Peacemaker sighed happily, stretching his glittering wings and lifting them to feel the currents of air.
Trees and leaves and so, so, much green flooded by in a rainforest rainbow of colors. The dragonet dove into the canopy again - it was nearly like plunging into water, but warmer and more beautiful and with less fear of drowning.
He spotted a branch and, uncomfortably, remembered earlier today in Jambu's tree gliding class how he'd been no better than any of the NightWings, who didn't have the "right type of tails" for swinging on branches.
Jambu had explained to Peacemaker that he didn't have to be perfect at everything, but secretly Peacemaker thought that wasn't true. The only other RainWing-NightWing he knew, four year-old Princess Firefly, was an amazing tree glider. Mastermind (who had made up for his past mistakes with how hard he worked and how eager to please he was) had said that "a prehensile tail were the prominent genes, in her case. Don't worry about it too much, Peacemaker." But Peacemaker worried about it anyways.
He veered to his right and up, curling his tail forwards in a position that would catch the branch. In one swift movement, he hit the branch, opened up his wings, neatly did a flip, and then didn't get his timing right and was sent crashing into the forest floor.
"Oww," the dragonet moaned, flopping his wings out on either side of him. "Might have misjudged that... a little bit... ow..."
He somehow managed to get himself onto his back, and stared up at the cascading colors of green and red and blue and orange and yellow and purple - basically the whole rainbow - around him.
"Peacemaker! Are you alright?" The five year-old NightWing hybrid turned his head towards the sound of his friend's voice.
"Firefly," he said, smiling, then winced as he tried to sit up.
"What happened to you?" Firefly asked, a few whorls of displeased and worried greens shifting through her wings and ruff.
"Tree gliding practice," he laughed bitterly.
She folded and unfolded her neck frill for a few moments, colors Peacemaker either had never heard of or never seen very much of shifting through it, before finally saying; "You don't have to, you know. I know that you're not built for tree gliding, and that isn't your fault. Besides, I like you just the way you are - it doesn't matter that you can't hang from a tree like a stupid RainWing." She made a mock angry face and added a layer to her voice on that last bit, however Peacemaker didn't know which NightWing she was imitating.
"Some NightWings can tree glide," Peacemaker argued. "If they can do it, certainly I can. I mean, I'm more RainWing than they are."
Firefly made a thoughtful noise but didn't verbally reply.
"I actually didn't come looking for you to save you from tree gliding practice," she said finally, slowly beginning to spread her yellow-orange wings. "I found something super-spooky. And I was wondering whether you wanted to come see it with me or not."
"Sure," the other dragonet shrugged. "Hey, where's your dad? Does he know you're doing this?" Normally Princess Firefly was followed around by two NightWings and two RainWings at all times for protection. But today Peacemaker saw none of that - only a delighted little dragonet.
"Oh, yeah, he's going with mom to make more negotiations with Queen Snowfall, or something," she waved a claw dismissively. "Something about how much she's grown as a queen since the whole... you know... Pantala thing, and to see if we can finally get the light globes Glacier said we could have.
"But don't worry. I have, like, six RainWing guards following me around all the time. Well, five. One went to go eat a banana. Dad doesn't trust the NightWings to do their job right when he's not around." A sigh whooshed out of her snout, and a few more colors rippled through her wings.
Unlike Peacemaker, who was mostly a rich, dark black with rainbow colored dots over his scales here and there, and who had trouble changing colors like the other RainWings, Firefly was royal purple and shimmering gold and sunset yellow and orange, her scales changing colors like the wind with a bucket of paint, just like the other full-blood RainWings of the village. The only hints that she was even a hybrid at all where the gold stripes on the underside of her wings, which at night - when her wings took a midnight blue tone - looked like a sky of beautiful, swirling stars, and the starry silver speckles all over her face and scales that looked like someone had upended a bunch of glitter onto her. And when Peacemaker had mainly more NightWing-like traits, with his fire (even if it was strange and green instead of the normal orange-red-gold color), Firefly had acid venom, which not only melted through things, it was also hot enough that if she spit some on if onto dry wood, the tinder would eventually start smoking, and then burst into flame. Peacemaker curled his tail around his talons, settling into a sitting position. He wished he had more powers than fire-breathing and growing strawberries, even if Firefly loved his strawberries. At least that made it a little better.
"So, what was it that you wanted to show me?" he asked.
"Oh, right!" she spread her wings in a rush, even though they were mostly extended already, and then grabbed his talons, hauling him into the air. There was a bit of fumbling as he struggled to right himself and unfold his wings, and by the time he got around to doing that, Princess Firefly was already tumbling through the jungle, dodging easily around tree trunks and large plants even though she was dragging Peacemaker along behind her, and he seemed to be getting hit in the face with every palm frond in the rainforest.
"Nearly there," she shouted, but Peacemaker was barely listening. He was focusing on pumping his wings as fast as he could, trying to dodge around obstacles and, surprisingly, only occasionally failing.
Suddenly they burst into a clearing. Firefly snapped open her wings, and Peacemaker slammed into a tree on the far side of the clearing before fully stopping.
"You okay?" the NightWing-RainWing princess asked, helping Peacemaker to his feet.
"Fine," he rubbed the back of his head, hoping he wasn't brain damaged.
Suddenly he felt... something... prickle in the back of his mind.
The dragonet whirled around, teeth flashing, only to find a large boulder. And the feeling of... of power coming off of it was obscene.
"What is that?" he said, pointing to it and finally grabbing Firefly's attention.
"I was going to ask you the same thing," she yelped, lashing her purple tail (which had become a shade of indigo that was nearly blue in the past few minutes) and taking a step towards it. "And that's not all." She kept opening and closing her wings, half extended, before tucking them back against her sides. Peacemaker noticed she did this whenever she was nervous, but he couldn't comfort her right now. Instead he followed her silently, eyes trained on the boulder.
They walked around the huge rock, to the side of it facing away from the pond in the center of the clearing.
There was a massive hole in the center of the boulder. Peacemaker let a bit of fire build up, and then blasted it into the hole.
"Th-that's impossible," he choked out, watching the green fire disappear down a long tunnel. "I-it's... it's like it's bigger on the inside, o-or something."
"I know!" Firefly spread her wings, letting orange ripple through them in violent waves. "It's super-creepy, like I said earlier..."
She continued rambling on and on about how she found it, saying something about fungi, and how they can mind-control ants - wait, when did she start talking about that?
"And they can, like, mind control things! Like the breath of evil! So spooky! Anyways, I noticed that the mushrooms - not the scary mushrooms, just normal mushrooms - were growing kind of funny..."
Oh. So she just got sidetracked talking about mushrooms. Alright.
Peacemaker kept his eyes on the boulder, barely listening. He suddenly had a moment of revelation, and the dragonet spun around on his best friend.
"We should go in," he said.
A/N: Ha-ha, what have we here, a ship? Oh, come on. You all knew there'd be one of those eventually. I originally wanted to put a scene where Peacemaker and Firefly sat on top of a tree, watching the sun set, but I couldn't really find a way to fit that in here, so maybe later on in the story.
Also, whoo-hoo, do you guys have some exciting crap about to go down. Sorry that I update the Prologue, like, every two seconds - I need to make sure it's perfect before I can move onto the next chapter, and even then there's still going to be grammar and spelling mistakes that I don't catch.
Just so we're clear, I'm going to update this book at least once a month. If I'm motivated enough to do more, then we'll do more.
Without further ado, let us continue!
(wow that rhymed)