That night he had wished to dream of Crane — to see her at least one more time after being able to bear to think of her. It hurt, yes, but he thought he had it under control. Little did he know, that was far from the truth.
Tears poured down his scales, a sharp pain in his side prevented him from getting up, and the air was thick with ash and debris. The stone under his talons was cold, and a part of him wished it was the only thing cold he was touching — or rather, someone.
He looked down, the lifeless body of a female MudWing laid in his arms, tears splatting against her face as the waterfall of tears obstructed his vision. He wished it would stay like that forever so he could never see again. He wished he couldn't make out her face through his blurry vision blocked by salt and water.
His talons shot to his side as he flexed the wrong muscle and paid the price, dropping Crane a few centimeters. He looked down as the wound gushed blood, staining his scales and the ground beneath in a puddle that wasn't only made up by his blood.
He looked back down at Crane's lifeless body, the cut on her throat still fresh, pouring blood. His talons had to decide between holding his wound and trying to wake Crane up, the decision was made before he could think. "Crane?" he muttered softly, his voice frail, on the brink of collapsing.
All he wanted was a dream of playing tag with her, not a game of caring for both his wounds and Crane's at the same time. Not a game where his tears would be the price for her death. Not a game where he had to watch her die again and again and again.
He shook her slightly as she laid on her back. "Crane, wake up," he said in a low voice, it was more of a question than a demand. At that moment, he felt defeated. He felt the weight of his head feel more and more, until it drooped, burying itself in Crane's chest — something he vividly remembered doing with Flame many times before. Except that time, there was no joy connected, only pain.
He didn't cry, he didn't speak, all he did was lay there in defeat. After all the work he had gone through to get to where he was, he was right back to where it all started, a dream about Crane.
He let his head rest there for the next few minutes, his mind wandering through all of the things that could possibly go wrong. Maybe she'll start yelling at me again, he thought. Maybe she'll just kill me right now, or better yet I'll bleed out soon. Bleeding out, dying, was the best he could hope for in that moment. In fact, he would rather sit through his chest being cut open and then being left to die in his dream than have to listen to her yell again.
"Umber?"
He didn't react. He knew that game well enough. He knew what his mind was trying to pull on him, and he wasn't going to fall for it. Instead, he kept his head buried in her side and waited. Maybe he could trick her that he was dead somehow. But then again, how could he trick his own consciousness?
He didn't know how, but he knew her talons had reached up and were feeling against her throat. He winced at the thought, imagining the words that would come next. 'What have you done to me?' and 'I thought you loved me,' and 'I saved your life, and you let me die?'
Maybe it was a mistake — imagining the exact opposite of what he wanted to happen in a nightmare, that was — because what happened next wasn't far from his thoughts. "Umber, I was" — cough— "your sister," she said, her voice weak and full of anguish. "I was your sister, and you let me die."
He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt a stab in his heart. As much as he tried to hold back tears, the weight of her words were forcing down on him, and the dam that was once blocked unblocked. The scales on his face soaked once again, and an audible whimper could be heard.
"How could you do that to me, Umber?" she continued, the anguish in her voice disappearing. "Look at me! Look at what you let Icicle do to me!" Her voice was full of anger, much like what Flame sounded like when he first saw the scratch on his face. "You fucking killed me!"
His mind moved faster than his muscles, and his head shot up and stared at her. Her eyes were angry slits and one of her talons were holding the cut on her throat, almost as if he was trying to stop the bleeding. Tears dripped from his bottom jaw, falling against the stone floor. "Shut up," Umber demanded. His voice was low, a warning before she pushed him to yell.
"You have no right to tell me to shut up," she spat. "This is your fault, Umber. Maybe if you weren't so occupied checking if you were okay, I'd still be alive!"
"Shut up!" he said again, covering his ears. It did nothing because he could still clearly hear Crane's voice as if his talons were non-existent.
"You want me to shut up because you can't face what you did!" she started again. "You can't face that it wasn't Icicle who killed me, can you?!"
