Sky City Chronicles

Epilog

Epilog

          Once Ember and I got back to Ironscale’s school, it was a quick thing to find a room and close the door, not having any plans of leaving it anytime soon anyway.  For the next hour or two she and I loved one another like we had been apart forever, and needless to say, the only thing Ironscale had to do to know not to enter, was listen through the door.

          Four years after Igneous’ fall, Ember and I had built a home not too far from the forest that held Ironscale’s school, settling down on the edge of the river and putting together a small farm.  Ember bore my son and daughter not too long after that, her pride in giving me two children far outweighing my beginning father’s nerves.  Little Rosa Swiftwing was a bright red in color, though slightly more pink in tone than my scales, with a white band down her back and across the leading edges of her wings.  Her belly scales shined lavender in any light, but positively glowed in the setting sun rays when she and I would take evening walks to clear the air over a problem she and I might have.  We named her younger brother Quicksilver, because his scales shined silver like liquid mercury under the light of the noon sun.  His face was cut into sections by black stripes arching up and over the back of his head, two going under his eyes and one straight down his spine.  Quicksilver may have been a sight to behold, but unlike his sister, he had to almost be forced to do anything new, and we had to practically drag him into his first flight.  To change the subject, Ember turned out to be a wonderful cook as we lived together, trying just about anything in her search for the perfect dish, though sometimes we were the brunt of disastrous failures.  Rosa, Quicksilver and I endured several attempts that tasted worse than the rear of a horse, but in doing so had the delight of tasting some of the best food this side of Sky City.

          Dragons all over the country had broken free of the Bloodbane in mass numbers, the magic holding it to them disappearing with Igneous’ death.  After four years of peace, Sky City was again the metropolis it had once been, all traces of fighting wiped clean in the efforts to rebuild it.  Ironscale had promised to teach both Quicksilver and Rosa the secrets of the Sages if they wanted, and Rosa turned out to be a natural learner once she discovered the possibilities of magic.  Quicksilver had a natural talent as well, but like all things related to him, he had to be coaxed into trying new things slowly, scared of any form of failure.  Ember took to it a bit more slowly, once she upped the courage to try learning as her children were, but given she had bad experiences with the stuff I couldn’t blame her for her misgivings.  One thing both she and I forbade Rosa and Quicksilver from learning was combat magic, and Ironscale agreed with our wishes and hid all scrolls and books containing the stuff away in forgotten niches and unused rooms.

          Over the coming decades Drekinia recovered from the horrible acts of Igneous and his enslaved dragons, trade booming between us and other neighbors, along with a new higher learning school being built in Sky City for all dragons to use if they wished to do so.  Rosa went on to be a chief engineer in building new sky-scraping towers and stronger bridges, while her brother became a world-class musician of all things.  Ember and I lived out our golden years on the same small farm she and I had built, enjoying the peace and quiet of country life once the kids left.  Every once and a while we would ask ourselves if things could have come out different, but every time she and I agreed that some way, somehow, it would have still come out right in the end.  We spent the rest of our lives in the same spot, getting visits from Rosa and her mate Talon Aircutter, along with the grandkids in times a few years after they met.  Quicksilver never took a mate, far too afraid to ask a dragoness the big questions and too busy with his work besides.  Rosa acted as the middle dragon to keep us all in touch, and Quicksilver came by every once and a while to catch up, spending a night or two and then disappearing again.  Things never got very dull in between times though.  Once, during one of Rosa’s visits, her oldest son, Swift, asked me what it had been like after Ember and I had met.

          I looked at him and said, “It was like she and I had been built to be together, and no matter what, we were destined to free the dragons under Igneous’ control.”  I looked into Ember’s eyes and smiled, kissing her lightly as the little ones tumbled out of the room, chasing dreams and living the lives that we could only dream we could have had at that age.  Our hearts may have been filled with longing for what we could not have, but we rejoiced in the knowledge that our legacy would be filled with happy memories thanks to all of our hardships.