Wings of Evolution (WoF AU)

Chapter 12

Echo of knowledge

Uhar wasn't sure how he felt about heading back to the caves, all he could think about as they finally headed off was how uncomfortable he felt being constantly the center of attention. Traveling with Just cactus made it much less obvious since there was nothing else to hold her attention.

Oddly, the more dragons there were, the less Cactus talked, which made Uhar vaguely wonder how much she must talk while alone.

Uhar kept a hand perpetually on his bag, checking every now and then to be sure that the precious scroll he'd gotten from Foam was still there. A scroll that had nothing to do with the caves, a scroll that wasn't just another personal history on the descent into the chasms, or a cookbook describing in detail all the fun ways to boil snails or gut fish.

After traveling with Cactus for over a week, he'd become accustomed to dragons that ate pretty much anything that moved, Uhar himself preferred insects and fish. He was still a bit salty about the bird incident, but Cactus had apologized later after explaining that birds were actually really dumb and not in any way related to dragons.

But thanks to that accustomization to this strange world, Uhar realized just how weird it would be if he went back home and never left again. He didn't think he could do that. Before, he'd thought he could easily just sate his curiosity and go home, but it was somehow comforting, actually, he could never sate his curiosity because it just kept on popping up out of nowhere. Everything the Kiaen did was inconsequential, but it didn't have to be that way, they could change the world for the better.

That was the mindset that Uhar tried to keep as they soared across the sky, it was difficult though, as he once more touched the scroll to be sure it was still there. This scroll had a perspective of history in this world. Maybe even including when the icewings went extinct. What Uhar needed was a concrete timeline to know if those had really been his ancestors, and it was torture to have to wait until they camped for the night to read it.

He'd tried to read while flying when he was younger, but that didn't really work. The result had been not only a vow to never try that again but also a sore snout thanks to the cave wall he'd run straight into.

It was the sort of thing he was sort of happy about because he'd learned and there was no way he would have lived through embarrassing himself in such an obviously dumb way in front of all these huge dragons. Only an idiot would read while flying, and Uhar was very good at pretending to not be an idiot.

When they finally stopped for the night, his wings ached and it was disturbingly obvious how much slower Cactus had been going thanks to him. His wings were not meant for long-distance travel. He was tired enough by the time they met the ground that he almost fell right asleep, but the scroll pocking at his side was a very good reminder that sleep wasn't that important.

So in the fading sunlight, he unrolled the scroll and fell headfirst into this known history of Pyrriah.

History (seawings) vol 1:

The first recorded mention of the seawings was in the time post-Scorching when the tribes themselves were beginning to be formed. It is unclear what the first true tribe was, but seawings were one of the earlier ones.

Uhar skimmed past the introduction, searching through the timeline.

~3,007 After scorching - Royal seawing massacre:

It wasn't until this terrible event that the texts of our past became clearer. Caused by Queen Lagoon's brother, an animus named 'Albatross,' the massacre killed nine dragons including his own daughter and sister.

This was, however, the event that led princess Pearl to ascend to the throne, furthering our records of seawing history. Her brother was also an animus, but did far more good in his lifetime, convincing the Nightwing's first young animus of the danger of their powers.

This only led to good things for the seawing tribe, persuading most dragons that the animus bloodline of the seawing royals was not a curse after all.

The sheer amount of things that affected history forever in that generation was truly startling, the seawing summer palace was created shortly before the-

Uhar set down the scroll, deciding that whoever had written this needed to get more to the point. Was there anything in there about the icewings? He skimmed through the scroll, passing the point in history where his ancestors would be in the caves.

Perhaps there was nothing useful in this scroll, or he'd missed it. Either way, it wasn't a bad history, and Uhar was fine with reading it even if it didn't have his answers. But it was still disappointing enough that even though there were still a few minutes of sunlight, he tucked away the scroll and curled up a bit off from the others -being that close to so many huge dragons was grating on him- in a matter of minutes, Uhar was asleep. 

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