Winter was very tired. His proud spikes sat flat against his neck, his head hung heavy. His sinuous tail and spiked club dragged on the stone floor. His wings fluttered with his amble and the soft wind as he left his study for the day. He looked back at the room haggardly and remarked its fullness, filled to the brim with rolls of scrolls, sketches, and data plastered all over the walls and shelves, nary a single surface spotless. Even as he left, having put down his work for the day physically, his mind buzzed with his work. Scavenger measurements, observations, controls, everything. There was so much done today, and so much to do tomorrow. Every member of his team had separate projects, and he, as the head of Sanctuary, had to manage it all. That was on top of maintaining funding and formal relations with the various Kingdoms, meeting with diplomats and students, and organizing events. Everything. Yes, everything was written down, but at the same time, it felt like nothing was written down. It felt like everything was going down the drain, wholly unorganized, and inaccessible. A dragon's mind could never hope to keep track of what he was tasked with keeping track of, so he had written everything down.

Winter felt his scales crawling, thinking of his many files. He'd write something down, then write it down again somewhere else out of fear that he'd forget it. His stacks of paperwork harbored so many redundancies, so much disorganization. A paper could be in one pile when it belonged in another. His work was chaotic and unorganized, and it was a miracle that he was still sane. He could just envision a whirlwind tearing through his office and ruining his precariously balanced structures and patterns.

"God," was all Winter could groan. He wanted to tear his scales out. There was so much to write down, so much to learn about these creatures, to share with the world. He didn't think they'd understand it all. He remembered when he first started petitioning the queens for funding. Queen Moorhen had cackled her head off, before she narrowed her eyes and pierced his gaze, asking why exactly he thought MudWing tax dollars should go to something as frivolous as understanding these minuscule, dimwitted, animals. Pets or nuisances at best, but instruments of conflict at worst.

Winter gritted his teeth. He knew that scavengers were more, but he had to prove it. His studies had started with just himself, in the field, collecting data and observations. He had no workspace, no sanctuary. It wasn't until he had finished his first paper and was able to arrange a meeting with Queen Thorn to present his work and ask for funding that he secured his grant to continue his research and work, courtesy of Thorn. He'd never admit it but he would kiss Qibli's claws for having allowed him to interface directly with the sovereign of the sands. Having friends was great.

Over the years, the easy observations were written down and publicized. More intricate, detailed work was underway at Sanctuary and that meant scientific rigor had gone up as the work became less and less obvious. Gone were the days he could stalk a pair of scavengers as they picked berries and observe their yammering and hand gestures. He could prove that they were communicating and write a paper on that, but he couldn't write a paper proving (not yet at least) that their communication was in fact a sophisticated language with tenses and pronouns and adverbs. Merely that they could communicate.

Winter and his team had to maintain the scavengers' living spaces, ensuring that they were happy, healthy, and able to live as if all these dragons weren't there. That would be the only way he could get an accurate window into their habits and behaviors, untainted by outside, unwanted influences. After all, he sought to understand them as they were. Not cowardly creatures that hid from dragons, but curious and adventurous tinkerers. That meant a lot of protocols in place that had to be followed strictly, protocols that he had to follow, remember, and enforce on his team. When they could interact with scavengers. When they could enter their spaces and what they could do while inside. How they could act. What noises to not make. Where they could stand. This was barely scratching the surface.

When Fern first started working at Sanctuary, Winter had chastised him many times to not use his camouflage, since it scared and confused the scavengers. He chuckled at those memories. It made all this research more bearable. From start to finish, a good paper could take years. Months could pass without making any progress. He had his projects and their associated steps, procedures, and wating but he had to guide his team simultaneously on all of theirs. Each separate project concerned a different aspect of scavenger behavior, building on previous work. If there was no luck in observation one day, that would just be one day the project's final paper would be pushed back.

God help Reef because his project on scavenger reproduction was moving at a snail's pace. The rate at which scavengers reproduced seemed to mirror that of dragons. Any attempts by him thus far to force breeding seemed to fail. It would seem scavengers were incredibly selective with who they mated. Even when confronted with challenges that impeded writing a paper on a certain topic, observations had to be written down as possible venues for further study.

Winter wasn't entirely sure if Reef had written these questions and future directions of research down like he had instructed him to, so it kept bouncing around his head.

Winter refused to let the questions out of his mind until it was down on paper, since Reef hadn't written anything down. The death of ideas is the massive void outside of one's brain. Why did the scavengers refuse to mate? How did they choose mates? How did scavenger relationships work?

