Passes (L1quid)

Passes is an anthology of short stories set in the universe of Pern, and is the Wings of Fire adaptation of the short stories in These Alien Dragons. It gains its name from Passes, the period of time when Thread falls on Pern in Dragonriders of Pern.L1quid's notes and outlines for Pern
==Synopsis==
Many worlds.One vast universe.Endless possibilities.
In 2020, a young author brainstormed potential books to write. One was a science-fiction novel, another was a urban fantasy series, and one that was a plausible ripoff of Wings of Fire. All, but one story, were scrapped.
That "unscrapped" story evolved over the period of several years from being off-brand Wings of Fire to a series inspired/based on it and other science-fiction works.
These Alien Dragons (formerly known as "FeatherWings") is the brainchild of L1quid, who grew up with magnificent stories such as How to Train Your Dragon, Warrior Cats, among others. They continue to consume such stories like this, including Dragonriders of Pern, The Wingfeather Saga, the Grishaverse, The Orville, and (old) Star Trek. The series is also an attempt to resurrect some concepts lost to the modern science-fiction and fantasy genre, such as mythical creatures that are aliens in the far future; and their allegory on modern (2020s) events, and what will happen if we do not closely pay attention to them.
Now, see this world through the series that started it all...
==First Pass==
The First Pass is when Thread first fell on a colonized Pern in Dragonsdawn. This also sparked the creation of dragonkind, by genetically-modifying the planet’s native fire lizards to be larger, stronger, battle-ready.Dragonriders of Pern
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is 5,012 A.S. (and before that)-5,034 A.S.L1quid's notes and outlines for Wings of Fire (Pern): Passes
===Arctic Night===
Coming soon...
===Night Wings===
Coming soon...
==Second Pass==
The Second Pass is when Thread came in the centuries after Pern was colonized. This Pass is known for the impeachment of Chalkin, a Lord Holder who believed that Thread was a fairy tale in Red Star Rising/Dragonseye.
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is 5,034 A.S.-5,056 A.S.
==Third Pass==
The Third Pass is known for the lethal dragon flu, which killed many dragons and forced many dragonriders to go back in time to train for Threadfall.
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is 5,056 A.S.-5,078 A.S.
==Fourth Pass==
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is 5,078 A.S.-5,100 A.S.
==Fifth Pass==
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is 5,100 A.S.-5,122 A.S.
==Sixth Pass==
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is 5,122 A.S.-5,144 A.S.
==Seventh Pass==
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is 5,144 A.S.-5,166 A.S.
==Eighth Pass==
The Eighth Pass is known for the mysterious disappearance of dragonriders near the end of it. It is later revealed in Dragonflight that the “disappearance” was caused by time travel.
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is 5,166 A.S.-5,188 A.S.
==Ninth Pass==
The Ninth Pass is the final Pass of the Red Star in Dragonriders of Pern and is the era where the main events of the series take place. It is also the final Pass as AIVAS managed to help the Pernese humans destroy Thread permanently.
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is 5,188 A.S.-5,212 A.S.
===Caelum's Wings===
====Part One: Dragon Wings====
The pod of dragons lumber through the ocean to their next destination.
It is made of three members - a male, a female, and their dragonet.
Where they are going, only they know.
They are following the path of most marine traders to a hub where they sell their wares for essential goods such as prey and Scales.
The Scales here aren't the ones used by the SeaWing government to determine who becomes who once they are grown. They are the currency used amongst the dragons, although in the future that might change.
Turtle knows it, despite the huge economic boom the past few years.
Even though she can’t read her parents’ minds, she is sure that they know about it too.
In the deep, rumors spread like ripples.
From the outside world, light filters down, lighting the trio’s way to Ice Kingdom, the northern arctic of Pyrrhia.
There, the three would stay at the hub of the Village-of-Plentiful-Seals as the young SeaWing herself was going on a trip.
It wasn’t a usual trip, like the one she was on right now with her parents. No, it would be to the piedmont, the border of the Mud Kingdom and the Sky Kingdom, to study Caelum’s word for several days away from civilization.
Okay, where they were going was still in the vicinity of civilization. But still….
The pod knows their way to the hub, and that they will stay with an old friend of theirs until they have to go.
Turtle had already packed her stuff when the trio was last on land - at the series of islands on the southern end of the Rainforest Kingdom. There, the three had traded with a reclusive RainWing who lived in the caves under the islands. Although he was skittish and wary, he did allow the family into his caves so Turtle can pack her belongings for the piedmont.
Now, as the pod was getting closer and closer to the Ice Kingdom over the days, Turtle could feel the elation in her claws.
It had been months since she saw her friends in Caelum’s Wings and worshipped Caelum.
The last time she saw them was when her family had stopped at the LeafSilk Kingdom to trade with the LeafWings and SilkWings. They gave them Healing herbs, tapestries, whatever they had on talon; they gave them seafood, seashells, whatever they had on talon.
