OC Oneshots

28

OC: Indigo (she/her)
Species: Dragon (RainWing)
Universe: Wings of Fire

I think her name was Songweaver.

She was the guard in the morning shift of my cave. She refused to talk to me at first, but I managed to convince her to take off my muzzle after a while. I found her to be quite chatty.

She liked poetry and theater. She wasn't able to act herself because of the conditions of the island, but she had always had a liking for the dramatic. She hadn't wanted to spend her time guarding some RainWing who the guards seemed to take more interest in than the others, she'd wanted to sit in a study and write.

She was waiting for the NightWings to attack the rainforest so she could be in a study with clean air. She told me that, and I promised her she could come back with me if they ever let me go. I hadn't known what it meant to be “attacked.” She'd seemed amused at that statement.

That day, that horrible day that I would regret for the rest of my life, started more or less normally - or, as normally as it could get on this island. A few NightWings came to my cave to pick me up for a session with Mastermind.

It was more painful than most.

Songweaver made the mistake of trusting me enough not to put on the particular restraints, the ones they had forced me to enchant to stop my own magic. Or maybe she just forgot - it was hard to tell, because she acted so natural about it.

My fear and my pain clouded my mind. That's what happens when you're in a situation like that one. You start to forget who you are. You're not an individual. You're just another RainWing to be poked and prodded and studied. A lab rat.

It was the end of Songweaver’s shift. Lunchtime. She came into my cave to bring fruit to eat. She sometimes snuck me fruit, because she knew I couldn't eat the rotting corpses they tried to feed us.

I acted on instinct. I didn't want to bear this anymore. Why did I have to be the one in a cave while Mango and Cacao and all the others - moons, I barely remembered what they looked like - pranced around in the rainforest, carefree?

I should have been with them. Songweaver may have treated me like a dragon, but she did not stop the other NightWings when they came for my venom and my magic, she did not tell them that all RainWings were vegetarian, she did not step forward when more prisoners were brought in.

My claws acted before my mind could. I had no physical advantage, but I had the element of surprise.

And then I took her identity, because that was what they did to me.

I took her name.

I took her memories.

I took her scales.

That day, I killed Songweaver and replaced her with something else. Something that could offer me some relief, while also suffering for the crimes of her tribe.

I think that was when the first threads of insanity started to take hold on my mind.