"I don't want to fight you," Ozone said hurriedly, ducking his head and tucking in his wings to look as small and nonthreatening as possible. "I'm just here to shelter from the storm for a little while. I'll get going soon enough. Or now, if you want."
There was a long pause.
Then the other dragon asked, "Are you a SkyWing?"
"Yes," he answered, glancing down at his red and gold scales. Perhaps in the faint lighting it was difficult for the other dragon to tell, even when Ozone was standing closer to the mouth of the cave. "Are you?"
The other dragon remained silent, as if he didn't want to answer. At least, Ozone thought it was a he, though the relatively high-pitched voice made it difficult to tell.
"I didn't think so," Ozone said thoughtfully.
"And you're not going to do anything about it?" the dragon asked disbelievingly.
"Not unless you're planning to hurt my tribe," he replied, tilting his head to one side. "But since you seem to be alone, I doubt that's the case."
"Hmm," the other dragon said noncommittally.
"It's not—is it?" Ozone blinked a little anxiously.
"No," the other dragon replied. "But why should you believe me?"
The SkyWing shrugged. "No reason not to."
"I thought SkyWings were supposed to be a tribe of warriors," the other dragon commented, his tone scathing. "You seem to be pretty dumb for one."
Ozone considered his words for a long moment. Was it dumb to give someone the benefit of the doubt? Maybe if you were supposed to consider everyone a suspect. But that seemed impractical to him. He personally thought you would lose a lot of potential allies if you treated them all as enemies.
"Seriously?" the other dragon said. "You're not offended by that?"
"Not particularly," Ozone replied, his mind already wandering to other things. "Do you mind if I stay in your cave until the rain eases off a little? My wings were so waterlogged before I found this place that they felt like they were about to fall off."
"I can't stop you," the other dragon answered, his tone so faintly contemptuous that Ozone wasn't sure if he'd imagined it. "This is your kingdom, not mine."
"You could if you really wanted to," the SkyWing mused, more to himself than to the other dragon. "Claws still hurt regardless of whose territory you're on."
"Ah," the voice said, tinged faintly with embarrassment. "About that. I know I said I wasn't afraid to fight you, but the truth is I can't move all that well right now. I injured my wing yesterday and I've been stuck here ever since. Since you're here, and not going to tell any of your tribe-mates to chase me off, maybe you could… help?"
He's rather quick to confide in me, considering he called me stupid for trusting him, Ozone thought, drumming his claws on the rocky floor absentmindedly. Or maybe he feels more desperate than his tone is letting on.
"Sure. I'll do what I can," he accepted. There seemed to be no harm in it.
"Thanks," the other dragon replied. His tone was a bit grudging, but behind that, Ozone thought he heard a tinge of relief.
"You'll have to come closer to the light so I can see what's wrong, though," he told the injured dragon, already trying to think of a way to subtly ask Ridge how to treat the wound. The red-orange dragonet was much better at first-aid than he was. In fact, he was much better at pretty much everything than Ozone was.
"There's some wood back here," the other dragon reported. "Someone else must have used this cave as shelter before. You can use that to light a fire so you can see better if you want. SkyWings are one of the tribes with fire, right?"
"Right," Ozone said, puzzled. Had this dragon never left his kingdom before? It seemed impossible that anyone would know so little about the other tribes.
"Here." There was a splintering sound as the other dragon batted the wood with his talons, and a few logs came skidding over to rest at Ozone's feet. He nudged them a short distance away from him and arranged them as quickly as he could into a decent fire structure before setting them alight. The flames blazed up brightly before subsiding into a more controlled flicker.
Satisfied, Ozone looked up to see the other dragon. The light revealed that he had pure white scales and angular blue eyes, a narrow face, a long glistening mane of spikes, and a whip-thin tail, which was curled around wickedly sharp talons.
"So you're an IceWing," he said. "I've never seen one before."
"I've never seen a SkyWing before either," the white dragon responded, sounding guarded but intrigued. "What's your name?"
"Ozone," he answered. "What's yours?"
"Cornice," the IceWing said. The name was strikingly unfamiliar to Ozone, not only in its meaning but also the softness of the pronunciation, which sounded like a faint hiss. SkyWing names were typically harder, like the crackling of fire.
"What are you doing here in the mountains?" the red dragon asked. "I thought I remembered learning that IceWings hardly ever left their kingdom."