The Pantalan branch of Caelum’s Wings was led by the LeafWing Bough and his mate Flora.
Both were dragons Turtle could trust, alongside her LeafWing friends Spinney and Maple.
She was also part of a small group that discussed what the Wings learned in the Sanctus Liber the previous sunrises or during that meeting. They changed wherever Turtle and her parents went, but one thing was for sure - Maple and Spinney were part of the group Turtle was in when she was at the LeafSilk Kingdom.
Who she would see at Village-of-Plentiful-Seals, she didn’t know.
Perhaps Arctic would be there. Or Scales, or Requiem, or another dragon she knew.
Who she did expect to see again was Winter, the IceWing who looked after the Caelum’s Wing members from the Ice Kingdom.
The trio continued swimming until they saw a large shelf of submerged packed ice ahead of them.
The Ice Kingdom.
They had made it.
Turtle charged ahead of her parents, who were already flashing at her in Aquatic. She didn’t pay attention as swam to the ice, lifted herself out of the water, and collapsed onto the ice like a penguin getting out of the water.
Despite the biting cold, she closed her eyes. The ice softly crunched through her claws and underbelly as she gripped it, and the only sound she could hear was the softly blowing wind.
“Be still, and know that I am with you.”
CRUNCH.
Turtle opened her eyes and saw her parents - Softshell and Rips - pull themselves out of the water.
She got herself onto her feet, and gave her parents a look.
“We still have a while to go”, Softshell snipped at her daughter, noticing the expression on her face. She flicked her tail, signaling for Turtle to come.
The dragonet came, and took to the skies with her parents, heading to the Village-of-Plentiful-Seals.
----The flight was not that far, despite the majority of it being glaciers and ice shelves for miles on end.
The Village-of-Plentiful-Seals was one of the major hubs for IceWing-SeaWing trading. It was also the only one that celebrated Caribou’s Claws, a week that remembered how an IceWing princess named Caribou used her magic to help the outer villages after seeing the state they were in, much to the chagrin of the upper class. 
As the town came into view, Turtle could see that all the ramshackled structures were huddled near the edge of the ice shelf, and were all made of resources from the surrounding area (mainly ice but a few other things here and there). In the distance, several white and blue dragons were sticking their claws into a large, icy, deep blue lake and pulling grey seals of various shades and sizes out of it.
A third of the Gift of Subsistence, Turtle knew as she saw them throwing the fresh carcasses into woven nets that would carry them to the town.
“Are we still staying at Snowfall’s?”, she asked her parents.
‘Yes’, Rips replied with one of his snout stripes in a tired fashion.
Snowfall was a friend of Turtle’s parents, and allowed them to stay in her igloo whenever they were in the Village-of-Plentiful-Seals. Like most IceWing igloos, her’s had several “rooms”, each able to fit five dragons piled on each other from floor to ceiling and from one side to the other.
In a booming economy, you would expect a society to reflect this with something huge and opulent, like a statue or a grand building.
For other cities and towns on Pern, this was true; but not for the IceWings. Like the scavengers in their dens, they formed tight relationships with each other to survive; isolation was a death sentence.
You would think that they lived in abject poverty.
But you were wrong; the sounds of dragons chattering with each and the splashes of SeaWings emerging from the water carried themselves through the dark polar skies like birds singing at dawn.
Perception - a moon half the size of Imperial, the largest of Pern’s moons - was the only light source here, and it was close to being half-full.
Oracle, the smallest of the three moons, was only a crescent. Imperial was nowhere to be seen.
Turtle, Rips, and Softshell descended towards the eastern edge of the town, and saw that several dragons were guarding that side of it.
Yes, even trading hubs were guarded, as to make sure that nothing sketchy happened between dragon species.
The dragons noticed the trio land and several of them became alert at sight of them. One of them, a white male, was holding a block of ice that was covered by a single piece of sealskin wrapped around it multiple times.
He noticed them, and glared.
“State your name, species, occupation, and your reason for being here.”
The guard dragons’ claws were twitching, as if they hadn’t killed anything and needed to do so before their shift was over.
Rips went first. “Rips of the SeaWings. I am a trader, and I am staying here for several days to visit a friend.”
Softshell went after him. “Softshell of the SeaWings. I am a dragon, and I am staying here for several days to visit a friend.”
Turtle went last. Like her namesake, she was usually the type that stayed inside her shell unless elation or terror provoked her.
“Turtle of the SeaWings”, she said, trying to match her parent’s tone and mask her fear. “I am a trader, and I am visiting Winter, the leader of the Ice Kingdom branch of Caelum’s Wings.”
Turtle could feel her parents glaring at her with shards of ice or daggers, even as the white dragon studied the long sealskin covering the block of ice. She could also see that the expression on his snout had softened.
