Dragon(s)layer
2
Swamp Echoes
{Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning Soundtrack: A Swamp Hide and Seek}
The swamp always stunk in the morning. An out of control fungus population, copious decay from dead plants and timber, and great ravines filled with noxious sludge-water basically assured that this morose scent was immortal. However, Spyra had been living here for her entire young life, so the stench didn't bother her or her brother.
"Were you falling off of a cliff? Or out of a tree? 'Cause you're not a spontaneous type. No offense." Firefly said.
"It wasn't off of anything in particular. It was just… I dunno, out of thin air?" Spyra grunted, leaping on top of a fallen willow tree. It was something to get off the mushy humus of the marshland for at least a little while. She used it as a balanced bridge as she spoke. "There isn't much more to it. I mean there is, but it was just me falling. You've had dreams like that before."
The dragon steadied herself by spreading out her wings, the mushroom-encrusted flesh of the dead tree crinkling under her armored talons with curious crunches. She glanced at Firefly as the little gold dragonfly hovered by her flank, his compound eyes glistening with concern.
"Haven't you?" She blinked.
"...Yeah. Sure, I guess." Firefly hummed, his tiny head arcing up-down in a slow ascent of uncertainty. Spyra wanted to roll her eyes but decided it was better to let it sit with just a dissatisfied huff. She should've figured Firefly's hormonal teenage mind would struggle to get a firm grip over what she was saying.
"I think everyone has dreams like that." Firefly tried to sound helpful as the timid words escaped his mandibles. "Dreams of falling, dreams of being chased, it's just basic nightmare mumbo-jumbo. They're all signs of the condition of sapience."
"Mm, a scholar." Spyra smirked.
"And don't forget the dreams of their teeth falling out."
"You'll never have to worry about the last one, clippers." She winked at him as she foot-worked to the end of the log. "But I don't know, Firefly, it didn't feel like just any other nightmare. I've never had a dream that vivid before. And the fire? What was that all about?"
"How am I supposed to know? Maybe because you breathe the stuff all the time, you're starting to get backwash." Firefly shrugged his tiny arms and span a circle around one of her horns. "We don't know any other dragons, yeah? We don't know how they think, what they do for fun, or anything really. We just have you, and you do you. Being yourself, right?"
"I guess?"
"Besides, I think you're just being paranoid." Firefly clicked his mandibles. "It isn't like some kind of god is looking down on you or something anyhow. Who cares about the swamps anyway? All the wars and the gods and the magic happens up North. We're safe down here because it's boring down here."
"You're probably right." Spyra sounded glum. "You're definitely right about the boring part, that's for sure."
"Positively I am. I have a perception on these kinds of things." He proclaimed proudly.
"Oh-ho, here we go." She hopped off the end of the timber. The ground squished a little under her heels, but she was too amused to give it much thought. "So zen-master, whatever shall I do to rid myself of these abominable night terrors?"
"You scoff now, but one day, you'll see!" Firefly laughed as he followed her in the air. "Somebody had to inherit mom's spirit-sight, and seeing as I'm the only naturally-made baby…"
"Ew, dude, you're burning images in my delicate mind." Spyra clicked her tongue, wincing at horrid still-shots of the old dragonflies, Lightnux and Cometcu, appearing in her brain. "I wasn't trying to step into all that."
"I know." Firefly poked her on the cheek, making her snort. "I just like messing with you."
"Buzz off, you annoying little firecracker."
"I'm always here for your moments of crisis!" He mused. "Seriously though, your dreams of doom and the apocalypse? I wouldn't sweat them. We've got a lot more important things down here, in the actual real world, to deal with."
"Yeah, like having to watch my ass so your ugly little friends don't stick something in it." The dragon flicked her tail as she walked. "You ever hear the statement playing with fire?"
"It wasn't my idea." Firefly snickered, reeling when she glared at him. "Calm down! It was over the line, I agree, I agree..."
"...Yeah, well, just be sure to tighten their leashes next time you let them out of their pens." Spyra grumbled. "I thought I got away from all that bullying when I got big enough to step on people."
"You were always big enough to step on people." Firefly shuddered. "-And- pfft- bullying? C'mon, Snot-Tail, Wingwhip's a jerk, but he isn't stupid. They aren't going to push you over the edge and get squashed. No cheap laugh is worth getting biffed."
"Why didn't you apply this logic when you were still in the pond?" Spyra batted away a mushroom spore zipping loops in her face. "Remember that time I had to dive in and save you from that snapper turtle?"
"...don't remind me..." Firefly shuddered. "Nothing natural should have a mouth like that. Especially a turtle. The Mayfly must have been drunk when he designed that particular species."
"Or maybe he took one look at my fat-head brother and his stupid friends, and figured natural selection was needed to quell the tide."
"I'm too beautiful to not be selected by nature."
"Nature cried when you hatched."
