Dust (Ribbon)

== Appearance ==
Dust looks rather unassuming in the crowd. He easily blends into crowds with his more muted shades of pale yellow. In fact, you'd easily lose him in a crowd if it weren't for one or two defining features that he has.
The first thing you'd probably notice is that whenever he does anything, he always seems to have a smile on his face. It isn't to a point where he looks like a psychopath with no regards to life, but he certainly looks like he doesn't take anything seriously. It is only when things get serious in a personal sense that he loses the smile. Which in that case, he always adopts a thousand-mile stare look. Though it's not likely you'll ever see him like that; generally, he is very laid back, and his body language communicates this clearly.
Dust is a rather lithe dragon with a low profile, perfect for slinking around and stealing things, which he does more often than you might think when you first meet him. His wings and tail barb are of average length. However, he always curls his tail barb inward, hiding it and putting it out of sight when other Sandwings might view it as a point of pride. While the rest of him is loose and relaxed, his tail always seems to be tensed up, as if he is ready to strike at any moment.
Around his neck, he wears two things. First is a very tight fitting necklace with a small, but incredibly shiny diamond as its centerpiece. It has been colored all the colors of the sunset and often catches the eye of dragons who approach him. Whenever he is in trouble or is nervous about something, he will always unconsciously rub the gemstone for luck. The second is a small, innocuous bag filled with all sorts of things. Everything from spare playing cards to small vials of medicinal liquids. 
== History ==
Growing up, Dust had a pretty normal childhood.
Well, as normal as anyone can get these days.
Dust was raised in a very rich household, in where his parents were world famous archeologists and explorers. He grew up not really knowing them all that well, but it was alright because life was good. He spent a majority of his time hanging out with his friends and reading all kinds of books, which consisted of a mishmash of anything with words on them. This ranged from classic novels to children's books. With nothing else to do, he simply let the days of his youth pass him by like a summer breeze.
Eventually, his parents thought that leaving Dust alone in the house for most of his days was probably unhealthy, and hired a caretaker to keep him company. Luckily, they found a Skywing drifter down on her luck and ready to try just about anything to get by and hired her. This Skywing's name was Saffron who, unbeknownst to them, was a violent ex-Skywing soldier who was legendary for her lack of mercy and irritable-at-best disposition. If they had a shred of sanity, they would have turned her down before she even asked. But in a strange turn of events, they didn't, even after catching wind of who she used to be.
Surprisingly, Saffron turned out to be quite the motherly and protective caretaker, who seemed to deeply care for Dust. As she grew increasingly attached to Dust, Dust started to grow attached to Saffron. Eventually, they both formed a bond akin to a relationship between a mother and her child, odd, seeing as, under any other circumstances, such a relationship between two dragons like these would be impossible. They spent their days together happily, and they both felt a strange sense of fulfillment from each other; Saffron from having someone to care about again, and Dust from having a mother to love.
However, as with everything else, this would not come to last.
Saffron's past, which she thought she had left behind along with her youth, started to re-surge. It came back stronger than ever before and eventually started to eat away at her psyche. Eventually, her toxic past came back to her in the form of two odd dragons, who broke into the house she shared with Dust. They left her at death's door and took Dust, leaving without a trace, without a trail to track.
Or so they thought.
Piecing together what information she could from their short conversation, Saffron tracked down the man who hired them to kidnap Dust. This led her to her the physical embodiment of her past regrets, a Skywing named Raven. She didn't know what Raven wanted with Dust, but she attacked him without mercy, regaining much of the hot-headed and impulsive vigor that she used to have. However, even that wasn't enough.
As a last ditch attempt, Saffron pulled off a move that left both Raven and herself inches from death, but Dust safe. Dust woke up only to find the most important dragon of his life dying in his arms, all for him. With nothing else to do, he simply cried as Saffron tried to comfort him, to her dying breath.
She died having no regrets save for the fact she couldn't spend more time with Dust, but the same couldn't be said about him. The dead are the lucky ones. After that, Dust could never forgive himself; to a certain extent, he was the one who killed Saffron, and he vowed to carry the weight of that action wherever he went.
When Dust's parents returned after an expedition, they were apathetic about Saffron at best, but were sympathetic toward the connection Dust had with her. Dust's father, who was incredibly experienced with tribe traditions, suggested that they carry out a traditional Skywing send-off, where they would cremate her body and turn the ashes into a diamond. After finding an expert Skywing to do the job, it was made so.
Ever since, Dust could never let go of the diamond necklace. He would wear it everywhere he went, never taking it off under any conditions, in fact, there might only be one or two times that he actually did part with it, and even in those cases, it was for seconds. The longer he wore it, the better his mental state had gotten until he eventually got over Saffron's death. Even to this day though, he keeps it on as a reminder.
