No Story Stands Alone

by VigoGrimborne

This is a collection of one-shots, short stories, and alternate perspectives all based in the universe created by the story Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities, and its various sequels. So, in case it's not clear, new readers won't want to start with this one. No set genre or main characters, as it focuses on whatever genre and character I want to write about.

35. Ember: More Illustrations (EC)

CAUTION: Spoils aspects of Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities, When Nothing Remains, and aspects of Usurpation of the Darkness.

Seriously, major spoilers here.

Assuming you wish to continue, read on…

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Background: Man, this has been a long time coming. I did appearances for most relevant characters up to the end of When Nothing Remains (which you can find in a previous chapter) but Usurpation of the Darkness added more than thirty relevant new characters after that, many with theoretically very similar appearances that could do with someone waxing poetic about the differences or at the very least putting all of their descriptions in one place. And in doing so, well, this has some actual new stuff in it for the canon series too, including one thing that's been a long time coming.

Kudos to Deadly-Bagel, by the way, for reminding me that this was a thing I said I was going to do at some point… and for doing so at least twice. I probably wouldn't have gotten around to it until I was ready to come back and start writing another story in the main series, otherwise. (Which is still definitely in the works, albeit somewhat far down the priority list at the moment).

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Ember, more than most dragons or for that matter most Vikings, had Loki's fingers. If he was made to sit still and wait long-term, he would inevitably resort to making things with his hands. Most dragons didn't have that problem as most dragons had no fingers at all, but he was inclined to attribute it to both sides of himself. Even when he was purely Ember, he had not dealt with long-term boredom well. Purely as Hiccup, he'd faced the same problem, but instead of it being a problem it became his defining skill. Having opposable thumbs and a drive to create merely put a solid and productive outlet on the slow-building frustration.

Living with next to no privacy, underground, with a pack of dragons who had no positive experiences with humans really put a crimp in his ability to hammer, draw, or tinker his boredom away, but he managed. Not so much the creation of physical objects, since he lacked tools, materials, and the ability to transport his hypothetical creations once he was finished with them, but drawings? Parchment and charcoal were part of the supplies he always kept on his human form, and his hands were well-trained. It wasn't so hard to find a few hours in solitude, if one knew where to look and was small enough to fit into places dragons couldn't go.

He didn't draw every day, or even every week, but whenever his fingers and mind felt the restless itch, he had an outlet. And through that outlet, he documented places, things he had seen, and people.

So many people. Thankfully, he had a good memory for visual details, and enough parchment to make plenty of small sketches he could elaborate upon in the future. So long as he took note of the people he would like to draw while going about his day, he was never short of subjects to practice with the next time the itch snuck up on him.

O-O-O-O-O

"I have not changed much since the last time you drew me," Pearl said, though she obligingly posed for him. "Won't this be the same as the one we have back home?"

"I could draw you a thousand times and always find something new to show," Ember said earnestly. "And I want one of you to start this collection. I plan to draw as many people around here as I can." Though he would wait to actually draw her until after he was done examining her, to more accurately hold to the conditions the rest of this pack would place him under. None of them would sit still for a No-scaled-not-prey to stare at them while scratching parchment.

"How can I complain when you put it like that?" Pearl purred, turning back around to face him. "Look harder, I need to remember this moment when I see you staring at other light wings." She leaned forward and flicked her tail up, crouching playfully.

Ember stepped forward to rub his face on hers, chortling softly at her wit. "If you phrase it like that, you make it sound downright unappealing. Staring at anyone other than you." Unappealing was, of course, the last thing he could say about his own mate. She was as beautiful as the day he had gotten over himself and chosen to return her interest. More so; she was stronger, physically and mentally, and her persistently positive outlook showed even in the way she held herself. The scar across her chest had not faded very much, but that only served to set her apart from the other light wings of her former pack in one more way. Her rose glint was particularly prominent compared to most light wings, and her eyes were still vibrantly ruby-red.

There were actual, easily accessible rubies down here. He needed to remember to take Pearl out to see some of them, next time they wanted a quiet place to spend some time together away from others.

"This is a good idea," Pearl set her chin on his shoulder. "We will not be here forever. Drawings will be better than just memories… For most. Are you going to draw Diora?"

"Why would I ever do that?" he asked, befuddled.

"So I can burn it?" Pearl said innocently.

Perhaps he would draw Diora.

"And then there is Beryl… If you are doing drawings of us all, you will need to get him, too," Pearl continued, her tone growing more pensive. "When he comes back."

"When he returns I will draw him." Whether that was here, under the ground, or back in their home underneath the sky… Beryl would need to move quickly if it was to be the former. He knew his family, and he knew they would not all be content to wait around under the ground forever.

But Ember knew his son in turn, and he believed that Beryl was more than capable of finding them again, even if they returned home. It was not as if Beryl did not know the way. If worst came to worst and he did not return within a year or so, it would be another rescue, and in the end Ember's family had a surprisingly good track record with those. But, more likely, Beryl would return when Ember least expected him. Until then… waiting and drawing.

O-O-O-O-O

"Drawing again?" Thaw asked.

"Yes, it's been too long." It was morning, or what passed for morning under the ground, and Pearl was off fishing while he and Thaw got a later start up in the little cavern complex in the roof. It wasn't much space, but it was private enough that he had risked a quick change to jot down some plans and a few rough sketches. Thaw, of course, knew both languages and didn't see anything strange with his choice of bodies.

Thaw walked around him to look over his shoulder. He rumbled approvingly at the sketch of his Dam.

"Come back around so I can take some notes on you," Ember instructed. He didn't want to stay this way too long; it was a small but definite risk that someone would walk in on them and raise a stink about the No-scaled-not-prey inexplicably under the ground. But he could do a little, and the last drawing he had of his youngest son was of him as a fledgling. It was about time to get another one.

Thaw hummed his approval of the idea and circled back around, stopping in front of Ember to give him a side-on view. Thaw had grown well, from a bright blue and green fledgling into a well-built male just on the older side of the line between fledgling and adult. He was stocky, solid in every sense of the word, with shorter than usual legs and a longer tail making him flatter to the ground than the average light or dark wing. His coloration was complex, more complicated than any Ember had ever seen. Green, blue, and white scales mingled in intricate waves along his body, with only the whitest of his scales displaying flecks of a green glint.

And then there were the two parallel lines etched into both of his front paws, which Ember knew were there even if he couldn't see them. Those were a part of Thaw too, in a way that Ember's own affliction never would be. Something he had from hatching, not something inflicted upon him in a moment of terror.

Ember sketched a rough outline – he liked how Thaw was standing, looking off at something beyond the edge of the parchment, contemplative. Then he marked his son's most distinctive color bands, a rune to each one for reference, and tucked the parchment away.

"Any plans for today?" he asked, before swiftly changing back in a wave of flames.

"Some," Thaw rumbled. "Fishing tonight?"

"Family flight, yes." It was just that the easiest, safest place to fly as a group was over the underground lake, so fishing would also be happening as a matter of course. "Remind Spark if you see him today, okay? He did not even come back to sleep last night."

Thaw shook his head, a wordless lament over his brother's busy social calendar.

O-O-O-O-O

Ember watched from above as a half-dozen young light wings played chase through the grassy cavern below. They were all after a golden figure who gamboled across the open space with wild abandon, leaping over and around the other light wings going about their lives, causing no small amount of consternation in his wake for the pursuing light wings to run into and make much, much worse, slowing them down.

Spark wouldn't be caught any time soon, that was for sure. In this chase, or by the females playfully attempting to hunt him down. Ember expected that the moment his oldest son saw someone he really liked, the entire family would hear about it. That they had not, even now… Well, Spark was in no rush. If he didn't see anyone who really appealed to him, he wouldn't leap in on a middling attraction. It was still questionable whether he wanted a mate at all right now.

The females chasing him right now didn't think it was questionable. If they thought about him at all, and not just themselves. From their perspective, he was quite a catch, a young adult dark wing with impressive golden scales unmarred by any significant scarring. If they saw the odd pattern of small scales under his eyes, they thought nothing of it, and the pale silver lightning-bolts of discoloration in his wing membrane didn't look like scars at all. His pure white irises, speckled with silver strands, probably drew their attention away anyway. He wasn't as muscular as his younger brother, but by the standards of this pack he was close to perfect.

They could chase him all they wanted, but none of them would catch him. Perhaps the light wings of the Twisted Corridor pack would have more luck once he turned his attention to them.

O-O-O-O-O

"I think," Herb said slowly as he peered down into the water, "that we are learning that we prefer solitude."

Ember's Sire had not changed in the last few years. At his age, that was good; change rarely came for positive reasons for one well into the second half of their life. He still looked like a capable male half his age, weathered by circumstances but not by time. His eye was his one concession to age; the scarred vertical slash down his face and through the center of his eye had rendered it a milky yellow mess some time ago, and as the years passed the eye itself grew duller and duller, fading from the strong yellow that the other still held. The rest of him was strong and sure though, and he flew with complete confidence.

"Or this pack is the problem," Thorn said. She and Herb were side by side, flying in tandem as they casually looked for fish. She too had not visibly aged since his last drawing, and without any major injury to show the passage of time, could still pass for a much younger dark wing if she wanted. Specifically, a charcoal-gray dark wing with piercing purple eyes and a strong voice rooted in her broad chest. She too was looking down at the water, but with almost no real intensity. They had flown over two schools of fish already.

Personally, Ember was bored of fishing. It was the one thing everyone was forever doing or talking about doing down here, where only the bold were willing to venture out into the danger of the caverns beyond their immediate territory, and the other pack was still mostly blocked by ongoing negotiations. Those who could not talk their way into a visit had little to do with their time, and only one place to stretch their wings. So many, like his Sire and Dam, felt absolutely no need to rush this particular necessity. What else were they going to do?

"We did abandon our original pack," Herb remarked. "Willingly, at that. We should not be surprised that life in another pack does not suit us."

"I had wondered if a pack who had thrown off bad customs would be more to our liking, though," Thorn said wistfully. "Oh well. We have something to go back to, this time."

O-O-O-O-O

As a favor to his Sire, Dam, and mate, Ember always took time out of whatever he was doing to stealthily observe if he saw Silva and Diora together. It didn't happen much these days; Silva was often out exploring under the guise of scouting, something that he knew caused Herb and Thorn less stress and worry than her spending time with the one who had laid her egg, despite it being objectively more dangerous.

Personally, Ember worried less for Silva, and more for the headache Diora would cause for literally everyone associated with her. His Sire and Dam knew how to raise a fledgling, and the moment Diora graduated from using her words to using her claws, Silva would defend herself. Violently. It was the words that his parents were worried about, and if those hadn't had any effect by now, they never would.

Still, he liked being able to assure everyone involved that he was doing his part to keep an eye on them, so when he spotted a distinctive silver glint slipping into the bug-filled ravine exit to the grassy cave, followed by a light wing with a red glint, he temporarily abandoned his quest to fill his stomach at the underground lake and wheeled around to check on them.

Light wings might have a firm upper wing when it came to hiding from prying eyes, but Ember was no slouch himself, and the dim, intermittent light of the ravine helped him blend in almost as much as camouflage would have, as he leaped up to creep along an extremely narrow set of outcroppings far above the heads of the two light wings now walking.

Silva was in the lead still, stubbornly ignoring Diora. The latter was tagging along behind her, nagging in a whiny voice that was too high-pitched for Ember's ears to filter out distinct words.

