Qsmp And tntduo stuff thats on ao3

these bones never rested

Now

            The wind was as sharp as his dragon’s teeth today. It sliced at his cheeks, roared in his ears, and sparked mild pain wherever it found bare skin. If they weren’t in the middle of a war, Wilbur would’ve elected to pass on flying today, but as it turns out, it didn’t matter what his thoughts on the current weather were like. Messages and orders had to be delivered, and it was his job to do so without any complaint.

            It helped that he had the fastest dragon. Out of all others fighting in this war, Tallulah was by far the quickest out of the rest of them. Her size made her agile in the air, a hard target to hit by anyone who wielded aimed weapons on the ground.

            But the Nubarrón Army wasn’t aiming for her anyway. It was against the rules of war to shoot an envoy, and those were mainly the missions that Wilbur and Tallulah were assigned. They knew that with Tallulah’s size, she wouldn’t do well in battle, so they sent her to deliver messages to the opposing side. It was a necessary job, and Wilbur’s superiors weren’t wrong in assuming that Tallulah was best designed for this because she was.

            Wilbur longed for battle, though. He yearned to fight for his country’s cause. He wanted to sacrifice as much as his fellow brother-in-arms. He was a dragonrider for fuck’s sake. Protecting his nation was what he was born for. It was his destiny to fight on the front lines with his dragon beneath him, to be swept up in battle and blood and fire, but the only thing he had done so far since training had officially concluded was run messages back and forth like some pigeon.

            We’re almost there, he heard in his mind, a tiny, sweet voice whispering through the bond, and he knew that it was Tallulah trying to console him, trying to check in with him, to pull him from whatever spiral he was slipping down.

            He tried not to feel too guilty about where his thoughts had headed, but it wasn’t like this was the first time Tallulah had caught him wishing for something more. While he wanted to fight and die for a cause that he believed in, Tallulah was happy staying as far out of the fray as possible. She was a timid creature, spooked by battle as unusual as that was for a dragon, but Wilbur truly loved her all the same. She was an integral part of him, and he wouldn’t trade her for any number of battles or bloodshed.

            It’s colder than normal today, isn’t it? He asked her through the bond, trying to get his mind and hers off of what he had once been so focused on. I feel like I might freeze to death if we don’t get there soon.

            You’re being dramatic, Tallulah scorned, and he could practically hear the scoff in her voice. She was too much like him sometimes, but Wilbur supposed he had no one to blame for that but himself. The only time when their opinions differed was when it came to the war they were both in the middle of and what their roles in said war were.

            If he was truthful, Wilbur never anticipated that this is where he would find himself and his dragon. When he first learned what the Rider Mark on his wrist meant—back when he was very little—he had dreamed about all the things that he and his dragon would get up. He thought about the adventures they would have, the life of splendor they would live. Back in those simpler days, he never even thought to imagine they’d be in the middle of a war. He never would’ve had the imagery to envision what they might look like. In his young mind, the only thing that he and his dragon would have to do was help the Royal Family build and grow, defend the Island they all lived on if it came down to it, but his imagination only conjured glory and gold.

            As time passed, as the that was placed in his care hatched, as he raised the dragon that crawled out of it, as he named her Tallulah and nurtured the bond that began to grow between them, Wilbur slowly began to realize that reality was a lot grimmer than a little boy’s dreams.