Lost Change - Snippets

Getting Cold Wings

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Author's Note - Moving

Moving sucks.

You can get used to it, but it never really stops being a big thing.  Realizing you're about to be in an entirely new environment, that all your friends and enemies are going to be gone, that everyone around you will be a stranger, that your home will be different from what you're used to... it can be scary.  Even more so if you don't do it very often and aren't used to it.

So of course it would worry Ivy.

I might go back and clean this up more and find a way to work it into the sequel, but for the most part that's going to take place several years after Lost Change, so I doubt I will be able to.  Still, it was fun to write more from Ivy's perspective, and to flesh that one dragonet out into more than just a one-time plot point, as well as to explore a little into the idea of the dragonets that were mentioned at the end of Upon Wings of Change, who started forming friendships with Kymari without needing to be injured first (like Keegan).  So overall this was a combination of three interesting ideas I've had for a while, and a fun chapter to write.

The title is a play on the term 'getting cold feet', and these scenes take place shortly after the epilogue of Lost Change.

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*~Ivy~*

Am I making a mistake?...

I bathed in the warm sunlight and tried my best to relax. The sand was warm, the sound of the water was nice, the sunlight was steady and gentle. It was a perfect, relaxing afternoon. It would normally be so easy to just drift off and fall asleep...

But I couldn't stop worrying.

I had spent so much time worrying about what Nate would say. That one question had consumed all the attention I normally spent on worrying and wondering about the future - 'Will he want me?' It had taken a lot of courage to finally ask, and I had thought of a million ways it could have gone wrong. The silver dragonet had been through so much. He still struggled with the simplest of interactions. It was hard for him to be comfortable around others. Hard for him to open up. Hard for him to find it within himself to share his life.

It was entirely possible he had reached his limit. Opening up to Minna, building a life with her, after so very long on his own... there was a real possibility that was all he could do. That with all he had been through, his heart just didn't have any room left in it.

There was every chance that he didn't want me. That even though we had become friends, and that even though I could tell he liked when I was around... maybe that was all he wanted. Maybe he didn't really think about me the way I had started to think of him. Or maybe he had met another dragonet. Introduced to her by Tom, or somebody he had met in the brief time he had spent in the park with the rest of the flock, and nobody had thought to tell me. And this whole time he could have been pursuing a relationship with her, and just not thought to tell me. That would have been such a Nate thing to do - to not even realize that he should tell me something like that. It was impossible to know what was going on in his head most of the time, because it rarely ever occurred to him to share what he was thinking. Or even that he could share what he was thinking. So it was entirely possible that when I asked, the silver dragonet would have said... no.

But he hadn't. None of those fears or possibilities had manifested. I had asked, and he had pulled me close and hugged me.

He had wanted me.

I rolled over onto my back and tried to wiggle into the sand. One of the other dragonets sprawling near me grumbled out a short yawn as my motion interrupted her nap, and my golden neighbor shifted in place on the sand to get comfortable again. She exhaled heavily and spread her wings out a little more, then rejoined the twenty or so other dragonets gathered together in napping in the sunny clearing.