Silva had grown up since she escaped Diora's clutches, and she flaunted that with every step she took while ignoring Diora's complaints. Her silver glint and bright blue eyes might have been to Diora's liking, but that was all. She was bulky, muscular, and good at wrestling in the way that all of her age group from his family were due to constant practice. Thunder and Lightning in particular left their mark on their recurring playmates, a mark that showed in tactile skill and strength. Ember knew through Pearl, who knew from Thorn, that Silva had on occasion complained about how slim the other light wings her age were in the valley pack. Not because she envied their appearance, but because none of them could keep up with her. She also had a strong, piercing voice that she used freely, another thing her former Dam would have hated. Meek and silent, she was not. Diora likely did not think her 'alluring', either, though Ember would say that Diora's disapproval was as good as an endorsement from a saner light wing.

If anything, Silva's main fault was that her need to assert her defiance occasionally leaked into how she dealt with other, more innocent relations. She hated being told how to feel or what to think, even when the one giving advice truly only meant it as advice, not an order. That, Ember suspected, was one of the few marks Diora had successfully left on her hatchling before their parting.

But right now her confidence was serving her well. She took to the air at the end of the ravine and left Diora behind, abandoning her to whine alone. Diora cried out in indignation, made to turn around…

And paused. Waiting.

Ember snorted to himself, high above and behind her. How very optimistic of her, to hope that Silva would feel any guilt at all for not bending to her will. Every heartbeat that passed without Diora giving up made it funnier.

She did eventually huff and paw at the ground, as Ember knew would inevitably happen. If Diora were infinitely patient, she would have starved to death the first time the fish refused to surface of their own accord to be eaten.

But then she turned again and took to the sky, flying out into the dark cavern.

Ember followed, unseen mostly because she was supremely unobservant. What was she up to now?

O-O-O-O-O

Some time later, Ember began to wonder whether he would need to reveal himself to stop Diora from getting herself completely lost. Shortly after, he wondered whether he would actually do that, when the alternative would be going home and pretending he had no idea where Diora had disappeared to if anyone asked. She'd got herself into this mess, why should he be obliged to help her out of it when she would happily ruin his mate's life if she was presented with the opportunity?

Sadly, she did eventually figure out which way led back to the pack's current territory. Not before Ember regretted wasting his time following her, though. His best guess as to her intention upon leaving was that she wanted to trail Silva, but she was entirely inept at it if that was her goal. They'd not seen so much as a single scale since Silva left Diora behind. All the trip amounted to in the end was Diora wandering around, growing more and more tired and crabby.

Hers was not a body suited for anything physical except displaying the faint impression of light wing bones on a still-living specimen. Diora was not just thin, she was painfully thin, more so than when Ember had arrived with the rest of his family some months ago. All the better to play up the angle of the wronged victim, he supposed. With the lack of fat, muscle, or even padding came a skeletal look, and a pinched face that sagged a little around the cheeks. A few weeks of twice as many fish would fix the worst of her current state, likely returning her to an appearance that wouldn't stand out in a crowd of light wings, but the sour cast to her yellow eyes would never go away. Her glint also seemed to have collected where her skin sagged, little red flashes glittering from the crooks of her elbows, base of her tail, and other such unlikely places.

She could better herself, but she wouldn't. If asked, she would probably proclaim her current state to be attractive beyond compare. The question of whether it was safe or desirable to be so unfit wouldn't even cross her mind. He doubted it had occurred to her even now, as she directly suffered the consequences, huffing and puffing as she walked on tender paws back into the bug-infested ravine.

Any pity she might have garnered from him had already preemptively died a thousand deaths, once every time he saw his mate stop what she was doing, momentarily troubled by her own thoughts, and then go on with her life, just a little less upbeat for no clear reason.

He growled, deep in his chest, and decided on a whim to put some fear into her. Swooping low, he came up behind her as she plodded along, too tired to swat at the bugs pestering her. He shot over her head like an arrow, his wings in and his legs tucked up against his torso, and hit the ground hard just in front of her, sending twinges of warning pain through his front legs.

Diora yelped, utterly surprised. Ember ignored her and walked briskly on, mentally putting her out of his mind even as she began to complain about his rudeness. If he tried hard enough to ignore her, her voice faded into the background buzz.

O-O-O-O-O

Ember would have thought that splitting the duties of alpha between three sisters well-accustomed to dividing labor would have made for a relatively light schedule. In fact, he still thought that. There were other potential reasons for why he was being made to wait.

The name of one such reason was Cloud, a young male light wing who was acting as the equivalent to a door guard in a world without doors. In lieu of a slab of solid wood, he was doing his best to puff himself up and raise his wings enough to block the way.

Thinking about it, Cloud reminded him of Snotlout. This would be an entirely nonsensical comparison if he were making it in terms of their physical forms; Cloud was a young adult light wing, a male with light gray eyes and white scales that, when the light hit them at the right angle, appeared speckled with ash of a darker gray. He was as unlike Snotlout as it was possible to be… Except that their personalities, the posturing and the unearned confidence, were eerily similar.

This impression might have been helped along by Beryl speaking of Cloud in less than glowing terms. According to Beryl, Cloud had tormented Root, was not particularly bright, and continually attempted to challenge Beryl back when he was teaching Cloud's own pack to fight. He also, if Ember remembered correctly, had made a few passes at Lily.

Ember chuckled at his own obliviousness, comforted by the knowledge that Pearl had not noticed it either. Beryl not liking Cloud, on more than his own merits, was really only obvious in hindsight.

"What are you laughing at?" Cloud demanded, flaring his wings a little more.

"Nothing," Ember said absently.

"You know, you could leave and come back later," Cloud suggested huffily.

"I would rather wait." Wait, and wonder what she would say once she got around to him…

O-O-O-O-O

In the end, Ember only got to speak to one of the three alphas. Holly asked him to fly with her over the underground lake, and sent Cloud away when he made to follow them out. In a few moments, during which they exchanged pleasantries, they flew beyond the easy sight or hearing of everyone else in her pack, and his family. Alone, for all intents and purposes.

He wondered how much Holly knew about him. He certainly wasn't going to volunteer anything to fill in the possible gaps in her knowledge; the less she knew, the less she would be able to maneuver him into doing what she wanted whether or not it was best for him and his family. He had a responsibility to them.

"I have been waiting for you to seek me out." Holly's voice was low, matter-of-fact but laden with held-back exhaustion. Ember was flying beside her on her left side, so he couldn't see her healing neck injury, but he had seen plenty of it by now, even in passing. The small jagged gray line crossing the front of her neck was a visual reminder of what had happened. She was lucky that her very faint glint was light pink, because if it was red or brown she would never be able to shake the look of one whose scars, even the oldest and faintest, were still dirty with dry blood. Her eyes, by contrast, were a pale tan and utterly sharp, even now.

"It didn't seem urgent," he said.

"Not compared to most things recently, no," she agreed. "Your family does not cause problems. Except for Storm, though she has not done anything too egregious."

"I'm glad to hear that." He was especially thankful he had not been called in to 'discipline' his sister. That would not have ended well for anyone involved.

"At present, your family is not a problem." Holly paused. "But," she continued right as he opened his mouth to respond, "this cannot continue forever."

"What cannot?" he asked. "Us living in your territory?" Here, his father's old training came in handy. Not Herb, oddly enough, rather this entire situation reminded him much more of Stoick's teachings. How to lead a tribe, and more relevantly, how to protect a tribe from other tribes with words where weapons alone wouldn't do the job. They were Vikings, so that portion of Stoick's teachings had been short and sweet, but it was still there. And it covered the problems involved with two tribes living in close proximity, even for short times.

"Sharing our territory, our safety, and our future without any promise of permanence," Holly elaborated. "If you are to join our pack, your family mating with our families, benefiting from our security, living in our space, you need to be us. Not to be set apart."

"It was not a problem before." Because Lily had not cared… Or because she had plans to solve the issue herself. Or Beryl had reassured her.

"The ambiguity might have suited Lily, but I am not her, and this cannot go on for much longer," Holly said.

"Understood." Where they disagreed would inevitably be the solution to the problem, not that the problem existed. And that was, itself, a problem. But not one he could claw or stab into submission.

He empathized with Holly's tiredness. He was beginning to feel a little of it himself.

O-O-O-O-O

Root was surprisingly understanding when Ember found him to deliver the news.

"I have been thinking this might happen," he said. "But it is a good thing you told me this now, while my Dam is away. This is where she sleeps, you know. I am waiting for her."

"I did wonder why you were here." Specifically, sitting next to three gossiping females, within earshot of a screeching hatchling, in the middle of the grassy cavern. He also wondered where Storm was, but if there was a chance of Whirl being around, she had probably opted to be anywhere else for a while.

"Can a blind light wing not sit and do nothing without being questioned?" Root asked wryly, tilting his head to one side. He was sitting on his tail and hind legs, tall and slightly awkward. His brown-flecked scales shone brightly under the light of a nearby yellow crystal, and his eyelids were drawn back. The pits – because Ember could not help but look – were clean and healthy, as old injuries went. A bit like his stump whenever he was human, just concave instead of convex… and in Root's face. The rest of him was fine, he had put on muscle and grown a little in the last few months, by all other accounts he was a fine specimen of a light wing…

But his face was disconcerting, and until he had learned to see with sound, his lack of sight crippling. For anyone who could not look past the surface, that was all there would be to him.

Root hummed idly. "I cannot say I know what I want to do in regards to the pack," he said in a more serious tone. "Or what Storm might want to do. But I know what my Dam wants, and some of what she wants is not possible. Other parts could happen. I do not know if I am willing to deprive her of everything. Not right now, as things stand. I will have to think on it."

"That is all I hoped to achieve." They were not being forced to leave or join up today, or tomorrow, but Holly had all but said the issue would eventually be forced. He didn't know what he was going to do about that yet, so the least he could do now was ensure everyone involved knew what was going on. It would not just be Root; he still needed to go find Crystal, Thunder, and Lightning. Spark and Thaw too. And the families of the ones involved, just so that no one would be caught off guard.

If Honey thought only the people who had arrived with him would be leaving with him… Well, she might be right. But he didn't think it would happen that way. Ties to his family went two ways, and Holly was not in a position to pull or hold too hard.

O-O-O-O-O

Ember stayed to talk to Root about a few other things, none so important as the warning he had delivered. After a while, Whirl returned, flying down to land by them.

She did not look well, and Ember wondered if he should tell Root that, or whether the blind dragon already knew from some other source. Light wings did not really show their exhaustion or tiredness, just like dark wings, but there were subtle cues that Whirl was showing in spades. Her wings drooped, her tail dragged, and her ears sagged back even when she otherwise seemed perfectly okay. Her pale gray glint did her no favors, and her brown eyes were duller than Ember thought they should have been.

She had lost her mate, and if things could not be satisfactorily resolved with Holly soon, she might lose her son too.

"We can go fishing now," Whirl announced.

"I was not done speaking to Ember," Root said mildly.

"Come on, follow me." She spun around to trail the tip of her tailfins against the ground in front of him. "Do not get lost."

"Dam, I can see you just fine," Root grumbled. He was always rumbling, grumbling, and speaking in low tones now when he was around others. His experimentation with the extremely fine points of seeing with sound were bearing more fruit than Ember would ever have thought possible. Long gone were the days where he would have to outright roar to see anything at all, though the lower noises, as he had been explaining, had very harsh limits when it came to definition and range.

"For my peace of mind?" Whirl asked.

Root grunted and rose to his paws. "If I must."

Ember watched them go, on paw. Slowly.