After his childhood and schooling, Dust immediately wanted to be independent of his parents. This was most likely because Saffron's innate rebellious ideals were rubbing off on him, but even so, his relations with his real parents were starting to rapidly fall apart, likely due to the attachment he had to Saffron and how little he thought his parents cared about him, no matter how much the contrary was true.
Taking nothing but his most prized possessions and leaving nothing but an "I hate you," Dust set off into the world with no goal or direction. However, he always did have a knack for investigation and deduction, and before long, he was scouted out by a local detective in the Scorpion Den. At that time, the Scorpion Den was rapidly transitioning into a full-fledged city, which meant an influx of crime outside of the organized crime that used to dominate the city. The local authority there was running low on good dragons, so they had no choice but to actively scout for new members.
Excited to live out his childhood dreams (and flat broke), Dust graciously accepted the offer and joined the local police there.
However, he quickly learned that being a detective wasn't as fun as he thought it was going to be. The murder scenes were a lot more gruesome in real life than they were in a book (Dust almost threw up on more than one occasion), everybody started to absolutely despise him (of course a city of thieves and criminals would hate a detective), and there were stacks upon stacks of paperwork that he had to fill out every time he accidentally sneezed on someone (let's just say that Dust had many sleepless nights). To say the least, it was all a lot more... Bureaucratic than he had previously hoped.
 Fed up with all of the rules and regulations that he had to put up with (not even mentioning the mundane work that he had to do occasionally), he eventually quit the force to strike out on his own. He would go on to become a Private Eye primarily but would do almost anything as long as it put food on the table.
== Personality ==
With a painful past, a bleak present, and an uncertain future, one might assume that Dust will give up at this point and spend his days wasting away and moping. However, he surprisingly manages to be the complete opposite of that. Not only does he manage to somehow keep a smile on his face, but he surprisingly goes into a lot of things positively, and tends to look at things from the bright side. 
Considering this, it is no surprise that dragons who find themselves acquaintances with Dust often see him smiling or laughing when he isn't working. 
That isn't to say that he is a blind optimist though, he often considers himself to be one of the few dragons who actually see the world for what it truly is; the strangest mix between bits of sorrow and moments of joy. He tries his best to never ruminate on the past, and always brushes off what happened before, always taking a "Whatever happens, happens", approach to life, which he ironically adopted from Saffron. 
That being said, he is a character made up of many contradicting traits and half-truths. He may say that he is unbound by the past, and that very well may be true, but only to a certain extent. The very necklace that he wears proves his attachment to his past and is a symbol of his guilt. In another case, he often sees himself as an optimist, but in fact, this isn't necessarily his only mode of thought. Sometimes, he is downright fatalistic, with his innate deterministic attitude getting in the way of his supposed optimism. 
To put it simply, sometimes Dust lies to himself, in fact, he might lie to himself more than he lies to anyone else. He has never been and isn't comfortable with who he truly is, he strives to shape himself into someone he thinks is acceptable, not into the best dragon he can be. This arises from his rather troublesome childhood of neglect, in where he spent a great deal of his time trying to please and gain the attention of his parents, rather than becoming his own person. 
Dust, oddly enough, is actually deeply aware of these facts, which played a part in why he decided to run away from his parents. It served as a way to force himself to become his own person and to break off. Even so, he unconsciously falls into behaviors that he despises all the time. That being said, it isn't something that necessarily tears at his psyche; most of the time, he doesn't bother to think about such things, and simply carries on living his life in the moment. 
So it shouldn't come to much surprise that Dust is the kind of person that drifts and cruises through life, setting himself into a routine. He does this so much so that honestly, he couldn't tell the difference between yesterday and two years ago. Ironically, he regrets leaving the force for this very reason. In the force, his life was filled with purpose, but ever since he left it, his life has felt empty, with nothing to really look forward to. 
When he isn't at work, which finds itself to be a majority of his time, he gambles an almost unhealthy amount in order to sustain himself. He is a big believer in luck and often takes sometimes insane actions in games to either win it big or lose it all. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn't. Either way, every day ends the same for him; in his small living and office space. 
Despite being an upbeat and optimistic dragon around others, Dust actually is quite a melancholic person when he is by himself. Often, in his office, he spends a disproportionate amount of time reflecting on his past, a seeming contradiction to how most dragons know him by. He is often seen as a whimsical, careless, devil-may-care kind of dragon by many, but whenever he is faced with his past in its full truth, he is often silent and taciturn, a dragon of few words. 
Category:SandWings
Category:Characters
Category:Males
Category:Content (RibbonRaptor)
Category:Work in Progress
Category:Occupation (Other)