“Turtle”, he mused in a cool voice. “Turtle, Turtle, Turtle. Where are you?"
He kept rolling the sealskin until he stopped.
“Ah, here you are! You are a member of Caelum’s Wings, no?”
Turtle nodded.
“Yes, Winter said you would be going on the trip to the piedmont?”
She nodded again, before the white dragon flicked his spiky tail at the trio.
“Search them”, he ordered as the guard dragon patted down the three.
It felt odd to be patted down by any dragon for any reason, but they always said that they did it because of “safety”.
Although it did weed out the criminals from the civilizations, it did make Turtle feel like she was a criminal herself, even though she wasn’t one.
After a bit the guard dragon took their cold, serrated talons off the three, and went back to their original positions. The white dragon moved aside to let them through.
“Welcome to the Ice Kingdom's Village-of-Plentiful-Seals”, he said as the family headed into the town.
----Snowfall was the only IceWing that Turtle personally knew. She was like a distant cousin or aunt that was lost to family history.
Her white scales matched the ice-and-snow that made up her five-sectioned igloo and her grey eyes reminded Turtle of the sky before dawn.
When her family reached the igloo, they saw that multiple pieces of skin and fur from animals that roamed the arctic were strung together in something like a patchworked quilt to cover a dragon-sized hole that was the main entrance.
“Hello?” Softshell called.
“Come in!” a voice called, and the three entered through the curtain.
Inside, a white dragon was working on preparing seal meat in the main section (or the “center” of the igloo). They turned their head to the entrance, and Turtle knew who it was.
Snowfall smiled, and made her way over to the family to hug Turtle’s mother. 
“Softshell!” she exclaimed before walking over to Turtle’s mother and hugged her. Likewise, the SeaWing reciprocated the hug.
“Ah, it’s good to see you!”
Snowfall let go and noticed Rips.
“Hey Rips”, she said and hugged him. “Nice to see you too, Snowfall”, he replied in a bass voice.
Snowfall let go again and noticed Turtle last, like that sentry of the Village-of-Plentiful-Seals the family passed by a while ago.
“Hi Turtle”, Snowfall said, and hugged her with her cold, serrated, white talons.
Turtle said nothing, and just let herself hang there like a sad piece of meat until Snowfall let go. It seemed that all ArcticWings had cold, serrated talons. 
She gestured to one of the sections with one of her wings. “Please, make yourself at home.”
----Turtle felt well-rested the next day. She woke when the sun was halfway towards its highest point in the sky, and noticed that everyone was in the igloo. Sounds from outside the hub gently flowed into it.
She yawned and sat up on the polar bear fur-made blanket she slept on last night as Softshell noticed her daughter getting up.
‘You’re finally up’, she flashed her underbelly stripes at her.
‘Well, what did you expect?’, Turtle snipped back with her snout stripes, to which Softshell gave an indignant look.
In the main section, Snowfall was stabbing pieces of seals with her claws and putting them into stone bowls.
As Turtle walked over to her, it suddenly hit her that the structure of Snowfall’s igloo resembled a giant version of a polar bear’s paw.
Rips, who was sitting next to his mate, was looking through whatever he had and muttering to himself how much it would sell here.
Turtle tapped Snowfall’s shoulder, and the white dragon turned. She was in the middle of putting a filet into a bowl.
The green-yellow SeaWing was now thinking that she did the wrong thing, when the Snowfall slid the skewered filet from her serrated talons into a bowl and gave it to her.
“Thanks”, Turtle said in a soft voice and slinked away back to her blanket to eat her breakfast alone.
----Everyone treated night at the time to wind down and prepare for the next day; Caelum’s Wings treated it differently. They thought that it was an extension of the day, and that night didn’t hinder who or what they were.
Everyone part of the group met at Ice Hole, a ramshackle structure that was specifically made for meetings like this. It was near the Den, a bar of sorts, so Turtle knew where to go for nights like these.
The Ice Hole was made from wood and stone from other IceWing towns here in the Ice Kingdom, and was one of the only buildings in the Village-of-Plentiful-Seals made from those materials. Everything else was made from ice.
The Hole was a building larger than Snowfall’s igloo, and it was in the shape of a cube. It gained its name from the small hole in the ice that was in the center of it, which was used for food whenever something got too close to it.
Inside the building were the Ice Kingdom members of Caelum’s Wings - IceWings and SeaWings. 
As Turtle made her way to the small hole in the ice, where she would stay during the meeting, she noticed that Scales was here.
Scales was one of the friendliest dragons Turtle knew, alongside Spinney. (Although the LeafWing had… unusual quirks.)
She was also willing to talk about anything - anything.
As Turtle walked towards her, she could see that the purple SeaWing was talking to a white dragon - specifically, a white IceWing. 