Perhaps it was good that Holly might soon force the issue. If she did not, Whirl could still lose her son to her own behavior. If Holly made it happen instead, Whirl would at least have someone beside herself to blame.

O-O-O-O-O

"Come see! Come see!"

Ember, Pearl beside him, flew down to follow Thunder and Lightning to the gathering throng in the middle of the grassy cavern. Most of the light wing pack was there, milling around trying to get a better look at something in the center of the crowd, a small open space. He knew what it was when he flew over and saw two figures, one light and one dark, in the middle of that open space.

Someone had goaded Storm into a fight, or vice versa. Not a real, no-holds-barred fight, he expected someone would have stepped in to break that up, but rather a very violent sparring match. Light wings stepped out of his way as he waded through the crowd, and soon he had a good view from the inner ring of spectators. He thought he heard Thunder complaining about the crowd not doing the same for him, but that was one voice among the throng, so he couldn't be sure.

Storm was there in the open space, subtly favoring one of her front paws as she and her opponent slowly circled each other. She had not changed much since the first day he met her. In fact, he would even say that right now she looked more like she had that day than she usually did. Slightly bloodied, primed for violence, and utterly unconcerned with anything beyond her immediate opponent, she was lean and ready to hurt someone. Physically, she was still in great shape, even more so since Thunder and Lightning had grown out of the stressful hatchling phase and could keep up with her. Her coloration was still the same blue core fading out to gray at the edges. Her ears and frills were entirely grey while her face was a smoky blue, giving her a severe, complex appearance. Her tailfins and tail had a lot of grey and blue intermixing, while her torso and legs were mostly blue with gray edges.

Her eyes – teal, though they showed their color best in the sun, and there was no sun here – were focused on her opponent. They were both creeping so slowly that they might stop entirely if they slowed any further, and at any moment one or the other was going to leap.

The other was Cara. One of the three murkily-divided Alphas, a combative and, in Ember's experience, often unpleasant light wing. She reminded him of Astrid, before anyone thought anything about dragons besides killing them, but without the physical prowess to back up her attitude. Her ragged, cut-short ears and missing frills might mark her as one who had seen combat, but in reality she knew only what Beryl could teach in a few moon-cycles, and had almost no experience in any kind of fight beyond the usual play-fighting. Where her sister Aven was peculiarly naive, Cara was oddly cynical without any cause Ember knew about. Beyond the obvious, of course.

Right now, though, she looked the part of a fearsome fighter. Fearsome, but bloodied; the red streaming from her various cuts was covering her usual white scales and faint green glint, and she had a cut on her forehead that was muddling the vision in one of her brown eyes.

Storm, by contrast, was only lightly cut in a few places. Cara broke their standoff with a high leap, too high, and Storm mockingly barked as she stepped forward and bit up to grab the whipping white tail passing over her head. This was not what Ember would have done in his sister's place; in forcibly stopping Cara, she had succeeded in dropping a shrieking, enraged light wing on her own back. But Storm wasn't going for a clean fight, or a clean kill; she wanted a brawl, one with kicking and scratching and roaring.

"That's not very good form," Pearl said from beside him as Storm rolled squirmed around under Cara and began thumping the light wing about the face with both of her front paws.

"Neither is that," Ember agreed as Cara bit down on one of Storm's paws and tried to do something with it, not that she got anywhere as said paw was still attached to a raging dark wing whose claws were now inside of Cara's mouth. They would both be embarrassingly and agonizingly dead if this were a serious fight.

Then again, it wasn't a serious fight. If he wanted to be charitable, Storm was teaching a novice many valuable lessons about fighting defensively and the danger of overextending oneself.

Storm managed to free her paw, roll over, and begin kicking Cara in the stomach with both hind paws – it was more like jumping on her, really – while her tail held her steady, and Cara spit out blood, getting it in Storm's eyes.

He was going to have to wade in and break them up, wasn't he? "You get Cara, I get Storm?"

"Before one of them loses a tooth, an eye, or the feeble remains of their sensibility," Pearl snorted.

O-O-O-O-O

Sometimes, danger or not, Ember had to get out. The grassy cavern was stifling, too many light wings in too small a space for his liking, and the little complex of tunnels his family currently occupied was claustrophobic. When flying above the lake wasn't enough, when thinking about what he would draw next didn't ease the itch in his wings, he had to go.

Thankfully, he could just go exploring. Nothing except the promise of the unknown, and the dangers within, stopped him. That danger was real, he had no doubt about that, but as long as one was not predictable and didn't fall into a set routine, it was minimal. The real threat was to the very cave everyone spent all of their time in.

Thus, he and a few others were out exploring not far from the grassy cavern. There was a long range of verdant caves that had many, many tunnels leading to and from them, and the giant mushrooms alone made it worth stopping to sightsee. He stood atop one, marveling at the firm, damp substance beneath his paws, and watched over everyone else as they explored on the ground.

Pearl was there; he couldn't see her, but he could hear her beneath his mushroom, clawing at the thick trunk. Thaw was further out, scaling a stalagmite with some success. Silva had come too, though she was just wandering about in the open, looking around. And then…

He couldn't see the other two light wings he was supposed to be keeping a lookout for. Where were Thunder and Lightning? Leaping off the mushroom to glide down into the cavern, he peered behind the other large mushrooms, then at the bottom of his glide pumped his wings to ascend again, angling toward a little dip in the ground near the far wall. He had noticed it upon arrival, it and the odd smell emanating from it. Many large mushrooms grew around the depression, forming a semi-solid wall of odd pale trunks, and it took him a moment to find somewhere he could poke his head through and look down.

Thunder and Lightning were there, having shimmied through to enter what looked like a large sinkhole in solid stone. The smell was worse there, cloying and fungal, but they seemed fine. They were pawing at the mud-like amber-colored gunk covering the bottom of the sinkhole, both apparently fascinated by it.

He watched for a moment, just to be sure it was safe. Thunder and Lightning were adults now, but anyone could get into trouble in a place they knew next to nothing about, and if anyone could, these two more than likely would. They had grown from the hatchlings Storm promised to take care of, and were both very capable of flying, fighting, or sneaking around to their troublemaking hearts' content. Lightning, with her flashy yellow glint and matching yellow eyes, often served as the distraction while Thunder, slightly more subtle and with a darker blue glint and cobalt eyes, was the one who would sneak around behind and deliver the surprise to the unsuspecting victim.

Right now though, they were both just pawing at weird mud. Ember withdrew, returning to his vigil over the cavern.

It was mostly safe, but that was no reason to let down his guard.

O-O-O-O-O

He should have known. How, he had no idea, but he still felt he should have intuitively understood that anything mundane Thunder and Lightning took an interest in could and would be turned to chaotic and unexpected ends.

Now, in the middle of what passed for night, he was obligated to stand vigil over the aftermath of the prank Thunder and Lightning had just carried out and subsequently been caught laughing over. If he didn't, Storm would, and if she did, there would be more blood shed. Also, he had a feeling this little scuffle would come back to bite them all if there was no satisfactory end.

What he knew, as told to him by Thunder and a very unhappy female light wing who he didn't recognize, was rather simple. Thunder and Lightning had somehow transported a large amount of the amber-colored liquid all the way back to the grassy cavern without anyone knowing. Then, when everyone was asleep, they somehow brought it above Cara, who was lying close to the middle of the grassy open space, and dropped it all on her.

This had the expected effect of waking Cara, startling her, and making her very angry, all of which presumably Thunder and Lightning had expected. But it also had an unexpected side-effect, which was why they had been caught laughing.

The amber muck, whatever it was, was incredibly sticky. So sticky that Cara, splashed with a large amount of it, was physically stuck to the ground and couldn't move.

Holly met with Ember by Cara, who was practically vibrating within her mostly-solid goopy prison, every muscle in her body, including her face, flexing as she strained to pull herself free. She was unfortunately muzzled by the goop on her face, though it thankfully missed her nostrils, but even so Ember could hear the deep, rumbling growl coming from her chest.

Ember had no idea how he would free Cara, especially without hurting her, but luckily for Cara he and Holly were not the only ones there to help. Holly had brought with her two light wings Ember only knew in passing, Honey and Copper. They immediately split to circle around the yellow-amber glob of sticky mess that had Cara stuck to the ground, examining it intently.

"Are these your resident slime experts?" Ember asked Holly, as they stood off to the side waiting.

"Our healers," Holly corrected. "They have been taught the use of plants and herbs, and know all of the common ailments our light wings face, along with applicable treatments. They are an asset to the pack that a family living alone would not have."

"Who taught them?" Ember asked, intrigued. He didn't know enough about plants, himself. It just wasn't something that interested him, and he doubted that would change. But having someone in the family who knew what they were doing would be very nice. Perhaps Thaw or Silva might find they enjoyed such things.

Holly went peculiarly silent, and out of the corner of his eye Ember saw her ears drop as she stared over Cara's trapped body, out at the wider cavern. "I should have thought of that," she muttered after a short time.

"I am going to try some heat, Cara," Honey announced. She was a bright, calmly confident female light wing, moving slowly but with purpose. She lowered her head to carefully position herself over the thickest part of the sappy trap by Cara's front paws. "Let me know right away if this hurts." Her orange-yellow glint matched the amber substance's color, while her eyes were an offset pale near-white.

Copper, on the other paw, was busy dragging his claws against the muck around the base of Cara's tail. He had an orange glint, pale green eyes, and a very no-nonsense look about him. He didn't speak, but when Honey began flaming he quickly came around to watch.

Luckily for everyone involved, heat was the answer. If Cara's head had been left free, she could easily have freed herself. Honey and Copper quickly set to melting all around her.

"I will discipline Thunder and Lightning," Ember said, spotting a chance to resolve the matter before Cara could vent her anger. "This is not acceptable. But that is all it will be, my discipline. They are not part of your pack."

"No, they are not." Holly looked at him. "The time in which that is a valid defense is growing short. They are not of my pack, and if something else happens, the only recourse I have available is forcing them to leave our territory. If they were part of the pack, I would have many more proportionate options."

"I will deal with it," Ember promised, turning to leave before any more veiled hints could be dropped, or Cara could voice her opinion. If this happened again in the future, there could be real trouble. Now, he had to lecture Thunder and Lightning about antagonizing the leaders of the pack they were staying with. And probably Storm too, if she didn't think it was serious. Best to bring in everyone, really.

He was not looking forward to that.

O-O-O-O-O

"Holly? Why ask me about her?" Mist looked around suspiciously, before lowering her head to return to her digging. Ember had come across her doing exactly that, in the place where he assumed she slept, a little grassy patch like any other.

"You worked with the last alpha."

"Barely," Mist scoffed, putting more force into her clawed scrapes at loose dirt. "Not enough to speak of. I watched her a lot, guarding, but that was it. Besides, Lily and Holly are very different."

Ember had come to hear her opinion, mostly because he recalled Mist coming up fairly often in Beryl's tales of this pack. She was there for all three of the most recent alphas, and had worked closely with Lily for a time, despite her statements to the contrary now. "How so?" he asked.

Mist stood back from her hole, planting her paws to either side of it as she looked up at him. She was an average female light wing, nondescript in most respects, though that put her as firmly above average for this pack when it came to fitness. Her deep blue glint and gray eyes complimented each other nicely, and her voice was very clear without being painfully high-pitched like some light wings.

"I think that while Lily might have overheard and remembered anything I said about her, Holly is much more likely to hold it against me," she said flatly. "So I will not say anything."

Nothing more than she already had, at least. "And Lily?" he asked.

Mist sighed, looking down at her hole once more. "She did me a favor. I do not have to worry about looking away from her suffering anymore, because I cannot see her."

