Wings of Evolution (WoF AU)

Chapter 13

Wings of night shall come to you

Starflight found it odd to be sleeping at night, he kept waking up at random times and staring at the moons wondering why in the world he'd let the angry seawing drag him out into the middle of nowhere.

It was sort of nice though.

With only six other dragons' thoughts filling up his head, Starflight felt almost like a normal dragon. And with most of those being dreams, he could hear himself think for the first time since he'd come to that place filled with nightmares.

Being able to think his own thoughts without being swamped by voices and memories was almost terrifying, but in a way that made Starflight want to hug onto that moment and stay there forever. He relished the thoughts that drifted in and out, focusing thinking reminding him that he wasn't their thoughts, he was an individual.

So of course the first thing he did was analyze, and try to understand what he remembered since coming to that place of nightmares. Most of his memories were of Sunny, the small sandwing that he could think clearly around because she let him. He tried to figure out the strange flutter in his chest at the thoughts of her, but it evaded speculation so he ignored it.

He remembered when he'd transferred from one place of nightmares to another, from that time, he remembered the angry blue seawing. Tsunami? And the rainwing that never smiled, but these other dragons were unfamiliar. Especially that one.

Starflight frowned at the tiny dragon for a few seconds, trying to figure out if he'd ever seen a dragon that was like that before. He was smaller than sunny but not small enough that he couldn't still catch prey, and his scales let off a faint light in the dim moonlight.

Out of curiosity, and partially to see if he could do that much, Starflight peeked further into the mind of the strange dragon, tilting his head at the alien mind. It was like other dragon minds, but it had a strange quality to it that Starflgiht couldn't quite describe. The dragon was between dreams at the moment so Starflight couldn't glimpse much.

He shrugged and focused on the second dragon he'd never seen before, a large nondescript mudwing with a mind filled with dreams of good days, flying along with a pack of mudwings. There was an undertone of dread within his thoughts though as if he was sure that days like these would never return to him. That underlying sense of loss that Starflight was far too used to.

The third strange dragon was a sandwing like Sunny, except rounder. She didn't seem to be very interesting on the outside, and there was strange echoing anxiety in her dreams. Only you will live. They will all die and you will live. Only you.

It reminded Starflight of some of the nightmares from before, but he carefully avoided thinking of those in case his visions decided to tell him that there were more nightmares to be found in the future.

As if his visions had been waiting for that very moment, a particularly strong one blazed into his mind.

A field of icy whiteness covered completely with snow, strange dragons arguing with strange accents. The angry seawing yelled, lashing her tail and attacking. It was chaos, almost as if several visions had been stitched together without a proper timeline or coordination. Starflight kept trying to focus on the strange dragons, but every time he thought he had a good hold on their appearance, it would flicker and the vision would focus elsewhere.

Almost as if it wasn't likely they would even find the strange dragons. But isn't that what we're looking for? Starflight furrowed his brow, trying to remember what Sunny had mentioned during the flight. The memory fled him, replaced by the vision in front as if asking, what are you going to do? Decide now Starflight.