He hadn't even noticed until then, but his head was turned away and looking into the endless void of mountains and ash. The pain in his side intensified, and more and more blood started pouring out — it was strange that it hadn't clotted at all by then. Like his wound, even more tears started dripping down his face.
He turned his head back to face her, and her eyes felt like they were shooting scalding hot daggers through his scales, leaving a wound in his back. "W-What?" he stuttered. A smile arose on her face, arcing from cheek to cheek. She knew she had hit a soft spot.
"You heard me," she paused, staring him dead in the eyes. "Icicle isn't the one who killed me… You did! You killed me by not saving me!"
It felt like he had been hit by a wheelbarrow full of bricks, every bone in his body felt like they had shattered into a million pieces. How had he killed her? Icicle was the one who had given the finishing blow, right? No, he thought. No. I let Icicle kill her, she was only ordered to. I let her save me. I killed her.
He tried to shake those thoughts away, but they stuck to his mind like a burdock plant. The roots dug as deep as they could and burrowed their way into the center of his mind. So deep that nothing could burn them away. It was a poison that plagued his mind, and there was no cure in Pyrrhia.
"No…" he trailed off, going back over his thoughts once again. "No, stop! I didn't kill you!" he denied. It was more him telling himself than Crane, but his efforts were futile.
"How can you say that?! Icicle was ordered to kill me! You were ordered to protect us!"
"Shut up," he interrupted, but Crane kept going, ignoring his desperate attempts to get her to stop.
"Your only job was to get us all back alive while we ventured into the battle, and you couldn't even do that!"
"Shut up!" he interrupted again, louder that time, but she kept drowning his words out with her own, the roots burrowed deeper into his mind.
"You killed me, Umber! I saved your life, and you fucking killed-"
"I SAID SHUT UP!"
Then, everything went black. All of the pain he was feeling faded into nothing, and he swore he felt his heart stop pumping for a few moments. Except, once his eyes adjusted and his senses started coming forth, he realized he wasn't in a pit of nothingness, but was instead laying beside Flame in their DIY queen-sized bed.
He felt the warmth of his wing wrapped around him, but he didn't feel the same comfort he was so used to. Instead, the pain he felt in his heart during his dream slowly crept its way back, engulfing it in fire. At least, that's what it felt like to him.
He felt their tails intertwined, and Flame's arms pulled him close even in sleep. As close as they were, Umber couldn't feel more distant, not after what he had seen. Not after what he had heard. Not after what he had realized.
He knew that if Flame ever thought of it the way he did, he would never want to see him again, and he didn't blame him — he didn't want to see himself ever again either.
"I didn't kill you," he muttered, trying to reassure himself. "I didn't kill you," he said again. His voice bounced off of the walls through the empty darkness that was his mind, echoing back to him in Crane's voice. He tried to deny it, but he knew that no matter how many times he said it, nothing would change it.
He had killed his sister.
He had one job: protect his sibs while they did the fighting, and he couldn't even do that correctly. She was right, Icicle was ordered to kill anyone who stepped in her way, she was only doing her job. Umber, on the other talon, failed to do his.
"Umber?" he heard Flame's voice say from beside him. His voice was groggy and weak, plagued with exhaustion. He lifted his head up to face him, his eyes hardly opened. "What are you still doing awake? Go back to sleep." He flopped his head back down on his pillow and pulled him closer with his wing and arms. Within seconds, he fell right back asleep.
For the rest of that night, he didn't get a second of sleep. Instead, he laid wide awake staring at the ceiling, thinking about his dream — or rather, his nightmare. He tried to fall asleep a few times, but his efforts were left unsuccessful. When his eyes closed, what filled the darkness was Crane's bloodied face and her hoarse voice that reverberated through his mind a thousand times with each word.
A few times, he even had to stop himself from crying. Not just to avoid waking Flame up, but also because the sun had begun to come up and Flame would be able to clearly see on his face that he had been crying.
He closed his eyes, knowing that Flame would wake up any minute. He had to make it believable that he had been sleeping all night instead of lifelessly staring at the ceiling, so he started snoring lightly.
