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

Beige - 8

    Beige was born in the SandWing Stronghold. Mother and Father were simple servants and his older sisters, Adobe and Sting were training to become chefs and teachers. Beige was very young, and he still remembers sneaking to the kitchen to grab a glass of camel milk one night.

    "I'm not sure," Mother's voice said quietly. His parents were in the small living room with one of the two windows in their small palace apartment. The other window was in his parent's bedroom, but he preferred the window in the living room so he could watch little desert birds nest in the old palm tree outside.

   "It might be better for the dragonets though, Mouse," said Father's voice. Beige put his glass of milk down as silent as he could to try and avoid the clink. He tip-toed over to the corner and peeked around it at his parents. 

    His mother, named Mouse, was a pretty dragon with pale grayish-brown scales with faint darker brown stripes on her tail. Father, who was named Bleached, after bones and wood after being in the desert for many years, was very pale gold, nearly white. His sail was a true white, and present Beige compared it to even whiter than Crevasse's snowy scales.

   "Only Beige is a dragonet. We can't send him alone, and the other two are too busy learning how to cook and teach. They can't go with him." Mother said softly. She looked down at the tiny wooden dragon carvings on the coffee table, and a tiny gold hoop in her ear caught the candlelight.

    "I know," Father rested a pale talon on her shoulder. "But we don't have enough to continue raising three dragonets. And I know we both want to have more, but if Glass keeps cutting our income, we won't be able to afford it."

    Beige recognized the name Glass well. His parents could talk for hours and hours about him. He was one of Queen Elf Owl's advisors and was in charge of his parent's group of servants. He didn't pay them well. The queen gave each servant advisor an allowance specifically to pay their servants with. He gave every servant a very small amount, and he put the rest of it into "bonuses and raises and emergency pay if the RainWings attack"

    "This is annoying," Mother growls, her tail flicking. "Hopefully Sting will become a good chef. She'll bring in a lot of money."

     "Maybe," Father said. "But she's going to want to save money, so she can move out when she's old enough."

     "Yes, but I hope she realizes that we really need the money. We're lucky the school in the Stronghold is free, or Beige wouldn't be able to go to school next year." Mother said. Beige stuck his tongue out at the word school, and pulled himself away from the corner and finished his drink before going to bed.

    Beige was eight years old when Mother announced that there were going to be new talons in the house. At first, no one suspected that there were going to be twins instead of just one dragonet. Mother's belly where the egg was forming was larger than other pregnant mother dragons, Beige knew that because he work a small job at the nursery, where some royal or noble eggs or the teeniest of dragonets were kept. All mothers who were expecting went here and most dragons laid their eggs in the safety in the nursery.

    He remembered Mother bringing home an enormous speckled egg one day, and Father racing to the door to help her with their unhatched dragonets.

    When Beige was almost nine, Sting moved out and contributed a small amount of her earnings to her parents.  With the rest, she could live comfortably in a small apartment that looked over a different court yard than his parents. Adobe still lived at home, and seemed happy to give a good chunk of her pay to her parents, especially when there were two twins on the way.