Always - Moonbli

15. Slaves and Firescales

Moonwatcher

Morning dawned, bright and cheerful. 

Unlike Moon's mood, which definitely wasn't helped by Winter grumbling about the quality of everything from the mattress to the birdsong outside. 

Finally, Qibli snapped and told Winter exactly what was on his mind - no filters. 

Needless to say, Winter wasn't impressed. 

Last night, they'd filled the IceWings in on everything that had happened. Too late, Qibli had realised that he hadn't asked Eagle about the intruder, but they'd found the cousins safe and sound in their room.

 The dragonets had stayed up late discussing plans for breaking the captive NightWings out of prison, but no one had come up with any good ideas, unless you counted the one where Kinkajou offered to go commando with pineapples and knock out the guards long enough for the dragonets to escape with the black dragons. 

Turtle had considered the idea of enchanting a guard to somehow distract the rest so they could free the prisoners, but he was immediately shut down by the rest - they preferred to keep Turtle sane, thank you very much. 

Nightfrost had toyed with the idea of disguising as a guard, but Moon had demurred, saying that it was too risky. Qibli had volunteered to pretend to help as a guard, but again, Moon had objected - she figured that seeing that Nightmare was probably going to kill them off, the princess definitely wouldn't give them guard duty. 

That would be like giving a hungry MudWing a bunch of chickens and telling him not to eat them, according to Kinkajou, who agreed with her (Moon took this as a subtle implication of Clay - Peril probably wouldn't approve of this analogy). 

Winter had just sat there commenting on the dreadful state of his usually sparkling scales and driving everyone crazy. Finally, they'd retired to bed, giving up on any hope that one of them might have a late-night brainwave. 

And Moon - and everyone else, judging by the amount of grumbling in the room - had woken up on the wrong side of bed. 'Guys! Why don't we eat something? We can think better on a full stomach!' proposed Kinkajou finally, clearly tired of being the only dragon not complaining with some choice words about the state of their lives. 

Most of them declined, though Turtle eagerly perked up when the word 'eat' was mentioned. So, the next few minutes, the only sound was Turtle demolishing a sea crustacean. Moon got up and paced, just to have something to do. 

Her mind was buzzing with nervous energy. Eagle hadn't come yet to collect them, so Nightmare clearly didn't want to see them anytime soon. The sun was a fiery blood-red ball in the horizon, emerging in a blaze of colours. 

She sighed. Her mind wandered to her mother. Moon had spent the night worrying, wondering if Secretkeeper was safe and if Nightmare had done anything to her. No matter how many times Secretkeeper had left her alone in the rainforest, no matter how many lies she'd told - Moon still loved her mother. 

She growled, whirling around and marching back to the other end of the room. How could they rescue Secretkeeper? Clearly, Nightmare would have some tight security around her captives - the Night-Sea princess didn't seem like a lazy, lax dragon to her.

Suddenly, the doors creaked open and everyone jumped. However, it was only the SandWing slave - Dust - laden with a couple of buckets of water. 'I'm - I'm supposed to give yer this, um, miss,' he told Kinkajou nervously, when the RainWing hurried over to relive him of his burden.

She smiled reassuringly at him. 'Thank you. Are you hungry?' she added. Dust blinked. He looked longingly at the shellfish Turtle was devouring and swallowed. 'Uh, no, miss, but that's kind of yer ter -'