Dull Clouds, Bright Stars

a fanfiction by Laurel Willow and an expansion on what happened to Bright, a RainWing said to have died on the NightWing island. 
==Prologue==
My journey started the day I woke up and did not see the forest. 
I remember that day all too vividly- seeing bare stone, with an orange glow coming from one side, and an uncomfortable heat. It didn't feel right, it didn't look right, and it smelled awful. I didn't know where I was, but it wasn't the rainforest, and that was all I needed to know. 
I remember trying to bolt and nearly plummeting off the side of an abyss. I remember trying to scream, but having my scream clog in my mouth. I remember slapping my talon down on my snout and not feeling clearly- canvas and a metal bar between them. I remember the black dragons, taking off the muzzle and feeding me the most horrible, disgusting food in the history of Pyrrhia, then snapping it back on and leaving me to get a bad upset stomach and a feeling of utter misery. 
I remember Kinkajou, the tiny, annoying, yellow-pink RainWing, standing in front of me when I woke up and asking about escaping. I remember being horrified at her violent ideas of how to get out, and shaking my head to her plans. I remember being taken by the black dragons, clamped to a wall, forced to use my venom on inane things. I remember the pain in my wings after being there for a while. 
I remember thinking, "Someone'll notice we're gone. Someone'll investigate and come find us. Someone'll get us out of here." I remember hoping, wondering, shaking Kinkajou off. But as the days ticked by, I wondered. And I thought of a way I could maybe get out. 
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First things first. 
My name is Bright, and I am not dead. No matter what Kinkajou says. 
== Part One ==
So. Back to my plan. I'm not sure it'll work, but I'm willing to try it to get out of here. It's pretty weird, but if I'm lucky, I can be out of here within a few days. 
The plan is: pretend to die. Don't accept food for a few days and then play dead. If I'm lucky, they'll take me out and take my bindings off, and then I can just fly away- there's probably nothing between me and the rainforest. I'll put it into action tomorrow- today I feel like trying to sleep and nothing else. I flop down on the stone, wincing as my muzzle clanks against the ground, and close my eyes. I'm tired- I haven't slept too well in a long time. And I know I won't tonight. 
I wake up to Kinkajou poking me in the snout and stick my talon into her face like I usually do. She's full of plans for violently bursting out- cut our wings free! Charge across the abyss! Attack any dragon who dares get in our way! But it all sounds way impractical, not to mention being completely against the RainWing way of life. After I ignore her some more, she goes away. 
Luckily, I'm not taken away to spit venom for the black dragons, which always makes me hungry. There's no one else in my cave until the guards come in to feed me. I let them take my muzzle off, but I turn away and shake my head when they try to give me food- I want it to look like I'm giving up, but I'm not sure how well I did on that. Apparently well enough, because they just grumble, stick my muzzle back on, and fly off. 
I go hungry that night, but I feel better knowing this is the first stage of the plan that could finally get me out. 
The next several days are similar- I feel lucky not to be taken for the venom testing, and I refuse food. Kinkajou bothers me, but I can't really tell her my plan, and it probably wouldn't work for two anyway. Plus, she'd be so insufferably excited about it that it wouldn't be even remotely worth it. 
When I hear wingbeats outside the cave, I flop to the floor, close my eyes, go a dull shade of pale gray, and hope to the moons that this works. 
Three sets of talons thump down in front of me. I listen hard, trying to be perfectly still. 
"What's wrong with her?" says one voice. 
"Is she dead?" squeaks another. 
"Mightyclaws, don't be so jumpy. She does look dead," says the third. 
"What do we do with her?" asks the first. I tense, trying to listen hard without pricking my ears. 
"Uh- Mightyclaws, could you fly over to the labs and grab Mastermind? Tell him there's a RainWing dead. If that doesn't work, tell him we found a rock that can withstand venom." 
"Ok!" the second voice says. One set of wingbeats fades off into the distance. I hear the two others walking around behind me, presumably to get away from the lava. They chat quietly about a "Battlewinner" and a "Deathbringer", seeming to disagree often but still get along fairly well. 
Several minutes later, two sets of wingbeats turn up in front of me again. They thump down, and one makes a "hmm" noise. I recognize the voice of the dragon who does the venom testing on us and hiss inside. He pokes me on the neck. Don't move don't move don't move- "Yes, she certainly appears to be dead." Phew. "Take her away to Skull Rock. Take her bindings off, too- no point leaving them on when we could reuse them." 
"Yes, sir," the first voice answers. The two of them grab onto my wings and body, and I try to stay flopped. And keep my ruff from turning bright yellow. And STOP TWITCHING ALREADY, TAIL! Luckily, they don't seem to notice. 
Eventually they thump down and drop me on a rock, not unlike the one I've been held prisoner on for the past several weeks. They roughly tug my talon covers off, click my muzzle open, and pry off the metal and wire things preventing my wings from opening. Yes. 
