Freezing Wings

Chapter 23

As soon as the boulder rolled into place Jordan's face went somber, a question filling her blue eyes.

She immediately turned to the workstation, walking over to a half-done sculpture of a snowflake. "What color do you think is the best for this? I think sky blue would look good but I'm stuck between that and white. What's your opinion?"

I walked up next to her, sitting down next to the desk as she sat down, picking up a chisel, "I would usually say blue, but for this one, white would be best to me. This is your sculpture though, if you want to do blue, do blue."

She glanced over at me, her small face scrunching up into a disgruntled expression. "You're no help."

I smiled at her adorable expression, "This is your sculpture after all, it's not my place to tell you what to put on it. You can make the decision, you certainly have done before," I gestured at the finished sculptures in the corner, "So just do it again."

After a few more seconds of giving me the stink eye, Jordan sighed, picking up a blue sapphire and biting down. She crunched it down into a powder and inhaled, coalescing a fog in her mouth before flaming on the sculpture. After creating a blob of blue ice in the right shape she closed her mouth, lodging a glowing white stone into the ice. 

The ice fogged, a frost spreading on the stone desk. Jordan worked fast, her originally neutral face scrunching up in concentration. I watched on from the side, letting her do her thing. 

Jordan was nine months old, and had a mentality of a ten year old. We mentally matured much faster as dragons than humans. After three months, we had already reached four years old mentally, and at a year and a half, the mentality of a twenty plus year old was heavily ingrained in our minds. 

When we hatched, most of the time we were only five feet tall. The ones of us hatched in the facility were most likely injected with something to grow bigger than naturally, because we came out at around eight feet but our young were only five. Once we hit about a year and a half, we hit a major growth spurt that would add four plus feet, but didn't stop growing then. So far, there didn't seem to be any end to when we physically grew. 

I had been nine feet tall and a thousand plus pounds in the facility. Now, seven years later, I was over twenty two feet and well over ten thousand pounds. Jordan came out of the egg only five feet tall and less than four hundred pounds as a newborn. Now, she was about eight feet tall and about one thousand and five hundred pounds. 

It had taken me five months of stuffing myself like a pig and training myself to get back to how I had been before the fall. My scales had regained their originally inky black color and shiny luster. After I actually started taking care of myself, I grew from the runt of the litter to one of the tallest and strongest lizards in the group. 

Almost all of the older dragons were runts compared to me, excluding a few giants that topped twenty five feet. Lucas was still a head taller than me, but other than that, I was taller than almost everyone else. Considering the fact that when I was human, I barely four foot seven on a good day, this was a major upgrade.

Jordan sat at her workstation and chiseled away at the ice blob she had made, eventually carving it into the shape of a snow dune with paw prints marring the pale blue ice. I mostly just sat there and looked on, letting her do how she pleased. Her parents said that she acted out with others, but I had never seen any behavior that even hinted at any sort of trouble. 

She would just be excited at the beginning then calm down after her parents left, then go out on her own and work quietly. I looked back to how it was just five months prior. At that point, she still had the mentality of a five year old, and was hyperactively excited to see me. Now, after the initial hug, she just left me alone. She didn't even ask about the present I brought her this time. I could feel an imaginary tear run down my face. 'They grow up so fast....I feel old...'

A heavy sigh blew a ring in the perpetually fogged air, and I stood up, bringing in the basket I had brought. I walked over and picked up a bowl from where Sarah said they were and after making sure Jordan wasn't paying attention I slipped out for a moment, going down to the stream, washing it off, and getting back into the cave in less than fifteen seconds.

Before she noticed, I picked up the slate that Sarah had already prepared, and crushed it into bite-sized stones that could easily be eaten. Along with the slate, there were pieces of the sapphire and ruby I had brought mixed in as well. 

I set down the bowl on the edge of the desk, far enough so she wouldn't bump it over, but close enough she could see it out the corner of her eye. 

Jordan glanced at it, still engrossed in her work. After she finished with the snow landscape, she was attaching them together, one of the more delicate parts of the process. She had a pile of diamonds next to her, that she was crushing up and turning to ice, creating a clear bar that attached the snowflake to the ice.

A cloud of fog covered the desk and spilled over as she went through the complex process of producing enough frost to cover and secure the sculpture, but not enough to show up or change the original color. It was a skill, and was one that was both needed and extremely difficult to learn. It had taken me two years before I could do it with any sort of confidence, and even then, four years later, I still messed up occasionally. 

She worked slowly, going over every inch with an upmost amount of care. I sat on one of the pelts on the floor, watching as quietly as possible. 

*

[The author needs a bit of help T-T.

Although this is a fanfiction, it cannot and will not follow the same plot as the original, since it really wouldn't work considering the difference between the dragonets and the dragons. No Kymari would house a predator twice their size in a cage in their living room, even if their house was big enough to hold them - which is sorta my problem. 

I know how I want to progress the story for the short term, but have absolutely no idea what to do for the long term. I have an idea for what the endgame of this story will be, and I've already finished the beginning (The prologue to now) but I don't have the meat of the story, the part in the middle.  I need a plotline. 

The conflict of the story is still undecided, and I'm drawing a blank on ideas. I would be extremely grateful if ya'll flung some ideas at my head so I can munch on some plot lines and hammer out a pre-set timeline for what to do next (this may change at any moment). 

Pretty much what I'm saying: Please, please, please, put what you would like for Sasha to do next, and what you would like the story to be about, in the comments so that I can continue this off of your preferences, or at least continue a variation of your ideas. This would help me tremendously, and you, the reader, would have a hand in this story, which I think is pretty cool. Thank you for reading this little call for help, and I hope you have a great day >.>]