Gretel never expected that ‘a few weeks’ for her fracture to heal would turn into eight. She realized her impatience to take flight before recovering only reverted her injury to its original severity, prolonging her need to rest it.
Resting tortured the juvenile wind dragon even more than the pain of her injury; every day, her instincts to leave and travel in search of a safe retreat fought against her awareness that doing so would worsen her condition. Gretel also hated how useless she felt in the meantime, since she couldn't contribute to Efron while she relied on him to provide her food.
Even still, the violet revealer had assured his friend that she could help him with singing lessons while she rested, and Gretel had jumped at the opportunities, both for fun and to return the favor of his care for her. During some sleepless nights, Efron did confess to her that he truly did enjoy singing; the birdsong had been the only thing to bring him joy since he had been isolated from his society. He also admitted that he wanted to postpone their duet until he felt good enough–by his own standards–at singing, regardless if Gretel thought he was already adequate.
He also had stopped trying to appease her when he had caught on to the fact that she was refusing to react whenever he tried to ask her permission for anything. Gretel was proud of how independent and self-confident he was becoming without relying on her constant approval.
As for flight, Gretel did notice that the blue-spotted juvenile’s wings had developed a longer span and thicker muscles over time. Her injury prevented her from helping too much with wind summons, but she did compensate with her basic knowledge of how to fly. She would study his attempts and instruct him how to steer by tilting and directional wingbeats, how to keep balanced, and how to recover if his wingbeats became out of sync. Efron had taken her lessons seriously, both with singing and flight. Gretel even noticed that her lack of ability to aid his flight made him all the more determined to fly on his own.
It wasn't until two months after her initial injury, at the dawn of autumn, that seven-month-old Gretel had fully recovered, able to fly again without any pain at all. That's when two-year-old Efron had mastered flight, but hadn’t attempted to go high or far since he didn't want his mother to discover him, and because he didn't want to leave Gretel before she was capable of flying painlessly.
The young, striped wyvern also mentioned that they should wait until she found a suitable retreat for them to seek refuge in before leaving this island, and Efron agreed.
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Presently, Gretel recalled Chryssa’s mention of a small island east of the crescent one that the older wind dragoness had described as perfect. This issue lied with how far it would be for Efron to travel with her, and the risk of getting attacked again by the seers on the jungled island between. After spending two whole months in pain that exacerbated each time she let her impulse to fly ruin her recovery, Gretel refused to take risks near islands inhabited by predators anymore. The last thing I need is another ‘few weeks’ to recover from a new fracture.
“I'll be right back, Efron. Gonna test my wings and explore southwest a little bit, okay?” she informed her companion. During her time spent gazing longingly at the sky, she had noticed that lots of birds roosted on a small island just miles from Efron's. That was a sure sign that there weren't any predators there, else the birds would have avoided it.
“Should I come with you?” Efron asked.
They both hesitated when Gretel’s hot pink eyes focused on the top of the highlands where his family resided. “Maybe not yet… That time when your cousin caught me, he said nobody would care if a wind type made the lowlands a retreat. I've seen your family look directly at me sometimes when I had tried to fly off in the past couple months. They don't seem to care about me as long as I keep my distance from them,” she explained. “But if they see you, then…”
Efron halfway frowned with uncertainty. “...Yeah. I'd rather not learn the hard way how they'd react to finding out I survived my mother's attack back when she disowned me.”
Gretel nodded. She was also aware of how much more open her friend had become about his past traumas as she'd gotten older. There were a lot of smaller issues involved that the wyvern wouldn't have been able to understand back then, either.
His self-reflection ever since she had decided to be impassive to him made him realize that his deference to Gretel stemmed from fearing the consequences of not deferring to his abusive mother, and that seemed to be the key to him realizing just how free he was to be himself while away from the other revealer; he knew his friend wouldn't punish him like that, even if he did still get anxious now and then, especially if the wyvern ever lost her temper–which had happened occasionally due to how stir-crazy she'd get during her recovery. For the most part they had learned to trust one another and themselves… because they had to, and because they wanted to as friends.
“Alright, then. I'll see how things go,” the white-and-purple juvenile said as she reared onto her hind legs and stretched her winged forelimbs. She flapped them just once to summon a tailwind, then again to take flight by riding it. The chilly autumn air barely hindered her, and she flapped to gain altitude just because she was able to without pain.
Gretel laughed with a mix of relief and enjoyment as she did a celebratory aileron roll, then did a backward loop. Her movements were as instinctive and graceful as they had been before she had ever gotten injured. She hovered and spun one-eighty degrees to look back at Efron, who was grinning just as widely as his friend was at the confirmation that she had fully recovered.
With that, she resumed her search for a safe retreat near enough for them both to fly to.