Snowfox was dreaming.
She was walking through tunnels and tunnels of shimmering pale blue ice. She guessed she was in an underground cave of some sort. All of a sudden she heard a high, ear-piercing shriek - Snowflake! She raced through the tunnels, left, right, straight ahead, right again, straight, left - but the screaming wasn't getting any closer. Still she raced on, determined to get to Snowflake and help her.
Wait - were the walls closing in on her? They definitely were - Snowfox could feel them pressing in on her shoulders, trapping her wings. She soon found herself facing a dead end, a wall of ice that reflected her worried face. She pushed against it, expecting no results, but the wall cracked and she fell through, not onto solid ground, but into open air. She was falling, falling, falling. She flapped her wings to slow her descent but when she looked her left wing was ablaze, flames stretching all across it. She screamed, and suddenly the air was screaming, and she landed in a pile of snow. The fire on her wing had gone out, leaving no trace of it ever being alight.
She looked around and saw a dragon with silvery-white scales and a charred left wing quietly sobbing with her back to her. She walked over.
"Snowflake?" she said softly. "There's no need to cry. We'll get the dragons who did this to you, I promise."
But the dragon turned around, and its face was not Snowflake's, but a weird, twisted face - one side of it was Foeslayer's, and the other was Arctic's, but all the same it looked like Queen Diamond as well. The horrible face started screaming, a strange sound that no normal dragon could make. Fox lunged at it, swiping her claws -
"Snowfox. Snowfox. Snowfox!"
Snowfox looked up. A tall male dragon with silvery patterns across his wings was shaking her. She blinked up at him with sleepy eyes.
"You were screaming," he said. "Something about a snowflake, or something. And then you started clawing at me. Is there anything wrong?"
Snowfox jumped out of her ice bed. "Nothing is bothering me, father," she said, bowing. "Bad dream, that was all."
"What was it about?"
"You don't want to know what I think about," Fox replied smoothly. The last thing she wanted was for her father to know all her troubles and worries - especially her strange, strange feelings for Snowflake.
Fox's father, Prince Wolverine, had been a kind figure to her over her dragonethood, but he had always been sligthly distant. He had been good to her, and she loved him, but he had never been a part of her personal life, and she wasn't bothered by that. She prefered to keep it that way, actually.
Both Fox's mother and Arctic's father had been killed by a strange plague that had swept the palace while Fox and her cousin were both in their eggs, so they had never known them. The closest thing Fox had to an actual parent was probably her weapons trainer, and Arctic had killed him mercilessly while betraying the entire IceWing tribe.
"I was sent to wake you by the queen," Wolverine said. "You must pack your things. We're leaving at midday."
"Midday?" Fox asked, shocked. "Today? Why?"
Wolverine looked surprised at this question. Fox could guess what he was thinking - "My daughter just questioned me? Why would she do that? She's a rank below me - she knows that, right?"
"It's the queen's orders," Wolverine replied, still looking bewildered.
"Yes, but why today?" Fox pressed. "Couldn't we stay at the castle for a few more days?"
Wolverine shifted uncomfortably. He was probably not sure if he should stop Fox's disrespectful and persistent question-asking because he was ranked above her, or answer her anyway because she was his daughter.
YOU ARE READING
The Snowstorm Inside
FanfictionEver since the dramatic departure of her cousin Arctic and Foeslayer, Princess Snowfox has been feeling strange. She stays up all night and spends all day thinking about her injured best friend, Snowflake. Is it happiness? Is it sadness? Or is she i...