Pretending

A short-fic by Rainfeather
Featuring Candles
== Pretending ==
Candles kept on walking, her dark blue scarf billowing behind her, talons slowly sinking farther into the shifting sand with each step. Where was she going? Was there a point to her seemingly endless wandering, her never-ending nights of battle for survival, her infinite, cruel theivery?
Candles did not know anymore.
Did survival matter? Wasn't life just this one big game, that everyone would eventually lose?
Probably.
It scared Candles to think that she might one day lose the game and be forgotten in time. Life would go on as it had always been. Not that she was significant here, in the present, anyway. 
Candles, still walking, gazed up at the sky. The large, yellow sun glared right back at her, but she ignored the spots dancing in her vision. She ignored the searing heat she felt on her scales, ignored the terrible thirst and hunger she felt each and every day. 
Did this cruel world know how cruel it was? How cruel it had been to her, and countless other SandWings before?
Likely not.
Candles sighed, wandering into the Scorpion Den. The guards let her right in; they knew everyone who had ever been in. That included Candles, evidently enough.
Dragonets around her laughed and cheered as they played their games. Some played with a small tumbleweed, passing it back and forth between talons. Others played chess, brows furrowed and eyes concentrated on the board. A few even swam in the oasis, despite the protests claiming it was the water they drank.
Correct enough, though the dragonets didn't care.
Candles frowned, wondering if she was ever that carefree and young like them, the dragonets who played in the middle of the Great War. Had she ever been so oblivious, or had so much courage and optimism? Had she, the SandWing that had traveled down the wrong street and spiraled into a life she hated so, ever been like THEM?
Never in her life.
Candles nearly bumped into a large pole. She jumped back, startled. She had not been facing forward and had not seen it. Luckily for her, she turned in the nick of time. 
Candles glanced upwards to see a shining, silver sign bolted onto the pole.
There were two simple words, engraved deep in the metal.
She inhaled sharply, clapping her talons over her mouth, the message repeating over and over in her brain until she was fully sure that was what it said.
Dragons crowded around her, smiling. They had put it all together, for her. Just for Candles. The rough, mean dragons of the Scorpion Den had engraved a sign for Candles.
The sign read;
===YOU MATTER===
Candles cried.
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)
Category:Genre (Short Story)
Category:Content (Animusdragon)