Wings of Fire - Eclipse Burning (1)

Chapter 4

"You two are a mess." he said. 

"I know." said a new voice. Moon's voice. But she couldn't see her, nor could she feel her or hear her thoughts.   

"Moon?"

"Eclipse?"

"Are you ok?"

"Yes. Now anyway. Are you?"

"Gotta be. Where are you?"

"I'm not sure. I'm still asleep, I think. But I'm not in the nightmare anymore." she paused. "I guess you had it again too?"

"Yeah. Moon, it's Jade Mountain."

"I know."

"Someone should be punished for letting you two get this way." the voice growled. 

"No one knows we're like this." Moon answered. 

"Other than Mother." Eclipse added. 

"Thank you. For. . .that, what you. . ." Moon stumbled over her words. 

"You should be able to do that yourselves." he said. Eclipse was mostly sure it was a 'he'. It was hard to tell sometimes by someone's internal voice. She could sense nothing else about the speaker; when he was silent, it was as though nothing was there. 

It was sort of creepy, a voice with nothing behind it. She couldn't sense any emotions or thoughts. There was just emptiness, as blank as the dark walls around her. Was this how ordinary dragons felt everyday? That everyone else was just a face and noise on a completely opaque backdrop? And all you could know about someone was what they chose to show and tell you?

"Why can't you do anything?" he asked. "Shield your thoughts? Silence voices? By all the moons why has nobody trained you to step outside your visions?"

"That wasn't a vision." Moon snapped. "It was just a nightmare."

"Really?" he sounded amused. "That's your opinion?"

"Who trained you?" Moon asked, quickly chancing the subject. 

"My father," he said. 

She'd never met her father, and Secretkeeper didn't want to talk about him. All she would ever say was that he'd died when the volcano erupted. Eclipse had only known his name through passing thoughts in her mother's mind: Morrowseer. 

"That sounds nice," said Moon. 

Now he was definitely amused. "You wouldn't say so if you'd ever known my father. What volcano?" 

"I-" Eclipse fumbled for an answer. She'd forgotten she was in the presence of another mind reader. Was this how their mother felt when they read her thoughts? "Don't do that."

"Do what? Ah, invade your privacy? Rummage through your memories? That would be intrusive of me, wouldn't it? But isn't that what you do to other dragons every moment of the day?"

"Only because I can't help it." Eclipse answered hotly. "No one's ever trained me so sorry if I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Easy," he said, chuckling slightly. "I was only teasing." there was a pause. "Don't wish to be ordinary Moonwatcher. Why would you ever wish for that? Your powers are a gift, don't you know that?"

A gift? 

"Not according to my mother." Moon sighed hopelessly. 

"How strange," he mused. "I've never met anyone who would call our powers a curse. Other powers yes, but not ours."

"She says everyone will hate us if they ever found out." Eclipse scoffed.

"Not like they like me very much anyway." Moon mumbled.