Let The Chaos Continue

Squelch, Adobe, Stream, and Dawn

A/N: Okay, help, everyone keeps changing their usernames so I don't know anymore. Who used to be Majoritybrush48?

Night had recently fallen in the rainforest, and Stream paced outside a cave, worried. Dawn stood nearby, leaning against the cave and watching her. Squelch, Adobe, Cypress, and the rest of Willow's family waited inside with Joy.

They had all voted to see Willow one last time, to no one's surprise. They needed the closure, needed to say goodbye. But one of the dragons who needed it the most wasn't even here.

"Where is he?" Stream finally asked. She'd seen Thistle run off hours earlier, looking ready to either throw up or explode. She didn't have the heart to go after him; didn't have the strength to talk him through his own grief. 

"He probably just went to blow off some steam," Dawn assured her. "Joy sent out a few dragons to find him, they'll be back any second. Relax."

"Relax," Stream echoed. "I hate that word." That word, along with Rest, were her two most hated ones now, because that's all her mother gave her for advice. Relax and rest awhile, she said. The pain will ease with time.

But the more she rested and relaxed, the more she thought about that day, and how she had failed. She had failed Willow, and she had failed every dragon waiting in that cave. It was enough that she nearly burst into tears again right then and there, but then two dragons burst into the area.

"Sorry about the wait," Aurora said instantly. "I meant to keep track of time, but..."

"It's alright," Dawn insisted. Thistle only stared at the ground.

His tour with Aurora hadn't lasted long. He'd come to the forest in the first place because of Willow, and although he had wanted a distraction, it had only worked for so long. Aurora had taken him to her mother, and he'd talked with her for so long that the whole day had escaped from them. 

Dawn tried to help so much, but her methods didn't work for him. He needed someone who understood, and Permafrost did. More than he had ever imagined. He thought, as he and Stream went inside the cave, that he'd probably turn right around after this was over and go back to ripping his heart out with Permafrost. She didn't seem to mind, after all.

"H-how exactly, does this work?" Squelch asked, his voice breaking as he looked at the emerald Joy had placed on the ground.

"You just have to hold hands," She explained. "Close your eyes, and think of Willow. Then someone has to say her name, and she should appear. The amount of time you have to talk varies from dragon to dragon, so I recommend getting everything you need to say out as quickly as possible. You can't summon the same dragon multiple times in one night, but if there's more that needs to be said, we can always do this again tomorrow night. Understand?" They nodded, and Joy left the cave, giving them privacy as Squelch, Adobe, Stream, Cypress, Thistle, Nile, Gator, and Egret all joined talons and thought, letting memories of Willow play in their mind.

Squelch thought back to the war, when Willow's drawings had given the other soldiers such hope, and had brightened all of their days. He didn't have the heart to tell any of them what had happened to her.

Adobe thought about her daughter, who had been shyer than her sister, but just as important. 

Stream thought back to their days at JMA, the long hours they would spend in the library or in a random caves, talking about everything under the sun. She thought about how quickly it had taken her to fall in love with Willow, because there was nothing about her that wasn't worth loving.

Nile, Cypress, Gator, and Egret thought about their sister, and how crazy they'd all been growing up on the banks of the river. No Mudwing Siblings were ever the same after losing one of their own, after all.