CAUTION: Spoils aspects of Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities, as well as aspects of When Nothing Remains, and aspects of Usurpation of the Darkness.
Seriously, major spoilers here.
Assuming you wish to continue, read on…
Background: It's kind of funny; chapter 86 of Usurpation of the Darkness (not that it was chapter 86 in the first draft, it was actually chapter 65) is nearly identical between first and second draft, but the two drafts converge there only to split again for the last handful of chapters. The split is actually so pronounced that the first-draft epilogue is completely different from the second-draft one, even though many of the same events came about in one way or another.
This is the first-draft epilogue of Usurpation of the Darkness, unchanged from its original, years-old state. See if you can spot some of the many, many differences.
Waiting was not an enjoyable pastime.
Lily was waiting for a lot of things. One such was supposed to return today, and she was excited, but also nervous. The news Beryl would bring might be good, but it also might be disappointing.
Luckily for Lily, she had plenty to distract herself with. First on the list was getting her daughter up and moving for the day.
"Risa," Lily hummed, "time for fish. You do not want to miss that, do you?" Lily loved using her daughter's new name, and she was glad Beryl had so easily agreed to it. It fit, both as a tribute to the female neither of them had ever gotten to meet, and as a name in its own right. Their daughter rose from her injuries and kept going, instead of succumbing to the very serious gashes all across her body from Diora's teeth, not to mention the broken ribs.
"Dam," Risa murmured. "I hurt."
"I help," Lily replied in kind, running her tongue across Risa's many scars. She wasn't sure if Risa actually felt any pain from them; this was a routine they had established back before Risa could even talk. It might be that Risa continued to complain of pain because she did not want Lily to stop licking her upon waking.
Something to address soon. Not yet; Risa was still young, barely able to form the words to complain of possibly imaginary pain, and Lily was content to humor her for the time being. So she licked her daughter's left side and back, covering all of the afflicted area, the places little discolorations in the purple, black, and white could be seen.
Nobody knew if wounds taken so early on in life would scar. It remained to be seen whether those discolorations would go away as Risa grew. Lily would call her daughter beautiful either way, and either way it would be the truth. Lucky and Glow, the female and male offspring of Storm and Pearl, respectively, were beautiful, but nowhere near Risa, at least in Lily's eyes.
"Better?" Lily asked hopefully.
"Better," Risa agreed, standing and stumbling forward, shaking her little wings out. "Fish?"
"Soon." Herb and Thorn had taken to bringing fish for anyone who requested it, one of their many ways of helping the three sets of parents living in the same cavern Lily had originally laid her egg. The non-mated light and dark wings had spread out across the rest of the segmented cavern, but those with young all lived in the section by the water, just in case. The egg-eating little predators had not returned, but nobody wanted to find out whether they would consider hatchlings a possible meal. The only way in from the main part of the cavern, the arch, was always guarded by somebody.
Of course, none of them planned to live here forever. Just until their hatchlings were big and strong enough to handle the journey ahead of them. It was going to be a long one, and nobody wanted to take tiny, unable to so much as walk, hatchlings along.
There was a small peep from Lily's right, followed by a quick bark of surprise. "Hey!" Storm rushed over to Lily. "Sorry, Lucky woke before us again." Said hatchling was by Lily's side, it seemed. Sneaky, for Lily to not have noticed.
"Have you tried putting her to sleep earlier in the day?" Pearl called out.
"Any earlier and she will be nocturnal!" Storm snorted. "She just does not sleep as much as any decent dragon should. I swear she sometimes gets up at night and plays with my frills while I sleep. Are there bite marks on my ear?"
Lily ignored Storm's mild ranting to watch Lucky, who was at that in-between stage where she crawled sometimes and walked on all fours at other times. Right now was a crawling time, it seemed.
Lucky was not a spitting image of either of her parents. She had a light pink swirl of color on her chest and wing membranes, but was otherwise mostly white, looking more like a light wing who had gotten into some pink-staining plant than an actual dawn wing. Meanwhile, Glow, Pearl and Ember's most recent son, was a pale yellow in his entirety, aside from a quite striking patch of pure white around his eyes, which were deep yellow, like the sun as it was just beginning to set. Lucky's eyes, on the other paw, which were light red.