Ember waited, silent and unmoving, as Mist resumed her digging. He didn't understand… But he had not known Lily. He had not witnessed the events that shaped her, her pack, the people around her. And most of all, he did not think that Mist meant him to understand.

"Ugh." Mist's paw hitched, and she yanked it back to shake it, sheathing her claws. "Another bone. The ground is full of them. All I want is somewhere to sleep without having to think about what might be underneath me."

They both eyed the dirt-caked white shape she had revealed. Its curve was familiar, and the gaps inside its outline a dead giveaway. A piece of a skull.

No matter how much she dug, Ember doubted she would ever be able to sleep soundly here.

O-O-O-O-O

Ember would never approve of a parent spying on their children. Fledglings needed some personal space, room to spread their wings without a nervous adult flying right beneath them in case they faltered. Vikings were much the same, without the wings though often with sails instead. He chose to trust that his sons were sensible enough to handle themselves, even when they were learning.

That said, he did like to keep tabs on what his sons were up to in the more general sense. Thaw especially. Often he did so openly, just by asking, but he had found that with Thaw it was easier to just be present when plans were being made, or journeys embarked upon. There to see them off, as it were, if not to join them outright.

"Good morning, Wax," he said, greeting the light wing who had come looking for his son. Wax was a young male several season-cycles older than Thaw, an adult of a similar age to Thunder or Lightning. He didn't look it, though; he had the gawky appearance of a fledgling who was still filling out, on the smaller side with longer legs and shorter wings that worked, but did not work gracefully. On Wax, knowing his age, this look was unfortunately a permanent part of his appearance, not something he would grow out of. His eyes were a pale pink that reminded Ember of the scales of certain kind of fish, and did not really go well with his yellow-orange glint.

He was also one of Thaw's casual friends down here under the ground, and an all-around polite individual with a tendency to stay very quiet in the presence of adults, fading into the background of any group setting. Ember considered such details much more important than any physical appearance… Though if he did ever act on his observations here and draw Wax, showing the subtle differences between him and an actual older fledgling would be a challenge. They were there, only upon a cursory glance could Wax be confused for a fledgling, but Ember couldn't for the life of him put a paw on what they were.

"Good morning… Good cycle," Wax corrected himself, flicking his ears back. "The Twisted Corridor pack do not say morning or day or night. They just call it all a cycle." He shifted his weight from paw to paw as they stood in the tunnel, awkwardly glancing down it every so often.

"I suppose that makes sense, but I'm rather attached to having words for times of days, myself. I'll be sure to keep that in mind today." He, Thaw, and Wax were going on a little trip, to the Twisted Corridor pack. Just as soon as Thaw came out of their sleeping cave, they would be on their way–

"Dam," Thaw's characteristically deep voice echoed forward, down the tunnel to Ember and Wax. Ember's ears twitched; he knew that tone of voice.

"Oh, fine," Pearl's voice replied, light and amused. "Have a good time! Do not do things just because everyone else does them, follow your instincts."

Thaw emerged from the cave, Pearl right behind him, with a conspicuous wet patch on his forehead.

"He's ready to go!" Pearl announced. "Have fun, everyone."

The look shared between Wax and Thaw spoke volumes. Ember let Thaw past him, then turned, eyes wide and curious, to look at his mate. Pearl silently showed her gums in an impish grin.

Ember snorted and followed his son and his son's friend out of the tunnel.

O-O-O-O-O

Ember knew that travel between the two packs was still somewhat restricted, but once they had passed the Twisted Corridor pack guard at the entrance to the tunnel, he thought they were through. Sandstone, the guard of the day, a male light wing with a tan glint, off-white eyes, and a peculiarly high-pitched voice, had let them through without any trouble.

But it seemed Sandstone was only the first guard. Further along the tunnel, a female light wing sat in wait. She was sporting a jagged soot stain curiously similar to Herb's facial scar, crossing over the eyelid on the left side of her face. Her glint, the little he could see of it, was yellow, and her eyes were pink.

"Names?" she hummed.

"Ember," he said in response to her one-word query. "Behind me are Thaw and Wax. We've come to look around a little, meet some of your pack. Holly told us there would be no problem with that." She told Thaw and Wax, anyway. He was tagging along, and hadn't bothered to ask her. If it was really an issue, he could turn around and find something else to do with his day.

"And there is not, so long as you cause no trouble," the female said. "My name is Sola, I am in charge of greeting light wings from your pack and keeping track of who is visiting. Or, that is my duty this cycle. Are you going to be moving about as a group, or separately?"

"Separately," Thaw said quickly. Ember nodded in agreement. He was here to provide a watchful, protective eye in case anything unexpected happened, but he didn't need to ride his son's tail around everywhere. He had some exploring of his own to do.

"Thaw and Wax, you may go. Ember, my alpha wishes to meet you."

"He didn't know I was coming," Ember remarked.

"No," Sola replied, "but he did know your name and he hoped you would come visit at some point, so it is a standing invitation. I can take you to him."

O-O-O-O-O

Rose must really have wanted to meet him, judging by how little Sola cared what her alpha was doing when she introduced them. Ember followed her down through a large vertical cavern, through a tunnel in the floor of said cavern, and out into a steamy smaller cave with porous stone walls, standing water, and three quarreling light wings, one of which had to be the alpha, though he didn't know which yet.

"If the water-spitters will not keep up their end of the deal, right now, then we cannot trust them in the future. It is as simple as that!" The male who said that was probably not the alpha; Pearl would have told him if the alpha she had met was so emaciated. His lack of glint and off-white eye color were normal enough, but paired with his thin, tough and scarred form, they made him look unhealthy.

"That is unfair to them, and unfair in general, and you know it!" The male who retorted had a strange black glint, looking as if he had been lightly dusted with coal particles, and yellow eyes. He at least looked healthy, though if the first male acted on the anger he had voiced, that would soon change.

"And you both know that whether or not we like the situation, we do need them to continue holding up their end of this deal and others, so I personally do not think it matters who is at fault." That had to be the alpha, Rose. He had a deep voice, a red glint, and green eyes. He was larger than both of the others.

"Alpha, Obsidian, Quartz" Sola interrupted, only a few moments after they arrived. She addressed first the red-tinted male, then the one with the black glint, and finally the emaciated one, giving Ember names to go with their appearances. "You wanted to meet Ember if he came to visit our pack. I have brought him… And a necessary break to the strategizing?" She eyed Quartz and Obsidian disdainfully. "The longer you take trying to figure out how to fix this without talking to the water-gliders, the longer the old ones will have to go without their chamber."

"Yes, thank you Sola, we have spent too long on this," Rose sighed. "Obsidian, can you get an explanation as to why they have stopped?"

"They could tell him anything and he would believe it," Quartz muttered.

"A lie at least tells us that they mean to deceive," Rose retorted. "Quartz, could you bring the scouts in, just in case this does become a fight?"

"Should have done that first," Quartz muttered. Ember stepped to the side as Obsidian hurried out without giving him a second look, but Quartz walked right up to him instead of leaving. "You look reckless," Quartz remarked, eyeing his various scars.

"If the stupid plan doesn't work, try the crazy one," Ember quipped. "That usually works for me."

Quartz scoffed and stepped around him.

"Thank you Sola," Rose said as he approached Ember in turn. "For bringing him and for the interruption."

"You should not need it, but with those two it is inevitable," Sola said as she turned to leave. A moment later, Ember and Rose were alone in the warm stone chamber.

"It's good to meet the alpha of the pack I'm visiting, but I'm curious why you wanted to meet me specifically," Ember said.

"You do not call yourself an alpha, but all that I have heard tells me that you are one in all but name, if with a much smaller pack than mine," Rose answered neutrally. "So I wanted to meet you. I think I had much grander things planned, but…" He waved a wing aimlessly. "This is not a good cycle to be adding unnecessary complications. Would you settle for a quick tour of our territory, and a promise of long, drawn-out diplomacy some other day?"

Settle for that? Ember would leap on it with both paws and hope the second part was optional. "Yes, I think I'd like that."

O-O-O-O-O

Some time later, after seeing the Twisted Corridor pack's territory and parting ways with their quite genial alpha, Ember gazed up at a wall of bloody splotches, and decided that as far as record-keeping went, he had truly underestimated how useful charcoal, ink, parchment and leather were. "And you can use this to keep track of light wings that far back?"

"To the founding of the pack! I keep track of it all myself, as my successor did before me, all the way back." The caretaker of this confusing-smelling mess of history was a muddled male light wing named Peat, who had introduced himself to Ember by asking to smell his blood. Luckily for him, once Ember was past the initial disbelief, he quickly recognized all the hallmarks of a light wing who was so far immersed in his chosen passion that everything else, including common sense or decency, was secondary. Peat himself was a rather thin and scrawny adult male light wing, with a silver glint and red eyes, and he practically glowed with excess energy as he told Ember all about his life's work.

"Is your mate a light wing or a dark wing?" he asked Ember, suddenly breaking off his own monologue about the pack's history.

"Light wing, how–" No, he probably could guess how Peat knew he had a mate, if he really spent all day smelling blood and matching scents. "Not from your pack," he added, hoping to forestall another request for his blood.

"From the other one, the new one?" Peat asked. "But that is our pack, a diverging root of it. From the least interesting light wing to all of their alphas, they are descended from us."

"Claw, Lily, Holly…" Well, of course they all were if one of them was. They were all related, and extremely closely at that. A Sire and two of his many offspring. "You know exactly who they are related to?"

"Not yet," Peat said, surprising Ember. "We know they are related to us generally, but they themselves do not remember everyone who has come before them. There is some confusion. Some are clear, but some are not. Claw himself is a mystery they are all too reluctant to talk about, which is ridiculous."

Ember stared at Peat, wondering whether he would realize what he had said, or whether it would remain firmly above his head until someone explained it to him, with words or perhaps with claws if he said that to the wrong person.

"We do not know his Sire or Dam," Peat rambled on. "The next alpha down obviously shares half his problem, but only half. Your pack's Root was very helpful – on that matter, if almost nothing else – and gave me enough to connect her directly to us, here." He waved a wing at the wall. "Holly, Aven, and Cara are less clear–"

"Tell me more about Lily's ancestry," Ember interrupted.

"Oh?" Peat peered at him curiously, before shaking off whatever momentary thought had interrupted his obsessive recounting. "Certainly. Her Dam was Risa…"

Ember settled in to learning just a little bit more about the female Beryl was, right now, trying to help. The one his son had given at least some of his heart to.

O-O-O-O-O

Spending time outside of guarded, known territory was always going to be a risk. It was so above the ground, just as it was below. But, as was true in either place, that risk would always be overstated by those who could not defend themselves. For those who could, the risk was manageable.

That did not include many of the light wings Ember's family was living with, so he was surprised when a pair not only worked up the courage to have a romantic liaison outside of the pack's territory, but that they did so in the little nook he and Pearl had scouted out… At the same time he and Pearl were using it.

Luckily for the dignity of all involved, they were getting ready to return to the grassy cavern when two light wings turned the corner, stopped, and balked in surprise. They didn't walk in on anything in progress, as it were.

They were a pair, of course. Ember had seen them around, and he thought that they were officially mated, though he could be wrong. The male was young, of average fitness for the light wings in his pack, and had a reddish-brown glint with dull purple-red eyes. The female was about his age, much more slender, and possessed a matching set of yellow eyes and glint. He didn't recall their names–

"Cedar, Liona," Pearl said, stepping to the side. "We were just going."

