Heart of the Rainforest

Chapter 15 - Plot

"Did you send that eagle after Panther?" Tiki asked, watching the pale orange RainWing land softly on the ground. 

"Maybe," Banggai shrugged.

"Seriously? That's- you just threw everything away! That's how you get yourself executed!"

"I couldn't just let you get imprisoned like that." They stretched their wings and yawned.

"So you ruin your whole life instead of... I don't know, explaining that I didn't even do anything?" Equo walked up next to Tiki and brushed her wing. "And you got Geelvink caught up in all of this?"

"Are you really mad at me?" Banggai looked genuinely curious.

"Well- not really, I guess." Tiki sat down. "I just, you didn't have to do that. We would have been fine without you sending an eagle after the queen."

"Well, we don't know that." They let their scales shift into a a few shades of dark green dappled with gold, similar to the rainforest around them. "Now. How do we get your friends out of the prisons?"

"I don't know." Tiki sighed. "There's going to be a lot of guards, and who knows if the queen has some other prisons I don't know about. She probably does."

"Well, then, they must be really secret prisons if I don't know about them."

"I have an idea," Equo offered. "Kind of. Maybe both of you could make your scales look not like yours, go into the village and pretend you're someone else, then when you get to the prisons you could camouflage yourselves and see if they're in there. Then free them."

"That's.. actually a good idea." Banggai nodded approvingly at Equo. 

"Really? Usually I don't have good ideas." She smiled.

"When do we do this, then?" Tiki wrung her talons, curling her tail tightly around herself. "It'd be best to do it as soon as possible before Panther does anything drastic. If she does. Which she probably will."

"Why not now?" Equo tipped her head at Tiki, looking genuinely confused. 

"I need to calm down."

"So. Nightfall? Maybe? It's not that long from now." Banggai suggested.

"Sure." 

---

It was hard to see, on the rainforest floor, at dusk, but Equo saw fine, of course. All three dragons were making their way up to center of the village, where the prisons were. Akila had been sent home, as to not make noise, and so had Banggai's bird. 

Tiki's scales were a bright scarlet colour speckled with yellow and black. It wasn't a colour she would ever wear on a normal day, but she had to not look like herself to do this. Banggai was a drab grey-blue-silver colour that Tiki had never seen on them, but otherwise they would be recognized. Equo's phosophores were all dark, and Tiki could barely see her in the shadows. 

Tiki had to force herself to keep her head up as she walked, and tried really hard to put just a hint of confidence in her step, so she would seem as little like herself as possible. Banggai's head was low, their back spines flared and tail coiled tightly behind them. Everything about their posture and colour made Tiki almost not recognize them.

"You're sure this will work?" Tiki wrung her talons, crouching under hanging vines and droopy leaves. 

"Completely." Banggai nodded sharply.

"And you're sure the guards won't be there?" 

"Completely."

"It'll work!" Equo bumped Tiki's shoulder, making her jump. She hadn't even known she was right beside her. "We've already broken out of one prison before, we can do it again!"

The three dragons slithered along branches and tiptoed on platforms, quietly slipping through a backdoor into the prison. Banggai and Tiki's scales shifted into camouflage, and Equo crouched in the shadowy corners of the windowless block that was the rainforest prisons.