Wings Of Fire: Closing Eyes (Prequel To The Last Day Series)

Splinter - 2

  Splinter was bored of the world.

  Nothing interesting ever happened, even with a friend of his being so top notch in the Pantalan Project. Splinter needed something interesting to happen, or he was going to explode.

    School was boring, aside from making some new friends, he supposed. Crab was totally in love with that SkyWing, and she was nice, but that little RainWing drove Splinter insane. Her older sister was distant and seemed to have no interest in talking to anyone.

   He wasn't looking for anyone to love, he had just been checking them out.

   Epiphyte declared that he would be coming to Splinter's house after school with a friend from the Pantalan team. They were burbling behind him about possible ideas on how to take back the continent as they swooped up to his treehouse in a small forest section of the city. Splinter unlocked the door and swept Epiphyte and his colleague, a NightWing named Beamcatcher, into his little home.

   "Oh wow, you have such nice plants in here!" Beamcatcher commented. She peered at a bush of hydrangeas growing in the corner.

   "Thank you," Splinter said. He opened the curtains for the plants, he could here them begging for the sun. Splinter grabbed a watering can and went outside to the central well and filled it. He fluttered back to his home where Epiphyte was turning on the lamp for the big glass tube of plants. Splinter smiled at him and the plants. Neither of them knew what all the plants in there were, but there were a few sundews and Venus flytraps and some other exotic plants. There was one interesting plant he didn't know what it was, its smelled weird and was red and green with little white flowers on its vines. Splinter thought it was beautiful, and it was his favorite plant in the whole tube. 

    "Ooh, I haven't seen that one before," Beamcatcher said, peering at the vines. "Would you mind if I took a sample?" She looked up at Splinter.

   "Oh.. not at all, just a small cutting though." Splinter said warily. He unscrewed the lid way on top and carefully untangle the plant from a stick and sliced off an piece with his claws. He  almost heard a voice from it as he pulled the piece away and handed it to the NightWing.

   This plant never spoke to him, and when Splinter tried to talk to it, it didn't respond. It only emitted a quiet hum. Splinter never thought much of this, it never really concerned him as many other plants didn't talk to him. Each plant was different, so maybe this one just wasn't as talkitive as others. 

   "Thank you," Beamcather said. She put it in a little bag around her neck and sat down to look around at more plants.

    "Do you think there were this many plants on Pantala at one point?" Epiphyte said. "I mean, you could probably repopulate the entire continent with your bedroom alone, Splinter," He grinned at Splinter.

   Splinter laughed. "Probably," He sighed and watched one of his sundews curl around a fly. "There were old stories I found in the library of the first LeafWings and BeetleWings that arrived at Pantala. There were huge forests for thousands of years before the Old Hives were built. Then for a long time there was the Poison Jungle before it burnt down."

    It was weird to think of Pantala as his ancestors' home. The concept of having parents apon parents going back tens of thousands of years- from now to way before the Scorching. He felt angry about how the HiveWings treated his ancestors- but also didn't, because the HiveWings were reborn almost entirely since there was an entire generation of uninfected HiveWings two hundred years ago. The LeafWings had forgiven the HiveWings as the living HiveWings at the time were too young to understand why the LeafWings and SilkWings are angry- and had't done anything horrible yet.