Wings of Fire; The Sinking Continent

Cliffwing - 3

Accompanied by a startled shout, glass shattered, little white pieces scattering all across the cave floor. All fell silent for a moment, then disgruntled and angry roaring ensued.

Mesa sighed inwardly. Two more years until I can move out, she thought. Rolling her scrolls closed and getting up from her desk, she strode over to the door and peered out of her room. Quartz and Gabbro were tussling on the ground, locked in a painful-looking fistfight. Her brother appeared to be winning, , but had a thin trail of blood running down the side of his head. Picking her way across the glass-strewn cave, Mesa grabbed Quartz by the shoulders and wrenched him away from Gabbro, releasing him to help her brother stand up. "What are you rock-heads doing?" She questioned incredulously.

Gabbro hissed, glaring over Mesa's head at the paler gray Cliffwing. "Your crazy boyfriend threw a plate at me!" He pointed an accusatory claw at Quartz.

"He attacked me first!!"

"Did not!"

"It is the middle of the night!" Mesa growled, spreading her wings to block their view of each other. "Quartz, that was your last warning; get out. Gabbro, go back to your room and clean the blood off your head."

Her brother grinned with satisfaction as Quartz turned and stalked out of the cave, his wings hunched. "Never gets old watching them walk away for the last time," he mused smugly.

"What is that, the tenth one?" Rattlesnake asked, walking in after Quartz had left.

"Eleventh," Gabbro smiled.

Mesa sighed, turning to return to her room.

"Aww, don't get mad! It's not our fault you're pretty but have the personality of a vampire bat."

She whacked him with her tail. "Where were you when they were fighting?" She questioned, glancing over at Rattlesnake. "I was studying!"

"I was just coming back from a meeting with Father and Queen Ravine." He started to move across the room to his quarters when he stopped, as if remembering something. "The Rootwing messenger was also there- Puddle, was it?" He held out a sealed scroll to Mesa.

"Ripple," she corrected him, taking the roll of parchment. "Why didn't he just come straight here? He knows he's welcome."

Rattlesnake shrugged. "He had something for Ravine as well." Nodding to the scroll, he explained "That's for Queen Velvet- he didn't feel safe flying through the Wind Kingdom, so he got permission for the message to go through you instead."

"Thanks, Ripple, for making me fly across the entire continent for this," Mesa muttered sarcastically. "I'll leave in the morning."

"Actually, make that sunhigh. Father wants to send you off."

"Will he not be back tonight?" Gabbro wondered, tilting his head.

"No, he's busy trying to interrogate the Sunwing prisoner," Rattlesnake hummed.

"Delightful." Mesa pivoted on her heels, stalking silently back to her room and pushing the door closed with a harsh nudge from her tail.

"Say hi to Father for me when you see him!" Gabbro called after her.

Despite being near-fatally wounded in battle, her father, Basalt, was still just as active in his role of commander as he was before. An excellent parent to her and her brothers, but his job left him little time for them. It didn't matter that much; they were all adults, and she and Rattlesnake had important jobs too, but she knew Gabbro missed their hunting trips.

Mesa placed the message scroll on her desk. She stared down at the one she'd been writing in, ultimately deciding she could finish it another day, and leaving it saying with the others. Casting her cowhide blanket to the side and blowing out the candles that lit her room, she curled up on the slab of stone she called a bed and closed her eyes, wishing for the fog of sleep to fall over her mind.