"Ouch!" Firefly laughed, pushing into her head. "From the flying iguana?"
"You've got bug-wings. You don't ever have to glide like I do when you fly." Spyra smiled.
The swamp produced an emerald glaze to the cloudy day sky above. Things were already gray because of the storm last night, but the murkiness rising like cigar smoke from every nook of the humus-riddled earth was making things thick and choking.
The two of them trekked down a clearing that scythed through the marshland heights like a blade through wheat. Rising rock crags impeded their progress far to the west, and expanses of neck-high sludge-water bracketed the east. The willow trees towered through the greenish gloom like spidery fingers, and the smell of pollen intermixed with the more foul stench of swamp-gas. The willows normally acted as shade for hidden colonies of flowers. berry bushes and even basil roots. They were overseers, clawing into the cloudy sky with abandon, where they might act to frighten an inexperienced outsider, especially in the dead of night.
However: Spyra had been staring at the stupid things since before she could speak proper common. Massive as they may be, and oh-so strong, all the willow trees around here were nothing special to her.
In fact, very little here was.
"Why do you always come out here anyhow?" Firefly lowered himself beside a large pinkish mushroom cap. He sniffed at it and snorted through his chitin. "This place stinks."
"You don't even have a nose." Spyra sharply laughed at him as she trudged by.
"I brought up a valid point first." The dragonfly grumbled, a hand brushing over the space between his eyes.
"Why do I need a reason? It's just fun." The dragon shrugged her wings, finding a drier earth-bridge to cross a sickly patch of greenish muck. Crows cawed overhead and the cicadas broached as she balanced on the dirt. "It's something to look into. Exploring and whatnot. Think about all the little crags and niches we haven't checked in comparison to the ones we have!"
"I'm sure those unseen holes stink just as bad." The dragonfly grunted, snorting more shroom-particles from his mouth-pieces. "Dad says the mushrooms are getting bigger."
"Where? In the north?" Spyra was only half-listening. She had stopped on the edge of the little bridge and was bent over, examining a small, moving anomaly taking root in the water with keen interest. "Yeah, mom's saying bad mojo is going down up there. I was meaning to go take a look myself."
"No! Don't do that. Everything's getting bigger, and more dangerous, and poisonous or whatnot in the north. The swamp there isn't safe!" Firefly shuddered so much that little golden dust sauntered off his wings. "Gives me the creeps."
"The Forbidden Funguswood." She spat it out her chops like it was a joke, which, to her, it was, much to Firefly's chagrin.
"You can't take anything seriously, can't you? Maybe that's why you've been having nightmares. They're premonitions! Warnings from the great-beyond about your impending doom." He badgered. "If I thought like you do all the time when I first molted, I would've gotten eaten a long long time ago."
"A tragedy, for sure." The dragoness frowned testily, her tail whipping as she shot a quick glare over her wing. Spyra refocused on the water, squinting, as to get a better look. "Ya' know, sometimes you make me reconsider looking to you for therapy."
"I never said I was qualified for anything." Firefly chuffed, his wings droning as he shoved past Spyra's face to see what she was doing. "-And what are you looking at down here anyway?"
"Waitasec, bro, don't get too-"
Thw-wumpp~!
"-…close."
One second was all it took for a slimy, brown-colored tongue to shoot out of the shallows, wrap around poor Firefly's little thorax and slurp the dragonfly up. Firefly's shrill shriek was silenced when him and the tongue shot back beneath the water with a disgusting squelch.
Spyra- in contrast to panicking –simply sighed and sat on her haunches, watching with annoyance as the water sloshed, sprayed and moved, and a large, fat and bulbous Toadwort started to crawl out of the muck.
"Oh Firefly, what would you do without me?" The dragon grumbled.
"-Heeeeeellllllmmmmmppppp~!" –Came the muffled squeal of her brother from inside the plant's gut. The Toadwort produced a walloping garble, and one of its vine-like arms came around to smack its crop with an errant leaf, to render silent its tasty- yet loud –prey.
Slap~! –wiggled its stomach.
"-Ouch-" –Her brother muffled.
Toadwort's were only roughly humanoid. It was essentially a gooey ball with two fronds for legs and two leaves for graspers. It was all capped with a bluntly-fanged flytrap-esque head covered in white liver-spots. She'd seen things more frightening in dumps she'd taken.
The creature continued rising out of the swamp-muck until it stood a single head over the purple dragon. It opened its slime-dripping maw and gurgled at her in some effort to intimidate her, flecking green puss and tan-tinted saliva all over the place. Spyra grimaced and turned her snout away with a scrunched nose.
"-Pew~! It's called a toothbrush, buddy…" She waved a paw in her face.
"-Spyhwa~! Spyhwa, hellmpp meehhh~!" –Firefly blotted inside. The Toadwort croaked curiously and slapped its jiggling crop again. Schlap~! "-Ouch- Ohmyygawhdd~! It's awhfull in eerreee~! My wiinnghhhss are melltttinnnngg~!"
