AN: This chapter did not turn out at all like I was expecting it to. I also proofread and posted it right after I finished writing, so I hope there aren't any mistakes that I could've caught with fresher eyes. As always, thanks for reading and enjoy!
Cornice was momentarily confused when he woke again, blinking blearily at the unfamiliar room that was now bathed in orange light. It took him a while to remember the events of the previous day and that he was in Possibility, with Ozone. Judging by the angle and hue of the sunlight streaming in, they had probably been sleeping for most of the day. And judging by how much better he felt, as he rubbed the lingering drowsiness from his eyes, that sleep seemed to have been much needed.
He yawned. "Ozone? Are you awake?"
The SkyWing didn't respond. His side rose and fell evenly against Cornice's back, and a whistling snore came from his nostrils (along with a thin trail of woodsy-smelling smoke). It seemed safe to assume that he was still asleep.
Cornice hopped off the bed as lightly as he could, trying not to disturb his friend. As he stretched his sleep-stiff limbs, he was reminded of mornings in the Ice Kingdom, the only time he was left alone in peaceful silence. For the first time, the memory of his previous life came with more nostalgia than stinging regret.
He padded tentatively into the main section of the house, wondering if Loess had returned, and found the potter at his stove, making something that smelled unfamiliar but delicious. Cornice's mouth watered. His stomach rumbled, suddenly aware that he hadn't eaten anything in days. Loess looked up and grinned.
"Oh, you're awake!" he said. "When I came home from work, the pair of you were still out like crocodiles in the sun. You must've been exhausted."
"It's like I'm a whole new dragon now," agreed Cornice, smiling back.
"Do you like soup?" asked Loess, gesturing to the food he was making.
"I've actually never tried it," Cornice admitted. "In the Ice Kingdom, we don't eat anything warm. There's no way to heat it up, really. It smells amazing, though."
Loess looked pleased. "Well, no time like the present to try something new, am I right? It's not quite ready yet, but it will be in a half hour or so."
"Thank you," said Cornice. "For everything."
"Don't mention it," said the older dragon, in a kind but firm voice. "We all need a helping hand every once in a while. Dragons aren't meant to be totally independent."
Cornice's family and every other IceWing he'd ever known would disagree, but he thought that Loess might have a point. Although he still didn't know much about other tribes, Cornice knew that the MudWing lifestyle was all about being part of a family that could trust and rely on each other. Where IceWings taught that an independent dragon was the only kind of strong dragon, MudWings instead taught interdependence between siblings. And despite his upbringing, Cornice had to admit that interdependence as its own kind of strength was a nice kind of idea to believe in.
He just wasn't sure he could ever believe it himself. He was afraid that some part of him would always be pushing him to see it as a weakness. The kind of thing that was okay for other dragons but never for himself.
He shook the thought away. "That's an interesting way to look at things."
Loess shrugged. "Well, looking at it any other way is a bit of a downer, no?"
"I guess that's true," said Cornice, feeling mystified. The way Loess had phrased it made it sound like he chose to look at things the way he wanted to see them instead of at what the facts suggested. That idea seemed kind of outrageous to Cornice, although he did notice that the hybrid potter seemed comfortable in his own mindset, in a way that Cornice himself was not. But was choosing to prioritize optimism over logic really the key to being happier? Could you consciously choose your own happiness?
Loess was studying him with curious dark eyes. "I can see that you're thinking deeply about this. Is it really such a new ideology for you?"
Cornice nodded. "I've never even left the Ice Kingdom until a month ago. I guess living so far from any of the other tribes keeps us more isolated than I realized. We do learn a bit about other kinds of dragons, but we never see them. It's not like Possibility. In fact, it's probably the complete opposite of Possibility."
"Hmm," said Loess. "Then perhaps you are the dragon most unlike me I've ever met. And yet you find my philosophy interesting rather than off-putting."
"Well," said the white dragon, "I'm not really like the other IceWings."
"I think that goes without saying," Loess responded. "You're here, and they are not. Something brought you here, away from the other IceWings. Maybe it was chance, or fate, or maybe even a conscious decision, but it was also something inside of you."
