Double Rainbow

Torch-2

It's very cold and dark. I ruffle up the fur around my neck, trying to light it on fire as I usually do, being a Burn Canira, and I manage to get it sparking. In the dim firelight, I see a small golden, glittering figure. I walk over to it.

"Hello." I say.

"Uh... hello..." It says, "I'm Cherry Blossom."

I get a good look at her. She's a pegasus, a small one obviously. I only know about them because one of the Canis who let us stay the night had a picture scroll of every well-known species that lives on Dreamland. It was about 300 paw-lengths, with one species per page. That's because they grouped all the Canira together, otherwise the scroll might've taken up the whole house. I feel a pain of loneliness as I think about my adventures with Gash. We stayed up all night there, pretending to be Whirlwings (huge, beautiful bird-dragon hybrids) and pegasi.

"Hello?" The pegasus stares at me.

"Wha- what?" I say.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Torch. I'm a Burn Canira."

"A Burn what?"

"Oh, never mind." I look at her. Her hair is damp and matted, but also... sparkly. I stare at her for a while. "Why is your hair shiny?"

"The Obsidians gave me this stuff to put in it." She holds up a bottle. "They call it... glitter glue. Strange, we never had it back at home."

I feel like I've seen it before, but I can't place it. "So... what is this place?"

"I have no idea. They just abducted me and I've been waiting here ever since."

An Obsidian comes and opens the door to one cage, barely visible against the black of the room. The small dragon inside attempts to run away, and the Obsidian pounces on it. A scream reverberates across the room.

The Obsidian notices me. I fluff out my fur and the flame goes out, leaving us in darkness. Cherry Blossom and I stay together, whispering to each other. We try to preserve body heat, desperate and cold. She tells me of her people- she lives in a world mainly inhabited by equestrians. There are not many other species, and no Canira.

"Everyone has a purpose there." she explains to me. "Everyone has a special talent that we all use for good."

"What's your talent?"

"I don't know yet. Everyone else my age has one, but..."

"Well, what are you good at?"

"I can see things. Special things, like dimensions."

"Well, that's a talent. It's a great one!"

"Not really. It's more like a curse. I was trying out my powers, and I opened a hole between worlds. I jumped through it and ended up here. I miss my mom, and my house, and the food, and..."

She cries and buries herself into my fur. A few minutes later, another Obsidian walks into the room. I crouch down, scared, but it walks straight to our cage and opens the lock. "Walk right ahead. Any resistance and we kill you." snarls a feminine voice.

I decide not to question her. We walk down hallways until eventually we get to a small silver room. She pushes me inside and continues on with Cherry Blossom. "Cherry..." I whisper, but no one can hear.

A Obsidian in the form of a huge zebra with shark fins, teeth, and tail stands there.It's eyes are black and empty, like the others, and it's breath reeks of dead things. I shy away, trying to cover my nose. It leans down and nudges me on to a board. It clicks a few buttons and a huge syringe comes down and takes a blood sample. Next, another comes down and injects me with green liquid. My vision begins to blur. I hear a sort of odd, screeching sound and slowly everything begins to melt, but two Canira stand at the edge of my vision, a blue one with a golden trident on his head, and a pink and blue one with wings and a beautiful horn. Everything returns to normal.

The Obsidian looks angry. It smashes a control on the floor, and breaks a few levers between it's teeth. It walks over to me, angry, and changes to a Burn Canira, probably to mock me. It scratches three scars across my flank, and I scream in agony. Then, it puts a collar around my neck and fastens it on until I can barely breathe.

It carries me by the collar, the edges of it's teeth digging into my skin, until we reach another dark room. It throws me in a cage and walks away. This room is much worse than the other. It smells like decay, death, and rotting flesh. I shudder, and my cage, which is suspended by rusty wire, bangs into the cage next to me. "Watch it." rasps a voice.

"I'm sorry, whoever you are, but I'm just really really scared and I-"

"Well, welcome to the Deathpit. You've been designated as not helpful to mutate and so you're going to die here."

I begin to cry. I hear a small voice beside me. "Torch?"

"Cherry!" My cage clangs against her with a metal sound.

"Cherry, we're going to die here..."

"No... no... we can't..."

It seems like we will, for a while. Two days pass and things begin to blur around me, my fur to be full of sweat to the point where it's drenched and then suddenly dry. I know for sure that I'm going to die here alone, with no family and only one friend. Well, maybe two. Cherry Blossom qualifies, for sure.

Then, late at what I assume to be night, because it's darker and most of the machines are shut down, I hear someone... or something... come into the room. That's strange, they haven't brought in any prisoners at night yet. Then again...

It flicks the lights, and I see that its a male Obsidian, in the shape of a leopard. He looks somewhat different from the others- there's some type of thoughtful consideration in his eyes. I notice he's holding something in his mouth. He walks over to our cage and lays down a small steak and a bundle of oats. Cherry Blossom opens her eyes to look at him, drowsily.

He puts one claw to his mouth, as if to shush us. We understand perfectly- we are not to talk about him, not to the other prisoners and especially not to the Obsidians. He walks away, but turns back before turning off the lights, and I notice something strange. He has amber eyes.