"Technically, you still have an hour before its digestive juices start to work." Spyra yawned, examining one of her paw's talons. "What you really have to worry about is oxygen. Though, I bet a little guy like you would last for a bit, inside Tubby here's tight guts."
"-Spywhaaaaa~!" –Firefly sang. The Toadwort shifted on its tendrils and smacked its stomach again. Plat. "-Ouch- Spywha~! Yuu stuhpidd lizarddd, gehttt mee outtt~! Nowwww~!"
"I'm not a lizard, I'm a dragon." She guffawed, standing up and flicking her tail. The Toadwort gurgled again and backed off into the swamp sludge, holding out its stubby leaf-arms defensively. She grinned ferally, and her talons slipped from their joints with an audible slck~! "And dragons don't like it when flytraps-on-steroids eat their brothers."
The Toadwort could visibly be seen gulping.
She wished she had a legion of these things instead of those stupid dummies. They were much more entertaining to slaughter. Just a quick slash across the neck, and the fat head was rolling through the swamp air, where it splashed heavily to oblivion in the water nearby.
Another hack and the jiggly crop spilled all its mushy, mud-looking innards all across the dirt. One of those stomach contents was a screaming, golden glowing dragonfly who was writhing on the ground in terror.
The Toadwort stumbled back on its fronds, headless and disemboweled. Spyra sighed at the image with content, and cut off her combat pose, politely giggling at the walking corpse.
Splash~! –it tumbled back and sank back-first into the sludge, bleeding darkly-colored plant fluid to float in the water like a pool of oil.
"…O-Oh my… Oh…" Firefly rolled over in a slick mess. He coughed up black bile and twitched in horror, colored browner than a cow's turd and much less like the annoying glow-toy he normally was. "…G-Gonna' be sick…" He gagged crazily, his soiled wings trilling underneath hills of gut-sludge.
"Which one of us, you or me?" Spyra stepped closer and snorted at the smell. "Aw, man, bro', what is it with you and touching before looking? Adventurers can't be curious like cats."
"…Y-You're the one… who wanted to be an adventurer…" Firefly coughed, pointing at her weakly from the pile of slime. "…I was just… looking… at the water…"
"Only one way to fix a stank like that." She pinched one of his wings. "Water!"
"-Waitnononono-!"
Firefly screeched all the way through the air until he hit the marsh pool nearby with a tiny plop~! Spyra chuckled and wiped her talons off on a branch.
When Firefly finally clawed his way out of the shallows, leaving a skid in the mushy earth behind him, he face-planted in the humus, his wings a crinkled mess across his back.
"Well, now you only stink like one corpse and not a pile of twenty." Spyra chided humorously as she stood over him. "Ya' see why I like to explore out here?"
Firefly slowly looked up from the ground, his mandibles caught, and sludge dripping from his little bug-face. Spyra grinned toothily.
"Because it's fun."
"I hate you." He spat.
{🐉}
"Did your brother get swallowed by a Toadwort again?"
"Yup."
Cometcu was probably the most collected soul in the bramble. She rarely lost her temper, and something about that pinkish light always coming off her tiny form seemed to soothe everyone who saw it.
But right now, as she stared at her adopted daughter and noted with much concern the proud smile across her muzzle, she couldn't help but huff.
"Young lady," She started.
"-Aw, mom! I hate when you call me that!" Spyra groaned, burying her face under her paws. "You sound like an old Timbergarden Teacher scolding nymphs!"
"-Nymphs, dragonflies or dragons, Spyra, I will not let something like this go." Cometcu wagged a chitinous finger. "Your brother is all you have! All we have! You're the older sister. You should've been watching him."
"All I do is watch him, mom." The dragon rolled her eyes. "It isn't my fault he can't watch where he steps."
"He flies."
"Semantics." Spyra reasoned, gesturing with her claw. "I didn't tell him to stick his face in the water and try and kiss the thing like he did."
"-That's exaggerated-~!" –Came a groan from Firefly's room. A moment later, and the air was tinged with the horrid sound of distant wretching.
Cometcu sighed and dusted off her tiny hands, looking down at the floor as silence bled into the argument. The kitchen was probably the single greatest source of what Spyra would brashly call: 'action' -in the whole thicket house. This was where Cometcu had first learned how to cook meat after Spyra got sick from not having it in her diet. This was where Firefly had first dumped a mug of tea over Spyra's head when they were both tiny, and she had responded by throwing him out the very window behind Cometcu's head.
"He'll be sick for days, I can already see it." She muttered defeatedly, using a little rag to wipe her hands off.
"He'll get back on his feet- err –wings, like he always does. It's a family trait, mom: "Springy", remember?" Spyra wing-shrugged. "It really wasn't my fault. I was just doing my rounds, and he wanted to come along and-"
"Spyra," Cometcu interrupted tiredly. "this isn't about all of that, in fact, it isn't even about just responsibility. This is about your recklessness."