All in all, Lily had come to the conclusion that actual mixes of light and dark, which Risa and Thaw possessed, were only one of the many possibilities of dawn wings. It seemed any mixture of light, dark, or the distinctive dawn kind of coloration was possible. Lucky looked like a light wing, and Glow looked like a very pale dark wing.
Even glints seemed to be optional. Lily was pretty sure Risa didn't have one at all, and the same went for Glow, while Lucky definitely did. It was all random. Lily was interested to see who could camouflage and who could not. She suspected the glint was the deciding factor in who would be able to, as Thaw had it and could, but for all she knew it was another totally random attribute.
Another thing to wait for. Lily was waiting for a lot of things.
Fish, for instance. She spotted Herb out over the water, diving at the surface, and knew he would not be long. He always helped her and Risa first, at least when Beryl was away, because she could not go fishing for them herself.
"Sire?" Risa chirped.
"Yes," Lily said happily, still watching Herb. "He should be back today or maybe tomorrow." She hoped, anyway. They had allotted three days for Beryl to attend whatever it was the Twisted Corridors pack did to decide punishments for wrongdoers. He would be staying with Sola for that time.
Lily didn't worry about Sola making a move on Beryl. It would take far, far more than three days to make any headway against him. What was not easily won was not easily taken away once achieved. Besides, Sola did not seem like the kind of female to do that.
"No," Risa growled disagreeably, "Sire!"
"Yes…" Lily looked past Herb, and noticed the dark shape on the horizon, silhouetted against the water's refracted glow from the crystals. "Oh, I see. Yes, Sire is coming!" She nudged Risa up. "Come on, let's go meet him at the shore!"
Risa bumbled after Lily as she walked slowly to the shore, stopping well short of the water. If Risa had respected the water before, she was nervous around it now, and Lily felt no better about the depths. They would both need to get over that small, lingering fear eventually, but such traumatic events did leave scars, in one way or another.
Beryl roared triumphantly as he glided in to land lightly on the shore, rushing forward as he did, transitioning from air to ground with little to no loss in speed.
Lily met him head-on, allowing him to stop himself on her. She could take the impact with no pain, thanks to her healed back, and she would never stop revelling in that, no matter how long she lived with it healed. Risa stumbled up to Beryl's paws and pounced, gumming on his leg in her own version of a greeting.
Lily nuzzled Beryl as he leaned over to greet Risa. "Mate first, then daughter."
"Daughter thinks differently," Beryl winced, pulling his leg away from Risa. "So unless my mate uses her sharp little teeth on me, I'm going to greet my daughter first."
"Bad, Risa, that hurts him," Lily scolded.
"A little Beryl agreed, nosing at Risa. "Miss me?"
"Yes!" Risa chirped. "Fish?"
"Over there, I think," Beryl remarked, pointing behind Risa, at the fish Herb had just dropped on the ground. Lily assumed, anyway, as she could not see where he was pointing. Wherever it was, Risa scrambled off to go there, and Beryl turned his attention to Lily.
"Next time I go," Lily murmured, licking Beryl's chin and face. "She missed you."
"Next time there is somewhere to go that is not dangerous for you specifically, you go," Beryl promised. "Holly and Cara were there, and you were not spoken of kindly by some. I was right to go in your stead."
"I do not…" Lily trailed off. "No, I will not argue." It was better she just put that pack out of her mind and behind her for good, not try and take every opportunity to make things just a little more right. Not when it was dangerous for her to do so.
"It's over anyway," Beryl revealed, licking her back. "They heard all sides and decided. It was not fast, but also not drawn out. Diora spoke the longest of anyone, and that did not help her case any. I think some thought her crazy by the end of her rant."
"What was the verdict?" Lily still felt a deep anger towards Diora every time she saw Risa's small scars or remembered those terrible moments. Pearl also bore a new scar right across the membrane of one of her wings and down the side of her face. If not for Ember knowing how to stitch together such cuts, she might have been grounded. Another possible crime to lay at Diora's paws.
"Harsh," Beryl whispered, keeping his voice so low Lily could barely hear him. "The punishment for attempting to kill a fledgling was already set before any of this, so it was just a matter of making sure Diora really was guilty. They drowned her."
