That night at dusk, I woke up from my nap and immediately took flight, coasting down into the meadow and following where my heart told me to go. I could see others pouring out of the mountain, all of us going in the same direction, like streams leading to the ocean.
This had happened every night since we had escaped, and it had become a happy time for us all. As soon as the sun went down and the moon rose in the sky we would feel a pull, pushing us towards a meeting point. We didn't choose where to go, and it changed every night, whether we liked it or not. One could resist the pull, but most just went along with it.
I set down into the meadow, about a half mile from the Kymari city. I could see a few of their kind sneak over behind a group of boulders, watching quietly. A few looked on from the forest, and others from the city. They did not approach, always staying at an appropriate distance.
I was early, and the sun hadn't completely fallen yet, only a few others there. I nodded at them and they returned the gesture before I turned my attention to the sunset. It was beautiful and blinding, but not what I was looking for.
Others touched down, dotting the meadow and scaring off any sort of wildlife there might have been. The pristine snow was put in chaos as more landed, all of us gathering together. Young ones barely six months old sat with their parents, while even younger ones latched onto their backs.
For a moment I could feel a tiny pang of envy in my heart. I shook my head, dispelling those thoughts from my mind and concentrating on the sunset, waiting patiently for it to fall. The rustle of wings quieted down and expectation rose, the world seeming to go quiet.
As the sun disappeared beyond the horizon and the moon rose in twilight, we launched from the snow, a silent signal pushing us off. For a moment, the only sound was flapping of wings and the whistling of the wind in the distant forest.
Then it began.
It started off soft, a low melody hummed at the back of the throat, a simple yet intricate performance. Then it got louder, going from a whisper to a low rumble, different tunes overlapping in a complicated harmony of nearly ninety parts. Every one of us was singing a different tune, even the fledglings.
We flew together, flying around each other, taking sharp turns and changing direction on a whim. Dragons went in every direction, rotating around a central point and with no set course. We drifted in a circle, the occasional wingbeat propelling us forward, a cyclone of dragons in the sky. An instinctive drive in our hearts told us where to go, and we followed it with absolute certainty, trusting it to keep us safe from collisions.
From the deep basses jarring my bones to the high sopranos sounding nearly like birds, and everything in between, the overlapping melodies wove together into a web of song, creating a aura of awe in all of us. A feeling of release went through us all, making us sing even louder, a wave of excitement pouring into the group.
As the moon slowly rose, higher and higher into the sky we got louder, the ballad echoed through the mountains, making the air quake. It seemed to release everything bottled up inside, every emotion pushed down during the day erupting out our mouths in the form of song. A feeling of rejuvenation and cleansing swept through me, like my soul had been wiped of everything that plagued me, and that everything would be okay.
Eventually, after nearly a half an hour of blissful singing, we finally quieted down, the song fading away into the firmament. We also halted our flight, hovering in the air, soft wingbeats keeping us aloft.
The sun had long gone down, and the moon was high in the sky, illuminating the snow in it's cold radiance. The stars glittered around it, twinkling in the dark. For a moment, we froze, a deafening silence bearing down on us all.
The Kymari from before stood up, as silent as ghosts but with excited looks on their faces. They knew exactly what was coming next.
A dense fog erupted from my snout, along with every other dragon in the vicinity, symbolizing the buildup of our flame. We began to fly again, more tightly packed than before, but in the same formation. The column of dragons rotated even faster, yet was completely silent excluding the sound of wingbeats from the young ones.
We kept going faster and faster, until we were just a blur of shifting colors to outside eyes. As soon as we sensed that a few of the younger ones couldn't keep up, we all turned towards the eye of the storm, impaling the ground with a bolt of ice before we all scattered, each going in a different direction at top speed.
It was the grand finale of our performance, the peak of our concert, and left a mark on our stage, and our audience.
Each dragon had given out one bolt of ice, colored the same as the last crystal they had eaten. Nearly eighty different colors were there, along with different shades and pigments. It was a rainbow of color against the white snow, overlapping layers of spikes creating a stunning work of art in the tundra.
This happened every night, right as the moon was rising, and the sculpture melted every day, just as the sun was rising, a never ending cycle of creation and destruction. A Ballad at Twilight, that cleansed us for the night and all of the next day, before we repeated it after nightfall.
I went back home and fell asleep again, going to bed for the night.
[I'm going to change the schedule to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. That four day gap between Thursday and Tuesday didn't sit right with me, so there will be a chapter release on Saturdays >.>]
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Freezing Wings
FanfictionAn Upon Wings Of Change fanfic** * There was one lab, the place where humans were kidnapped and tested on, turning them into small, fire-breathing lizards, destroyed when the white aliens took over Earth, leaving the dragonets as the last survivors...
