Friends to Foes, Foes to Friends

Chapter 1

Winter dipped his claw in the ink pot and scribbled another note on his scroll. He looked back at the scavenger city down the hill.

How fascinating.

The sight was hypnotizing, scavengers were milling about the fields, some of them coming back and forth from their huts to their companions - it looked like they were tending to the plants. Winter could make out some fruits on the bushes.

Growing food - of course! They're omnivores, right? I wonder how good they are at preparing food.

But to find that out he'd have to get close, and that would be the problem. He has never reached closer to the town than that first time with his friends, and no scavenger, except for a rare few, would willingly stay close with a dragon. He himself has only managed to get close to scavengers after the Scavenger Safety Decree twice.

One was an outreach to a very small scavenger village in the mountains. It did not go smoothly - he landed outside the village in hopes of finding one to communicate with through signals and gestures, and then grow closer to the rest of the residents.

It did not go to plan.

One scavenger did spot him as he was landing, and immediately yelled out. The whole village started running as fast as they could to hide from him. He ended up chasing one down, which, alright, probably wasn't the best idea if you're trying to establish a relationship. The cornered scavenger curled up into a ball with Winter blocking its path of escape. Not knowing the best course of action, Winter just sat down and waited for the scavenger to calm down. It took a few hours for it to get out of its funk, where Winter finally started some semblance of communication. It took a further three days of gesturing and talon-waving with the villagers before he was able to "explain" that dragons are no longer eating humans.

The only other time he got close to a scavenger was only a few days ago. He was sitting in his usual observation spot, when a scavenger unknowingly came up behind him. They stared at each other for a few seconds. Winter waved, hoping a gesture like that would put it at ease, but the small being dropped everything it was carrying and fled back right where it came from. By the time Winter stepped up to follow the scavenger, it had disappeared from his sight already, and no amount of searching gave any more trace of its passage.

He shifted his attention back to the fascinating den, studying once again, like he always did when he came to study its inhabitants. To him, there was no question, this was the biggest scavenger town that must have existed on the continent, and, by extension, the most fascinating.

There were so many details to linger on too; everytime he looked, he found a new one. A house here, another one there, a pathway between two rocks, and so on; he could continue forever. Of course, it could only be so good from afar, witnessing all this activity first hand would be much more enlightening for his studies.

Everybody thought that after the decree, there would be some communication set up between scavenger dens and the dragon kingdoms, especially between the biggest dens. It wasn't that easy however; while smaller dens could be swayed via patience, the larger ones were still very hostile to dragons. Some small groups tried to communicate with scavengers by the largest cities - they were shot at by the creative weaponry of scavengers; there were even a few injuries.

After that was agreed upon to reach out to smaller ones first - the ones that couldn't fight back, in hopes of scavengers from the smaller settlements notifying the larger, more dangerous ones of dragons being friendly. In the meantime, observation in order to learn was ordered regarding the larger dens.

Shaking the thoughts from his head, Winter went back to watching the scavengers go about their lives. His sharp Icewing eyes could pick out gardeners, settlers, what he thought were soldiers, and... What was that?