The scholars and clerks would tell you that this day, where the sun shone majestically upon the whole rainforest, the haunting cries of quetzals and araracangas echoed throughout both villages, and the anticipation of the upcoming festival manifested as joy in the air (and a few barrels of fruit scattered about the RainWing walkways), was the first day of the ninth month of the year five-thousand-and-eleven, but for Jambu it was only another day; one like the last and which, hopefully, the next would be like.
It was a good day for all indeed, but especially for this pink RainWing, for a personal reason unrelated to most of the simple pleasures yet described. After a series of negotiations (i.e pestering her and acting very sad about the whole thing), he'd been able to convince Glory to get him the day of the festival (the single related simple pleasure) off. He didn't feel like he really needed to specifically request this—it wasn't like there would be anyone unoccupied to teach tree gliding to that day—but she'd made a whole thing about asking her for approval about every time (not just days, she'd pointed out, but unscheduled time off within a day as well) he'd not be working back when she first gave him the permission to start teaching tree gliding to the NightWings.
He wasn't so sure why she'd placed this caveat upon his newfound responsibility. Did she think he'd figure one day that nobody would mind if he slept in, and while sleeping (and somehow unable to be woken?) miss a lesson for a NightWing which absolutely could not be moved, its intended recipient then getting so angry about it that they'd try to kill him—or her? That probably wasn't it. She had some confidence in him—it was most likely some boring political thing Jambu didn't care to understand and which didn't involve murder. Most of the changes she effected fell into that category. Really, it might've just been unrelated to that expansion of his duties; "telling Jambu about an update regarding his work" might just have been on her mind that day, and she had two such updates in the pile.
Whatever the case, Jambu's pleading had been phenomenally successful, earning him respite not just on the day of the festival but the two days before it as well. He'd not asked for those, and while he was grateful for the rest (spending so much of his time around little dragonets wasn't the most relaxing thing in the world) he'd not really much of a clue of what to do during the spare time. His first idea was to visit friends during hours he was usually busy, which wasn't too much of an occasion—unless he had a lot of work for whatever reason, Jambu usually slotted in breaks to nap or chat throughout the day, scattered around like seeds being sown in a game of Awari—but there were a few hours that were typically completely taken up and which he used today to speak with a few of his friends.
This idea turned out well and ended up taking up most of the day. His second idea was watching or participating in some kind of game—something he could have done any day, but which he was usually a little too tired to want to do from work—which was looking less and less likely by the minute, everybody wanting to save the games for the day of the festival (and the games that were being played consisting entirely of the kinds of strategising games—like the aforementioned Awari—that Jambu could never get his head around), his third was to just rest at some scenic location or another, and his fourth was to sleep in. He was on number three now, sitting alone on a small ledge overlooking the tiny pondside where the tunnels were. He'd tried to ask a friend? (to call him that would be dishonestly obfuscating the complexity of Jambu's relationship with him, but there was no other succinct descriptor that he could think of) of his, Pineapple, to come with him, and he'd agreed, but he'd apparently fallen a bit sick at the last moment—or else he'd also noticed how weird their relationship was and was trying to postpone having to talk with Jambu about it.
It was a shame, but not so bad—he usually came to this spot alone, so it wasn't an alien experience for him. It was quite isolated, as a matter of fact—nobody liked being near the tunnels, even at this distance where you couldn't feel them. Jambu could understand why: the bizarre unease they had about them, the slithering under your scales that was aggravated the closer you got to either of the tunnels themselves, wasn't a very pleasant thing to go through and most everyone he knew would rather be on the safe side about not feeling it again. The one of them that led to that island hadn't a great history, either, nor did it lead to the most pleasant of locales—its companion was a bit nicer, though. Easier to get to, quite a nice place on the other end that, as far as Jambu knew, had never been used for any disappearances or anything, though his memory might have just been spotty on that account. That tunnel wasn't so bad—it was still weird, of course, but that was hardly its fault. Really, it should've gotten more traffic than it did—it'd just had the bad fortune of being forced to place angry snakes under its travellers scales and having been born a twin of a brother with less practical applications and a more sinister history. He had to imagine that the tunnel felt a bit sad about all that.
