"Chromis, will you PLEASE just clean off the table of graphicolls," Avalanche begged as she scrubbed one of the dishes in the pile with a sponge.
"I want to play with Endwatcher and Atlantic though!" Chromis stomped his talons against the floor.
"And you will," Avalanche said. "once you clean up all of the graphicolls you took out!"
This dragonet is going to drive me crazy! Avalanche thought.
Chromis had been especially difficult today. He wouldn't listen to anything she said and would make a mess then refuse to clean it up. Normally he wasn't this difficult, but today that wasn't the case and Avalanche was getting fed up with it. She was getting to the point where she was about to just take his graphicolls away until he convinced her that he would be responsible with them. That possibility seemed to be getting more and more likely as the argument went on.
"I don't want to," Chromis pouted. "Why don't you do it?"
"Because I'm cleaning the dishes that you dirtied." Avalanche said. "You either put the graphicolls away right now or I'm taking them away and Atlantic and Endwatcher can stay home!" she snapped.
"Fine!" Chromis yelled. "This is so stupid," he muttered under his breath as he picked up the scrolls and returned them to the treasure chest.
She continued scrubbing the dishes and let out a sigh. Today had already been an exhausting day for her and the fact Chromis wouldn't listen wasn't helping, either. Shrimp had been out shopping for the last hour so he wasn't able to help her with him like he usually could. Flame and Umber weren't here today either, so they couldn't work their magic and make Chromis behave.
Flame and Umber had a weird connection with Chromis that allowed them to calm him down and get him to listen with ease. She always wished that she could do whatever they did to control him, but she was suspicious it had something to do with the fact that he didn't see them often so he was in a good mood whenever they were there.
Chromis had completely refused to go to the store and made a huge fuss about it, so Shrimp agreed to go to the store alone while Avalanche stayed back with him. It was probably for the best anyways since he would most likely be throwing a tantrum and complaining the whole time, making it impossible to get anything done.
After a few more minutes, she finally finished the pile of dishes and had them in a neat stack on the dish dryer. The sponge she used was beat up and destroyed and she completely forgot to add it to the shopping list that Shrimp brought with him.
Great! Just another thing to add to this already exhausting day! She threw the sponge in the sink angrily. It hit the bottom of a sink with a splat that sent water everywhere.
She walked out of the kitchen and into the main room where she could see Chromis laying on his bed with a scroll in his talons. He still looked annoyed from before as he read, but Avalanche didn't feel bad in any sort because he was being a brat about everything today.
"Let's go," Avalanche said.
"I don't wanna go though," Chromis complained. "Can you just pick them up and bring them here?"
"Chromis, I'm not leaving you here alone," she said, shooting him an impatient glare. "You either come with me or they're not coming over. Period."
"Fine!" Chromis threw down the scroll onto his bed, causing it to unravel partially.
Avalanche opened the door and immediately the smell of fresh food filled the air. There was a big food cart that was a mix of different reds and blues with white spots all over it being pushed down the street with a sign on it that read "STEW AND SOUP" As soon as she read this, she knew what was coming next and braced for the few suns she had on her to disappear.
"Can I get some?" Chromis said. "Please?"
"You know what, fine. Whatever," Avalanche said. She was definitely annoyed, but wasn't going to fight him over it. Not right now.
She began walking up to the stand, eyeing the dragons as they pushed the cart. What they were doing was clever since this part of Possibility was filled with young dragonets. She saw carts like this often though, so it wasn't unique in any way. Chromis had convinced her to get him some food from these a few times, but this time she didn't need convincing since she was already far too tired to argue.
The food did smell good though, she wasn't going to lie. But she assumed the food was going to be expensive as carts like this usually were. As expensive as she knew the food was going to be, it was nowhere near what she initially guessed.
"I want the stew!" Chromis said once they were at the cart.
"Okay fine, how much for the stew?" she sighed.
"Three suns," the SkyWing said.
"Wha- three suns?!" Avalanche shrieked. She looked down at Chromis and could already hear the whines coming from him, so she decided to just do it. "Fine, whatever."
Such a ripoff! she thought. These carts are always so damn expensive!
She unzipped the pouch hung around her neck and pulled out a few shiny gold coins and dropped them on the counter of the stand, which was now stationary and the SkyWing quickly swiped the coins and dumped them in a jar that was about half full if she were to guess.
Now that she was close, she could see that there were two different indents in the metal where the stew and soup could be put in and she assumed that it was heated since they were still letting off a little steam and bubbling a tiny bit. The stew was significantly less full than the soup, but that was no surprise since stews were far more popular in Possibility than soups.
She watched as she took one of the scoopers in the stew and scooped some up, then grabbed a styrofoam bowl and plopped it in there. It was an average portion; big enough for a dragonet but far too tiny for a dragon of her size and it was definitely not worth three suns out of all things.
