One Shot Challenge

Maybe one day

KikiDuzArt

Buttercup

Flower

Gift

Cheer up (that I turned into hurt/comfort)

Nickname

Wings of Fire (Canon divergence)

TW: harsh parents, child neglect, anxiety, panic attack

Sundew stood with her head down as her parents berated her outside the village's barrier.

"How could you do this?"

"Why did you bring a hivewing here?"

"Don't you understand how stupid that was? How stupid you are?"

Her pleas and protests fell on deaf ears. They always did. Her parents only pretend to hear her in front of the tribe.

Poisonwings.

For once she thought that to be true. It certainly wouldn't be the last time she thought that.

Her parents never raised her as a daughter. They raised her as a weapon. Betrothed her to someone for the sake of power. That was how the tribe worked.

And maybe, if she were inside the village, she would fight back, snap at her parents as she always did. But she was tired of fronting a confident personality. Her requests would always fall on deaf ears. Even though she was supposedly the leafwings' savior.

Poisonwings, their words dripping with two sided, hidden meanings.

Sundew had thought that was how everything worked. Always trying to search for hidden meanings in everyone's words. The insults they cover with sweet words, like a Venus Dragontrap's nectar.

Until she met a certain dragon. WHO SHE SHOULDN'T BE THINKING ABOUT IN FRONT OF HER PARENTS.

Kindness in her tribe. Or her half. Was far and few, nothing was meant to be taken at face value. Except maybe Mandrake.

"Sundew! Are you even listening to us?" Belladonna snapped.

"Yes mother."

Sundew still believed her parents loved her. In whatever twisted way they could. She always searched their words for something like, I'm not really mad at you, I just have to keep up an image. Or I love you, even though I yell at you daily, I'm just testing your resolve, and it's great.

Maybe that's why she liked taking long missions. To exist with only her thoughts yelling at her.

Maybe that's why she hated long missions, there was no one to tell her thoughts to go away when they got too loud.

She fronts a mean personality, someone tough who can and will kill, and rip to shreds. She can be that dragon, she is that dragon almost all the time.

Except in a meadow with a small pond that always reflects the moons, with a dragon who l- NO! Sundew can NOT think about that.

She can not think about the pouch that thumps against her chest as she walks back to the village after her parents are done with her.

Or about the jade frog in said pouch while trying to eat panther and cabybara jerky. She didn't want to dance with Mandrake, or smile at any congratulations that probably meant something more like I wish you hadn't come back.