“Yeah, we definitely might get assigned beds there.”
She was speaking about the Cliffs at the Piedmont, a set of cabins located in the piedmont between the Sky Kingdom and the Mud Kingdom.
“What do you think about some of the others?”
“I think that the worst sleepers should be given bunks - one on top, one on the bottom.”
“Who are you specifically thinking about?”
Without skipping a beat, Scales replied. “Spinney and Turtle.”
Turtle froze.
Scales was right.
She and Spinney were horrible sleepers. Both moved throughout the night, unconsciously kicking whoever else was in the bed off.
Spinney did it because she slept alone in her parent’s hut. Turtle did it because she usually slept at night in the ocean.
The IceWing Scales was speaking to stopped talking, and turned their head in Turtle’s direction, as if they had already sensed her in their surroundings.
Turtle recognized the IceWing as Arctic.
“Turtle”, Arctic said in a slow, awkward voice, whilst grinning at her white, icicle-shaped teeth in the same fashion. “We were just-”
‘Silence’, Scales flashed at Arctic with one of her wing stripes, and the white dragon shut up immediately.
She looked at Turtle sideways. ‘We’re about to begin’, she flashed with her tail stripes.
‘Now?’ Turtle replied with her snout stripes.
The purple dragon nodded and left, heading towards the right side of the building.
Arctic gave Turtle a confused look, shook her shoulders, then walked towards the back of the building. 
Turtle walked to the left side of the building just as some other dragons were gathering in the same place.
----More coming soon...
====Part Two: Dragon Heart====
Coming soon...
====Part Three: Dragon Soul====
Coming soon...
==Skywatchers==
The Skywatchers is the new role of dragonriders in Dragonriders of Pern after The Skies of Pern.
In Wings of Fire: Pern, the dating for this section is post-5,212 A.S.
==Changes from Original Series==
*In the original series, "Arctic Night" occurred way before the main events of the series while also focusing on the OceanWing-ArcticWing trading alliance and how it produced some hybrids in the process.L1quid's notes and outlines for These Alien Dragons In the adaptation, it focuses on how Typhoon's parents met during the Great War, since how they met is not documented in the main books nor in A Guide to the Dragon World.
*"Caelum's Wings" is inspired by L1quid's experiences at a fall retreat their church has hosted in the past. In These Alien Dragons, the novella is considered apocrypha (not canon).
*In "Caelum's Wings", the locations normally used in the mainstream adaptation are changed for plot purposes.
**The Ice Kingdom is North/South Archaea, the arctic poles of planet Eukarya.
**The Village-of-Plentiful-Seals is Iceberg Drop, a city on North Archaea.
**The Sky Kingdom, which usually represents the Mountain Claws, is the Great Forest and part of the Ridges.
**The piedmont between the Mud Kingdom and the Sky Kingdom is Alpine's Gorge.
**The southern islands of the Rainforest Kingdom are the Spiraled Mountains.
*The short story "Night Wings" was called "Leaf Wings" in the original series, as it focused on Spinney and her human after the prologue of Turning Tides (These Alien Dragons bk.1).
**"Night Wings" occurs after The Dragon Planet, a scrapped WoF fanfiction that explained their origin of the dragons similar to the origin of the dragons in Dragonriders of Pern, throwing the lore of The Flames of Hope out the window.
==Trivia==
*The synopsis of the anthology is similar to the synopsis of A Guide to the Dragon World. L1quid intentionally did this as they are planning to do several field guides of their own series in the style of A Guide to the Dragon World.L1quid's notes and outlines for Archai
*Some of the short story's names are in-world book titles and/or unused act names from These Alien Dragons and its old version, "FeatherWings".
*Some of the short stories (in the original series and the adaptation) are inspired by the short stories seen in Wings of Fire: A Guide to the Dragon World (2023).
**One of the short stories is inspired by the IceWing tradition of remembering and celebrating Caribou, an animus IceWing princess who created the Gift of Sustenance for the outer villages of the Ice Kingdom.IceWing section in Wings of Fire: A Guide to the Dragon World (2023)
*Several of L1quid's OCs will have cameo appearances or will be minor characters in the anthology.
**Two OCs - Brown-Ridge and Snow-Caribou - were specifically made for the anthology (although Brown-Ridge is a bit more flexible for future appearances).
==References==
==External Links==
*Named Pern characters, Unnamed Pern characters - Wings of Fire fanon wiki
*These Alien Dragons: Turning Tides, These Alien Dragons: Raging Fires, These Alien Dragons: Shifting Stars - L1quid's Wattpad page
*These Alien Dragons wiki - encyclopedia on the These Alien Dragons series
**These Alien Dragons - FeatherWings wiki (canon series added here so L1quid doesn't prematurely update the official wiki)
Category:Content (L1quidMarbl3)
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Inspired by Fiction
Category:Genre (Short Story)