A Whisper of Sand

A collab between Nyferine-RaidenWandersinger and X...Acadia...X. Hold on tight, as the ride is about to get bumpy.
== Prologue - Acadia ==
Claws of silence encircled the place grounds in a precariously balanced embrace, like a talon pinning an enemy with the potential to snap their neck with the tiniest bit of pressure. In this silence, the dry, empty trees did not creek in the breeze, no birdsong played musically through the grove. Nothing was there to drown out the faraway hiss of sand shifting across the dunes.
A dragon wavered over a squirming bundle, his scales cloaked in darkness and his eyes cloaked in shadow, his expression unreadable. A skinner, more hunched silhouette crouched next to him, anxiety and anticipation emanating from her bristling spikes. She searches the drake's gaze hungrily, expectantly, looking like a ravenous scavenger watching the approach of a long-awaited meal.
The dragonet wiggled at their talons, eyes glued shut, its tiny pink mouth gaping in a soundless roar. A shaft of moonlight spilled like quicksilver over its soft cloud of scales, bleaching each orange scale pearly white. The leftover speckles of amniotic sac on the dragonet's pelt glistened like dewdrops, touched in almost a sacred way by the glow of the moons. It was easy to believe that this ceremony was deeply surrounded by magic, that the faint breeze whispering by was in fact the breath of spirits long gone. 
The dragons did, all of them. Gullible fools.
The drake stooped low over the kit, his eyes tracing the tiny, defenseless kit. While there was a noticeable lack of love and devotion; however, the same tenderness stemmed from regret and determination. This dragon held himself with the authority and power he had been given by his own mentor, the same noble title he was to grant to this unknowing bundle.
"Hurry up, we have to inform Saphira of this little mite's name," the drakaina roars, her voice hoarse and raspy and edged with impatience. Her tail flicked carelessly, knocking over a pile of discarded raspberry leaves."But I know you will insist that you can't rush perfection." Her teeth flashed in a crooked grin through the thick swaths of shadow. 
The drake hesitated, not taking his eyes off of the sleeping dragonet. "I'm not going to."
"Good." The drakaina gave a slight huff of annoyance. "I was about to say that I couldn't stand to hear that sentence from you one more time."
"No… You misunderstood. I'm not going to name this dragonet."
The quiet words parted the way for a silence even more deafening than the last. The faraway hiss of sand in the breeze seemed to press in on the drake's ears, trickling into his thoughts almost treasonously. But the sound was impossible to block out, impossible to ignore.
"What are you talking about?" the drakaina demanded, hastily lowering her voice after the words exploded from her mouth. "Just do your job, Prophet."
"It's not a real job," the drake muttered darkly, and the moonlight lingering on the dragonet's pelt seemed to shudder as clouds swept across the sky.
"Of course it is," the drakaina responded in an impatient hiss. "It's just not the job everyone thinks it is. There is a reason we tell lies, Prophet. They are a thousand times safer than the truth, especially in this circumstance. Do you want to sink all the way to the bottom because you thought you were being heroic, sharing secrets with the leader?"
The Prophet reached out with a tentative paw and gingerly brushed the dragonet's soft orange coat, the touch as light and fleeting as that of a butterfly's wings accidentally grazing a leaf. His gaze lingered on the dragonet's closed eyes; what color would they be once they opened? Through what lens would they perceive the world?
"Now give him some kind of inspirational name," the drakaina scoffed dryly. "After all, he'll have a very important role in the Kingdom, and he'll learn it from you."
"I don't think I can do that," the Prophet roared, his agitation just beginning to slip through the well-sealed cracks in his mask of tranquility, his all-knowing, all-seeing face. He was just a dragon underneath, flesh and bone, the same crimson blood gushing through his veins as the other members of the kingdom, the same primitive heart and the same lungs that greedily stole air from the sky. The only difference was a title.
And that title, when stripped of its lies and reduced to its bare and fragile skeleton, was meaningless.
"You can name the little thing," the Prophet told the drakaina, standing up quickly as his heartbeat started to speed up. "I'll be long gone by the time his eyes open."
His poor, unknowing eyes.
"He needs a proper mentor!" the drakaina snapped, lashing her tail. Raspberry and borage leaves flew everywhere, fluttering onto the dragonet's pelt and at the Prophet's paws. "You are the Prophet! Saphira won't just accept a dragon without any training!"
"He doesn't need training," the Prophet said grimly. "Anyone can teach a dragonet to lie."
And then the shadow-cloaked drake whisked out of the den, moving like dark water through the forest, a phantom of the night whose path could only be tracked by the fleeting heartbeats in which the stars were blotted out by his silhouette. He rushed to the dunes, pelt suddenly bleached under the ruthless, piercing eye of the moon, and wavered at the edge of the plateau.
Then the Prophet leaped from the rocks and fled into the desert, taking the last shred of truth with him into sands unknown.
== Chapter One- Acadia ==
The drake drags his talons through the sand, his head held down. It had been days since he's seen any water or food in this bleak, barren, vast stretched of land. The Prophet, rubs his dry tounge against his scales, only to scratch it. The copper tange of blood sings on his tounge, it was at least liquid. He tried to shake out his scales the only thing to come out of them though was sand, and he could still feel it rubbing up against his scales. 
WIP
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Collaborations
Category:Content (Mussitation)