Cornice wasn't sure he completely understood what the MudWing-SandWing was saying, but it struck him as somewhat like the question he'd been asking himself since he left the Ice Kingdom. Was he still an IceWing?
And if he was in fact no longer an IceWing, he had a feeling it was not because he had decided to leave or because he had come to resent his parents. If he was not an IceWing, then he probably never had been. It was something he'd hatched with that had shaped him into the rebellious dragon he'd become.
"Can I ask you a sort of personal question?" he asked.
"I can't promise I'll answer it, but ask away," said the potter.
"Do you consider yourself a MudWing or a SandWing?"
Loess didn't answer right away. Cornice wasn't sure he was planning to respond at all. At last, he said slowly, "To be perfectly honest, I don't know if it really matters. I can think of myself as one or the other or both or neither, but all of those answers imply, to me, a sense of not belonging. I guess my answer is that I am Loess. When you look at me, you see something that is not quite a SandWing or a MudWing but entirely myself. I was not born to either tribe, but even then, I would not label myself as one thing."
He paused, searching for the right words, and then continued. "Perhaps this is because I live surrounded by dragons who have never lived with their tribes, but I do not necessarily see an IceWing and a SkyWing as two different kinds of dragons. The way I see it, dragons like yourself and Ozone, for example, are the same kind of dragon. You both consider yourself different from your tribes, and you are both deeply thoughtful dragons. It is fine to call yourself an IceWing or a SkyWing if that is what you wish, but the color of your scales and the powers you possess are not all there is to you."
Cornice didn't respond immediately. He couldn't think of the words to respond with. All he knew was that what Loess had said was an idea he never could have thought of on his own, but he couldn't deny that it had some truth in it.
It actually had a lot of truth in it.
"Does that answer your question?" asked Loess.
"It does," said Cornice. "Thank you. It means a lot to me."
"I'm glad you understand," said the potter, nodding in deep respect. He looked at the soup he was making, tasted a spoonful, and nodded again, this time in satisfaction. "Soup's ready. Perhaps you'd better wake Ozone so he can eat it while it's hot."
Cornice nodded. He turned and headed back where he'd come from, still mulling over the wisdom Loess had imparted on him. Maybe it didn't matter whether he acted the way an IceWing was expected to behave. After all, IceWing was just a word. It had meaning, but perhaps that meaning was in the same sense as any other descriptive word or phrase. It described him, but it was not his entire essence.
I am an IceWing in the same way that I am white, he thought. It describes me, but it does not equal me. White is not all I am. And an IceWing is not all I need to be.
When he went back to the side room, Ozone appeared to have just woken up. He rolled over to face the door as Cornice came in, jaws parting in a big yawn. "Oh, you're back. I had a kind of nice dream I wanted to tell you about."
"Oh?" said Cornice, curious and in good spirits. "What about?"
"The two of us had just bought some land so we could start a farm," the red-and-gold dragon told him, curling up again. "We were going to raise pigeons."
Amused, Cornice nudged Ozone to keep him from falling back asleep. "Definitely not. If I planned to raise any kind of animal, they'd have to be arctic foxes."
Ozone laughed a little. "Don't be so predictable."
"I am not predictable," he responded. "If I was predictable, I'd tell you to get up before I stick icicles in your ears. 'Seize the day, lazy SkyWing.'"
"Ouch," said Ozone. "That's not very nice."
"Exactly," said Cornice. "But I'm changing my ways and becoming a nice dragon, so I didn't say that. Instead, I'm nicely asking you to get up so we can eat the food that Loess kindly made for us. And not keep him waiting."
"All right, I'm getting up," said Ozone, stretching. "I wouldn't want to keep him waiting or come across like an ungracious guest. Especially since he was kind enough to not even ask us why I was expelled from the army. I'm honestly surprised he didn't ask any questions. What if I was actually a traitor or something?"
"Oh," said Cornice. "About that… I think he thinks we had a secret affair."
Ozone's response was almost a yelp. "What?!"