"Better that than the alternative," Cedar snorted.

"Cedar!" Liona gasped. "Oh, I am so sorry, we should not be here, this was a bad idea." She turned to go.

"No, Liona, we did nothing wrong." Cedar backed up to physically stop her from leaving, placing his hindquarters behind her. She wasn't really trapped, she could have leaped over his body if she wanted, but instead she let out a little grumbling hiss and leaned into him. "Sorry, sorry…" He looked up at Ember and Pearl. "You were perfectly safe here, this far from the pack?"

"Keep an ear out, but unless you can make the walls shake with your roars, no one is around to hear you," Ember said frankly. He had checked when he scouted this area out, and again before he and Pearl came today. Nothing would ever be truly safe, but under the ground it was actually rather simple to find every avenue of approach and check what was on the other side. Sound did not carry indefinitely, not even with echoing tunnel walls.

"Good." Cedar huffed. "We need to relax."

They certainly did, but Ember did wonder whether taking such an anxious light wing into a place that was, in the end, not safe, was the best way to do that. Then again, one could say that about them coming down under the ground to begin with.

O-O-O-O-O

What was Ember meant to say to someone whose son he had watched die? That it had been quick? Quick and brutal. That he had died for nothing? That it was not personal?

Clay, the light wing who had asked him, waited patiently for his answer. He was a nondescript light wing male, with a subtle slouch to his posture, a nearly invisible drab yellow glint, and tan eyes. Not the sort of person to distinguish himself from a crowd. Not the sort to ask such a hard question. But he had anyway.

Clay must have wanted to ask this question for months. Perhaps since Pearl's first return to the valley pack, when she announced Gold's death as a side note to her own personal quest for restitution. He and his mate, but he was only here now, so long after he could have asked.

How long would it take Ember to work up the courage to ask how his son died, knowing that the answer could not change what had happened, only remove the uncertainty?

"He died… unfairly," Ember said. "But it was not drawn out. If you insist, I can tell you the details, but from one Sire to another… I would regret knowing, if it were me."

"But not asking," Clay said. "Only knowing."

"Yes."

"Tell me."

So he did. And all the while, he could only hope that he would never be on Clay's side of this conversation.

O-O-O-O-O

"You cannot take them away from me!"

Ember had heard those words before, more than once, but usually they came from Diora in the middle of a whining ambush rant, and shortly before he reminded her that she was terrified of him, so he wasn't used to actually having to listen to them.

This was different, though. This was not Diora, and Pearl and Silva were not the subject of the conversation.

Rather, the female light wing in front of him had a salmon-pink glint, red eyes, and a much mellower, though no less insistent, voice. She was Moss, who he knew by association as Crystal's Dam, and she had lost her mate not long ago. The only time he could recall personally speaking to her was when he was warning everyone remotely connected to his family that there was some tension with the alphas, and he didn't remember her having any remarkable reaction to that. She was just a normal light wing who had lost a loved one recently.

He tried to keep that in mind as he responded to her. "I understand how you feel, truly, I do," he rumbled. She had come up to him in the middle of wiping a surprising amount of fish guts off his paws – he was not familiar with underground fish, but he doubted he would ever forget the putrid scent of this particular variety – so he rubbed his paws in the moss as he continued. "If you mean Crystal, I have no hold over her. If you mean Thunder and Lightning, they are not mine to command. They never were, even as fledglings, and they are adults now. And where would I be taking any of them that you could not follow?"

"Above," Moss huffed.

"If they go above, I very much doubt they will forbid you from going with them. But why do you think they're going anywhere?" He felt a little dishonest; it was a known fact among his family that at least some of them were going to leave sooner or later. He did not, however, know what Thunder or Lightning intended to do. They didn't consult anyone on their schemes, except occasionally Storm and he would assume now Crystal as well.

"Aven said something…" Moss looked away. "I think I heard her correctly."

"You should go and ask them yourself, before you leap to conclusions," Ember suggested.

"Yes. I will do that." Moss leaped into the air and flew away.

Ember continued to smear fish guts all over the ground, morosely considering whether he would have to dunk his paws in the same lake to be rid of the smell. He also wondered whether Moss would be back, and what exactly she had heard to set her off in the first place, but for the moment that wasn't really his problem. The smell gradually numbing his nose, on the other paw, was.

O-O-O-O-O

Crystal was waiting for him the next day, bright and early – except, of course, that it was not bright. "I want to apologize for my Dam," she said as soon as she caught his gaze. "She knows now that you were not really involved in our discussion yesterday."

"It was not a problem, she understood that once I explained it," he said. "I hope things worked out?" Crystal looked very little like her Dam. Where Moss had a very noticeable glint, Crystal had none at all that he could see, and her eyes were a pale yellow, nothing like red. Glints and eye colors were not, as far as Ember knew, passed down from dragon to dragon – Storm's coloration was the only exception he could think of – but it was more than that. She had little of the slightly nervous, uncertain attitude her Dam had displayed. Rather, he would almost say she was sad about something but hiding it very well; only the occasional drooping of her ears and tail gave it away. But right now, she was all business.

"They have," Crystal assured him. "She was just… She would not mind if we went somewhere else while she stayed here, she has no desire to go anywhere away from the pack, but it has been hard since losing my Sire. Us being away and us being missing were the same thing for her. We have sorted that out now."

"Oh?" He didn't really see how that would work, but then again he barely knew Crystal's Dam.

"It is nowhere close to our worst disagreement, do not worry," Crystal said. "So again. Thank you for not barking at her, or telling her to get lost."

O-O-O-O-O

Diora was her own worst enemy. This was a real achievement on her part, since she faced such stiff competition also of her own making. But Ember was more than willing to declare her the victor.

In other, much more direct words, Diora was still the most unobservant light wing he had ever had cause to casually trail. That a large part of his motivation for doing so consisted of boredom and her own bad attitude made it even worse; she was almost too easy to follow, and he was in danger of growing bored again. He followed her right out of the grassy cavern, lured by her shifty attempt at sneaking out, and down through a series of small tunnels that led to a low outcropping overlooking a large cave lit by a single red crystal in one corner.

There, he actually had to work at going unnoticed, because she was the last to a clandestine meeting and the other light wings were marginally more observant. They met by the red crystal, luckily, so he was able to sneak out onto the overlooking ledge and hunker down, out of sight. He couldn't see them, but he could hear just fine. His own fledglings were sneakier than this group, and he was confident he could get away without being seen if one took to the air to fly over and look where he was.

"The alpha still is not letting me go see the other pack," Diora complained, and the verbal floodgates opened.

"We will never find mates at this rate!"

"It is like she does not even care!"

"The dark wings get to go whenever they want, she caters to them like Lily did."

Ember wondered whether the complaining would turn to plotting, but it didn't seem like it was going to. Once they finished with their initial outburst of whining, they started taking turns complaining at length, while the others listened. That seemed like it was the whole point of the gathering. To moan about what they felt was wrong with the pack and alpha to like-minded individuals.

There were five light wings beside Diora participating in their little gripe-circle, and Ember listened long enough to match faces and appearances to names, so that he would know these light wings in the future.

Clover, a female light wing with bright green eyes and no glint that Ember could discern, complained the most. She was always ready to interject with her own troubles, and whenever she started speaking on a subject aside from herself, it always wrapped back around to her as fast as she could manage. Not even Diora could out-complain her, and the rest of the group only tolerated her for as long as she could go without pausing for breath, at which point someone else would take control of the conversation away before she could continue.

Petal, another female with a violet glint and dark gray eyes, was usually the one to take over from Clover. She had the widest variety of petty gripes, but was definitely the least enthusiastic of the group. It didn't look to Ember like she wanted to be there, but her complaints were definitely not feigned or exaggerated. He never knew someone could feel so much resentment over something as small as the smell of fish wafting over from a neighbor.

Sprig, who had a light green glint and darker green eyes, had much more serious complaints when she got a chance to voice them. She felt like the entire pack was against her because she still maintained that Claw was in the right in many of the things he did, though Ember got the impression she had learned, or been taught by force, that such talk was unacceptable in public. Here, she got to vent, away from judging ears who had, in her opinion, been told to hate by Lily and never thought twice. She loved that Lily was gone, but hated in equal measure that vilifying Lily did not mean justifying Claw for the pack as a whole. Holly never entered her rants at all.

Twila on the other paw had several bones to pick with Holly, all centered around her lack of special treatment for certain light wings. Certain light wings such as Twila. Ember was listening as closely as he could stand, but even after she spoke on three separate occasions, he still didn't know what, specifically, she was mad about. Just that she was very mad indeed. He didn't need to remember her deep purple glint, or her dark brown eyes, or really even her name; the moment he heard her voice, low and petulant, he would recognize her.

Then there was Feld, the only male in the group. He didn't talk much, and like Petal, didn't seem to want to be there. Ember didn't really know what he was angry about, because he let everyone else talk over him and never really got a chance to finish a thought before someone else took over. His glint was a faint purple, and his eyes were a dull, washed-out pink. Despite those colors he was eminently forgettable, unobtrusive and quiet.

And then of course there was Diora. Ember knew her all too well.

He stealthily left the cavern once their complaining began to wind down and his amusement at their stupidity began to wear thin. Perhaps he would tell their alpha about their secret commiseration. He held no great love for Holly, but he would rather not see anything Diora approved of succeed, especially something like this that could easily turn treasonous.

O-O-O-O-O

"There is a light wing in our caves," Ember was told when he landed on the lip of one of the upward-facing tunnels. Silva, the deliverer of the message, dropped past him on her way out, leaving him to seek out the visitor himself by following the low voices echoing through the tunnels.

"Who were his closest supporters?" Root asked. "Before Lily returned."

"This again?" a female asked irritably. "Clover, Petal, Sprig, Cressa, Feld, Ivy, and Twila. I know their names."

Ember knew those names. He had just recently spied on most of them. It was no surprise at all to hear they all supported Claw.

"Do you know who they were, though?" Root asked. "What they looked like? How they acted?"

"Yes, actually," the female huffed. "I sleep near Clover! The only ones who are not with us now are Cressa and Ivy. Cressa had a yellow glint, green eyes, and her frills were ragged. She never talked to anyone who wasn't one of Claw's mates. Ivy was Diora's mate, green eyes, dark green glint, never did anything worth noticing. But why does it matter if I know what they looked like? You cannot even see!"

"Shalla, it matters because you will have to tell these stories, over and over again, and if you are not careful and they are only names in your mind they will start to blend together," Root chuffed. "And because the more you can make others imagine them, the more it will feel real to them when you talk about what they did. This is important."

"Fine." Shalla continued in a much more neutral tone, seemingly convinced by Root's reasoning. "Claw. Dark green glint. Big. Silver in his eyes, they were mostly gray though. His claws were always dirty, and he smelled weird. That did not stop half of the pack from throwing themselves at him, though."

"Him, you would remember," Root said darkly. "And I. But some of the fledglings now have never seen him, and will never see him."

"They have someone else to think of when they think of bad alphas," Shalla grumbled.

"There is a large difference," Root remarked. "You will need to be sure to correct anyone who says that they were the same, I know I have already heard some saying so. That is just… not right."

Ember continued on, past the turn that would have taken him to Root and Shalla. When the time came to leave, he was now certain Root would be coming with them. Otherwise, he would not be training a successor in his self-appointed task.

