Tales From the Void

Breezy

Breezy sat in her room, her husband standing in front of her with that horrible glare. Breezy hated that glare. It made her feel like she had done something wrong, or rather that she herself was wrong for existing.

"You do realize how crazy this is, right?" She said in a dark voice.

"Oh! So, I'm the crazy one!?" He burst out, making her wince, "I'm the crazy one for thinking we should let our child hatch in this hell hole!? Where the only thing to eat is his own family!? Forget it!"

"You don't understand! This family means everything to me! Leaving it means the end of everything!"

"No! Leaving this wretched place is exactly what will save us!"

He calmed for a second, his violet eyes settling and the air around him becoming less hostile. Breezy noted how the air around her husband changed slightly with his emotions. It impressed her at times, but terrified her at others. Could all dragons from the other side do that? It frightened her to think about it.

She remembered the first time she saw him. It had been towards the beginning of the famine, when Etherium was slowly running dry and cannibalism was becoming more of a realistic option for survival. He had fallen from a portal over the mountains, one of the last of that season, and nearly died from the impact of crashing in a ravine.

Breezy found him near the mountain's base, severely injured and deeply confused. He looked nothing like any of the dragons from the Void, at least none she'd ever seen. He claimed to be a Whirlwind Dragon, an amphipthere with wispy, sandy scales, a shallow beak, and four sturdy wings. Of course, she'd never actually seen that many. Her family kept strictly to the highest peaks of the mountains, a flock of aristocratic Air Rifts. It's that seclusion that had kept them safe from Cucoo for so long, and, even now, her family insisted they could wait out the raiders.

"I didn't have to take you in, you know." Breezy spat bitterly.

"Oh, you're using that line again? Like I should be grateful you let me into this family?"

"You should be! Mother would have been perfectly happy letting you die in that ditch, but I pulled you out of it and allowed you in our home! And, to thank me, you want me to leave it!? Everything I've ever known to go to some foreign world!?"

He gazed at her more calmly now. His pale violet eyes locked with hers.

"Breezy. Please."

She shivered, "Maybe it's not ideal, but things are good here."

"But they might not be for too much longer. Think about it, this is one of the last places the raiders haven't hit. Sooner or later they'll get brave enough to come here and then what? I know you love your family and how important they are to you, but you can't keep sitting here and pretending everything is ok!"

He nuzzled his mate, who was still shivering with fear.

"But, I'm afraid."

"I know. But, you don't have to be. I lived in that world for most of my life. It's a beautiful place full of life."

He placed a wing on her gravid belly. She was due to lay her egg any day now, and now more than ever, her husband was pushing for them to abandon the mountains and go to his world, the Dragon Universe she heard him call it.

"It'll be a disgrace to my family if I go. No one's ever done it before."

He blinked gently at her.

"Let's wait..." she said finally, "Just a little bit longer. Ok?"

He sighed, "Fine." Then drifted from the room.

Breezy sat there on her bed, her glowing wings wrapped around her body to keep from shivering any more. She was still getting used to this form. As beautiful as it was, it terrified her to think what it cost. She knew he was right, letting their child hatch her, grow up in this misery would be horrible, but at least she knew what to expect here. What was there for them on the other side? What if something went wrong? What if they really were better off here?