"Intertribal romances are a valid reason for being expelled," said Cornice. "If you were dating a dragon from a rival tribe, then your loyalties might be compromised."
The SkyWing looked desperately embarrassed (which, despite claiming to be a nice dragon, Cornice found highly amusing). "Yes, I get that! But if you knew that Loess drew the wrong conclusion, then why under the three moons didn't you correct him?"
Cornice shrugged. "Because then he'd ask questions."
Ozone hesitated and then nodded, although he still looked flushed. "I guess that makes sense. It still doesn't feel right lying to him about that, though."
"We're not lying," pointed out the ice dragon. "It's not our fault he might've come to the wrong conclusion. And we don't even know for certain. That's just my guess."
"You're probably right," said Ozone, unhappily.
"Don't stress out over it," said Cornice, not unkindly. "Come eat, okay?"
The next few days were like a dream. It was a pleasant dream, but totally unlike anything Cornice had ever experienced, and probably unlike anything he would ever experience again. He and Ozone explored Possibility together, hoping they would come across the Tribeless but mostly just wandering. Besides his somewhat disastrous flight from the Ice Kingdom, this was the first time Cornice had gone anywhere without any specific destination in mind. He and Ozone were just walking to nowhere.
There was a saying (not from the Ice Kingdom) that most things in life were more about the journey than the destination. And for the first time, Cornice understood why that saying had been said. He and Ozone stumbled upon shops they never could have dreamed of, selling everything from scented candles to dried flowers to fancy hats.
He never would have guessed a store existed devoted solely to fancy hats.
"We have to check this one out," he said, dragging Ozone inside.
To his credit, Ozone never once complained about all the detours Cornice had been dragging him on, even though the Tribeless would probably never hold a meeting in a store for fancy hats. The Tribeless probably didn't know a store for fancy hats was even a thing. But Cornice had never seen anything like it and he wanted to be there. He wanted to try on fancy hats and laugh at his own reflection and have a good time doing things he'd never imagined doing two months ago.
Things the Ice Kingdom didn't have were a comfort to him here. Playing around and embracing the cultural differences of Possibility was starting to convince him that a life in the Ice Kingdom was not the only life worth living.
He had found a new life. It was fun and it was exciting and it might not be proper by any definition of the word, but it was his life. Cornice didn't need anyone to approve of it besides himself. And maybe Ozone, but Ozone wouldn't judge anyway.
It was a much bigger store than it appeared from the outside, made up of several long aisles with towering shelves. There were boxed hats and hats on display and even a hats on a rack by the door. Cornice was amazed.
"Look at this one," he said excitedly, grabbing a fedora with a giant feather on the top. He put it on and turned to face his friend. "How do I look?"
"Like a poet," said Ozone, laughing. "From the time of the Scorching."
Cornice stuck out his forked tongue. "I'd like to see you find something better."
"Challenge accepted," said Ozone, in such a mild tone that it sounded like a joke.
"I'll get an even better one, and then we'll see who has more style. Meet you back here in twenty seconds," said Cornice, crouching like a sprinter. "Ready—go!"
He bounded off down one of the aisles, vaguely aware of Ozone laughing at his enthusiasm. He skidded to a halt as he caught sight of something eye-assaulting. It was a witch's hat, easily half his height, and covered from top to bottom in what looked like reflective, sparkly scales. Cornice didn't even have a name for them.
Grinning, he swapped it for the fedora and looked in a nearby mirror. He looked like something out of one of the dragonet storybooks Ozone had read to him the day before (he'd mentioned never reading one, and the SkyWing had vowed to fix that). His scales barely looked white anymore, covered with dazzling arcs of color from the light bouncing off the hat. Perfect. This'll beat whatever Ozone's found for sure!
He ran back down the aisle and almost crashed into something hideous.
It was a red dragon, wearing what looked like a giant scavenger head over his own. Cornice couldn't even see the dragon's face. "Ozone? Is that you?"
"Yup," said the SkyWing's voice, sounding slightly muffled. "Like my hat?"
