Sands of Time

Chapter 1

All things considered, Sun was sure he would never change his life for anything.

Okay, sure, so everything hadn't always been perfect and sunshine and rainbows. That would have been unreasonable. To say nothing had ever gone wrong throughout his life would have been inaccurate. He'd had fallbacks and he'd made mistakes. Dragons he'd loved had been lost. But through all of that, the moral of the fact never wavered; Sun always believed the very best of the universe.

And sometimes, in return, the universe presented him with its ugliest side possible.

Such as being attacked by a dragoness he didn't even recognize and thrown through a magical glowing rift in time and space only to end up in a place he didn't know in a time he certainly didn't belong.

Ow.

Everything hurts.

What happened?

Where am I?

Hundreds of thoughts and scenarios shot through his brain as he carefully pressed his talons against the ground. The solid, formidable, very real ground, and pushed himself onto his feet, wincing as his head throbbed protestantly. Growling, he shook bursting lights from his eyes and backed off, drawing his wings close to his body and using his tail to test his surroundings.

Grass plus trees plus echoing sounds equals jungle.

A jungle means trees. Trees mean no ice.

No ice means a different Realm. 

We've left the frost kingdom.

Thunder rumbled in the sky above him, almost as if it were confirming his suspicions. A streak of lightning momentarily lit up the night, splitting the air like a sword and illuminating the darkness around him as the first droplets of rain splattered down on his head, earning a growl of irritation from the whiteish-yellow drake.

And it's raining.

Perfect.

It hardly ever rained in the desert. It was the desert. Water did not fall from the sky in the desert. It was not normal, not natural, and Sun did not like it one bit.

Get it together, he told himself sternly, closing his eyes and honing in on his inner calm. Don't let it consume you. Deep breaths. It's going to be okay. You've been in this kind of situation before. Just breathe.

Grass crunched near his left, jerking him out of his own pitying thoughts, and he twirled at a low, pained groan, finding a red mass of scales clambering up behind a fallen log toward him. "Fire!" he gasped, blinking back hot tears as the larger drake limped to his side, dark eyes glittering worriedly. "Are you all right?" he added, noticing a large gash running down his teammate's wing and forelegs. He winced at the dark splotches of blood coating Fire's scales, wondering how much of a tumble the drake had taken upon crash-landing. 

"I've been better," Fire grunted, "but I think I'll live." He glanced around at the thick foliage. "Any chance you know where we are or what happened to the others?" He pointedly refused to look toward his injuries, as if he somehow hoped they would go away if he pretended they weren't there. 

Sun lifted his wings in a helpless gesture. He barely knew where he was, let alone where anyone else might have landed.

A deep rumble filled the trees and he snarled, drawing in on himself, instinctively pulling closer to his bigger teammate who shot one more worried glance toward the darkening skies. Storms. I hate storms. Why did it have to be a storm?