O-O-O-O-O

Ember knew they were coming long before they caught up to him. In the air this close to the underground shore, everyone kept their distance to avoid awkward near-misses or potential collisions, but three light wings were flying right toward him, on a course to intercept him as he flew back from a long flight intended entirely to wear his wings out. Having so few places to truly work his body was beginning to grate on him in a way entirely separate from boredom, a much more physical way. It was hard to truly cut loose, free to fly however he wished, when stone walls were always so close at hand. Even here, he could see the limits of his flight to the left and to the right, above and below.

He was not in the best mood, truth be told, but he knew better than to vent his frustration. When they fell into formation with him, one on his left and two on his right, he sighed and tossed his head. "What can I do for you?"

"I would love it if you could teach me to be as intimidating as you," the male on his left said with a jaunty wink. "Male talk."

The two light wings to Ember's right were females, and both looked singularly put out at that declaration. "But Rain–" the one closer to Ember complained, and he recognized her voice immediately. Twila, Diora's most vague friend.

"Male talk," Rain repeated. Twila huffed and peeled off, dropping down to fire at the water as they left her behind. The other, a young adult with a stormy gray-blue glint and brighter, sky-blue eyes, stayed, undeterred.

"There is no such thing," she declared, tossing her head. "Anything you say to him, I can hear."

Ember recognized her too now, though it had taken him a moment. This was Aven. One of the co-alphas of the pack, though she definitely wasn't acting like it right now. He hadn't seen her since… Since coming below the ground, actually. Or if he had, he didn't remember it. With so many light wings, it was inevitable some would consistently escape his notice.

Perhaps she was avoiding him. He didn't recall what had happened to the pack's prisoner. He hoped they had either dealt with him, or set him free in the middle of nowhere.

"If you insist," Rain drawled. "Ember, please, give it to me straight. I find myself with two Dams and no male role models to look up to or ask for advice. What are the best techniques to keep a female howl–"

"Rain!" Aven barked.

"Aven!" he barked back. "I said, you would not want to hear this."

"I did not– Oh, have your stupid talk," Aven growled as she dove down, dropping away from them much faster than the last female to leave.

Ember flew in silence for a few moments. Finally, once he was sure they were both gone, he spoke. "I'm not going to answer that question unless you actually need an answer. But if you do…" He'd given this talk once for Thaw, and missed out on giving it for Spark and Beryl. He owed the universe two uncomfortable encounters, by his reckoning, and this could be one of them.

"No, I prefer learning through doing," Rain snorted. "But Aven just would not get off my tail once I told her I was going to see you."

"And the other?" Ember asked.

"Twila?" Rain growled. "She is scum. She was with Claw, and fought for him to the end. I usually tell her to take a long dive in the lake whenever she comes sniffing around for a mate, but again, Aven. It is not worth offending her. Especially now that she's kind of the alpha, and definitely willing to tell me off in front of everyone if I do something she thinks is wrong."

Ember looked closer at Rain, really examining the young male beside him as they flew. He was indeed young, younger than Beryl though at least a few season-cycles into adulthood. He was lithe, not muscular but not unfit either, built for gliding and sprinting, either using as little energy as possible or using it all at once. His wings were unusually long and broad for a light wing, and his white scales sparkled with a dark blue glint, matching his blue eyes.

"So I was a convenient excuse to get rid of them?" he asked.

"Yes, but I also do have something to ask of you," Rain said seriously. "My Dams. They are with egg, and they do not want the hatchling to hatch underground. They need to go back to the surface, but it is not safe. They have never gone anywhere without the pack. Could you or someone from your family go up with them?" He shrugged his wing shoulders. "I would ask Beryl, but he is not here."

Ember hummed thoughtfully. "Tell me more."

"They do not know how to survive on their own," Rain said bluntly. "It is like… There were these two light wings a little older than me, back when Claw was losing it. Danda and Ash. They left, even though they did not know anything about the world beyond the valley. We never saw them again. I do not want that to happen to my Dams."

"What were they like? Danda and Ash?" Ember asked.

"Danda was Liona's sister, they looked almost identical," Rain elaborated. "Yellow glint, yellow eyes. She was a little older, a little bigger, and to hear Cedar tell it, a lot more full of herself. Ash was her mate. He was not very bright, had a weird ashy gray glint and green-brown eyes. He did what she said, mostly. Neither of them knew anything, but Claw was so bad, and Danda had had enough. People say they must have found somewhere to live and are out there somewhere…"

"But you don't think so," Ember concluded. Now he saw why Rain had brought those two up.

"I think I would go mad if that happened to my Dams," Rain agreed. "Them disappearing and nobody ever hearing from them again. I am not content to hope they can figure it out on their own, with no one to help them, with an egg."

"I see." Ember nodded. "I think we can help."

O-O-O-O-O

Part of growing up was taking that first leap. The first leap into the air, the first leap of trust, the first leap to walking unaided, to gliding on one's own wings. Alone. In good times or bad, everyone had to take a leap sooner or later.

"We will follow within a season-cycle," Thaw promised. They made a large group, standing in the dark, empty cave beyond the insect-ridden ravine, but some of them would be returning to the grassy cavern, while others left, beginning the long journey to the world above, and then to their home in the cove by the ocean.

"Or two, but no longer than that," Spark amended. He, Thaw, Storm, and one other were there to see them off.

"Be safe, be very safe, look out for each other." Pearl gave her final advice to Thaw and Spark – mostly Thaw, as this would be his first time away from her for longer than a few weeks – with enough bated anxiety to make Ember's ears twitch. He felt exactly the same, truth be told, but he was more resigned to it. Thaw was going to make that leap into independence sooner or later. This was as good a way for him to do it as any, with some support in place in case he needed help, but without them hovering over him.

"Oh, get on with it," Storm muttered from the side. "And I make no promises as to when I will return… Though I will, you know," she nodded to Herb and Thorn. "Just that I will not be tied down by my word when nobody can say how long I might want to stay."

"Not long," Silva snorted. She was the furthest from the way they had come, half turned toward the darkness of the cave. She was ready to go, past ready. Herb and Thorn were too. Ember knew he personally was, though he had reservations about leaving his sons behind, two in relative safety and one still on a journey through the unknown. But it was time to go; events, attitudes, and happenstance aligned behind them.

Events such as the smaller parting happening off to one side.

"You will know where to find me, but being so alone just is not how I want to live," Rain told his Dams. "If you need me, though–"

"Stay, be happy," Dew said firmly, pawing at her grown son's chest. Her ears were down, but she did not sound sad, merely resigned and a bit melancholy. "Ember and his family will help us stay safe and learn how to live on our own. We will come back to visit, once we have found somewhere to call home and the egg is grown."

Pina, a white egg held firmly in her jaws, nodded in agreement.

Ember and Pearl were not the only ones saying goodbye to their sons. They, at least, had more certainty about the future. Pina and Dew were taking a leap of their own, into the unknown. The three of them pulled at his heart as they were now, embracing in the dark as they parted for the foreseeable future. The light from the ravine behind them illuminated Rain the most, his deep blue glint and eyes sparkling as he turned his head to let his Dam embrace him more fully.

Dew, in front of him with her head to his chest, was mostly in the shadow. Where the light did hit her, mostly on her tail, green-blue glitter flashed. Her eyes, pale yellow, were partially closed. She didn't want to go, or she wanted him to come with her, but she needed to see the sun again. To raise her next child under a clear sky, not stifling stone. Rain told him that, Pina told him that when he spoke to her, and Dew herself told Pearl the exact same thing later. Living underground did not suit her, but she could have bore it if not for the egg.

And then there was Pina, holding the spark they were carrying upward, the egg they wanted the best for. She was well-lit, off to the side and not embracing Rain to avoid pushing her jaw against anything with such precious cargo in her mouth. There was affection there, in how she looked at him, how she twitched her wings and winked at him when he looked at her. Her glint was yellow and her eyes green, and her frills had a ragged quality to the tips that surely had some story behind it.

Ember looked away from their parting, because he had his own to attend to. Not permanent, not goodbye forever, only goodbye for now. But it was no less solemn or meaningful for that.

O-O-O-O-O

"So many notes…" Ember rifled through the stack of parchment that he could finally sort out and put away properly. They had at last returned to their little cove by the sea, to the tumbled stone pillar and their individual tiny caves, to the hills and the trees and the empty sky. The journey was long but uneventful, bracing and familiar. All was as they had left it, only dusty, and in the case of some of the wooden furniture he had fashioned, a bit moldy.

The cave was quieter than it should have been. Leaving all three of their sons behind to catch up with them was still not a decision he was entirely at peace with. He knew Pearl felt even more conflicted, though they had months to grow accustomed to the absence. Spark and Thaw would be along soon enough, but theirs was an absence that he expected to measure in months if not a year or two if he started counting now. Beryl…

He couldn't put a timeline on that. The moment in which he could had been long ago, when Beryl told him what he would be doing, and Ember chose not to impose any restriction on his son's quest. Now he was regretting that, but it was too late.

If his other sons had no news of Beryl when they arrived, then they would mount a search. A long-winded search, as the trip all the way back to the entrance to the underground would take so much time.

Perhaps it was stupid of them to fly all the way home, when they might need to go back. But some of their family wanted to go, some were staying behind, and it was impossible to stay with everyone at once, so he and Pearl had made their choice.

Between Spark, Thaw, Storm, Thunder, Lightning, and Crystal, any news of Beryl being in trouble would be dealt with. If there was no news, then there was no true rush. If Beryl returned, everything would be fine.

He paged through his notes once again, now thankful there were so many. He would need something to distract himself with in these coming months, and turning all of his notes and bare sketches into proper drawings would help.

O-O-O-O-O

Seven silhouettes. Unexpected, but hoped for by everyone. They came on a day like the one before and the one after, unremarkable except for their arrival.

Ember was one of the last to hear, as he had been busy inside, working on a set of gears that was refusing to fit together in the right order and space without grinding against each other. The mechanism was reminiscent of Beryl's old tailfin and its inner workings, but the exact same thing he had accomplished years ago was frustratingly problematic now. He was inclined to blame the blacksmith he had gone on a month-long trip to commission them from. Gears were difficult to get right without any prior experience.

"Ember!" Thorn roared for him from outside. "They have returned!"

And so he rushed outside, tossing the gears onto his workspace and bursting into momentary flame as he went, taking to the sky when he saw the seven silhouettes flying down, and the rest of his family rising to meet them halfway. He caught up to Thorn and Herb, who were the last to start flying, and then passed Silva, who while enthusiastic to go meet them, wasn't putting in as much effort. Pearl was right at the front, flying joyfully around the darkest of the descending shapes.

Beryl and Storm were instantly recognizable even from below. The sun shone merrily off the other five, all light wings. He didn't see Thaw or Spark – but he had not worried for them the way he did Beryl.

The other light wings caught his attention as he reached their level. Crystal was there, a surprise who surely had a story behind her, as he had not thought she would be willing to leave. Thunder and Lightning flanked her, and they made total sense, along with Root, who was with Storm. Which left… Lily. She flew at the back of the light wings.

Ember didn't know what to make of that, but he did know who could tell him everything he needed to know. He flew in Pearl's wake, ascending to meet his son as Beryl and the others descended, slowly and steadily.

There was, he noticed just as he caught up to his mate, something on Beryl's back. Something sprawling, confusingly multicolored, and moving. A small hatchling, clinging by miniscule claws to his scales. Green eyes in a mostly black-scaled face followed him as he neared.

"I should get her down, she's not flying yet," Beryl barked.

"Yes, definitely," Ember managed. This was… not something he had expected. Or hoped for. If it was something he should hope for in the first place. Was this how his Sire had felt meeting Spark and Beryl? He too had come home late, with children already hatched, after being away from his parents with them having no knowledge of what he was doing.