"Recklessness." The word was a rock to Spyra's ego. She was a dragon! Dragons weren't reckless! They were practiced and meticulous. Everything she did, her patrols, her venturing around the swamp, it was all for her and her surrogate family's protection.
…it just so happened that it doubled as the only thing in her miserable little marsh-life that gave her any semblance of enjoyment, but that was beside the point. Though torturing her brother certainly had alleviated many a dark day.
Maybe when he got better, she'd hit him with a salamander egg. Or a rock. No, definitely the egg, he'd never be able to get the goop off...
"What do you know about recklessness, mom?" The dragon pouted, turning up her purple nose.
"-More than you~!" –Came from the other room between wretches.
"Shut up, Toadstool breath!" She shot back.
"I've studied the dragonfly mind since I was a nymph." Cometcu smiled calmly, ignoring the jab from her daughter. "Understanding life, understanding the mind. I've known these things since long before you were an egg, in that basket, on that canal, my little dragon."
Spyra had been preparing to shoot back another quick one, but held her temper. Instead, anything that had been boiling her throat came out as nothing more than a dispersal of air.
"Alright, I didn't mean it like that, sorry." She said that last word so lowly that Cometcu almost didn't hear her. "I busted him out of its guts, though. I get kudos for heroism, right? I technically risked my life."
"-You kill Toadworts by the bushel-!" Firefly hollered. "-And you hesitated-! You started-" -Another wretch. "-describing to me its digestive juices-! WHILE I WAS INSIDE OF IT-!"
Cometcu's mandibles gaped. "Spyra!"
"He's exaggerating! It's the sickness, it's making him delusional."
"-I can perfectly articulate what you're saying-"
"Don't follow the light, and breathe in through your mandibles and out through your... mandibles..." Spyra cringed, wiggling her nose. "Taking blessings for granted, eh? Look, mom, Firefly's fine. I gotta' make a few stops, but then I'm going out again. I still haven't finished my usual routes. Do you guys need dinner?"
"If by you guys, you mean me, your father and your very sick, vomiting brother, then no, my little dragon. We have enough for tonight." Cometcu sadly sighed. "Can you please promise me at least that you'll be careful from now on? I know I can't stop you from exploring, and traveling, it's-"
Cometcu smiled hopefully as Spyra stopped in the frame of the bramble.
"…it's who you are." She said.
"Yeah, mom, I promise." Spyra looked at her past her wing-joint, her purple hide highlighted bronze from the streaming sunlight outside the kitchen nook. Now that it wasn't so early in the day, the swamp was actually beginning to represent some kind of victual of beauty. "I'll be back by dinner."
"Please see to it that you are." The pink dragonfly nodded. "-Oh! And stay away from the Forbidden Funguswood. I've spoken with the plants. They tell dire stories of that place. Something very strange is happening there, even your father can feel it."
Spyra stared at her for a moment and then grunted.
"No Forbidden Funguswood, got it." She grinned daggers. "Don't fret, mom, I'll go nowhere near it."
{🐉}
The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion OST- Sunrise Of Flutes
Spyra was still grumbling to herself about the whole thing. It really hadn't been her fault! Firefly was too nosy for his own good, and out past the fringes of the village, you were bound to step on a landmine sooner or later when you had the perception of a log.
He'd be fine in a few days. He had grown up in the very same water Toadworts liked to hang out in. There had to be some kind of genetic resistance to things like that for dragonflies... Something about gut-health?
Eh.
At least she wasn't the one hacking up her own spleen.
Humming, she passed under the bramble frame of one of the village soap-makers, an elderly blue dragonfly named Saphide.
Spyra had grilled him once or twice about his real name, but the stubborn old coot had stuck with it through thick and thin. It was really just a title he'd gotten because as dragonflies aged, their hides started to crack, become ridged and would ooze, resembling the surfaces of scriptures carved on ancient tablets.
Saphide was so old that someone probably could pluck him out of the air and throw him like a rock. His mandibles were sunken, his eyes were turning misty, and all of his bodily weight had gone into his abdomen, rendering his tired, flimsy wings overworked at the best of times. Honestly, he looked like a fat, bloated fly. It was strange seeing such an unhealthy guy ironically being so good as making something for cleanliness. He probably envied his own customers.
"Heya', Sappy! Purple Dragoness at two-o-clock coming right atchya'." Spyra sauntered with a noticeable wriggle of her trunk-junk and tail to the little counter barrier in the center of the bramble. "-Sappy, c'mon, I know you're back there..."
Hmm.
Nothing.
The back of the thicket was devoid of anything but tiny wicker baskets filled with soap bars wrapped in leaf casings. Most of them were the size of pebbles in comparison to her. But the soap-makers- by order of Lightnux -had been making special bars for her since she had first come here in addition to the usual stock.
