Lighting, Storm's little brother, just turned 3 last night. He murmurs in his sleep as she nudges him, and he rolls off the edge of the cot. He lands with a thump and a small roar of complaint. Storm chuckled, looking over the edge of the cot and seeing little Lighting looking up at her in shock, confusion clouding his face. she jumps off the edge and look into her parents room, seeing her mother still sick with dragon venom, an illness raging the 1st realm since the dragon trappers came to the realm, and her father still writing the report to the commander, as he is a border guard, his claws stained with ink the color of lizard blood, a weird shade of purple red. Not quite magenta, not quite pink. Dark circles make him look centuries older than he usually looks. A jolt of realization hits her, and she realizes it's her turn to hunt, and she feels sick to her stomach. She hates everything about hunting, or even fighting or killing in general. She goes to the kitchen and starts heating up the stove, and her father walks past, licking little lighting and greeting Storm. "Good morning, children. I was up late last night, so please, no stomping. Storm, I'll go out hunting instead of you again, so please make sure to do the rest of your chores while I'm out. Be back in thirty minutes. Lighting, be good for your big sister." "Ok, papa. Take care of yourself, I saw you writing that letter this morning." Storm stares at her father, and he smiles at her sadly. "Well, my job is very important. Be good, Storm." She sighs and turns away as she hears her father close the door behind him. She puts Lightning back on the cot. He stares at her as she does her chores. She starts making the lemon and honey-suckle tea and collects honey from the bee farm outside. Lighting stares at her as she picks fruit from the orchard and cleans the counters, as she wipes and opens the window shutters and scrubs the wall. Once she makes the bed, she moves Lighting to the sofa so he won't wrinkle it again. She then brings mother honey water for her sore throat. After making her mother's bed, she helps her to the chair in her room. She then cuts the fruit, and prepares everything for breakfast but the meat, as they ran out of leftovers last night, not that leftovers ever last longer than a day. Lightning rolls over, tugging at the loose threads in a pillow, waiting for Storm to give him his toy, and growls a little bit when the little stuffed ninja bumps him in the nose. They have a happy life, a good life. Thunder returns with three squirrels, a boar, and a desert snake. Storm wordlessly puts the dead animals on the stove, putting the sliced fruit and morning tea on the table, anxious for sun quarter, when the sun is a quarter from the ground each morning. Then, she will go meet her friend and do nothing but talk and train. Storm Tailwhip is friends with an enemy. An elvendalian princess named Crystal, who was against the war also, and didn't like killing either. The realms were thinking about calling off the war, then Crystal's father, the king, was assassinated by the first realm ambassador, and the war was restarted, now lasting for 6 years, longer than Storm has been alive. As she shoves a squirrel and a pomegranate down her throat, she calls out to her father that she's going to training, and flies towards the cave where she meets crystal every 3 days. However, as she enters the cave she sees her cousin, Cloud, holding down her friend, growling at the princess. Once she gets inside, Cloud looks up and calls out to her. "Storm, my favorite cousin, I found a spy. Come help me, girl!" Storm's thoughts stop and the end of the sentence. Without thinking, she leaps at her cousin, knocking him off her friend and slashing at his face. Crystal flies out of the cave, and Cloud knocks Storm off of him, yelling at her. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, STORM! THAT WASN'T A LITTLE ANIMAL ON THE FIELD FOR YOU TO SAVE, THAT WAS AN ENEMY SOLDIER, YOU IDIOT!" "No, that was my FRIEND, Cloud!" "WHAT!?! You bloody TRAITOR! Your friends with the enemy! Are you a spy? Are you one of them in disguise? How dare you!" With that, he jumps on her with claws outstretched, and she blacks out.
