Hybrid

Chapter Three

Hybrid's P.O.V:

I woke up with a start, breathing heavily. It took me a moment to remember where I was, but, then, I sighed in relief.

It had been almost two years since I had become a part of the Unwings. Since then, I had changed. I definitely didn't have the usual five-year-old dragonet mindset.

Don't get me wrong, I hadn't killed anydragon - that would be absurd - I had just been in a lot of traumatic situations, with the whole 'living-in-a-group-of-dragons-who-are-basically-all-fugitives-or-thought-of-as-abominations' thing, and had more than my fair share of mental and physical scars to show for it. Everyone in the group pretty much had to learn to fight, too, considering those who refused to or couldn't would eventually get picked off by outsiders.

I had awoken from a nightmare. It was one I had almost weekly, in which I rewatched the death of my father. The scariest part was that I was always slowly merging with his murderer, until it was me who killed him and my talons were covered in his blood.

When I woke up, screaming, from that nightmare, my roommate would usually help me calm down. Luckily, that didn't happen often, maybe once every other month, and this night wasn't one of them.

Shifting my weight to my front talons and their larger-than-average wrists, my back talons, and then back to normal, I stretched and sat up. A yawn left my gaping, razor-filled maw, showing off the gap from pne of my last three baby teeth, which I had lost two nights prior. I gazed around the room, taking in the familiar sights of the canvas-covered willow frame. Across from my neatly-folded, thin bedding, which I slept on like a mat, sat a mound of heavy blankets, used to keep their occupant warm during the cold desert nights.

With a sight, I stood up, walking over to the blankets. "Quicksplash," I raised my voice to a decent volume, "Quicksplash, it's time to get up!!"

The pile of blankets shifted, and a couple lines of incomprehensible gibberish drifted weakly to my ears.

Twenty seconds later, the pale blue and pastel yellow head poked out from it's fluffy nighttime haven. "Hey, Briddy," my tribrid roommate murmured, giving a huge yawn and blinking her pretty, teal eyes slowly and tiredly as she called me by my nickname. "G'morning."

Quicksplash was the daughter of a deserter skywing soldier and a seawing-icewing hybrid, who had met in the camp of the Unwings. Her parents, sadly, had both died heroes, trying and succeeding in diverting the attention of several sandwings who were close to camp while the rest of us made a run for it. The five-year-old dragonet had still been an egg when that had happened, so she had never met them, but still certainly looked up to them.

"Good morning," I sighed, though it was not, the very corners of my mouth lifting up to form a slight smile.

She stood up, shaking the sleep from her body and giving a wide grin. "Let's get going, it's time for another great day!"

That was something I could never hope to pull off - optimism. It just didn't work for me.

She trotted out of the slit in the canvas, stretching her wings out under the desert sun. There was no room inside the tent to do so. I followed, the sun warming my four wings as I felt the joints begin to loosen up. Though I had no problem flying like that, unlike most other dragons probably would, my wings got stiff when they were cold, and it was hard to maneuver them in crowded spaces like that.

We trotted over to the food tables, Quicksplash, the social butterfly she was, greeting everyone we passed on the way. I, however, stayed mainly silent, though they still greeted me - we were all one, big family, they knew I didn't speak much some mornings and were fine with it.

We arrived at our destination. There was no one manning behind the counter - everyone was busy enough, as it was, and we all trusted the ones around us to not get more than their fair share.

Quicksplash grabbed a decent-sized portion of the sliced meat, while I only got about half as much as her. I ignored her concerned look as I turned away from the table - ever since I had woken up with wings, meat just tasted terrible. I would rather go hungry than eat too much of it, so the looks were nothing new, as we only really got to eat fruit when we travelled through the rainforest.

"You know," Quicksplash began as we walked over to eat beside our tent. We would have to pack up right after, the UnWings were always on the move around Pryrrhia. "I kind of wonder what-"

I never got to hear what she was wondering, as a voice called out to us, interrupting her.

"Q! Bri!" called the tan dragonet. His eyes, ever-shifting in an uncontrollable, unpredictable flurry of colors, showed nervousness as he trotted over, despite his apparent smile. He always was self-conscious, especially around Quicksplash.

Quicksplash pushed down a little bit of a purple tint that was showing though her scales, calling back, "Hi, Ro!"

His full name was Androctonus, but that was quite the mouthful, so we just called him Ro. It was either that or Fattail, but that didn't suit him at all - with his rainwing heritage, his tail was long, slim, and prehensile, though it ended with the characteristic sandwing tail barb, albeit slightly smaller than most.

Born of an incident between a high-ranking SandWing and a poor, unfortunate RainWing dragoness, his father refused to accept that he was his. Instead, the vile dragon killed Ro's mother and tried to kill the newly-hatched hybrid, but Ro, somehow, survived the fall down the cliff he was thrown off of at two hours old.

He was picked by a patrolling couple of male Unwings, who, having heard from a frightened underling of the despicable sandwing, took him back to camp within the hour and healed his injuries. They served as his parental figures, and he lived with them ever since.

He was now six, and totally oblivious to the fact that Quicksplash liked him back. Though I'd never say anything about it aloud, I totally shipped it. They were far too dense to see that the other felt exactly the same way, though, which only served to bug me.

"Hey, Ro," I gave a simple greeting.

"Do you hear yet?" he asked, "Elder Alder wants to talk to us."

"Wait, what?! Why?! Are we in trouble?!" Quicksplash exploded. I internally rolled my eyes.

He shook his head, "I don't know. Let's get going, though, whatever it is, it's got my Dads in a panic."

I nodded, beginning the short walk across camp to the Elder's tent.

A/N: There you go! I hope you liked the chapter, it was fun to write! I will be doing art of characters that appear in this book, the one in the media section above is Quicksplash. You can find some of the information on her character on the picture. Thanks for reading, I hope that you enjoyed it!!