Wings Of Fire: Warning

Chapter 8.

Strider suddenly opened his eyes again, being pulled back into the reality of yelling, blood, and burning. At this point he wished that they would just have amputated his tail, because it hurt SO MUCH.

It was hard to comprehend everything that was happening, it was just coming too fast and hitting too hard. It made him want to lay here forever and ignore everything around him.

I can't do that, I have dragons who care about me and want me to keep going.

Don't I?

He breathed and got up, he noticed the sand was a bit easier to stand on in this village than where he lives.

Then he realized that he had absolutely no idea what to do now. Should he go find Pecarry or Dromedary? But how?

They have to be awake, they are the owners of this hut. Right?

Strider was pretty sure he would want to be awake if HIS hut was burning. So Dromedary or Pecarry had to be awake and have heard about the news by now.

He staggered through the crowd of sandwings, getting shoved and ignored by many of them.

      But then, through out the crowd he noticed a brownish looking female sandwing with a dragonet behind her. But that wasn't just any dragonet, that was Cacti! Cacti was the sandwing he had met at the rocks when his tail had been crushed.

I wonder where his brother and sister are.

Maybe Cacti can help me in some way, I don't know, but it's worth a shot.

Strider dodged and carefully made his way through the crowd towards Cacti.

      He was able to squeeze through a few dragons and got as close as he thought was safe to Cacti. He didn't want to get any more near, because that sandwing who was guarding Cacti was probably his mother, and looked like she would devour any dragon who laid a claw on him.

The fire at the hut roared and boomed, as if trying to fight for it's life against the all the water the sandwings were pouring water on it. Water was kinda hard to find in the desert, so sandwings seemed pretty grumpy they had to use their few buckets of water they had collected from the little rain we've had.

The mother sandwing had her tail wrapped around Cacti, and the barb at the end was curled in to avoid hurting Cacti. Strider noticed that the mother would scowl and growl at any sandwing who even got within three feet of Cacti.

"Mom stop, your scaring the other sandwings!" Cacti wined, tugging on his mother's tail.

"It's for your own safety, you remember what happened to your little brother don't you? In fact, we should probably go back inside, and while we're at it, get you home schooled again."

"Wait no- I want to stay! I want to see the fire! I want to still go to school too."

The mother huffed and turned her head back toward the fire, which was dying down. "Fine."

Suddenly, Cacti looked liked a huge realization had just hit him in the face.

"Mom, mom! The boulder dragon I was telling you about- I got  Dromedary and Pecarry to take care of him! That's their hut- what if he was in there!?"

Mother sighed and turned her head back towards Cacti. "If he was, then he's dead I'm afraid."

"Oh..." Cacti said, looking down at the ground.

Strider suspected that "boulder dragon" was him, and he felt pretty bad about how some dragons thought he was dead.

How am I going to talk to Cacti if his mother is guarding him like a vicious hawk.

What if father finds out about the fire and comes here and gets me. Would that really be a bad thing though? Going home wouldn't be a bad thing- so why do I feel so nervous about it?

"Psst... Cacti," Strider said as lightly as he could.

It wasn't loud enough, Cacti could not hear Strider over all of the commotion, and thankfully neither could his mother.

"Cacti," he said a little louder. This time Cacti swiveled his head towards Strider and his eyes went wide.

"Shhhh!" Strider said quickly, and then waved his talons at Cacti's mother, trying to make some sort of 'make her leave please' kind of gesture.

Cacti understood, turning towards his mother, but Strider thought for a second that he was tattling on him.

"Mom I changed my mind! I wanna go home!" Cacti said tugging on his mother's tail.

Cacti's mother looked confused for a second, but then ignored her confusion. "You are correct, what was I thinking! Let's go home right now, maybe you might even change your mind about school too!"

"Erm- I still want to go to school- but I do want to go home now!" Cacti said.

Strider didn't know what to do as he saw Cacti and his mother began to walk to their house. Cacti turned around quickly and gestured to Strider to come.

Strider followed staying far behind to make it look like he wasn't following them, but the problem was that he had no idea what to do when he actually got to their home.