Lily jerked backward, shocked. "They what?"
"For attempting to murder, the punishment is injury in kind," Beryl recited. "For murdering, the punishment is death in kind, but may be waived or lessened depending on the situation. But for attempting to murder a fledgling, the punishment is death in the way the murderer intended, because there is no possible justification for such an act. They are very strict."
"They really just..?" Lily asked, seeking confirmation. "Did you see it happen?"
"They offered to let me take part in carrying out the verdict," Beryl rumbled, "as I am the Sire of the fledgling. I refused, of course. So their guards did it, in plain sight of everyone. The entire trial was held in front of both packs. No fledglings or hatchlings, but everyone else who could be there, was."
Diora had been drowned. It still didn't feel real. "How did they do it?"
"They picked her up, four of them carrying her, and lifted her out over the depths. Then they just let go, and that was it. She didn't even come up from hitting the water. Later, her body was brought back by one of the sea dragons, and I don't know what happened to it, because by that point I didn't want to be there any longer, and had left."
Beryl shuddered, leaning into her embrace even more than before. Lily thought that if she stepped back, he would fall on his face. She was literally holding him up. "I could have killed her," he whispered, "but only in the heat of the moment. Not like that. I almost died like that, once. I do not like to think about it."
"You did?" Yet another thing she didn't know about Beryl, even now. "When was that?"
"The fight against the Queen. I was trapped on a No-scaled-not-prey ship, and Ember, then Hiccup, was nowhere around. It sank, and I sank with it. I was saved, but only barely, and Ember almost died trying to get me out."
"It is fine, she only got what she deserved." Lily hoped that was the right thing to say. "Now put it out of your mind. That is over with."
"Yes. Yes, it is." Beryl visibly shook off his discomfort, pulling away enough that he was not putting much of his weight directly on her. "All is well here?"
"No attacks, no surprises, no Storm freaking out about an egg laid in the middle of the night and roaring at Root that he was supposed to be more careful," Lily hummed teasingly.
"That was a very funny argument to listen to," Beryl agreed. "More so when Storm realized what she was roaring for everyone to hear."
"Never have I seen her so embarrassed," Lily laughed. "She is very inconsistent about that. One would think she would decide whether or not mating embarasses her and stick with it."
"One would think," Beryl agreed. "But it is good to hear there were no more… accidents."
Another thing they were both waiting for. Lily nodded in agreement. "The sooner we can get up to the surface, the better." Her very first order of business would be locating an entire bush of those leaves and bringing it to everyone's attention. She wouldn't be selfish and keep it for herself, not when one leaf per moon-cycle was all one needed.
"Are you two done with your private huddle?" Storm asked rudely. "I want to find out what happened to Diora." There was rage in her voice. She alone of the dark wings had protested letting the Twisted Corridor pack punish Diora, instead advocating a slow, painful death right here, dealt out by her, Pearl, and Lily. Needless to say, she wasn't happy when everyone else overruled her.
"Dead," Beryl called out shortly. "That's all you need to know."
"Good," Storm said happily.
"Beryl, you can go say hello to everyone, you know," Lily offered. "While Risa is eating. Then we can all do something together." She would not hold him back from that.
"In a minute," Beryl agreed. "Right now, I just want to hold you."
"Hold? If anything, I am holding you, with how you were leaning on me," she remarked.
"Nuzzle you. Is that more accurate?" he asked, doing exactly that.
"Yes, it is," Lily purred. She was glad, more than anything, that he was back, with no complications. It was true that complications usually plagued her, not him, but still.
O-O-O-O-O
Later that day, Lily was put in charge of watching the three hatchlings, along with Thaw and Root. Everyone else was out flying, exercising their wings. Lily, Thaw, and Root had drawn the short straws, so to speak, though Lily had not known that expression until Ember used it, which had led into an explanation on No-scaled-not-prey and how they decided things, among many subjects.
The point was that she was sitting with Root while Thaw and the three hatchlings played some small, mostly meaningless game about batting each other on the nose and running in circles.
"All the dawn wings in one place," Root observed conversationally. "Lily, do you think those here are the only dawn wings?"