He turned his head up from watching a bird flutter about down a while's drop, looking instead towards the left of the two tunnels—the one that led to the sandy place, the one that was cut into a large stone. Well, he tried to look—his eyeline was blocked by tall collection of other, slightly less large stones. A twinge of annoyance burnt the scales just above his eyes, inciting various other machines within him to take action against it. His legs attempted to stand, and a route was formulated that led from this ledge to the tunnel, but before the project left planning phase it was placed before the judgement seat of reason.
Why do I want to go to the tunnel? Jambu asked himself. A few explanations bobbed in and out of the water, but only one caught his eye, making him smile as soon as he caught a glimpse. I've got to see if it's really as sad as I think it is, he thought, the depth of this idea's comedy flooding his chest and causing his heart to beat twice where it should have but once.
The joke quickly mutated, and a legitimate desire to see if this tunnel looked sad arose in his head. To fulfil this end, the springing up of his legs was completed and his wings began their arduous task of generating lift and gliding until he reached his destination. Luckily, he'd been doing this his whole life, so whatever difficulty it had in the grand scheme of things was perfectly nullified, and within fifteen seconds he'd arrived at the saddest of tunnels. Maybe. It could've been happy. It was still out of view—he'd landed in front of the boulders.
Oh, these aren't natural, are they? he observed, looking the arrangement up and down. He was right—they were arranged in a concentric set of three circles, the smallest rocks on the outer rim, the middling ones in the middle, as is only appropriate, and a stack of large ones in the centre. There was a symbol etched onto one of the large ones, a diamond enclosed by a wavy sort of shape and dotted in the middle. Jambu recognised it—it was placed at graves and sometimes in front of huts (and rarely weighing down a hammock) to ward off demons and other evil creatures. Another reason not to come here, he thought, if you think it's the abode of devils.
A few thoughts popped into his mind about how recently these protective stones had been placed, but he brushed them aside. He had tunnel feelings to gauge. He moved past the monument, nearly knocking over one of the small rocks with his wing—though he didn't really believe in the apparent cursedness of these tunnels, his heart did skip a beat as he very nearly broke the spell—and at last stood before the tunnel. It was smaller than he'd expected—he hadn't the greatest memory of it, to be honest, neither of its looks or of its past uses. Maybe he was wrong about it not being all evil. Good thing he didn't actually knock over that stone.
Regardless, it looked pretty dejected—someone had trimmed the vines and moss which had covered it, making its emotions easier to interpret. Its mouth curved down into a frown agape, apparently horrified by what it was seeing through its hidden eyes. He could hear a gust of wind perpetually inhaled but never screamed out. This analysis complete, Jambu had nothing left to do here. Any extra time he spent here would be done so without purpose or meaning, and would contribute only to his experience with serpent-wrangling.
I wonder, Jambu indeed wondered, defying these assertions and giving himself a new reason to keep looking at this tunnel, if it was always sad, or if I made it sad by thinking about it?
This question he had no answer to. He sat down to ponder it anyway, because what was a holiday worth if you weren't using it as frivolously as you could? He stared at the tunnel as he thought, ignoring the invisible and intangible beasts attacking him in order to give himself a reference for the sadness of the tunnel, and became a bit sad by proxy. Five minutes later, he'd still nothing in the way of answers—but he had produced another question. If someone notices that it's sad, he worded it in his mind, congealing various stray concepts and little mental knick knacks into a strange and contrived thought, but it isn't sad, is it sad anyway because dragons are more important than tunnels? A hasty follow-up came to him: are dragons more important than tunnels?
These questions he had even fewer answers to, whatever tunnel-based school of philosophy he was developing being quite different from most of its contemporaries in that it provided no answers and only increasingly less important questions for one to deliberate.
He heard the sound of something rushing past his head as his unblinking eyes remained fixed on the possibly sad tunnel, his internal monologue by this point totally detached from material reality. This sound, combined with the soft "thunk" of something hitting the grass next to him, broke him out of his ponderings—and, annoyingly, just as he was about to solve is there such a thing as objective truth?
He craned his neck right, an easy task suitable for someone who'd just re-entered this world, to get a closer look at the thing that had just gone by him. It was hard to see in the grass, his disorientation after leaving the philosophical plane of reality not helping his eyesight very much, but he was able to pick it out from between the blades—it was a little dart.