And right now, she was due for a fresh basket of them. The weekly drop, as it was.
The dragoness leaned over the little wooden counter and drummed her talons expectantly, eyes darting around as she searched back and forth for the old insect.
"Yo! Old man! I know you got a complex for people whose bodily functions work without a hitch, but lady-Spyra needs her feminine beauty to survive out here! Beauty means I need soap! So swing your abdomen and get your flaking be-hind out here!"
A light buzzing caught her attention as she quieted down and focused on the back archway leading to where the proprietor lived. Saphide bobbed through the frame a moment later, his bloated abdomen swinging underneath him as he struggled with his own weight. One of his misty eyes was pinched shut, and his mandibles were daggered in a sneer.
Spyra leaned over the counter and beamed at him toothily, her tail wagging like a dog's.
"How are ya', Sappy?" She chirped, winking.
"It's a good thing we have the rapport we do, or else, I might believe some of that nonsense you said just now..." Saphide's voice sounded like sandpaper being dragged against tree bark. The fat dragonfly itched his neck chitin and buzzed over to the mounds of baskets behind the counter. "You could have just taken it. Soap is a community benefit."
"Yeah, but where would the fun be in that? I'm a poised girl, Sappy, I don't keep my sparkling attitude by avoiding people." The dragon watched him idly as he sifted aside some of the little wickers, his arms quivering even for just lifting one. "How's the trade?"
"Well," Saphide moved another basket of dragonfly-sized bars with a grunt. "there's stock coming out my exoskeleton, the thicket has yet to burn down, and you continue to reassure me of my dashingly good looks every time you come here... which I am still waiting for to make up for your yelling."
"Don't fret it." Spyra winked. "You're sexy as ever, old man, take it from the dragon, I get around these parts enough to pick out a nasty wort or a gem."
"Aren't you sweet..." Saphide dryly chuckled, quivering as he dug his fingers into the underside of another basket, and heaved. It only twitched a little. "-Gah! Things are getting heavier..."
"Women are the worst victims to send fat-jokes at."
"Not you, the basket. I can't get it up."
"Phrasing?" Spyra giggled.
"It's starting to not be funny anymore. I make you soap. You don't have to mean to me." The old dragonfly buzzed back a bit and stroked his aching little fingers, embarrassed.
"Aw jeez', I'm sorry, I'm in poker-prodder big-sister mode today, I'm talking like I'm berating Firefly. Lemme' come around the counter and get that for ya'." Spyra flicked her wings and trotted over. "Maybe you should see mom for a salve? It's your joints buggin' ya', right?"
"Yes." Saphide sighed as he rested his abdomen on the counter and sat down, watching as the large reptile ducked to the counter level and nudged a paw into the stack of baskets. "When you go this long in the world, you gather rust with all your sightseeing. Be careful with those, you'll knock the whole pile down."
"If you wanna' talk about deep stuff: a benefit of youth is either precision or complete situational autism." Spyra smirked. "Lucky for both of us, I've got the prior, and in loads."
"What happened with Firefly? Is he okay?"
All of the villagers knew each other. There wasn't a family in the community who kept to themselves and did not readily offer assistance to neighbors in need. Of course, Spyra's family had always been treated a little differently on account of the whole adopted-draconic-child thing, but once she'd gotten older and teethed out the moody behavior, everyone had acclimated nicely.
"He got swallowed by a Toadwort."
"Again?"
"Yeeeup."
"You and that nymph are going to get yourselves in trouble, the two of you wandering around past the village fringe at all hours of the day." Saphide picked at some of the amber-colored scabs on his hide as Spyra sifted through the tens of soap baskets, humming when she found what she was looking for. "There are things out there uglier than me, and with more bite and claw. Haven't you heard about the Funguswood? Something's happening in that thicket, and it reeks of black magic."
"The only black magic around here is the shit that gets caught in my toes. Thank god you make soap, old man. Hey, I haven't scrubbed today yet, you wanna' see?" Spyra held up a rear-paw in the dragonfly's face, making him chortle in dry laughter.
"Get out of my thicket, you whippersnapper." He hacked.
"Mom didn't say anything about black magic." She trailed. "I mean, I know she wouldn't, at least not up front. But if those scriptures in the Mayfly shrine are right, magic hasn't been seen in the swamps for decades."
"I don't know these things." Saphide held his hands up, shuffling on the counter. "I just make soap."
"I'm sure if something was going down, mom would warn us. But, hey, the day's young. You should get out and get a tan while you're at it." Spyra held a large wicker basket by the loop in her mouth, filled with a handful of rounded soap bars wrapped in frond leaves. "Besides, don't take what I gotta' say to heart, Sappy', you're still on the market. What about Fragrence? You talk to her?"