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Once Storm wakes up, she immediately knows she is bound with dragon-skin leather in an iron cage, blindfolded with her wings bound to her sides, unable to fly, showing it doesn't have a roof. Her nose is filled with the scent of blood, fear, death, and dragons. She connects the dots and realizes what happened. Cloud, her annoying older cousin, knocked her out and handed her over to the dragon-trappers. She forgot Cloud has been studying the human language, and probably told them everything she did, which is considered treason. They will most likely treat her worse because of this. Well, not that they aren’t already. She can feel multiple bleeding slits across her back, and many missing scales. She can feel the dried blood in between her scales, and turns to lick the pain from her back. Lifting her head, she hears the annoying dragon-trappers walking past her cage, then the foot-steps pause. She hears the little squeaks of humans, the annoying thing known as the “human language” that Cloud says is the “proper” way to speak around guests and visitors that happen to be human. The cage cover, a large black cloth, can be heard hitting the ground as the dragon trappers pull it off. Suddenly, Storm smells a dragon. A fire dragon, young, scared half to death, and starved. She knows it’s older than her, but she’s only four, so that's not so much of a big deal. She hears the clank of a lock falling off of the cage next to her, and the smoky smell of the young dragon gets closer. It knows human, because a hoarse voice squeaks the harsh, annoying words humans speak. They respond, and it talks to me. “Hello, little lightning dragon. If I go into your cage, will you hurt me? I want to take off your blind-fold.” “No.” “Will you hurt the trappers?” “YES.” “O~k then. I’ll take it off for you. Please, don’t do anything unreasonable. What's your name, by the way? I’m Clash.”
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“Storm.” Suddenly, she feels sunlight hit her face, and she blinks open her eyes to see a fire dragon, only a year or two older than her, sitting next to her, his claws holding a strip of cleaned dragon scales used to close off her vision. I attempt to stand, and glance behind the little dragon, seeing the door closed and locked behind him. Clash steps backward, and goes back onto all four of her legs. Now, Storm can examine her properly. You can count little Clash’s ribs, and the bones in his spine. His little legs tremble, his tail twitches with a mix of fear of the trappers and excitement for the ‘new kid.’ “Well, happy to meet you, even under these circumstances. You seem like a good kid.” The only thing that goes through Storm’s mind is, I was, then I tried to kill my cousin for attacking an enemy soldier. I’m really fucking stupid, but didn’t respond out loud. However, Clash was quite an observant extrovert, and noticed her change in facial expression. “Let me guess, accidental treason? Broke a law to help someone? Forgot to bring your family's tribute to king scar?” “Yeah. . . Something like that.” “Well, can you tell me?” “I. . . I was kind of maybe friends with the elvendalian princess? And my cousin sort of attacked her? And I maybe attacked my cousin to defend her, and my cousin is 4 years older than me so he kind of overpowered me really fast. And then I woke up here. How long was I out?” Clash completely ignores Storm’s actual question, and goes to talk about how reasonable it was to stop Cloud. “Well, um, it was reasonable that you saved their princess. I mean, if the only heir to the throne died less than 5 years after the king was assassinated, then the war would’ve been a lot worse, and they probably would have restarted the Battle of Capital City. My entire family died during that battle.” “Oh. I’m sorry. How old were you?” “2. Can’t really remember them. Is your family still alive?” “Barely. Except my little brother, Lightning. We don’t know if my little sister will hatch, my father, Thunder, is a border watch, and my mother, Tempest, has dragon viper plague.” “Oh. OH. OH Dear! That's not good. Were you the only one taking care of your little siblings?!” "Yeah." "How old are you?" "Four." "Four?! Good stars, we need to get you out of here! The trappers are changing us to the same cage, it's going to be bigger than this, and then we can start working on a plan." "For both of us to get out. You don't need to suffer in this hell hole either. Speaking of which, what did you do to get in here?" "Long story. The best way I can put it is, I forgot to do something important when I was three, got handed to the trappers as a 'punishment' from my general. Pleasant, isn't it?" "Mhmm. Just cheery." With that, a trapper hits her on the back with a whip, and she cries out in shock and pain. They squeak at the dragons loudly, and Clash informs her the translation. "They said it's time to move to your new cage with the red one, the red one being me, and that you need to stand up and walk to the cage on the far side of the plain. They will bring your muzzle and start training you earlier than other dragons because it is war time. You'll be a good soldier eventually." Then his eyes widen and he realizes what's going on at the same time Storm does. "So," When she responds, Storm's voice has lost the majority of emotion. "They're selling me to the battle field. Hooray." She looks at her feet, and a single tear-drop hits the cage floor and passes through the metal bars. Storm sees it fall, watches the little droplet hit three plants on the way down, and finally it hits the dry, dusty ground with a small splatter, and forms the first puddle this land has probably seen other than dragons blood since the trappers moved in. It soaks into the ground, and the two dragons step out of the cage together, walking towards the far east end of the plain, sunset hidden by hills of cages and dragon corpses, but the beautiful pastel colors still line the sky.