His new philosophical experience did help him in this area, though, that being rationalising. He could come up with a thousand different explanations for this dart's appearance—most of them were nonsense, but he did come up with them, and that had to count for something. He pulled the judgement seat of reason back out and swiftly discarded the ones that didn't follow the facts, and he was left by the end of this exercise with only one: that some dragonets were either being careless about where they were shooting—or were intentionally aiming for him.
Actually, no, make that two; he noticed something about the dart as he snatched it out of the soil. It was thicker yet sharper, either indicative of poor craftsdragonship or that it was intended to pierce a thicker material than the hide of a typical rainforest animal. Perhaps one of the dart makers was trying to see how well this new design flew, had decided to test it out here due to this spot's isolation, and hadn't seen him? That made tons of sense. Jambu was good at this. Super good. Turns out he had done something useful with this day.
Well, there was a bit of a caveat with that one: there was tranquilising fluid (he could deduce this with his new training) on it, and that would conflict with the "trying to see how it flew" part of Jambu's skillful explanation. The putative dart fashioner could've been testing its piercing ability instead, but Jambu didn't see any thick-skinned animals around him. The target could've been him, but all the dart makers he knew were good enough shots that they wouldn't be missing a target that had been stationary for five minutes and counting—and anyone more knowledgeable about dart-shooting than a dragonet would have aimed for his neck, not his head. Besides, you ask permission for something like that.
So, Jambu's grand vision crumbled before his eyes—it was dragonets after all. He turned his head around to where the shot had come from, the tiny pool down... that would be east, yeah, and saw some of the foliage there rustle: a tell-tale sign of the activity of living creatures. He stretched his legs once more, beginning his journey to comment that they'd given him a fright and, if they'd aimed for him, the suggestion that they find a better target. He felt he'd have to correct them in some way if they'd shot at him intentionally, but he couldn't blame them for deciding to bug him. He understood the rationale well, having worked around dragonets for three years and been one for double that time: being annoying is very pleasing depending on who you do it to, perhaps some sort of natural draconic urge, and Jambu couldn't say he never partook in it—dragonets simply don't understand that, while being annoying is a normal and fun activity, it's not a great idea to do it to strangers (lest these were dragons he knew, students or friends of his, a case Jambu had no contingency for and would just have to deal with on the fly).
He deliberated the nature of this correction—a word which felt a lot meaner than what was going through his mind—and almost instantly arrived at the solution: to jump into their foliar hideaway and scare them back. The idea filled him with a strength of spirit in such excess that it spilled out of his body and travelled upwards, coalescing in a looming cloud of entertainment whose rainfall would soon arrive. He found it funny, to put it less poetically, and he was instantly certain that it was the one he was going for. It would work regardless of whether they'd actually shot at him, too, so he needn't worry about that any longer.
Acting on this sublime vision, he made it there unharmed and untired within five steps. He watched the reeds rustle once more as he approached, teeming with life like a pool full of tadpoles. It seemed to him that either he was dealing with a meek bunch—could've just been one, come to think of it—or that they had aimed for him and they were hiding from the consequences, and the latter was looking more likely according to vague rules, not based on any facts, that had popped into his head fully formed as soon as he stopped thinking about the Tunnel Philosophy, their already unsubstantiated forms manipulated to lend legitimacy to his plan.
He took an accidentally unstealthy step towards the obfuscating grasses and cattails, single and loud as it scattered a once mighty pile of fallen leaves, and the silence which followed was so genuine he nearly gave up the notion that he'd been shot at at all. There was but the trickling of water down into the pond and the cries of apes fighting over fruit, the tweeting of bushbirds and the nearly silent wind. The disorderly rows of tall canes and flowering bushes before him did not move a peep, and they did not shy away from the slimy water even as the tide had long subsumed their base. He was the only dragon here. That dart had come from the heavens.
So he thought, until he saw a little red tail poking out from the far end of the bushes, where the reeds had long deserted them and where they started to merge with all the moss and vines that crept up the hills and the black trees beyond—the thickest part of them, but not thick enough to hide this young rascal completely. It quickly tucked itself back into the foliage, but it was too late; Jambu had seen it in reality.