"The older fly down by the nymph pond?" Saphide blinked. "What are you trying to do? Getting me riled up for something out of my league..."
"There ain't no leagues. Just effort." Spyra winked lastly and happily trotted out the arch. "I'll check ya', Sappy, go talk to Fragrence, she's lonely too."
Saphide tiredly raised a hand and watched the village's sole draconic citizen walk out into the daylight outside. He picked at his wrist, and hummed through his mandibles.
Fragrence was starting to chip too, wasn't she? And she had a yellow glow. Saphide liked the color yellow, even if he was losing the ability to tell hues apart anymore because of his eyes...
Hell, maybe he'd give it a shot. Anyone made better company than a pile of soap bars.
{🐉}
{Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning Soundtrack: A Swamp Hide and Seek}
Spyra stopped at home to drop off her care products before heading for the village edge. In her little nook of a room, she could hear Firefly talking through the thicket's natural walls.
It started as a residual hum of indecipherable speech, and Spyra wasn't normally an eavesdropper. But she could pick out a few words, like: Spyra -and- Worried.
What the hell.
Maybe being a fly on the wall might enlighten her to some surprise party her adoptive family was planning for her. But her birthday (the day they found her basket) -wasn't coming up, and she hadn't done anything recently exceptional. Maybe Firefly was suggesting to one of their parents that they punish her for what happened?
Spyra snorted soot out her nose and marched out of her room, pressing a horn to the wall just outside her brother's nook.
We'll see about that, you talking sparkler. I'll leave a salamander pie in your nest if you start tattling on me all the time...
"...I'm kind of, sort of, worried about her. 'Cause, she was comfortable telling me, and not either of you, and that seems, y'know, like... weird..." Firefly said, muffled through the wood and earth. "She's been having nightmares a lot, but this one was new. She was tumbling out of the sky, and she was on fire. I know she breathes the stuff, but that seems a little extreme..."
"Did she ask that you not tell me?" It was Lightnux's voice next.
"...Not directly, but..."
"Definitely implied?"
"You know how she is..."
"Well, I certainly appreciate you telling me regardless, especially after the incident earlier today... Are you feeling any better? Still having stomach cramps?"
"No, I think I barfed up most of the mud, it's just a few dry heaves. Oh, by the way, I filled the last bowl, and uh... neither of you were here to take it away, so I kind of, sort of dumped it out my window."
"What?!" Lightnux barked. "No! No, my son, civilized flies don't do these things!"
"But I'm weak and fragile, and I could not travel the thicket in such dark, sickly times..."
"You had enough energy to flutter over to your window and dump your vomit on our yard!"
"It's all mud anyway!"
Spyra snickered against her own will. She had definitely rubbed off on her little brother. Her musings made her go pale as she slapped a paw over her snout. The conversation inside Firefly's room went silent.
"...Spyra? Is that you?" Lightnux asked.
Spyra danced away and swept into her room nook, almost tripping over her own nest as she scrambled to pick up soap bars from the basket to make herself look busy.
"Oh, there you are." Lightnux appeared in her arch's frame, and mandible-smiled. "I didn't hear you come back in."
"Yeah, sorry pops, I'm in a bit of rush to put this soap away and get back out there and... y'know... patrol, do my rounds..." Spyra fiddled back and forth, moving the bars with little to no direction as she desperately tried to find anything else to look at besides her father's eyes.
"...Ah, a rush. That must be why you're putting the soap in your bed." Lightnux smiled.
"Wha-?" Spyra blinked and looked down at what she was doing. Half the pile was still in the basket, the other half was in the center of her nest. "Huh, fancy that. I, uh... I enjoy a clean nest."
"Your brother is right to be worried about you, even after the whole Toadwort accident before." The older dragonfly mused. "I'm sorry that you didn't feel comfortable sharing with me your dream last night. I won't press you for details."
"Well by the sound of it, nine-carrot lips in the other room told you the gist of it." Spyra sat on her haunches and huffed. "It just bothered me because it felt more real than any of the other ones. And it was so clear! Normally, everything's hazy, and there's only snippets I remember... dark stuff, like black shapes, white eyes, a dragon with blood running down its chest."
"I remember you saying."
"This time it was like reading a scroll, like it was a story. I was falling, and on fire, and I hit the ground." She stared into space, recollections of the dream cycling through her mind briefly. "It really rattled my scales, and that takes effort."
Spyra sniffed, and looked between the soap basket and her father.
"...Should I say the end?"
"No, I'm just thinking." Lightnux smiled. "...In lighter news, Cometcu thinks Firefly will have flushed out his system within a day or two. Soon, he'll be back in the air."
"Cool, I'm glad." Spyra picked at her talon. "...It really wasn't my fault, what happened."
"No one is blaming you, we just want you to be careful, both of you, because me and your mother love you with all our hearts. You don't have to feel guilty- and I know you do -don't look at me that way, I know that look. Going beyond the edges of the village is dangerous, which I know you know. There are creatures out there, aggressive ones, ones who will make a quick meal out of a dragonfly."