"How do dragon relationships work?" Winter muttered as he left the massive compound that made up Sanctuary, its high walls marking the scavenger habitat. It wasn't a far walk from Sanctuary to Sanctuary. The town Sanctuary, where most of the dragons who worked at the research facility Sanctuary lived. The facility Sanctuary was a valley with lakes and rivers surrounded by massive walls, unscalable for scavengers. The town Sanctuary was mostly carved into a cliff face. "Could have been more creative with my naming, in hindsight," Winter said aloud, to no one in particular. "What am I doing?"

There he stood in the setting sunlight, scales sparkling in the rays reflecting off a nearby pound, looking up at the sky and its wispy secrets. Winter remembered that time in the frigid north when he saw the two scavengers, hunting the same polar bear he was. How intrigued he had been, that he wanted to put down his family, his duties. He was willing to give everything to understand scavengers.

Now, he was fulfilling his childhood dream. If he had gone back in time and told his younger self about his work, little him would have cussed out his parents and fled the Ice Kingdom to begin working right away on Sanctuary (if the War of SandWing Succession was not active, of course). But now that he was here, standing among his work, his colleagues, his research, and his knowledge, he still felt incomplete. His notes were messy and disorganized. If it were just organized, maybe he'd feel complete. If Reef would just write down what he was told to write down, maybe he'd feel complete. Maybe if he was just home, or not dead to his family? Maybe?

The sky didn't look so different in the Ice Kingdom compared to here, at Sanctuary. He could close his eyes and pretend he was home, feeling the chill on his scales, eddies whirling through his spikes and wings. Despite his losses, Winter could not deny his blessings. His friends, though they were not close by, were still his friends. He hoped he was on their minds. He hoped Hailstorm still thought of him. At least occasionally, at least.

He had Sanctuary, his life's work and pride.

Winter picked up a pinecone off the forest floor and examined it.

There are a finite number of seeds within that pinecone. Once they had all fallen out, that pinecone's purpose would have been completed. It would rest eternally knowing that. It knows what it did, and what it did not do, and it was happy. It was nothing in the grand scheme of things, but that is alright. Finite beings can only accomplish finite feats. Winter glanced back at the sanctuary, envisioning his office.

He had all this… stuff. All this research, all this physical property to support his work. He did not know exactly how much he knew and how much he had yet to learn. Things he had learned about scavengers from projects years ago were slipping his mind. He did not know how much his staff had done in its entirety. He couldn't quantify the total sum of knowledge learned at Sanctuary. Winter considered himself a researcher. A scientist, even. A scientist is never "done" with his work. Maybe he completes a project, but there are always more questions to ask, more things to discover, write about, and share. There will always be more to understand. He would never know everything. All this time, he had been doing nothing but sleeping and studying scavengers. Almost every waking hour was dedicated to understanding and rationalizing scavengers. It was his whole life, his whole purpose. Maybe that was why he was tired. Tired of pursuing something that can never be attained. Tired of not making room for anything else.

Sanctuary would never know everything about scavengers. Hell, dragons didn't even understand themselves, and they've been around for 5000 years. The Icewings meticulously maintained records and history, unbroken for thousands of years, and they still suffered as they did in the era of Diamond. They weren't any better off having kept all this information. Contrast that with the MudWings, who only kept an oral tradition, as any form of writing would get destroyed by the environment, rotted away in the swamps. Winter hated to admit it, but neither were wholly perfect.

Everything was imperfect. He would only know so much, and dragon societies will always have suffering. But that was okay. That had to be okay, or else every dragon would live in crippling self-hatred and pessimism. He knows for fact that other dragons are happy. Kinkajou is happy. Moon and Qibli are happy. Turtle is happy. Even Peril was happy, last he checked. So why can't he? He can be like the pinecone, knowing what he accomplished, and what he didn't, and be happy with it.

He set up Sanctuary. He wrote the petitions to Queen Ruby of the SkyWings for the land grant. He obtained funding from four queens for this endeavor. He hired the staff. Taught the students. Winter knew exactly what he had done. He didn't know how much. How many letters did he write? No clue. How many students were taught? No clue. But that was fine. The pinecone didn't know how many seeds it carried. Just that it carried seeds.

Tomorrow, he will work on organizing his stuff, and maybe get to a good stopping point on his project. Tell his staff to do the same. Then, maybe he can take some time off, and go do something to help him truly see the fact that his worth is more than just the sum of the work he produced. His worth is as a friend, a brother to the only IceWing who knows of his craftiness to overcome certain death. His worth as a mentor and teacher to his students and staff. His worth hopefully as a husband and father, one day.