Lily, he noticed as they set down, was keeping to the back of the group. Thorn, of all people, was speaking to her about something.

"Sire, meet Wild." Beryl leaned down to let his hatchling stumble off of him and onto the grass. The hatchling disembarked quickly enough that Ember wondered whether she needed to relieve herself, but once all four of her paws were on the ground, she relaxed and peered curiously up at him and Pearl.

Wild. His son's daughter. He leaned closer to scent and examine her all at once, purring deeply as she pawed at his nose. She was bright and dark in different places, much like Thaw but with colors that made for a far starker contrast. She had white paws befitting a light wing, the brilliant pure color fading up into a pale and then vibrant purple, which then faded to black where limb met torso. Her head was mostly black, though her ears and nubs flowed from black at the base to vibrant purple at the tips. The same went for her back and wings, black swirls across her back like a flame, blurring at the edges to more purple, which in turn held splotches of white. Her tail was more white than not, especially the fins.

"She's precious," Pearl cooed, creeping forwards as Wild backed away and Ember exhaled. There was already no doubt as to who her parents were, but her smell confirmed it. "And she has eyes just like yours." Those eyes fixed on Ember's for a moment, and Wild must have liked what she saw, because she chirped at him. He knew he was staring, but couldn't comprehend doing anything else that wouldn't overwhelm the hatchling, not before she knew him and had recovered from such a long flight.

"Speaking of things she shares with her parents, she has inherited her Dam's early lack of appreciation for flight," Beryl said wryly. "Precious is as precious does, until precious starts gnawing on my back fins to make me let her down."

"That is odd," Ember heard himself rumble, still entirely entranced. Pearl held her paw out in greeting to the little hatchling, and he shuffled to the side to let her get closer.

"She'll grow out of it, sooner or later." Beryl chuffed as Wild began to worry at Pearl's paw, toothlessly gnawing the proffered limb. "Lily did."

"Lily." If there was any word or name to break him out of his adoration and reminiscing of when Beryl himself had hatched, it was that one, and he let out a deep breath as he rose back to his haunches. He really didn't know how he was meant to broach the question, and couldn't help glancing at her and Thorn. They seemed to be amicable enough, and his Dam looked fairly relaxed. "How… Did it go?" How was she? What was going on with her? Would she be staying… or going? Her distance now made all of those questions even more pressing.

"She is sane," Beryl said. "Better than ever before, I would say. But I am obviously biased. She wants to speak to you. After you're done meeting Wild."

Done? He had barely started! But this couldn't wait, even if it seemed Lily was content to do just that. "Son, what she did–"

"Speak to her." Beryl interrupted, not unkindly, but with a firmness that Ember would rather not test. "So much has happened. So much has changed. I trust her with my life. Mine and Wild's. She has risked her own to save both of us at different times. But it's not up to me whether you, or anyone else in the family, can do the same. So long as you hear her out first and do not judge based solely on what happened before I left."

There wasn't much he could say to that. He wanted to believe that everything was better now. His son, whose judgment he trusted, believed it. But he wasn't sure he did, not yet, and what else was he going to do? Not talk to Lily? Make a decision based solely on his gut feeling when he had missed so much?

"I'll do that." Pearl moved in to play with Wild as he reluctantly tore himself away from the sight of her. Beryl stayed with them.

But his gaze followed Ember as he walked away. Waiting. Hoping. Trusting.

Trusting Ember, to hear Lily out with an open mind? Trusting Lily, to convince him of what they thought to be the truth? Trusting that the situation would work itself out in the end? Or just trusting that they would both try their best to come to some sort of understanding, regardless of the outcome?

Whatever it was, Ember hoped he wouldn't let anyone down. Especially not Wild. Whatever happened, she did not deserve to be caught in the middle.

But neither did his family deserve to suffer because he had misjudged the situation.

O-O-O-O-O

As Ember approached, Lily said something to his Dam and turned away from her, facing him. Thorn quickly left to join Herb in greeting Thunder and Lightning, leaving them more or less alone.

Ember looked her over as he approached. She looked healthy, even more so than when he'd met her despite taking such a long journey while carrying a hatchling for at least some of it. Her wings were strong and her gray eyes bright, her purple glint glittering in the sun. But how was he to know what she was thinking, what she might do?

"Be as wary of me as I deserve," Lily said quietly, looking him in the eye as he came to a stop a few paces away from her. "I owe you, and your family, many apologies. You were not my subjects, but I did you a personal wrong in attempting to make use of your son."

"Sons," Ember corrected, unable to keep the bite out of his voice.

"I was never, will never, and could never use Beryl," Lily growled. "But Thaw… I was not allowed to linger where he was, when we passed through towards the surface, and we did not come face to face. When we do, I will apologize to him, and I will mean it with all my heart. What I said, what I wanted him to do, was wrong. Trying to convince him behind your back was wrong."

"You did a lot wrong," he noted.

"And most of what I did… I will never be allowed to atone for." She continued to look him in the eye. "I want no power over you or your family. All I wish for is to be allowed to stay and make amends. If I must leave, tell me now."

"If I do, will you take my son with you?" he asked. Most dragons in her position would be whining and pleading, but he had known Lily was not most dragons since showing her his ability. He didn't know how he felt about it yet, but found himself responding in the same level tone.

"No, but he may follow me regardless of your wishes," Lily said quietly. "I do not control him. Whenever I asked him what we would do if you did not allow me to stay, he told me that it would not happen that way. That it could not. But that if it did, he would not abandon us. You may ask him yourself if you doubt my words."

Ember knew that he could interpret that as a threat. It didn't sound like one, but the fact that she had all but promised him Beryl would leave with her if he made her leave… Either a threat, a promise, or a bare truth without directed intent.

He saw nothing of her former instability in her face now. She could still be a threat… Using her skills to manipulate his family to fit her desires. Exploiting people to their own detriment like she had tried to do with Thaw. Maybe even driving wedges between Beryl and everyone else, if she wanted him all to herself. Ember didn't think another spell of madness was likely, and if it was then his family would be much more capable of putting a stop to it, but someone who fought a small war with only her words could just as easily turn that talent to destructive, insidious ends if she chose.

Her being capable of all of those things did not mean she would do them, though. He had to believe that potential for harm did not necessarily mean harm would be done, for his own sake as well as hers. "I will defend my family," Ember told her. "From violence, and from manipulation." If he saw it. He was forewarned. No matter how skilled she was at twisting words, they were all forewarned.

"You have a much, much better record of keeping your loved ones safe than I ever did," Lily said vehemently. "All I wish is for my daughter and I to count as family, but I know that will take a long time."

"If you speak truly…" There was really only one thing he could say. "You may have that time."

O-O-O-O-O

Some time later, after the initial reunion, after the long stories and the tense recounting of adventures below the surface, everyone mingled out in the open, under the rising moon.

Everyone but Ember. He watched, keeping an eye on Lily above all. She was with Beryl, their sides touching. Her gray eyes were never still as she took in the sights and sounds of their little cove at night, and the many dark and light wings within. The moonlight gave her white scales a luminescence that flickered with a uniform deep purple at the edges, most of all over her outstretched wings, one over Beryl, the other draping over Wild on the ground. She was white and purple all over.

Except, of course, for her back. He could see it from where he stood, on a very small mound in the ground that was probably the result of some fledgling digging in years past. It was much as it had been when he first met Lily, a long, expansive gray rectangle leading down from the base of her neck, past and partially over her wing shoulders, reaching all the way to the base of her tail, only barely missing her base fins. The scar tissue was tough-looking, gray, scaleless, and flat. Muscles rolled like fish under the surface of a scummy, weed-ridden pond beneath the otherwise flat expanse, pushing and pulling at it as they moved.

Her terrible scar patch had changed since Ember last saw her, though. There were new breaks to the flat expanse, chief among them a long, lighter line down her spine. It too ran from above her wing shoulders all the way to the bottom of the patch. In three places next to it, and in one spot right on it, were criss-cross scars, perhaps a claw length across. It all looked extremely painful, but according to Lily herself when she and Beryl were telling their story, the extra marks were what had made her back stop hurting. At the moment she looked totally at ease, as she kept one wing and a close eye on Wild, who was sleepily refusing to settle down, fidgeting in the grass by her side as various members of the family came up to say hello, look at her, and greet them more directly. The reunion had passed, and now the time of actually living together was beginning.

There was a distance there. Ember knew he wasn't imagining it, or projecting his own discomfort onto the interactions he observed. The way Herb looked to Lily before bending down to scent Wild. How Silva spoke mostly to Beryl, and only addressed Lily once. Crystal was the opposing example of how his family welcomed newcomers; her, everyone greeted without a second thought, or indeed a first thought as to how to approach her.

It was not, in his opinion, anything bad. He knew how it felt to be ostracized from his community. That was not what was happening. Lily was, unless she in the future proved otherwise, safe. Accepted. But never without that consideration, that knowledge. She was to be watched until actions could back up promises long enough that the promises ceased to matter.

Nobody wanted to find the first sign of a relapse, of ill intent. So they thought about what they said and did, just a little. Considering whether they might poke at a sore point, and whether they wanted to avoid doing so, or to lean into it to ensure that she was not too fragile.

Both Lily and Beryl knew he was watching them. He was not being subtle, hanging back like he was. Beryl accepted it with a wry shrug of his wing shoulders when Ember made eye contact. To him, it was a formality. Lily acted like she had no idea he was there, just as strongly signaling that she had noticed him but was going to let him be.

He didn't want to be here, standing on the outskirts watching. But someone had to be, and if he didn't do it nobody would. A small sacrifice to be certain he was doing all he could. Just as acting as his family's alpha had been with the valley light wings. Having to fulfill much the same role here was… irritating.

Beryl nuzzled the side of Lily's neck as they both moved to pick Wild up. She gently pulled her daughter up by the scruff and deposited her on Beryl's back. It was finally time for her to go to sleep.

He would suffer through far more than mild irritation to help preserve that.

O-O-O-O-O

Days later, after everything more important had been settled, Ember had a burning question for his son.

"What do Fear-mongers look like?"

"Yes, thank you Sire," Beryl said dryly. "I so wanted to be asked that."

"You described them to us all when you were telling your story, I did not think you would mind talking about them in a little more detail for me," Ember said. If his son showed even the slightest hint of being bothered by the question then he would apologize, but he didn't think he had misread the mood.

"No, it's fine, I'm still a little jumpy at the thought of them but nothing serious." Beryl padded into Ember's part of their little family cave. As he walked, Ember cataloged the changes in him.

There were not many, he was still a young male dark wing, strong and lithe, with black scales and skin. His eyes were still green, his ears and frills in the correct places, and his attitude had not changed at all. But there were changes. The new piercing scars on his shoulder. His smell carried lingering scents of Lily. He was a little more harried, a little jumpier, the marks of having to care for a hatchling who needed constant watching.

Still Beryl, but Beryl as a Sire and after a long adventure with his new mate that had contained its fair share of peril.

Ember shifted to his human form, and sat down at his desk. "You said they were like us in shape, but taller and lankier?" he asked.

Beryl settled down behind him, looming over his shoulder to look down on the blank parchment. "Yes and no. I have seen two of them clearly, without fear. Considera and Aggress. I am basing my descriptions on those two, but others could be different. I do not remember the others in their little group very well, or the one who attacked me."

"I'll draw them, then, and avoid making any sweeping generalizations," Ember agreed.