"Right now, or ever to exist?" Lily asked.
"Either."
"Well…" Lily considered that. "Maybe? We have to wait and see something."
"What?"
"What the offspring of a dawn wing and something else ends up being," Lily explained. "I would think, if a dawn wing and a light wing could only create more dawn wings, and the same for a dawn wing and a dark wing, that these are the first ever, because over time dawn wings would take over."
"Because the only way to create new dark or light wings is to have two parents of the same kind, and the dawn wings would occasionally mate with either of the purer kinds… I can see that," Root agreed. "But only if all the various 'wing' populations were in contact. If there was an isolated group that started interbreeding but did not spread beyond their territory in any way, then there could be a pack of dawn wings somewhere in the world right now."
"Or, conversely, we could be the only light wings left," Lily agreed. "Maybe the two light wing packs down here are the only pure light wings left in the world."
"It does make you wonder if one kind must eventually consume the other two," Root said sadly. "I would like to see all three living and existing together, somehow, but I would say it is more likely dawn wings will take over until there are no light or dark wings left. It is a peaceful, happy way to disappear as a unique kind of dragon, but no less the death of that kind."
"That's dark," Lily observed. "Been thinking much on it? I mean, we're both traitors to our kind if that's the case, mating with dark wings."
"I cannot hear the difference," Root observed wryly. "For all I know, Storm has always been a light wing, and Lucky is pure white. One cannot blame me if that is not so."
"Funny," Lily rumbled. "But we got off-topic. All of that is only one possibility."
"What is the other?" Root sounded surprised.
"Hear me out. Some dawn wings look like dark wings, and some light wings, but they are all, technically speaking, half and half. Right?"
"Right." Root gestured for her to go on.
"Put a dawn wing with a light wing, for the sake of argument. If we look at their parents, we have three light wings and a dark wing. Now pick two, one from each side, but at random, and see what their children would turn out to be."
"You think that is how it works?" Root turned to Lily, his sightless face surprised and intrigued. "In that case, some of the offspring between a dawn wing and a light wing would be pure light wings, and some would be further dawn wings."
"Exactly!" Lily purred. "It gets more complicated with each generation, but the basic idea means that the other two kinds of dragon, the pure ones, will never die out as long as there are dawn wings. They will just become rarer and rarer."
"And maybe so rare as to cease to occur at all," Root cautioned. "That is not a definite answer."
"No, and we do not know if it works like that," Lily added. "But I think it might."
"And if, say light wings, become so rare nobody knows what they look like…" Root shook his head. "I think we do not need to worry. The differences are small; coloration and ability to camouflage. We are really just three different breeds of the same creature. From all appearances, dawn wings lose nothing from either of their contributing breeds, so if it comes to pass that all of our kind are dawn wings, we have not really lost anything. Just the different names, and some of the predictability of what our offspring will look like or be able to do."
"That is probably the best way to look at it… and if dawn wings do take over, that means you, me, and Pearl are three of the parents of those who will rule the world." She would conveniently ignore the very probable fact that there would be more dark and light pairings in the future. Not Spark, as he wanted to find a dark wing for himself, but…
Actually, Spark was the only one, assuming Herb and Thorn remained incapable of adding to the pure dark wing population, which seemed a safe bet. Also assuming Thorn did not take a light wing mate, as Herb was the reason they would not be having more eggs together, but again, a safe bet.
"Do you think there are other dark wings out there?" Lily asked skeptically. "Spark wants to find a female dark wing someday, but there might not be any."
"Well," Root said consideringly, "we know there were dark wings out there. Else, where did Thorn, Herb, Flint, and the parents of Second and Third come from?"
"Who are Flint and Third?" She barely even knew who Second was from Beryl.
"I have been collecting the story of this little pack," Root explained, "and it is a crazy one. But Flint was Ember's first mate, a dark wing female he just ran into out in the wild a while back. Third was Second's brother, and the one who sired Storm… against Thorn's will. Both are dead, but we know they came from somewhere. Third's Dam is dead, from what Storm told me, but that leaves his Sire, Flint's parents, and the two dark wing families Thorn and Herb left behind."