"Like what mom's saying about the north."
"Yes, like what mom is saying about the north. But your usual rounds don't go anywhere near the Funguswood, so I won't nag you about what you already know I ask of you..."
"Uh-huh."
"...Well, if that settles all that can be settled." Lightnux put his hands on his little hips. It was weird, having those and no legs, just an abdomen. Spyra was smiling at him because of the very non-fly gesture. "Be back before dark."
"Yes, dad."
As soon as Lightnux's wings fluttered away to silence, Spyra stood up, her tail whipping as she dug through her mind.
Now what did she do? Her only exploring partner was sicker than a mule. Her rounds weren't as wholesome without someone to chat with. She briefly considered picking up what she had tried once as a hatchling, finding a rock, and drawing a face on it and naming it 'Balding'.
It had been cute years ago, but now it'd probably just be creepy. Scratch that. Not an option.
Oh well, Spyra puffed through her chops and glumly trotted around to start leaving the thicket. I'm used to being by myself anyway.
"Feel better, squirt! I'm off to save the world and kick ass." Spyra wrapped a wing on Firefly's arch frame as she passed by. "I'll be sure to save you a doubloon when I dig up some king's lost horde."
"...King's horde..." Firefly mumbled inside. "...That'll be the day."
"Who knows," Spyra grinned like a degenerate and peered around to make sure Cometcu and Lightnux weren't in the thicket. "-maybe there'll be ruby-encrusted dildos and I can keep you up all night with my feverish orgasms."
"-Ugh-! Eew-! You horrible person, now I can't unsee that-!"
Spyra cackled and gave him a raspberry before prancing like a deer and heading outside, ready to begin her usual journeys.
{🐉}
"Off again, Spyra?" Dredgelit was the village's sentry out on watch today. He peered at her as she trotted by and out into the swamp, past the boundaries of the brambles that made their home.
"You know it, Dredgy'." Spyra smirked daggers. "Your watch shouldn't be too bad. I already killed everything worth killing out there for ya'."
"Aren't you a peach." Dredgelit chuckled. He was a darkly colored green fly of the tribe, with a really deep voice for someone so small.
"We've actually decided that I'm the village plum." Spyra specified over her wing. "I think they're related to peaches anyhow, so it works."
The sky was still a bit cloudy and a pleasantly warm wind had settled among all the grottos and willows. Toads and crickets were dueling for the spotlight through their songs and calls. Mushroom spores danced in the breeze, and sunlight streamed through tree-sized mushroom caps as blue or pink light.
Without Firefly dragging her down, things sped up significantly. She could vault gaps in the water, glide over mud slicks and sprint on all fours like a clinging salamander down trunks and up trees and rocks.
This was what she loved about exploring. It was the freedom, and the danger.
I could use some of that last bit right now...
Right as she thought of that, a consistent drone caught her attention whilst she landed in a cleared grove.
The dragoness' keen sense of hearing directed her to angle her snout eastward. Sloughing from the shadows of a willow canopy was a brownly colored thing bobbing in the air towards her. It was almost as big as her, and had two beady, black eyes that were focused right on her. A green-liquid dripped occasionally from the erect end of a proboscis sticking from the giant insect's chin.
Not all the mosquitos here were tiny and insignificant. Spyra only grinned at it and pumped out her chest.
"Heya' there, big boy." She giggled. "Let's play."
The mosquito produced a shrill noise and descended for her in a nosedive, its wings chattering like buzzsaws.
The grove flashed amber and the sound of chitin tearing was pronounced. A moment later, and a mangled, scorched, unidentifiable mass of steaming bug-meat came catapulting out from behind one of the willows. It soared over the marshland like a fat smoke-meteor, before it hit a boulder with a hideous crack~! –and rolled to oblivion in some grass.
Spyra surmounted a few rocks and stared on with glee, her tail whipping in placated strokes.
"Better than training dummies." She smiled. "Better than sitting in that stupid village and rotting my purple arse' off."
It wasn't so much that she hated where she lived...
But she wondered why there couldn't be someone else besides dragonflies, someone who was the same size as her, that could come out here and kill giant bugs with her, or explore with her, and use profanity with her.
Her mother was too busy sniffing weeds, her father managing minute politics and her brother sleeping or getting into trouble all the time for them to really fill that social gap that she was experiencing.
Why did she always have to be this alone? She didn't remember it being so pronounced when she'd been younger.
Though, that had been the time when she had been a hatchling, and the dragonfly children were afraid to play with her in dragonfly school. When she had been a young, juvenile dragoness, none of the older nymphs would go near her or even look at her.
People back home could talk about the goodness of it all they wanted, but nobody in that hole was doubting the facts. Heck, even the elders had encouraged her parents to toss her egg back in the canal and, in quote: "Not risk such a unique find impacting the community."