The dragon handed her the bowl and she looked down into it. The stew didn't exactly look the best of quality, but she knew that Chromis would eat it because dragonets would eat anything; the sauce looked a little dried out and the food looked like it had been sitting in the sun all day. There were chunks of different meats and vegetables in it that looked to be cooked to perfection and she was sure that it probably tasted acceptable.
She handed the bowl and a fork that was sitting in one of the cups down to Chromis who instantly began digging into it.
"You better not drop that while we're flying," Avalanche said.
"I won't," Chromis said sincerely. "I promise."
"Good," Avalanche said. "Now we're leaving."
She walked away from the stand and launched herself up in the air. As she was ascending, she took a glance back to make sure that Chromis was following her and sure enough, he was. In one talon, he was gripping the flimsy bowl and was using the fork to eat in the other.
After a good few seconds of her staring, making sure that he didn't drop it, he finally caught up to her and was flying right beside her. They weren't too high in the sky since they wouldn't need to go far in order to get to Endwatcher's house, which they were stopping at first since he was closer.
After a couple minutes of flying, she looked over at Chromis and could see that the bowl of stew he had in his talons was gone. They hadn't stopped anywhere and a dragonet as old as Chromis certainly wouldn't have been able to swoop to the ground, throw it away, then fly back up and catch up to her without her noticing.
"Chromis! What happened to your stew?!" Avalanche demanded.
"I finished it," Chromis said.
"And…?" Avalanche waited.
"Then I dropped it," Chromis said.
"Why would you drop it?!" Avalanche scolded. "You couldn't have waited until we got to Endwatcher's house? That could have landed on someone!"
"Oh…sorry," Chromis apologized.
"Ugh, whatever, it's fine," Avalanche said. "Let's just go pick up Endwatcher."
She could see his house in the distance. He didn't live in a high-class neighborhood, but he wasn't poor by any means either. His house was mostly brown with a black tiled roof and darker brown support beams on each four corners of it that stood out surprisingly well.
They landed on the gravel path with a thump, sending little rocks flying all over. As Avalanche was walking, Chromis ran up to the door and began knocking. She could tell that he was definitely excited to see him as usual.
After a few seconds, Endwatcher's mother, Endseeker, opened the door. She was a rather small NightWing that looked extremely similar to Endwatcher except her horns were a little more rounded at the tip and her wings were tilted back a bit.
"Oh hey Chromis!" Endseeker said.
"Can Endwatcher come play?" He said excitedly. Avalanche got over to Chromis at this point.
"Of course!" Endseeker said. "Endwatcher!" she yelled "Your friend is here!"
She could immediately hear footsteps thumping and floorboards shaking as Chromis came running down the hall and skidded to a stop in their living room, then ran over to the open door. His face was beaming with excitement and Avalanche could feel his aura of happiness fill the air.
"Hey Chromis!" Endwatcher said.
"Hey Endwatcher!" Chromis said. "Do you want to come play?"
Endwatcher looked over at his mother, waiting for a nod of approval to which she gave after a couple seconds.
"Yay!" Chromis cheered. "We're going to go pick up Atlantic and then come back to my house."
"We have to fly all the way over to her house?" Endwatcher said, disappointed.
Endseeker obviously picked up on his tone when he was mentioning Atlantic because she looked down at him with a motherly glare that she knew all too well from all of the times she's had to give it to Chromis in the past. By the way that Endwatcher made himself look a little smaller, he obviously knew the scolding he was about to get.
"Endwatcher!" Endseeker scolded. "She's your friend, go play with her!"
"Fine!" Endwatcher said with a growl, obviously unhappy with the outcome. "Let's just hurry up though, because her house is like, so far away!"
Avalanche looked around at them both and Chromis seemed to be a lot happier about going to Atlantic's house than Endwatcher did, which was definitely a change from earlier; he had a giant smile formed across his face and seemed to zone out every now and again while they were flying here — which he did often whenever Atlantic was in the mix — but quickly realized and righted himself again every time.
He never seemed to do this for Endwatcher though, even when it was just the two of them playing — which also happened pretty often — it was only when Atlantic was thrown into the mix is when he would have these weird moments.
Could he…? Avalanche thought. No, he's only one! There's no way something like this could be happening already!
"Alright, well let's go then," Avalanche said with a sigh, already foreseeing how much of a rough day today was going to be.
Author's note: First short story! Yay! I won't be updating this that regularly, as my main focus is Healed 2 right now, which is also probably what you're most interested in as well. I only plan on having a couple chapters for this though, which will be worked with the extra time I have instead of laying around and doing nothing for hours. Also, basically everything except the last few paragraphs are my writing from a little over a month ago, so that's partly the reason they seem so different from my Healed 2 writing — different to me, anyways.