Finally, after what he felt was an eternity, he felt Flame's wing twitch and finally contract from under the blankets. "It's time to wake up, MudWing," Flame said quietly, shaking him awake — or at least, what he thought was him sleeping.
He pretended to wake up, slowly opening his eyes before shielding them against the sunlight with his talons. "Already?" he said, masking his emotions. Putting on such a normal facade when he was anything but hurt. "Didn't we just go to sleep?"
"You wish," Flame said, smiling. "Now c'mon, let's get to our sessions before they get mad at us." Umber tried to smile, but it quickly faded after he felt a strange surge of anger and annoyance pump through his veins. Instead, it almost turned into a grimace — something he managed to hide relatively well.
Umber got out of bed first and began dragging his bed when Flame stopped him. "I'll get it, you just go to your session and I'll take care of it."
He let go when another thought crossed his mind. "About that," Umber started, and Flame's head peaked over at him as he stood up. "Can I skip today? Please, just this one time?"
Flame's expression turned to a mix of confusion and disappointment. "Umber, are you okay? You usually love going to see Nighthunter, did something happen between you two or something?"
Umber turned his head away to hide the sheer amount of embarrassment spreading across his face. "Uhm- no, nevermind," he said before turning away, disappointed and angry. It didn't take long for him to reach the door, opening it and closing it behind him.
But right before he closed the door, he heard Flame say, "Wait, Umber, what happened-" before his voice was cut off. And before long, he was walking down the halls, appearing right in front of Nighthunter's office, leaving Flame behind.
A part of him felt bad for doing it, but another knew if he let Flame read him for any longer, he would probably break down and start crying, allowing his emotions to be laid out like a book for him to freely read. I'm sorry, Flame, he apologized mentally, wishing Flame knew what he was thinking.
With a knock on the door, Nighthunter opened it with a smile on her face — she was surely happy to start their sessions again after the day before, probably hoping to get more information out of him that day. Little did she know, Umber was then willing to give quite the opposite.
"Come in, come in," Nighthunter said, beckoning him inside. "How've you been doing this morning?" she asked him, taking a seat behind her desk that seemed to have been neatly organized the day before.
This morning, he thought, remembering how he had woken up that night. His morning had consisted of nothing except constant worrying and thinking, trapped inside of his own mind. "Good," he lied. "I only really woke up a few minutes ago." He put on the fakest smile he could — something he was good at, especially in front of Flame. Nighthunter though, not so much, but thankfully she hadn't picked up on his lie.
"Yesterday, I said I wanted to start talking about Crane more with you," she informed. It didn't take long for a flashback to harass his mind. Images left and right cycled through in his head at the speed of sound, every one consisting of something that happened in his dream that night. He winced, and Nighthunter paused. "Umber? Are you sure you're okay this morning?"
"Uhm, y-yeah," he lied again. "Perfectly fine, why?" Nighthunter looked at him closer, craning her neck towards him. She was probably reading every expression and twitch that had flown across his body in the last five minutes, and that thought scared him. He may not always be an open book to Flame, but to Nighthunter, that was different — sometimes he wondered if she was born under two moons.
After an agonizing few moments, Nighthunter finally opened her mouth. "Umber, you're lying to me," she said. Hearing her say it so bluntly sent a spark of fear through him. "Remember what we talked about? If you don't want to tell me, then write it in your journal."
"A-Alright," Umber agreed, though he never actually planned on writing about Crane in it, not after that dream. Instead, that journal would probably sit on the table, forever damned to collect dust.
"I don't want to start off with a topic too sensitive yet, so tell me, Umber, how did Crane treat you on a day-to-day basis? Like some of the things she said, her attitude towards you, things she did for you, things like that." She grabbed her clipboard and paper, talon dipped in ink and ready to write. That day, she didn't have her glasses on, so maybe she had something else that helped her see — something he couldn't see.
That thought didn't distract him long though, because Nighthunter was peering over the clipboard, waiting for an answer. "Crane?" he said, stalling his answer so he could make up a convincing lie, but when the little time he bought himself passed, he had no choice but to dig into his memory vault stored with moments between him and her.