It was hard to believe that they all had started with that, and ended up with what everything was like now.
The dragonflies had a soap bar and a meat quota, all set up by the community for one dragon.
She was lonely, sure, and there were issues in her head. But daily life was... pretty okay, if not boring.
Spyra licked her muzzle as she walked. She hadn't had lunch earlier before leaving with Firefly, and the whole Toadwort run-in had basically screwed up her schedule. She must have forgotten.
It'll probably be roasted salamander again anyway, Spyra rolled her eyes, stopping by the flank of a peat-puddle to look around. Even the jerky is better than that stuff...
The swamp water down below her claws showed her her own reflection. There she was, in the dim light, wavering in the water, with her snout, her ridged back and her orange-yellow wings.
She was haughty enough to tell herself she looked pretty. At least, for dragon standards. All dragonesses wanted to be told they were pretty, even if they didn't admit it. Spyra hummed under her breath and quirked a brow, edging her haunch over her flank to try and get a view of the top bump of her thigh past her shoulder.
She was pretty curvy. It was all the training and hiking she did. It kept her muscles toned, lean and fluent. She could move like greased lightning because of the exercise.
But exercise wasn't just why she was out here, and… and neither was it for gazing at herself like some fawning douchebag.
"Igghhh~." She clicked her tongue and sat on a rock, staring up at the cloudy sky. "I wish there were other dragons here. Dragons. People like me! So I wouldn't feel so alone all the time."
Clearing her throat as she began to realize what she was doing, the dragon took a double-take around her, and stared off back in the direction of her village.
You watch, Firefly isn't feeling as sick as he made it sound and up he comes, flittering right behind me just as I'm pouring out my soul to…
She looked back up at the sky.
…to a bunch of stupid clouds.
Spyra snorted.
Eh.
What the hell? It wasn't like anyone was listening anyway.
"Give me dragons." She muttered. "Give me real, living dragons. People who look like me, who think like me. People who get me. Strong people. Another girl to hang with. Someone cool. Someone tough. Maybe even… maybe even a guy."
She blinked at that last part.
Males… boys. Her mom had warned her about boys. But Cometcu had only told her about dragonfly boys, and all of them had been too afraid of her to even come near her during the years of hormonal chaos so affectionately called youth.
Not that I would've hitched a ride with a bug anyhow…
But what about boys? Dragon boys. Boy dragons. That was something little explored for her, ironically, even after all this time she'd spent in the swamps, doing nothing but exploring.
What were boys like anyhow? Ones that were actually worth something. Not these scrawny damsel flies whipping around to high heck and farting glitter, like her rock-head brother and his stupid little friends.
Not that I need boys or anything, but… hey, a female can wonder.
She snorted at the clouds.
A lonely, isolated, hick of a female who's got nothing to her name and runs a pastime of finding funny smelling mushrooms, and yanking screaming siblings out of carnivorous plants' guts.
Her tail whipped.
Why can't I have a miracle? Something to change my boring life, and get me out of this awful, stinking swamp?
Right as she was frowning at the clouds, it happened.
There was a thud, and the snapping of a twig. It all jolted her completely from the realm of daydreaming, and sky-talking.
Spyra hunched on the rock, and looked around wildly at the marshland. For a long time, there was nothing but rising swamp-gas, dark reeds and tall willow trees.
What in the Ancestors' mothers was that?
BMMmmmmmm….~!
-There it was again. A thud, a crash, this time, the sound of earth crumbling.
She squinted and looked up at the sky. It was cloudy, but… no thunder today, no rain, not like last night.
So what was-
BMMMMMmmmmmm….~!
The next explosion was louder, and was so sudden, that the dragoness found herself scrabbling in the air like a flipped cockroach as she lost her balance and fell onto her back.
Panting, she rolled behind the rock she'd been sitting on, and compressed herself to the earth, making herself as small as possible. She peeked over the stone, her purple eyes darting.
Right there! What is that?
Spyra narrowed her eyes, trying to penetrate the swamp-mist and the foliage. There was something bright amber in the depths of the woods. Something close.
But it was…
North.
Spyra gulped a huge lump down and blinked. That was where even the animals were afraid to go, rumors were saying. That was where her mother had forbidden her and Firefly to play near.
That was towards the Forbidden Funguswood. She had never explored there. That was the deepest portion of the upper swamps. It was, like, the fringe of the fringe of her village. Foreign country. Completely alien to her and the dragonflies altogether.
Oh, cripes.
Spyra looked back towards home, and then back at the flickering light in the distance. She whined and tapped her talons.
...There was no way they would ever know.
An adventurous grin slowly crept onto her face.
There was no way they'd need to know. Just a peak. Besides, she hopped over the rock and padded with gusto towards the light. I'm not afraid of anything.
{🐉}