"But…" There was an obvious problem there.
Root chuckled wryly. "You see it, right? Spark is related to most of those we know of. Not the Sire of Second and Third, not directly, but all the others."
"Wait…" Lily had to run through that one. "Spark. His parents are Ember and Flint. Ember is Storm's brother through Thorn." Root was right, there was no actual blood connection between Spark and Third, let alone Spark and the Sire of Second and Third, and any other potential offspring that male might have with another female… assuming that female didn't come from any of the other dark wings they knew of.
"Spark is going to have to be very careful about checking ancestry," Lily summarized aloud. "If he runs into a dark wing female out in the world, odds are she's his relative in some way, even if they've never met, assuming there isn't some haven of dark wings somewhere, like this place was for light wings."
"That will be Spark's best chance," Root agreed sadly. "But it is not a good one."
"Better than nothing. And he can always take up with a light wing if it turns out there just aren't any suitable female dark wings to be found."
"True. And he wants to find a female dark wing specifically because he doesn't like the idea of dark wings going away as a kind of dragon, so if your theory is right- Wait, no," Root interrupted himself, "that would still require dark wings."
"Nope," Lily purred, having thought about that. "Look at the parents of any two dawn wings. You can get dawn, dark, or light from a pairing like that."
"But no two dawn wings can pair up," Root objected. "They are all related in some way. Thaw is Risa's Sire's brother, and Lucky's Dam's half-brother's son. The same goes for Glow. Risa and Lucky are both female, but even if one was male, Risa is Lucky's Dam's half-brother's son's daughter." He let his head thump to the ground. "My mind hurts. Can you sprain your brain?"
"True… and there are only light wings around to mate with the dawn wings." Lily was getting her own headache just thinking about it. "Bottom line…"
"Bottom line is that Spark's quest to find more dark wings would be important even if he didn't plan on taking a mate," Root supplied helpfully. "We need our dawn wing offspring to have choices from both sides of things, just in case you are right about how this works."
"What are you two talking about?" Thaw called out from his place among the three hatchlings. "And am I now the only one on hatchling-watching duty?"
"No, sorry," Lily apologized. They had totally forgotten-
"Every time I speak I notice where the hatchlings are," Root called out to Thaw. "So I have to talk, or I see nothing. I could just randomly roar, though."
"I was slacking," Lily continued, unwilling to let Root cover for her, even if it was a legitimate explanation on his part. "Want me to take over whatever that is?"
Thaw nodded eagerly. "Let them make the rules; I don't even know what we are doing at this point." As if to illustrate that fact, Risa chose that moment to bite down on Thaw's tailfins, mercifully with her gums and not her teeth, and shook it around, or tried to.
Lily stepped away from Root and got involved in wrangling the hatchlings, giving Thaw a break. Her talk with Root remained in her mind, but did not bother her. All of that was for later, much later in fact. Many generations before it actually became important.
O-O-O-O-O
"I called this meeting," Ember announced, sitting between Pearl and Thaw, "to get a list going."
"A list?" Silva asked.
"Of opinions," Ember continued. "I want to know where everyone wants to go, and what they want to do. Just to get an idea of what we all want, so that when we can leave we know where we're going, and what we're doing."
"Is this short-term or long-term?" Root asked. He was next to Storm, of course. They were all lying in a circle, facing inward.
"Both." Ember shrugged his wings. "I will go first, and demonstrate what I mean. Short-term, I want to go check up on Valka. Long-term, I have no specific desires, other than to find somewhere central to all of the places we want to visit regularly, and live there."
After saying that, Ember scratched out a series of shapes in the dirt in front of him. "I have gotten all of that down. Pearl?"
"Well…" Pearl looked down at Glow. "I do not have anywhere I want to go."
"That is fine," Ember agreed. "Thorn?"
"Home," Thorn immediately supplied. "Our caves, the ones we left to come out here. I am not old yet," and here she nudged Herb reassuringly, "neither of us are, but we want to settle down somewhere. Ideally with company."
"Our home," Ember repeated, scratching more lines into the dirt. "Yes. I think that will make a good central location, actually, so you will have that company. Herb?"
"Same as my mate," Herb replied.
"Got it. Silva?"