Cornice walked in a circle around his friend, disbelieving. "That's a hat? It looks like you're transforming into a scavenger." He poked it, leaving a wrinkle in the strange material. "A scavenger made of plastic. Or perhaps a scavenger-themed balloon."
"It's the weirdest thing in this whole store," said Ozone, pulling it off. "It smells awful in there, though. And it's hard to see anything through the tiny eye holes."
"I think my hat's better," said Cornice. "Take a good look."
Ozone looked up, curiously, and then shielded his eyes. "What in Pyrrhia?"
"It's covered in little sparkly things," said Cornice, delighted.
"Those are called sequins," the red-and-gold dragon informed him. "And in this kind of lighting, they're blinding. Like sun off the water. I'm getting spots in my vision."
"I guess only an IceWing can appreciate this hat in all its glory," said Cornice. "I have perfect resistance to bright lights. I could stare at the sun all day if I wanted to. Or this magnificent hat."
"Okay, you win," said Ozone, squinting. "But you know what would make this hat even better? If it changed colors like a RainWing."
"Hmm," said Cornice, looking up at it thoughtfully. "Ozone, I think you could be a great hat designer if your heart so desired."
Ozone smiled. "Thank you."
After exploring the city on their own all day, Cornice and Ozone would talk with Loess over dinner, and the potter would tell them about the dragons he'd met. It quickly became clear that being a shopkeeper in a city as diverse as Possibility meant you'd interact with a lot of interesting people.
"An old SandWing soldier came to my shop today," Loess said one day. "As did an old SeaWing soldier. And they greeted each other with such warmth, although they'd been fighting on opposite sides. What I find so inspiring about veterans from the war is that they treat each other with dignity. There are no sides anymore. They're just happy that the war is over. These two dragons fought against each other, and yet afterwards they settled in the same city and bonded over their shared experiences."
Cornice and Ozone exchanged a glance. They knew that not everyone was happy the war was over. Behind everyone's backs, the Tribeless were trying to start the conflict again.
"Did you fight in the war, Loess?" asked Ozone.
"I didn't," said the potter. "I was too young. But I do remember my mother going off to battle. It was during the war that she met my father, actually. My father said that he was afraid of Famine's army, at first, but my mother treated him with compassion. After Famine conquered the Mud Kingdom, the SandWings didn't hesitate to use their own medical supplies to treat the defeated army. They weren't all cruel."
Cornice was startled—he'd never heard that kind of story before, even though the IceWings had been the first tribe Famine conquered. His mother insisted on training him, but she didn't talk about the war often. The IceWings were too ashamed of their defeat, their role as Famile's allies, and their loss of the Great Ice Cliff.
"I didn't know that," said Ozone, softly.
"There's a lot of things dragons don't know," said Loess, sighing. "But that's life. I just try to make up for it by running my mouth a lot." He laughed a little.
Cornice and Ozone smiled back.
"Oh, I almost forgot," said the potter, turning to Ozone. "I don't know if you've been in touch with them, but I saw your friends today. The trio of rowdy SandWings?"
"Really?" said Ozone, perking up. "Where?"
"They were at some SeaWing jeweler's shop," Loess responded, scratching his chin. "I think one of them mentioned something about a concert hall. Perhaps they're planning to go there tomorrow? I think a SandWing band is performing there."
Ozone glanced at Cornice. "Do you think we should go?"
Cornice kept his voice deliberately mild. "I'd like to meet your other friends."
Ozone looked a little surprised, and then seemed to understand that Cornice was trying to be discreet. He nodded, and then looked back to Loess. "Thanks for letting us know. We'll definitely go check it out."
The bigger dragon looked pleased. "No problem. Enjoy yourselves."
This would be the first time they'd face the Tribeless, fully knowing who they were and knowing that Ozone's friends had tried to kill him. What would prevent the Tribless from finishing the job if they noticed them? Cornice and Ozone would have to be extremely careful, even if there was a large crowd.
Cornice swallowed back apprehension. "We will."
AN: Sandshadow, I hope Ozone's dream was a good enough farm ending for you. :D