It was a vault that had been locked away for a long time, with cobwebs growing on the sides, and dust flying through the air. With no other choice, he began sorting through the filing cabinets, each piece of paper his talons grazed sending another memory he had tried to push deep to zip through his mind.
His mind landed on a faint memory after a few moments, and he cycled through their conversation as fast as he could. A feeling like he had been punched in the chest as hard as a dragon could washed over him, and he swore he felt his heart stop for a brief moment.
"F-Fine," Umber said, slamming the filing cabinet shut and locking it, before swallowing the key. "S-She treated me well."
All of a sudden, a faint voice echoed off of the walls of his skull. Icicle isn't the one who killed me… You did. He winced again, turning his head away from Nighthunter — it didn't go unnoticed, that's for sure. Once he turned his head back to look at her, she asked, "Umber, what's bothering you today?"
"Nothing!" he quickly said, his mouth moving so fast he could hardly come up with the word in time. After that, he refused to meet her eyes, realizing he had messed up in some way.
"I think we should end our session early today," Nighthunter informed. "Something's obviously bothering you today, and I need your mind to be clear when we go into this, just to be safe." Umber felt a thrum of excitement shoot through his chest at those words. "Now, I'm not mad at you or anything — because so far you've made an incredible amount of progress. I just think that if we're going to be talking about Crane" — she set her clipboard down, wiping her talons free of ink with a napkin — "we should do it right."
Umber didn't say anything, scared his shaky voice may reveal more than he was hoping it to — he could never know with her eyes constantly reading every little twitch of his body — so instead, he gave her a nod and left through the door.
The excitement he felt quickly faded though, because once he finally got into his room, the place he thought he was the safest, he heard her.
MURDERER!
Zephyr sighed, rubbing her temples with her talons. "I'm putting you on unpaid leave for two weeks."
"What?! That's bullshit! You can't do that!" Flame retorted. How could she do that to him? She knew him and Umber needed the money just as much as anyone else working there. He gets fired for two weeks, while all Alpine gets is a vacation to the hospital?
"Flame, you almost killed someone!" she argued, light annoyance plaguing her voice. "We had to cover his hospital bills because you couldn't keep your temper down!"
"He fucking deserved it!" He stood up quickly from his seat, causing it to slam backwards into the wall of her small office, putting his two front talons on her desk. "Do you even know what he said to me?!" He could still hear the words echoing in his mind — he could still remember the same uncontrollable anger he felt at that moment.
It felt as if he had no control over his own body like his muscles were moving for him. He remembered how blinded he was by anger, every scratch, punch, and slam only causing him to fall further into his deep pit of bright red rage.
"Flame, I've been lenient with you because of your situation" — she began raising her voice — "but enough is enough!" She slammed the table, much like what Flame wanted to do beforehand. "The moment you beat your coworker within an inch of his life is where the line is crossed!"
"Are you serious right now?! He hit me first!" Flame argued. He felt his blood start boiling. If it hadn't already been before, it certainly was then. "What the fuck do you expect me to do? Sit there and take it? He hit me after realizing that mocking Crane wasn't enough to set me off! He asked for a fight and he fucking got it!"
The angry expression she had on her face almost immediately changed into something more calm — no — confused. She sat back down. "Fennec and Alpine both told me you struck first. And where's this stuff about Crane coming from?!"
Flame took his seat again, quickly realizing that Zephyr had been told a false story. "Fennec wasn't even there! You can't seriously believe his word over mine, that bastard has wanted me gone ever since I came back!"
Zephyr sat there for a moment, connecting the dots. He could almost see the gears turning in her head as she thought through the situation, but there was still one more question. "How would Alpine know about Crane?" she asked. "That's confidential information! Moons, the only reason I even know about it is because Nighthunter had no choice but to tell me when Umber knocked himself unconscious."
