The CloudWings

23 - Waiting

Fourteen days. 

Lightbringer had sent the letter fourteen days ago. There was still no response. Nothing to tell her or the others that somehow the message had reached Cyclone. For all she knew, it could still be lying there in its seashell on the sand, vulnerable, where anyone could find it.

She envisioned claws snatching the letter, reading it, tearing it to pieces. CloudWing claws. Stratus's claws. She envisioned herself and her sisters being forced back to the CloudWing palace. She envisioned dragon blood splattering the clouds.

"It's okay. Cyclone will have gotten the letter by now," the others comforted. But there was still a possibility that she hadn't... and that she never would.

During the day, Lightbringer sat hunched in a corner of their tiny hut-prison, worrying, brooding, fretting. At night, nightmares of the letter falling into the wrong talons kept her awake and screaming.

Glade was the only one who was somehow comfortable, seeing as this was near her home and in her territory. Sandstorm would not cease her grumbling and complaints. Raindrop curled into a ball and gloomily stared down at the mud covering everyone's talons. Once in a while, they were told how long it would take for Stratus's CloudWings to arrive and transport them to CloudWing territory. No one but Glade ate the meager scraps of mud-caked crocodile they were given. Drizzle paced angrily around the hut, her fiery scales threatening to set all the dragons on fire. "There has to be a way," she muttered to herself. "A way to get out. A way to be free."

Lightbringer had given up. There was no use in trying to get help. They were all as good as dead. Cyclone, for sure, had not found the letter, or else she would be here by now. In a few days, Stratus would arrive and kill them, or take them to the CloudWing palace and torture them, then kill them. They would make the perfect example as to the punishment of not obeying Stratus's orders. She buried her snout in her talons.

Suddenly a voice shouted "Listen, everyone!", startling Lightbringer into leaping to her feet. Drizzle was standing before them all, her wings bristling, her scales glowing like molten lava as it spills from a volcano. "Are you all seriously giving up now? When Cyclone has gotten the message and is coming out to help us?"

"How do you know she has the message?" Sandstorm moaned weakly, clutching her horns. "Even if she does, we'll all starve before she comes to save us."

"Even if she doesn't, we must have hope that she will," Drizzle continued, ignoring Sandstorm's second comment. "What's the worst case, we all die? That's not even that bad!" She noticed Raindrop's horrified face and quickly added, "Considering we fought against Stratus our whole lives."

"We've got to get out of here!" Drizzle shouted, storming around the room. "We've got to find a way to escape! Every minute that we're stuck here doing nothing, Mist is in pain. Do you want her to die in agony?"

A few weak "no"s drooped out of her sisters' mouths.

"That's right! NO! We can't let Mist suffer. We were the first ones here on Pyrrhia. We are the queens of our tribes. You all don't want to die like this, helpless, hopeless and weak, right? And Mist deserves a chance. She was never a fighter, but she always manages to survive. She will survive now. She doesn't deserve to be killed by such a vile dragon as Stratus."

"For Mist!" Glade yelled around a mouthful of crocodile. Her sisters joined in, shouting and chanting. The firelight of hope and determination was once more ignited within Lightbringer, and she too tossed aside her worrying and misery. If there was one thing that could unite them despite their differences, it was that Mist was in danger.

Although no one could hear it, the next days the hut was filled with the sounds of a plan, an escape plan, clawing its way out of its cracked eggshell.