"Sunny? Sunny, where are you?"
Starflight stumbled out onto the bridge outside the treehouse, listening intently for Sunny's clawsteps. Instead he heard her wingbeats fading to the north, the sound muffled by the humid air. Uncertainly he ran along the bridge, keeping his wings out and brushing the ropes, until he reached the platform at the end. He almost took a running leap off the edge, before stopping himself. There was no way he could catch up to herself when he couldn't see and barely knew the rainforest's layout. He'd be more likely to hurt or kill himself flying into a tree.
Frustration welled up inside him. He'd always hated the darkness that enveloped him, ever since it first swallowed his world back on the Nightwing island when the volcano erupted. His last visible memory would forever be of Morrowseer, smiling smugly down at them after having claimed the prophecy was false. He remembered Sunny's cry, her flight through the tunnel—the last time he would see her beautiful golden scales—before the bright blast of the volcano flooded his eyes and took his vision for good.
Now the blindness kept him from going to comfort the one dragon he'd ever loved. Still loved to some extent, if he was perfectly honest with himself. Sunny may not have lost her eyesight, but she still lost something just as vital to her: the prophecy, the prophecy she believed in when no one else did. And in her time of pain, Starflight was powerless to help her.
"Starflight!"
Except...
"Fatespeaker." Starflight felt the Nightwing brush against his side. "We have to follow Sunny," he said, pointing his snout in the last direction he'd heard her wingbeats.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm not going to abandon my friend now," he said, reaching a claw out for Fatespeaker. "She's your friend too, Fatespeaker. We can't just let her go."
"But how...I can't see her anymore. Where'd she go?"
"Last I heard she sounded like she was heading north. Just guide me in that direction and...we'll..."
We'll what? Starflight didn't know. Sunny could be anywhere by now, all because he couldn't see where she'd gone. He was tempted to rip the blindfold off his head and shred it to pieces, pointless as that would be. Tamarin may have made peace with a life without sight, but Starflight didn't think he would ever get used to it, not in the foreseeable future.
"Wait," said Fatespeaker, "there's Thorn! She's going after Sunny too. I'm going to go with her, just keep close."
They took off into the sky, their wingbeats matching each other as Starflight stayed within touching range. Besides his own and Fatespeaker's, he heard the heavy wingbeats of another dragon approaching from in front of them. Starflight guessed it was Thorn, and his suspicions were confirmed when her voice came from the right.
"Are you going after Sunny too?"
"Yes," said Fatespeaker.
There was a moment for silence, before Thorn said, "I don't know if it will help much, but you're welcome to tag along."
They flew for an interminable stretch of time—in his distress Starflight couldn't tell whether minutes or hours had passed. Finally Fatespeaker told him to prepare for landing, and they landed on the soft dirt of the forest floor. Starflight couldn't hear the village behind him anymore, only the swish of wind through the treetops and the nightly chorus of crickets and frogs.
"I see her straight ahead," Fatespeaker whispered, "hiding under the roots of a large tree. She...doesn't look so good."
"I'll go first," said Starflight, then walked forward before either Fatespeaker or Thorn could stop him. The soft dirt muffled his clawsteps, punctuated only by the rustling of vegetation he brushed past.