"In terms of size, they are as tall as two No-scaled-Not-Prey from their front paws to their heads," Beryl explained. "They are also longer than us, perhaps half again as long if we include tails. But they are barely wider than a large No-scaled-not-prey. None of this counts their wings, which are covered by a metallic half-circle shell on each side, and which I didn't see much of except to say that they might be green?"

Tall, long, narrow… "Metal wing covers?" Ember asked.

"They looked like metal. They were made of scales, but not the same kind as the rest of their hide. Those were black, and angular. These were flat and wide and silver."

"Strange." Not the strangest thing he had ever heard of, but by no means ordinary either.

"They are angular all the way from their tails to their heads," Beryl continued. "They have two eyes, nostrils, all of the normal things, and then each Fear-monger has two very long fangs, one jutting down on either side of their mouth, that are green-stained and drip venom. They cannot keep those fangs in their mouths, they stick out at all times."

Ember sketched a head that reminded him of a dog, and added fangs near the front. "Like this?"

"Yes, that's right," Beryl confirmed. "There was nothing special about their legs. They have very long talons on their paws. No venom or green stains on those. Their tails end in a single angular fin, but are very skinny and knobbly all the way down from their haunches."

Not much muscle then, whipcord thin like a Nadder's tail without spines? He added it to the blocked-out frame he was working on, then mirrored it over to the other. The two Fear-mongers were looking away from each other. "Considera and Aggress, one female and one male. Any differences between them?"

Beryl hummed thoughtfully. "Considera was larger, but not by much. They were both very spindly and didn't have any excess fat on them anywhere. Considera's eyes were white, and I think Aggress had gray eyes."

That was something to differentiate them at least. He would add those later. The slightly larger of his two models would be Considera, and the other Aggress. Beryl would have to watch as he filled out their forms and added smaller details; unless a Fear-monger attacked his family someday, out in the sun so far from where they lived, he doubted he would ever see one himself.

O-O-O-O-O

"Beryl tells me you have been drawing people I know."

Ember looked up from the log he was clawing at, noticing that Lily had come alone to find him in the forest. "Yes, it's something I do on occasion."

"Have you drawn me?" she asked carefully.

"Not yet. I was going to ask you when I was ready." He thought he could draw her from memory, now, her and Wild. He had certainly seen enough of them since they returned with Beryl and the others. But he was still planning to get her permission. "Do you want me to?"

"If you have done it for everyone else…" Lily shook her head and breathed out, hard. "I was going to ask about something else. You captured something that you have never seen. An image of dead light wings."

Ember wasn't particularly proud of the generic outlines he had made with limited supplies, time, and understanding, but he understood that to Lily it must have meant the world and was far beyond anything she could have created. "I can do better than that, with time and references. Do you want the same drawing?" She and Beryl were painstakingly carving out a den of their own, but it wasn't done yet. He would have to wait until they were satisfied with the walls.

"There are… people I knew. Who are dead." Lily pawed at the ground. "I would like a way to remember them. More than the ones you did last time. That was something that could not have been. I want to see them as they were. If you can do that."

Ember pushed off the mauled tree and sheathed his claws. "I can't promise they will be perfect. You'll have to tell me about each of them before I try."

O-O-O-O-O

It was well after nightfall when Ember finished drawing. Pearl had come in sometime during Lily's initial litany of the dead, but she had left again almost immediately, presumably once she realized what she had walked in on. The end of the initial set of descriptions was only the beginning of the process, as he'd had Lily talk about them all at length. The bare facts and the descriptions were one thing, but who they were, quite another.

And Lily had talked, long and in depth, about most of them. Through quiet sobs and through stifling stillness, through her voice beginning to wear raw. Her words worked to paint the most complete picture of the people she knew and would never see again, and Ember strove to translate that to a single, unchanging image.

It was an impossible task, and Lily had known it. He had shown her his drawings of the living light wings she knew. She had seen his limitations. Yet she had continued, undeterred.

And the sketches beneath Ember's hands, open shapes and lines to begin with, had taken shape. Not all at once, not perfectly, not without revision and rubbing out to begin again. Slowly, inconsistently, with leaps and false starts and steady progress.

In the end, he had something that felt, if not perfect, then adequate, and with it the bone-deep certainty that he was not skilled enough to do any more without lessening what he had accomplished. Where there was not enough detail, blank space sufficed. Where there was detail, it was shown as it was. The poses were good. The individuals were connected by minimalist landscape, a bare plain studded with large rocks like the valley in which most of these people had lived and died. Their home, for better or as was so often the case in their lives and their deaths, for worse.

On the left edge of the long piece of parchment, partially obscured by the shadow of the rock next to him, was a light wing Ember had watched die.

"Gold was a creep. Even as a fledgling, he was a tale-carrying brat. He thought that every female should fall over themselves trying to please him, and even when they did he wasn't satisfied. I was going to choose him as a mate to protect myself from Claw. I thought I could make something of him if I had to. He was not all bad, and his parents aren't bad at all. But he disappeared, at the same time as Pearl, and she said he was dead when she came back. I don't know how I feel about him, and I never had the chance to see who he could become. Other light wings I thought badly of proved that they were more than their worst traits. He could have too."

He lurked, his gold glint a barely-visible speckling on the part of his tail that lingered in the sunlight. His yellow-orange eyes were more colorful, but the way he lingered in the shadow pushed attention away, even as he gazed at the others in the scene.

A little further to the right, standing in the open between two boulders, was a bulkier young male.

"Bone was not dear to me. His skull was as thick as his name would imply, and he just would not be swayed from anything he decided upon. I worked to keep him from challenging Claw, but near the end he was so obstinate that I wondered whether I should keep trying at all. He challenged despite me, and he died. A fledgling died because I couldn't convince him to keep himself alive. Worse yet, I barely tried directly. I worked through intermediates. If I had spoken to him myself… He wouldn't have changed his mind. Probably. But he might have, and I didn't try as hard as I could."

Bone could be seen pushing his shoulder up against the overhang of a boulder, growling at the ground as he pitted his might against a very large, very heavy rock to no avail. A few speckles of gray shone on his back and neck, and his off-white eyes glared down as he put everything he had into the futile task.

Above Bone, on the very boulder he was trying to topple, was another young male.

"Blur lived through Claw's reign. He made a few stupid decisions but nothing irrecoverable, and he always sought approval from the female he was trying to court in the worst possible ways. She wanted to feel safe, whereas he didn't think there was anything to be afraid of to begin with, and challenged the things that she believed protected her. An enemy killed him, senselessly, and he never did win over the one he thought he loved, and who would have loved him back if he could ever see her point of view."

Blur looked up at the sky, oblivious to the attempt at toppling his rock. His gray-brown glint shone brightly, and his green eyes were wide with curiosity as he looked at something only he could see.

On the far right of the parchment, in a patch of paw-high grass, a fledgling napped.

"Spruce… I know next to nothing about Spruce. I know he was the young fledgling of one of my people. His Dam? I don't know her name. His Sire? I don't know who he was. Spruce was not one of my many half-siblings, Claw had been dead for too long, but that's it. All I know is that we settled in to rest in a cave, he and some others were playing, and the danger we had no idea lurked there managed to drag him away while we fought back. He was tortured, terribly, before he died. His body was put to rest by Dams from another pack. He was so young. He died because I led the pack there and didn't do all I could to make sure everything was safe soon enough."

Spruce had no glint, and his eyes were closed. Lily truly did know almost nothing about him, not even his eye color or glint. Only that he was under her protection, and how he had died. Ember had drawn him peacefully curled up, obscured by the grass.

Watching him from behind a nearby rock was an older female.

"Grass wasn't a good Dam. I wasn't hers, and she didn't like me very much. But when it really mattered she saved Crystal's life and went against Claw. After, she chose to be one of my guards. She died fighting to protect me. I kept her as a guard to keep an eye on her, and that got her killed."

Only Grass's front half was visible, the rest covered by the rock. Her green glint blended in with the real grass around her paws while the white stood out, and her brown eyes drew attention to her furtive form. A patch of sunlight illuminated her head, but little else, the rest shaded by the rock.

A male stood by her, close but not touching.

"Crystal's Sire was another of my guards. He has a name, of course he does, but he was always her Sire in my mind. I don't remember exactly when I learned his actual name, though it was definitely after he became a guard. It didn't fit him. Ice? Really? He was neither cold nor hard, and his eyes were blue like the sky, not like deep ice. He died defending me, alongside Grass."

Ice was close, but he was looking the opposite direction, his tail to Grass. Watching her back as he gazed to the left. His eyes were wide and alert, and his bulky frame blocked the path between boulders.

Nearer to the center of the parchment, depicted sprawled out on the ground, was another adult male.

"Flare was Root's Sire. I never had any quarrel with Flare. His mate, yes, but Flare was the voice of reason and moderation. He took Root's injury… not in stride, but much better than Whirl ever did. He died leading part of the pack away from the valley. The No-scaled-not-prey killed him, and I know it because we found the skins of the ones they killed. There were more than just him, but he was the one I knew best."

In the background Ember had drawn several silhouettes of light wings, but Flare was in the foreground. He was utterly relaxed, and his pale orange eyes were unfocused. All across his body, the sunlight threw up red sparks, reflecting off his glint.

In the center of the parchment, sat back on his hind legs in front of two touching boulders, was a younger adult male.

"Granite was my brother. Half-brother. I had a lot of half-siblings, but he was the only one close enough that he was my brother. Mine. He had a good heart and did what he thought was right, even when it wasn't easy. He loved Crystal, they were going to be mates, but when he saw something he couldn't ignore, he decided that he was going to do more. Be more. Right a wrong. And it was a wrong… But not one worth his life. Not like that. Claw killed him."

Granite was looking out, directly at the point of view that the parchment presented, at the nonexistent light wing whose eyes were seeing the scene. His head and shoulders were in the sun, showing off a light red glint. His yellow eyes were wide and curious, and it looked as if in the next moment he would drop down to all fours to run toward the viewer.

Finally, in the center, atop a pair of stones that they would never have set paw on in life, were an older pair of light wings. One of which, according to Lily, had met Ember, remembered him. The other had too, but had not lived long enough to tell Lily so, or to ever meet her. He didn't remember either of them, due to the many years and many nearly identical light wings he had met around the same time.

"Risa was my Dam's Dam. She was smart, and quick, and she died before I was even an egg, killed in a fight that she shouldn't have had to be in, but volunteered for anyway because her mate was too injured to go. I don't know what she looked like."

"Pyre was not his name, but it was the only name he ever gave me. He had deep red eyes, and if he had a glint, I never noticed it. He was smart, and sad, and he taught me everything a Sire should. He could swim. He couldn't fly, so he learned to swim. His wings were missing all their membrane, it was ripped off and never grew back, and that hurt him but he never let it stop him. He died because of me. Claw killed him for sheltering me."

Risa was a bare sketch, a light wing whose eyes were closed as she nuzzled Pyre. His eyes were open, deep red and looking directly at his mate. His wings were folded in, and it was left ambiguous whether they were mutilated or intact.

And that was it. Ember stood, gently shook off the parchment to remove any fragments of loose charcoal, and set it back down on the desk. That drawing was all he could do for the eleven lives Lily had given him, the eleven undeserved deaths. It shouldn't have been enough.

He stepped away from the desk and shifted back to his other body. "His name was Blaze," Ember said quietly. "I found out from the Twisted Corridor pack."

"Blaze?" Lily stared at the long roll of unraveled parchment. At the still, hollow outlines of people long gone.

"Blaze," she repeated.

It shouldn't have been enough, but it was anyway.