He camouflaged himself, his scales becoming a variety of colours that would look truly bizarre if he were standing even a little bit to the left, shifting as the reeds swayed behind him by what had become instinct over nine years of rigorous hide-and-seek training—nine years ultimately in service of completing his task of scaring these mischief makers by leaping out at them. A nearly invisble worm in the back of his head—it could've been a snake from the tunnel, but those were usually in his lower body—doubted that they'd take it in good faith, predicting disastrous reactions of true fright rather than silly surprise. It was thrown away quickly—nothing could really dislodge an idea from Jambu's head once he'd had it, and especially not any inter-thought infighting—but it left some of its influence on the rest of his mind. Attempting to appease these tiny doubts, he hoped that, if all else went wrong, they at least were actually mischief makers—being mean to dragonets who'd done no wrong wasn't a great thing to be doing with his time off. Maybe this place did harbour some demons.
He approached where the tail had once been and, by miracle, it popped itself back out again. Jambu's hind legs tensed, ready to pounce, but he stopped himself as he took a good look at the compromising body part before him. It looked... weird, there was no other word for it. Really weird. It was too thick, so short and so straight—and very large for a dragonet. It didn't look like it could curl even if it wanted to; its owner would have a hell of a time trying to grip something with it. He felt a little worse about startling this one—they were disabled, no doubt.
You know... he thought as he stared at the malformed thing on the ground, his muscles slowly relaxing as various pangs reverberated in his heart, They probably have to deal with enough japes and teases, poor thing. Last thing they need is my scaring them. Stupid idea, wasn't it...
The "scaring them" idea out of the water, Jambu was left purposelessly invisible before this grand tangle of bramble and its juvenile inhabitants. He'd still need to talk to these dragonets—well, he'd been assuming they'd been dragonets thus far, but the plants here were tall enough that most adults could hide underneath them—about bugging dragons they didn't know—again, provided he didn't know them, a possibility made slightly less likely by the fact that it might have been some adult friends of his who were over here—but leaping out at them was definitely the most effective way to teach them that lesson. Pulling the judgement seat of reason back out for a second, giving them a harsh talking to would hardly work, and a normal talking to wouldn't've been much better. The point was to mess with him, so him yelling at them all angrily wouldn't solve a thing; they'd just smile and scamper off, and he'd not be able to stop them. A regular talking to would have them half-listening for a little while before scampering off regardless, and while they'd probably feel some shame in the moment they'd not internalise any of it and be back at their tricks by sun-time tomorrow.
Jambu hadn't a synthesis to present here, or even anything outside the paradigm. His creative skills were a little exhausted from the destruction of both of his post-tunnel grand constructions, and at the end of the day he just wasn't the most inventive dragon in the world. That was Glory, he was pretty sure. He had one idea, though, to make things stick a little more: he could open with a joke. Something about monkeys? Could he, like, work in-
Jambu was broken out of his thoughts by a sudden sound reaching his ears, sharp but quiet—sharp enough to pop the bubble his thoughts were in and quiet enough for Jambu not have noticed it was there until it was too late. He opened his ears further—it was too late to save his thoughts, but he could at least avenge them—and the sound, droning on and on, became clearer and yet clearer. It was long and low, punctuated by stops and rests; the unmistakeable sound of speech.
It was coming from the bushes before him, the land of rascals and disability, in short and muddled whispers. Jambu could hardly hear what they were saying, but he leaned forth to try anyway—just out of curiosity, really. Their words were well muffled by the fortress of leaves and roots around them, but that wasn't the only obstacle on Jambu's path to decipher their speech. No, below that outward layer of simple dampening they were also just... talking weird. Everything was filtered through a weird drawl, every word dragged out and their tongues often descending into their throats in a manner most humorous and, Jambu had to imagine, difficult. This was truly a silly voice to be vaunted for all time—or else they were mighty paranoid, and Jambu's difficulty in comprehending it was the intention.