"We don't," Cornice growled shortly.
Ozone tilted his head to one side. "Then why did you?"
"If I don't tell you, are you going to change your mind about helping me?" The IceWing sounded bitter but resigned. He flared his nostrils, a faint trail of frost-breath rising from them the way smoke did from a SkyWing's when he was annoyed.
"No," Ozone responded, puzzled. The thought hadn't even crossed his mind. He was just curious.
"In that case, I'd rather not say," the white dragon said, firelight dazzling off his horns as he turned his head away. "We've just met. I'm not going to share my entire life story with a stranger, no matter how…" He trailed off, seeming to realize that whatever comment he was going to make would be insulting.
"How what?" Ozone prompted, his curiosity getting the better of him. And there was something about hearing the IceWing talk that was intriguing. His voice sounded to Ozone a bit like music—not the war drums the SkyWings played, but like the flutes he had heard SandWings play or like wolves howling.
"Nothing." Cornice's voice was perfectly even now, no emotion behind his words. Ozone realized that Cornice had been consistently speaking without a pained edge to his voice, despite his supposed wounds. Had the IceWing been lying about being injured, or was he simply very good at hiding it?
"So what happened to your wing?" he asked.
"I was flying through the storm," Cornice explained, "and I somehow got caught in a particularly fierce wind tunnel. We have mountains in the Ice Kingdom, too, so I thought I could handle it, but yours are a lot taller and the valleys a lot narrower. I got swept right into a cliff by the wind."
"Can I see?" Ozone asked, moving around the fire to get a better look.
The spikes along Cornice's back bristled slightly, as if Ozone's approach made him somewhat uncomfortable, but the IceWing didn't protest as he lifted his left wing and unfolded it about halfway. "That's as far as I can open it."
Ozone reached out his talons and ran them lightly along the white dragon's cold scales. Cornice stood perfectly still through the inspection, keeping his face turned away but watching out of the corner of one eye.
Ozone was struck then by how blue Cornice's eyes were. Not pale like ice, but as vivid as the summer sky.
"Does this hurt?" he asked, as his talons passed over an area that looked slightly bluish against the otherwise stark white of the IceWing's scales. There was a dark blue substance encrusted over the scales near the joint that would be the wrist if the limb were an arm rather than a wing. Ozone couldn't tell what it was.
"A little," Cornice responded, but Ozone took note of the way his tone had gotten harder and slightly more brittle, like ice about to crack, and guessed that his touch was more painful than the white dragon was letting on.
Ozone peered closer at the blue substance, turning the observations over in his mind and putting them together in a different way. "Is that blood?"
Cornice nodded. "I think my wing membrane is torn."
"The joint looks dislocated, too," Ozone said, removing his talons from it. "That's probably from the impact, and the tear was likely caused by sharp stones."
"It sounds like you know what you're talking about," the IceWing said, turning to face Ozone again and narrowing his eyes. "Can you fix it?"
Ozone thought about it. He was fairly sure he knew the procedure for mending dislocated joints—less so that he could carry it out himself. The tear was just a matter of proper bandaging so that the wing membrane wouldn't be torn open further by flying as they waited for it to heal. "I think so."
Cornice's brow furrowed into a scowl. "That's not very reassuring. But I suppose I have no other choice than to trust you, SkyWing. Don't make me regret it."
Ozone felt a tingle run up his spine, as if something within him had shifted ever-so-slightly into a better position, finally settling into place. He couldn't explain why, but a part of him wanted very much for this mysterious foreign stranger to be his friend.
I'll try not to, he would have said to any other dragon.
To Cornice, he said, "I won't."
AN: I've noticed that it's gotten a little quiet on the readers' end of this story. I know that it's still being read, but I haven't gotten any reviews on the last two chapters and I'm not exactly sure why that is. If you're losing interest, please give me some feedback so I can try to fix what I'm doing wrong. If you are still interested, please let me know! Even super short reviews would mean the world to me. I'm not going to withhold the chapters I have pre-written due to the lack of reviews, but feedback gives me motivation to keep writing that is otherwise difficult for me to keep up, and the silence is starting to discourage me.
Furthermore, I have a question for you. The next chapter is considerably longer than any of the previous ones, so would you rather me break it up into "Chapter 5 Part 1" and "Chapter Five Part 2", or just post it all together? Please let me know your opinion!
Thanks for reading!