"Places to go?" Silva asked. "I do not know anywhere but the places we have listed, and these light wing packs, who are not all that great. But I will need a mate sooner or later, and they seem to be the only place to find one."
"Long-term, you want to come back here to look for a mate," Ember summarized. "Would you be averse to a dark wing as a mate? I know what Spark wants to do."
"No, I do not think so," Silva hummed. "Either will do. I want to find a good one, and I do not care what kind they are."
"Sire, you know my plan," Spark supplied.
"Yes, finding more dark wings," Ember agreed. "I've got that down under long-term for now, because if you find a pack, we'll want to go visit them too for the reason Silva gave. Thaw?"
"Put me down for the dark wing pack," Thaw suggested. "Long-term. The light wing pack too."
"I'll just put 'finding a mate' to indicate both of those places. Anywhere else?"
"Well…" Thaw shrugged his wings. "I want to visit Berk, if you are okay with that. Spark has seen it, and I want to."
"So do I," Ember agreed. "I'll put that under short-term. Storm?"
"I do not care where we go, as long as it is good for my daughter," Storm growled, glancing over at Lucky, who was sleeping on Root's back, and then at Root himself. "I have my mate, finally."
"But I would like to go everywhere," Root countered. "Will you go with me?"
"You know it," Storm purred.
"Everywhere? That seems kind of vague," Ember remarked, purring in amusement.
"Everything on your list when we are done with this," Root specified. "I like stories, and these places all seem to have them."
"Got it. Everywhere has Root's vote," Ember murmured, scratching more into the dirt. Lily had a good idea of what he was doing, but she would wait until this was over to talk to him about it. "Beryl?"
Beryl started, jostling Risa, who didn't seem to mind. "I almost forgot I had not spoken yet," he explained. "Put me down for most of that, but also, I promised to go visit Fishlegs at some point. He's on Berserker island, I think?"
"I know where that is from Berk… and a dangerous place for dragons, but apparently that is no longer the case," Ember declared. "Got it. Anywhere else?"
"Is there anywhere else?" Lily asked, knowing she was next, being the only one Ember hadn't asked yet. "I want to go see the valley one more time, but that's a pointless trip. It's just a burnt-out depression between mountains. Maybe in a few dozen season-cycles we can take a trip out there to show all of our children. Other than that, put me down for absolutely everything too." She wanted to explore.
Ember scratched hastily in the dirt, shuffling backward to give himself more space. "Okay, that looks to be everything. Home, Berk, Berserker island, and Valka are all on the short-term list. Searching for dark wings and visiting the light wing packs, along with any future dark wing pack, and visiting the valley is all on the long-term list."
"Sounds like a lot of travelling around," Pearl noted. "With hatchlings?"
"We do not all have to go on every trip," Silva reasoned. "Home is kind of close to a lot of these places, right?"
"A moon-cycle or so from Berk and Berserker island, about four moon-cycles from here, and half a moon-cycle from Valka's place," Ember explained. "It's as central as anywhere could be with all of those places."
"Thorn and I will keep the caves cleaned out for you all," Herb purred. "Since you will be coming and going so often."
"Relatively often. We can space the short-term trips out, and we'll definitely be living there for at least a season-cycle every time we want a new egg," Pearl added. "We will live there, and venture out to go everywhere else, but always return."
To Lily's ears, that was perfect. A home base of sorts, one she and Beryl could always expect to be able to return to, one that would always have some assortment of friends. As Lily planned to just go exploring with her mate and any of her children that wanted to come, that was the best possible scenario.
A bright future lay in front of them all. One fraught with danger, sure, but life was like that, and at least now Lily had allies, not subordinates, to face the danger with.
They all spent a while talking about the various trips and other such things, but sooner rather than later the three sets of parents realized their children were falling asleep or still sleeping, and they broke up the informal meeting, going to their places in the cavern.
Pearl led Glow away, and Beryl took Risa, leaving Lily free to talk to Ember. She walked over to the large section of dirt he had marked. "I think I know what these mean," she began.
"The list, and who wants to go where," Ember offered. "It helped me keep everything straight in my head. There are a lot of us now."