No matter these measures, Jambu was not stopped but rather slowed in his decipherment of the youths' speech. (They were probably youths; silly voices were common enough, but as they got older most dragons started to lose the dedication to keep them going for longer than a few sentences. Plus, either whichever dragon had shot at him was an awful shot or they'd not yet been taught where to shoot when aiming a blowgun.) While the sound was too quiet for him to pick up most of what they were saying, sentence fragments did fall into his talons every now and again, satiating enough of his curiosity to want to stay listening and not enough for him to be satisfied and tell that joke to them—he'd not yet figured it out, but it was definitely going to do with monkeys. Funny animals, them.
Only when Jambu's reserve of patience was nearly empty, and the joke had been just about fully composed, did he get anything more than those sentence fragments. The dragonets in the bush suddenly launched into a comparitively uproarious argument—ostensibly still via whispers, but whatever had incensed them had driven these "whispers" to become about as loud as normal speech.
"What do you mean, he's gone?" said one of them; her voice sounded higher than how the silly voice usually was, but Jambu couldn't tell if this was because she had a naturally higher voice or if the silliness was slipping a small bit.
"Well... I can't see him!" another tried to defend himself, the small tail before Jambu lashing as he did so before hastily tucking itself into the bush—this was the disabled one, poor thing, "Don't be angry with me, I've—"
"I'm not angry with you, but—how? He was walking toward us!"
"I..." The red-tailed one hesitated. His voice was no higher than before—Jambu had some respect for him for keeping the silly voice up despite this adversity. "I really don't know, alright?"
They had to have been talking about Jambu, right? Could they... really not figure out how he'd disappeared? Were these RainWings unaware that camouflage existed? At all?
They couldn't be NightWings... Jambu considered, 'cause NightWing scales aren't red like that. Maybe they're NightWings and the red-tailed one is a RainWing who lives out in the NightWing village, and he's just never heard of camouflage?
"They're brightly coloured, he was brightly coloured..." the red one spoke up again. "He was totally brightly coloured. He couldn't have just blended into the background..."
But that's, like... Jambu's teeth pushed against one another as he processed this new information, He's talking like he hasn't seen a RainWing ever. Like he's just heard of us. Maybe... Maybe NightWing tails are sometimes red? And he's a NightWing? I don't know...
In an effort to expedite the solving of this conundrum, Jambu stopped trying to listen in on the dragonets and instead set to work on putting the finishing touches on his joke, a task he completed quite quickly—it wasn't a very hard joke to craft, it turned out, he just kept getting distracted. He revealed himself in all his raspberry pink glory as he submerged all that lay below his wings in the bush, his great machinations of terror upon these rascals laid waste to by sympathy. A peacemaking joke sat at the ready. He felt something warm scurry away from his claws, accompanied by a rustling beneath him. He could very well hide himself here if he crouched—as he'd noticed earlier, he needn't have been a dragonet for the shrubbery to ensconce him completely if he wished it. He began his address to the unseen creatures surrounding him, a laugh caught in his throat being drained of its blood in order to provide a friendly tone for these words: "You know, monkeys make better target practice than—"
Jambu found his tongue unable to move and his throat unable to open, two feelings that were well accompanied by a stabbing sensation in his neck. He didn't feel too much else after that, his muscles tiring artificially and his uncontrolled body ending up landing halfway within the bushes and halfway without them. The leaves brushing against his scales were barely perceptible, overtaken by numbness as soon as they made contact. These dragonets were good shots after all, he used his rapidly depleting brainpower to think, or else they were quite lucky—this thought took precedence over numerous others that probably would have been more insightful. His time awake expended on a concession to his assailants, his eyes fell a-closed and a fog overtook his mind, carrying him deep into unconsciousness...
A/Ns: I've spent, like, a year trying to write this. First draft was on the 29th of May last year. In that time, I have read more of the series than the three books I had until then, and have promptly forgotten nearly everything I read. I might rewrite this again. I was so certain that I would get it on the first try, May of 2022, and I am quite certain now that this is the draft that'll make it. I and myself from a year ago might be equally wrong. This used to open in medias res, at what's now about the halfway point—this was the sixth chapter or so.
These early chapters'll be fairly short, but things'll pick up steam later—if things go according to plan, that is.
Also, I imagine these fellas work on some sort of a weird trilunar calendar so "the ninth month" is most definitely not September—it'd be closer to Ramadan, but they've two more moons than are used to calculate the Islamic calendar, so idk.
There's some tense mixing, I think. Sorry.