That was a question that hadn't crossed Flame's mind yet. How did he know about Crane? He never thought about it too closely because he never assumed someone would be stupid enough to snoop around Nighthunter's files, let alone openly say he knew. It was no secret that Zephyr realized he was just as confused as she was. "I'll look into it," she said. "I'm putting you on partially paid leave until then."
"Still?! You already know I attacked him out of self-defense!" Flame said angrily. He already knew he wasn't going to change her mind, but he knew another attempt wouldn't hurt. After all, it's his job they were talking about.
"That doesn't change the fact that Alpine nearly died, Flame," Zephyr grumbled, obviously annoyed. "I could have you imprisoned for this, so you should be grateful I'm giving you a vacation here instead of in a dungeon. This conversation is over, Flame, you may go back to your room now," she demanded.
"Whatever," Flame huffed, before standing up, closing the door behind him. He made sure to give her a flick of his tail against the doorframe right before he walked out.
As he walked down the hall to his and Umber's room, he put his talons around the handle. All of a sudden, he heard a loud slam come from somewhere inside. It didn't take more than a second for his heart to start racing and run through the doorway.
The sight he was met with was nothing short of shocking. Graphicolls were scattered all over the floor, the box they were in was ripped in half and on the opposite side of the room, and the table they were under had been flipped, laying upside down on Flame's bed.
But what he was worried about far more, on the other talon, was Umber. He scanned the dark room — the candle that he had forgotten to blow out had been blown out as it laid on the floor. Umber was curled in a corner, his hind legs to his pale brown chest, gripping his tail close as he sobbed into it.
Flame raced over to him. He stepped on a few graphicolls on the way, but he could hardly care — first, he had to make sure Umber was okay. He knelt down beside him with his talons on his back. "Umber, what's wrong?! What happened?!" he said, panicking.
"Nothing, just go away," he said, his voice frail, it faltered a few times. He batted his talon away.
The context of the situation was almost comedic — a dragon who had just destroyed their entire room, huddled in the corner, and cried into their tail had just told him that nothing was wrong. Almost.
"We both know I'm not going to do that," Flame said again. He tried to go through all the possibilities that could be wrong. First, he thought that something happened while he was gone. Next, he thought it could have something to do with the fight between him and Alpine, but neither of those made enough sense for him to tear up the room.
One possibility, though, that stuck out like a sore talon, was something he tried steering his mind clear of. He hoped it wasn't her, but he'd only ever seen him in a similar state once before.
"Is it Crane?" The words left his mouth faster than he could stop himself.
Then, he could see something in Umber's eyes snap. It was almost as if Flame could see his walls rising from the ground in the reflection. "I said it's nothing!" Umber yelled back, the anger in his voice all but confirmed Flame's suspicions.
Something happened with Crane between that day and the day before, but when? Was it his session with Nighthunter? Maybe she overestimated how prepared Umber was. Or maybe it was something else, but when would there be time? Between the games between the five of them yesterday, sleeping throughout the night, and their sessions, when would there be time for something to knock him down that much?
But then something flickered across his mind, a faint memory. So faint, in fact, that he hardly had less than a second to realize what it was about.
He remembered that in the middle of the night, Umber had woken up — something Umber never does unless he rolls off. Umber is one of the hardest sleepers Flame knew unless the sun was shining, then he was the exact opposite.
In the middle of the night though? Something big had to have happened to wake him up. And once he thought about it more, he realized that when he woke Umber up, he almost looked tired, as if he had stayed up all night. Before, he chopped it up to just early morning drowsiness, but with the string that seemingly connected all of those things together, it didn't seem so.
Then it clicked. Waking up in the middle of the night in a panic, exhausted in the morning, and then he destroyed their room over something to do with Crane, a breakdown he had certainly never expected from Umber, of all dragons.
That night, Umber had dreamed of Crane again. And whatever she said had enough of an effect on him to cause him to break down. He tried reaching a talon out, thinking of pulling him into a hug. But instead, he slapped his talon away and whipped his head towards him, his eyes hot knives that drilled into his scales.
His expression turned to anger — anger he never knew he was capable of feeling. But it wasn't the only surprising thing he said, because what he said next was nothing short of shocking.
