Chapter 4
By the time Coquina and Scella touched down at the edge of Hiedium territory, night had truly fallen, and the world was shrouded in darkness. Moonbeams bounced off Coquina’s scales as they mirrored the moon’s silvery-white colouring. She ducked under Scella’s piercing stare.
This was where they thought she belonged: in the clinging dark of night.
No sooner had they reached the ground did Scella lift her wings again, preparing to take off before she’d even properly landed. “Good luck,” she whispered, voice rolling with growls, before a sudden breeze indicated that she was in the sky once more. Coquina peered after her. The Secundux’s outline was barely visible against the sky’s velvet black, the grey glint in her dark scales the only thing that distinguished her as a dragon and not pure darkness itself.
Soon, she was swallowed by the night, and Coquina was alone. Her scales tingled, making her claws tremble as she stepped forward. Though the border wasn’t physically marked, she felt its presence with every cell of her being. It was like stepping out of a bubble of air, suspended in the ocean, and entering the deep waters. Her fragile safety was gone, and she was vulnerable, a single dragon amongst a world poised in readiness to destroy her.
Brown scales caught the moonlight, and for a second Coquina’s heart leapt, her mind thinking of Tidi. Perhaps her friend had followed her out here, if only to be of temporary company. But then the wings tipped closer, and she realised that their shape was flatter than Tidi’s, and their shade a touch darker. The border guard, not a friendly face.
His blue eyes flashed as they met hers, and he nodded once, before spreading his wings further and soaring on past her. He had clearly been notified of her job. Coquina swallowed, a hard lump pressing at her throat and clogging her lungs. Since when was breathing so difficult? She seemed to be struggling with it constantly today.
The night’s chill felt no different to the frost that had followed her all day, yet still it made her shiver as she trod carefully past the border and into a knot of trees. There were woodlands that stretched into her own clan’s territory, but she’d never spent more than a few minutes of investigation in them, and now she realised why. Celïsora weren’t made for the trees. The shadows of the branches seemed to tug at her, chasing away the light and settling over her scales in a claustrophobic blanket. The whole place was a cage: the tree trunks thick bars and the twining, stretching canopy a looming roof.
This was the domain of Teffré dragons, and every crack of a twig beneath her claws made her acutely aware of that.
She hadn’t even had time to consider what would happen if a Conupium or Viridium clan member found her first. Would she be able to fight back? She imagined swinging her tail, trying to attack with her tailspikes, only for them to get caught in the dense shrubbery. Even if she was small for a Celïsora, her build was still wide and stocky, made for flying over mountains rather than dodging between trees. Teffré were leaner, more manoeuvrable, and far more skilled in regions like this. Even if she’d never seen them in anything more than claw-scratched drawings - and, of course, the strange dragons lurking in her mind - she knew that much.
Pulling her wings tight against her scales, she craned her neck upwards, peering through the web of branches to the endless sky beyond. Darkness had settled in the world now, painting the sky with a deep black Coquina didn’t see often. It made her tail twitch, curling up against itself.
She remembered a night like this, clear enough so that the winking specs of stars were visible. Six years ago now, perhaps more. The other juveniles hadn’t wanted to play with her that day. They’d called her a demon. She recalled her confusion, her hurt, and even now it made her wince. So, as she always did when she had a problem, she’d gone to ask her Mator.
It was then she had first heard the tale of Selen. From that day on, she understood why her white scales were the curse the others spoke of.
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