"Anyone who knows what these marks mean will see our list?" Beryl had told her that much. It was a visual language, like drawings but not, learned not intuitive.
"Yes, but nobody will ever see them, because in a few days they will have been walked over a thousand times if I do not just scuff them out now." It seemed Ember didn't see where she was going with her question.
"Can you teach me to understand them? And drawing, I want to learn that too. And the language of No-scaled-not-prey." She might as well throw that last one in now. It was high time she actually learned the language her accent indicated she already knew. Especially if two or more of the places they were going were places of No-scaled-not-prey.
"Yes, but that's a lot to learn," Ember cautioned. "Why the sudden interest in all things No-scaled-not-prey?"
"It's not sudden, I've wanted to learn to draw ever since the cave drawing you did for me at Beryl's request." She had not actually decided she wanted to learn until much later, but the spark was there, with that amazing evocation of people long gone and impossible scenarios made real in a small way. "The rest came more recently, but they seem like interesting skills."
"Well, drawing is the easiest, and the other two are much harder," Ember rumbled. "How about we start with drawing, and do them one at a time? Drawing, understanding the spoken language, then reading and writing it."
"You will teach me, though?"
"Sure." Ember purred at her. "I'll teach you whenever we both have time. Want to learn seeing with sound, too? I've been meaning to say everyone should learn that, ever since Root had to wait half a season-cycle because neither Beryl nor Spark knew it."
"That too," Lily agreed. She was looking forward to all of it, and exploring, and raising Risa, and being with Beryl, and getting closer to everyone here as she truly earned the trust they were extending out of courtesy right now-
So much to do, and so much to learn. No responsibility except for herself and her daughter, and no power except over the two people she had just mentioned.
No stress, except that of living life. A good life, one with ups and downs, but some of both, not all downs, like it had seemed to go for Pyre.
Pyre. Lily could see far too many parallels between them. Grounded, exiled from their packs, unhappy and alone for a time. Brought back by one caring individual, one person who saw something worth having in them.
But where he had failed or been defeated, she had triumphed. Her daughter had not been taken. Her flight was restored. She regained her mate. Her daughter, barring some horrible turn of events, would not be raised to hate her.
Was it right for her to be happy? She had caused a lot of pain and had plenty of regrets. She had in one way of thinking skipped out on her responsibility to her pack, and never fixed what she had broken. Some might say she didn't deserve to have such a good resolution to a life with so many mistakes and bad choices. She herself didn't think she had ever really been bothered the way she should have by losing the pack.
Was it right for her to have a good life? Maybe not, if one thought there was some fated balance of right and wrong. But even if there was, she considered this a just balance. She had gone through enough pain and suffering for any dragon, even if it had come before her crimes. The order was wrong, but the end result was the same. She had erred, and she had paid for it. Now she could live life and try not to mess up again.
Lily knew she was flawed, cynical, manipulative, prone to paranoia, and capable of terrible things. But nobody was perfect, and she wanted to believe that how one chose to be was more important than what one was by one's own nature. She chose to be better, from the very start when Pyre had taught her empathy because she lacked it.
Lily felt she did not entirely deserve the good life she saw unfolding in front of her, full of mystery and adventure, with a mate and children and a whole extended family by her side through thick and thin. Maybe it was better she did not think she deserved it; she would not take it for granted or grow complacent.
Never that. There would be future struggles, inside and out, and she would not let herself stand by or fall to anything. The world was not strong enough to break her down any longer.
Author's Note: Yeah, there were a LOT of differences! Most are either self-evident or were cut to streamline the narrative. Some relied on things that I had already removed (such as Fishlegs randomly popping up in the Hidden World and running into Lily and Beryl, which was a fun idea but really just made no sense in retrospect). Others just weren't relevant enough, or didn't match up with how people were moving around and the one viewpoint I had to show them with.
Lucky and Glow are two big differences. The way the final version of UotD turned out, there wasn't narrative space to introduce either of them, so they didn't make the cut. That does not, however, mean they won't ever exist in the actual series! I fully intend to introduce both of them just as soon as I know for sure what is happening post-UotD and am certain I'm not going to be stepping on my own toes by saddling somebody with a hatchling when I need them elsewhere.