Wings of Fire: Peace (Completed)

Chapter 10- Cecropia

Cecropia the SilkWing yawned as she tumbled out of her chrysalis which was now just white silk scraps on the ground. She spread her four huge wings. They were magnificent. "Hey, Flytrap," she nodded. "Hey yourself, SilkWing," Flytrap said gruffly. "You sure took your time growing those flappers." 

Cecropia giggled, folding in her wings again. "You've got a little something on your head." Mandarin pointed at a silk strand flopping on her horn. "Oh," she pulled it off and tossed it to the side. "Wait a minute." The yellow dragon flexed her wrist, shooting out a spurt of white silk that flew across the room and hit Copper in the face who scowled at her even more.

"Can we go flying then?" she asked. Everyone nodded yes. "Yay!" Drift squealed, bolting out of the room. "Wait for us!" Kumquat cried.

Cecropia followed, trying to keep her wings against her body. She finally had a chance to look at them in proper light once they were outside. Well, not exactly proper light, as it was sunset.

Copper breathed out a plume of fire to light the way. The SilkWing spread her wings again. they were purple and green with hints of gold and blue. Whoa! she thought, "Flying can't be too hard, right?" she wondered aloud. "Just flap your wings," Drift said, spreading her wings as a demonstration.

"O-okay..." Cecropia flapped all four wings and lifted a small wing-length off the ground. "Good!" Drift commented, pulling a bush over to where she was flying so if she fell, she wouldn't take too much damage.

"This is fun!" Cecropia said. "Now try flying forward or left or right," Drift suggested. The SilkWing pressed her lips together and swung herself forward. "Good! Moons, you're fast!"

She had read somewhere that the HiveWings and SilkWings had extra agility in the air because of their second pair of wings. Cecropia stopped to hover in midair. The three moons were creeping their way into the sky; one was full, another was half, and the last was just a silver crescent that was barely visible among the stars. "Cool, isn't it?" she heard Empathy's voice next to her, but couldn't see her, thanks to her dark violet scales, just saw the silver sparkles disappearing and reappearing every wingbeat. "Yeah," the SilkWing agreed.

"Guys! Come on! We need to go to our caves!" hollered Mandarin from below. The dragonets exchanged a glance and dove down to the ground, extending their legs for a soft landing, Cecropia's not nearly as graceful as Empathy's.

The Sapphire Winglet split up in their groups as they walked down the halls: Copper, Palo, and Mandarin; Drift, Junix, and Cecropia; Flytrap and Kumquat; Sheer and Empathy.

"I'm so happy you're out!" Drift said bouncing up and down happily, "But you do have quite a lot of homework to do." "Right," Cecropia sighed, "Homework." Junix didn't seem to care; she hopped in her bed and engulfed herself in her black and yellow silk blanket.

The SeaWing rolled her eyes. "Anywho, I have it all right here with a guide on what you're learning and how to do it."

"Okay..." Cecropia picked up the one on the top of the pile of parchment and silk paper. It had writing on it about the history of Pantala and Geography. There was a pretty NightWing on the front with purple eyes and a nice smiling expression. "Who's this?" she asked, pointing at the picture. "Clearsight!" Drift answered, thrashing her tail, "SHE IS YOUR GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT SOMETHING GRANDMOTHER!"

"SilkWings are hybrids?" "HiveWings too," Drift shrugged, "The Legend of The Hive says you are descendants of BeetleWings, whatever those are, and Clearsight, that's why HiveWings have black on them." "Eww, but cool," Cecropia said, scratching the last thing the blue dragon said on her paper. "You wrote that all down?!" "Uh- yes?" "Wow."

The next scroll on the pile had illustrations of random time periods and she had to order each one. There was a list of things next to the timeline. The first word was "Scorching", the second "War of SandWing Succession", third "Darkstalker", fourth "Beetle and LeafWings banished", fifth "Clearsight's Arrival", the sixth one was "Darkstalker's Return", and the seventh and last one said "War of SandWing Succession Ends". 

The first one was obvious because the Scorching was five-thousand and twenty-five years ago, so she wrote it on the first mark on the line. The second one was probably "Beetle and LeafWings banished" because the BeetleWings were extinct. The next one was probably "Darkstalker Hatched" because Clearsight couldn't have arrived in Pantala before it, as she lived near that time. After that one was "Clearsight's Arrival". Then "War of SandWing Succession". Then "War of SandWing Succession Ends", then "Darkstalker's Return".

The next scroll on the pile had a tutorial on how to know where things were on a map. There was this thing called 'degrees' and 'coordinates' which involved a lot of numbers and measurement and counting. Cecropia narrowed her eyes at the paper. "Isn't there a way to make this a bit easier?" she asked.

Later, she had finished most of her homework and tried to fall asleep. It felt so weird with her new wings in the way, but they also covered her like a blanket.

Drift and Junix were snoring loudly. Cecropia quietly stepped off her bed and peeked out the window, a soft wind greeting her happily, the smell of trees night animals and blowing in with it. She suddenly heard sharp and fast breathing from behind her.  "What's wrong?" she asked, rushing over.

"It-it's the DreamWings," Drift panted, attempting to catch her breath as she leaned on Cecropia's wings. The SeaWing had a wild and terrified look in her dark green eyes. "Tell me what happened," the yellow dragon said. "There were two of them, one was blue and one was pink and they were torturing me, I couldn't move, I felt everything they did to me, I was in like a void or something, everything felt so real even though it wasn't."

Cecropia cupped her face in her talons, eyes covered. What was she going to do? What could she do? She was just a plain old SilkWing! She wasn't even seven! She didn't have any cool defenses like Junix or Palo, how could she fight?

All the noise must've woken the HiveWing up because she was standing with her wings spread in her defensive stance, tail raised, stingers unsheathed. "Junix, it's okay, nothing's wrong," Cecropia said softly. "OF COURSE IT'S NOT OKAY! NOTHING IS OKAY RIGHT NOW!" Junix yelled, narrowing her pitch-black eyes that looked like bottomless pits of nothing.

The furious HiveWing was right; nothing was alright anymore; there was a war brewing; what was the point of a peace school if DreamWings were attacking it? Cecropia sighed and slunk back over to her bed again.

"Guys, we need to leave," Cecropia narrowed her eyes at them both and swept out the door, flicking her tail for them to follow. "We're telling the others, get someone to tell Tsunami. Drift, you get Sheer, Empathy, Kumquat, and Flytrap. Junix, you get Mandarin, Palo, and the other, alright?" Junix and Cecropia nodded and hurried off.

Soon, with a lot of grumbling, they were flying in the direction of the SkyWing Kingdom.