"FLAME, I SAID I'M FUCKING FINE!"
Then there was a pause where neither of them knew what to say. Umber was just as shocked as Flame was; he could see it in his eyes as he stared at him. His talons shot up to his mouth just as he realized what he said. "I-I didn't mean to…" he trailed off. "Flame I-I," he stammered, trying to find the right words.
With tears still pouring down his face, he pushed himself to his feet and ran. "Umber, wait!" Flame said, reaching his talon out as if Umber would come back, grab it, and kiss him. But he had already left the room, leaving the door wide open.
With shock still plastered on his face, he saw Nighthunter stare back at him from the hall. "Flame, what did you just do?" she asked, undaring to move.
That's when he realized what he had just done. Instead of giving him time and space, he tried to force Umber to talk about something he didn't want to talk about. He was the reason Umber swore. He was the reason Umber ran out. And he was the reason everything Umber had been working towards had just been blown away in the wind.
He messed up, and there was no going back to change it.
He got up and began to walk through the doorway, hoping to catch Umber. "Flame, stop. Let me handle it from here," she spat. Her eyes glared at him, he never knew just how scary she could be when she was angry. She turned around and flicked her tail at him as she walked off toward Umber.
FUCK! he screamed in his head. He slammed the door, not angry at Umber, or even Nighthunter, but at himself.
He felt like throwing something, but as he looked around the room, he realized it was already destroyed enough as it was. So instead of trashing it more, he cleaned it up a bit and then trashed it again. Except, that time, the graphicolls weren't all over the floor, because he couldn't just destroy Umber's — and his — graphicolls.
He laid down in bed and gripped his forehead with both talons. He felt like crying, but nothing came out — all of his sadness was drowned out by the lingering anger he was feeling. Not even destroying their room could cure it.
The wall shook as his talons collided with it, creating a nice big hole where his knuckles made contact. He could already feel his talon start swelling, and he wanted to cover himself with his wings to make it feel as if Umber was beside him, but he couldn't stomach the thought, not after what he had done to him. Instead, he laid on the bed and closed his eyes, until the tears finally came.
Author's notes: A lot of you are probably confused as to why I didn't upload last week, and that's because I've changed my schedule. Instead of uploading once every week, I'll now be uploading once every two weeks. Here's my old versus new schedule:
Old:
Tuesday (Day 1): 500 words
Wednesday (Day 2): 1000 words
Thursday (Day 3): 1000 words
Friday (Day 4): 1000 words
Saturday (Day 5): 1000 words
Sunday (Day 6): 1000 words (sometimes it did go into 1.5k words) + edit and proofread chapter before uploading
New:
Tuesday (Day 1): 500 words
Wednesday (Day 2): 500 words
Thursday (Day 3): 500 words
Friday (Day 4): 500 words
Saturday (Day 5): 500 words
Sunday (Day 6): 500 words
Monday (Day 7): Break
Tuesday (Day 8): 500 words
Wednesday (Day 9): 500 words
Thursday (Day 10): 500 words
Friday (Day 11): 500 words
Saturday (Day 12): 500 words
Sunday (Day 13): Edit and proofread chapter before uploading
Monday (Day 14): Break between chapters
This new schedule is necessary for me to continue writing, as I'm getting incredibly burnt out. This week, writing started to feel a lot more like something I do on the side rather than something that's at the top of my priority list. It's not nearly as prevalent in my day-to-day life anymore, and I often find myself not thinking about it too much either. 1000 words a day is honestly pretty crazy in the grand scheme of things, especially for a new author like myself. The main thing that caused me to change my schedule was the fear that I would lose interest in writing, hence the phrase, "The brightest stars burn out the fastest."
My Discord server is the place where I'll be exclusively giving updates on breaks (though I won't really have those anymore I'd assume). Not only that, but you can interact with me there as well. If you want to join, here's the invite code: Q6FhhhXK2g. My friend recently drew Flumber art, so if you want to see it you can join the Discord server. I tried posting it on FFN, but that didn't work.