Queen Grandeur

Grandeur was four years old, the new Queen of the RainWings, and absolutely terrified. 
Mother was dead. The SkyWings had invaded the rainforest. Scrolls, as well as buildings and trees, had been destroyed, and many dragons were dead. A heavy crown had been plopped onto Grandeur’s head and now hundreds of dragons were staring at her, waiting for her to do something. 
She curled up into a ball, shivering slightly. All the dragons were white and blue. They were shocked and saddened, and they wanted her to comfort them, to make them believe that their friends, their families, hadn’t died in vain. But what to say?
Mother would have rallied them. She would have roared, and gathered all the soldiers. She would have gone to battle the SkyWings, to make them pay for what they had done. That was what the RainWings would have done in the height of their power, back when they were a tribe to be feared.
But Grandeur had read the scrolls. She knew things had changed since then. The SkyWings were big and scary and powerful, and she didn’t want to fight them. Mother had always told her she was too little to fight, and that she should hide if attackers came. Could the whole tribe hide? 
Grandeur spoke up, her voice squeaking slightly. “We should hide. Close off the rainforest so that no one can come and attack us.”
All the RainWings started talking at once, and an orange dragon stepped in, trying to calm them down. Grandeur climbed up onto the throne. She could save her tribe. She wouldn’t let any more dragons die like Mother had. The SkyWings couldn’t hurt them if they couldn’t find them. 
-    - -
Grandeur had just turned twelve. She was still quite young to be queen, but at least she was slightly more qualified than she’d been at her coronation, when she was four. 
She’d made some changes, ever since she’d closed off the rainforest. The army was basically non-existent now. She knew some of the dragons disagreed with this change, but Grandeur couldn’t stand to look at it. The weapons, the claws, the teeth… it always made her nightmares worse. The flashes of blood and claws and screams that haunted her in the darkness. That was why the rainforest needed to be closed. If it remained closed, she would never have to see battle in real life again. 
She quite liked most of her decisions, though. She’d organized hatcheries for all the dragon eggs, so that no eggs would get eaten by pythons, or destroyed by falling trees. Of course, she hadn’t intended for that to kind of destroy family units, but they didn’t really need them, did they? Once Grandeur had realized that it was kind of impossible to tell the eggs in the hatchery apart, she’d set up a new system. Everyone was organized with jobs, and they also had shifts where they would teach the new dragonets about their jobs, and show them how to camouflage and shoot venom. 
A new village was in the process of construction, hidden deep into the rainforest. It was so well blended into the leaves and trees that it would be almost impossible to find if you didn’t know it was there. Exactly what Grandeur wanted. 
The palace wasn’t much, but it didn’t need to be. Grandeur was just happy to be keeping her dragons safe, and she would do it for as long as she lived. 
- -    -
Grandeur was happier than she had ever been in her life. 
She still had nightmares, but now when they came, her mate was there, and her adorable little dragonets. Everything she’d gone through had been worth it to see their happy little smiling snouts. 
Other things had happened, obviously. Grandeur was now ten years older, and very comfortable with her position as queen. They had put an official ban on using venom against other dragons. The melting and the screaming from when they had attacked a MudWing that wandered into the rainforest still echoed in Grandeur’s mind. 
Instead of using their venom, a new system had been devised. They used sleeping darts, which had been developed by a particularly ingenious RainWing. Grandeur reminded herself to give that dragon a reward at some point. 
Her dragonets were so sweet and kind. Shimmer, Firefly and dear little Mango. Firefly was already beginning to master camouflage and the rest weren’t far behind. Hopefully they would make good queens someday….
Grandeur pushed that thought aside. There was no need to think about her dragonets having to potentially murder her someday. Right now they were kind and sweet and good. Along with her mate, Sunflower, she would raise them to be kind, loving dragons. They would care about others and help other dragons, no matter who they were. And they would never fight. It just wasn’t worth it to fight. It never was. 
No matter what the voice in her head said. No matter what her mother would have done. No matter that something said that fighting might have been better than closing themselves off to the rest of the world. 
- -    -
Grandeur was so very tired. She was tired of being queen. She was tired of all the problems, of how the RainWings seemed to be growing lazy. She was tired of dealing with what had happened with Firefly, how she had destroyed all the scrolls and now the RainWings only cared about having fun.
She hated that she had to surrender her second batch of eggs to the hatchery, so that they could find some useful queens. She hated that all the queens that had come after Firefly had almost been worse.
She really hated these useless alternating queens, all of whom were awful. They only cared about eating fruit, or getting the best platform during suntime.
She wondered what the rest of the world thought of them now. The lazy, vegetarian dragons who never left their rainforest. Was this all her fault?
It was almost enough to make her want to fight back. To reclaim her throne and open up the rainforest again. That desire was made even more pressing by the fact that dragons had begun to disappear.
But she wouldn’t. She would stay as the old queen, the stuffy old dragon who hated fun. The one who told stories about the times they needed their powers for more than games. She was still one of the queens, but she just answered questions once a week. What else could she do? 
The queens might have been useless, but no one was dying. And Grandeur couldn’t risk changing that, because there was still a core of her that was that frightened young dragonet hiding under the throne, listening to the sounds of battle outside. She was still the dragon who got glimpses of blood and claws in the night, and screamed out, begging for it to stop. It might not have happened as much anymore, but she was still terrified inside. Terrified of the fighting, of what her dragonets had done, of her tribe, of the world. And hiding was a way to keep all the terror and pain and sorrow out. 
-     - -
There was a new queen. She’d been raised outside the rainforest. Her name was Glory. She was only a few years older than Grandeur had been when she became queen, although she was much younger than Grandeur now, who was at least a hundred years old. She was just a dragonet. And yet, she was braver than Grandeur had ever been. 
Grandeur had let the fear run her life. She’d never tried to do anything about the nightmares, or to fight back at all. Instead, she’d locked them away in the rainforest and assumed it was the right thing to do because it calmed her mind.
Fighting wasn’t always the right thing to do. She still believed that going after the SkyWings would have been the wrong decision. But sometimes you had to fight. Sometimes, fighting was the only thing you could do, to save the ones you cared about.
If the new queen was willing to risk fighting the NightWings to save dragons, Grandeur had to be too. 
After the coronation, Grandeur went to the healers for the first time and told them about her nightmares. It was too late, far too late, but perhaps they could help her. 
Her tribe had a new queen, one who would fight for them, but who understood the value of peace. She didn’t understand exactly what was happening in the outside world, but she knew that Queen Glory could help her tribe, and for the first time, Grandeur felt enough at peace to finally help herself.
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)
Category:Content (Colorchanger the Mindreader)