he was running on metaphorical fumes. And the more tired he got, the more frustrated and angrier he became. As he was shuffling through the mountains of papers, his famous scowl stuck to his face, he finally had had enough and just dumped the rest of papers in a stack on his desk. "Screw this! I'm going to sleep!"

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"You have got to be KIDDING ME! I JUST WANT TO GO TO SLEEP!" Winter yelled in frustration. He started walking towards the front door fully intent on chewing out the poor, unfortunate soul who dared to knock on the door. Winter was beyond livid at this point. He had never been one to skip sleep very much because he knew he would always get like this if he did. When he did, however, everyone knew to stay away from him until he got at least ten hours to calm himself down.

On his way towards the front door, he noticed Flint stick his head out of his room on the right side of the main hallway to see what the commotion was. As he saw Winter approaching, he asked, "Everything okay, boss?"

"Yeah, what the hell is that noise?" another voice spoke up, Winter turned to the source of the voice and noticed Flint doing the same. They saw a male Skywing, Titan, who was walking up the hallway behind Winter.

Winter didn't even stop walking and just answered both of them with, "Go back to sleep. I'll handle this." Winter vaguely noticed the venom in his voice and wondered if Flint or Titan did, too. If they did, they were smart enough not to comment on it. Right now, he was too tired to care either way.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Winter was ten feet away from the front door when the second round of knocks came. He all but lunged at the door. In the back of his mind, he wondered who in the name of the moons would be out in this storm, at his front door, at this time of night. But he was still too tired to care. If not for his frustration and anger fueling him, he was sure he would have already collapsed.

When he got to the door, though, he ripped it open despite the storm and was fully prepared to deliver a verbal tirade that would make even the most seasoned and grumpy Skywing soldier blush. His voice disappeared and his anger instantly subsided as he saw a shivering female Nightwing staring back at him. He instantly recognized the silver teardrop scales and dark green eyes that he hadn't seen in almost seven years.

"M-Moon!?"

AN: I hope you all enjoyed the prologue. The first actual chapter will be significantly longer than this (prologues are supposed to be short after all) and should be out sometime next week, hopefully. I promised an explanation so here it is. (And it's a long one).

It is best split into three points:

1.)As of today (2/6/19), I have just finished the second book in the series and am already in love with the universe. Even though I haven't actually read the books that introduce Moon, Winter, etc… I have learned enough from reading others' fanfictions and on Wikia to know that Winter is my favorite character. Why? Because he is one of two really emotionally complicated characters in the series (with Peril being the other). Because of that, I can see myself in him a little bit because we both have deep emotional turmoil that we experience.

2.)With the whole Moonbli and WinterWatcher debate going on I decided to look into it as unbiased as I could be. I can see both perspectives well enough, though I decided to go with the latter. The reason being that Moon strikes me as the kind of dragon/person that would try to help people that actually need it. Even if she didn't have mind reading powers, she would know that Qibli's life is pretty dang good. He just got adopted by a new family with Sunny as his sister and Queen Thorn as his mother and is probably living the good life in the Sandwing palace. Winter, on the other hand, lost his tribe, his family, and, in his mind, his friends. He believes himself to be alone in the world with no one to count on or help him. Since she does, however, she should be aware of at least some of his internal struggle. Knowing this, I feel as if she would go with Winter in order to help him unravel his emotions and fight through his pain. In essence, she would try to fix him. That's just my opinion, though. Everyone is entitled to their own thoughts. I just thought I should explain mine.

3.)I recently rediscovered the song Pieces by Sum 41 and after listening to it over 20 times in the past 24 hours (don't judge me), I felt as though it fit Winter's character perfectly. Not only do the lyrics themselves fit, but the singer has a voice that I could see Winter having if he was real. I've been dabbling with the idea of implementing that song into the story later or perhaps writing a short songfic for it. If you want either of those, send a review or message telling me which one you would rather have me do. If you don't want me to, send a review/message saying so.

If you got this far, thanks for taking the time to read this long explanation of mine. It means a lot.

Until next time,

AdmiralCole22