Unfortunately, one of them spots my ruff, which has gone bright yellow despite me mentally yelling at it. "Is that supposed to happen?" 
Oh, spoiled fruit. Please just fly away and let me go. "I'm not sure," his companion answers. "I've never done this before. Should we get Mastermind?" 
"Probably isn't anything. RainWings are stupid." 
"True, that." Stupid?! I stop myself from rearing up and shouting at them. They fly away after a while. 
Alrighty, I think. Now to get out of here. 
I stand up and look around. Nobody. Good. I spread my wings and jump into the air, but almost immediately stall and collapse on the ground. OW! Probably has to do with the fact that I haven't flown in weeks. I have another go and that works much better. 
I camouflage as best I can in the smoky sky and fly around, looking for something I recognize, but I suddenly soar off above a cliff and spot the ocean. Or, at least, a dark, angry, smoky, ashy body of water that stretches out for a very long time. Nothing like the ocean I knew before. 
I fly along the coast for a while. There's a forest, the lava caves where I came from, a lot of black dragons, the fortress where they do venom testing, more smoke, another forest, more lava caves, another fortress, forest- wait. Am I flying in circles? I never thought there were two sets of lava caves. 
I go higher, trying to get a better perspective, and end up uncomfortably close to a huge plume of smoke. I strain my eyes and look at the coastline, wheeling in the sky- 
I'm on an island. 
Maybe this won't be so simple after all. 
I wheel around for another few minutes and then land near where I took off, thinking about how to get out. It's going to be more complicated than I thought, but first I decide to find something to eat. I take off again and soar down into the forest I saw before. 
I'm not a natural fruit gatherer- I worked as a venom trainer in the rainforest- but I find a tree with a few odd fruits on it. They're tough and stringy from the ashy air, but they're better than anything I've had in weeks. 
My stomach protests. Oh moons, why did I think about what I've eaten? I finish the fruit, trying not to go too quickly. 
Afterwards, I decide to find a place to spend the night, since I'm obviously not getting back to the rainforest today. I hold my wings close and walk through the forest, making the bushes rustle behind me. 
Suddenly I spot a pitch black dragon in front of me, eating something that's far too dead for my taste. I stumble back, camouflaging and she looks up. I don't quite get camouflaged in time, but she spots me, screams, and runs. What was that for? I follow her as she crashes through the forest back to another dragon. "There was a ghost," she says to the other. "A RainWing ghost." 
== Part Two ==
And so I go on, ever worried about how I'm going to get off the island. The next day- second day, I note in my head- I fly away from it anyway, hoping for any sign of land. Nothing, although the smog thins after a while. Even so, the air doesn't smell very good- too much salt and fish for me. 
On the third day, I wait till most of the dragons are gone, then camouflage and start hunting around the island. I know my way up into the fortress and to the venom testing room, but nothing else. Every time one of those black dragons comes by, I press myself against the wall, hoping they don't sense me. They don't ever seem to all go to sleep at once; there's always at least a few wandering around. 
The venom testing room is near another one, where pipes and pots and boxes sit, some hissing or bubbling or smoking. It looks like a huge mess, and I leave quickly. I don't care for messes. 
Moving on, I find a room full of what looks like rolled paper, from what I've heard of it. They have symbols all over them, and I wonder if this is what writing looks like. I find myself wishing I could read it, even though I've never worried about that before. I run my claw along a sign mounted on the end of one of the shelves, wondering what it means. I almost don't want to leave the room; even though the papers aren't useful, it smells a bit better than most of the island, and it has a sense of calm about it. I decide to make it a home of sorts while I'm on the island, at least until I find a better option. 
The next room I look into is a huge cavern, with a wide ledge for dragons to sit, and a spur of rock jutting out on the opposite side of the room, with a doorway just behind it. There's lava below the ledges, and a higher ledge only big enough for one dragon, with some strange holes in the wall near it. I don't like the room very much; it's very hot, and the lava bubbles a bit too ominously for my liking. 
But as I move to go back to the paper-filled room, I nearly run into a dragon, then another, and I realize it's time to hide for the day. No more exploring. I curl up in the back of the room and hope no one comes in while I'm asleep. 
I'm lucky. No one does, and I'm free to explore for the fourth night. I go down to a part of the fortress I've never been to before, but it turns out to be mostly little caves full of dragons. A lot of them are asleep, but some of them are still up, playing little games with cards or rocks or bones. I move on- I don't want to risk being spotted. I go and pick fruit in the little forest instead. 
In the next few nights, I find a lot of things- a dormitory full of dragonets, a weird room empty except for a spot on the wall full of holes like the one in the large cavern, a small, more comfortable room with shelves and nests for eggs but only two eggs there, and a sort of room that seemed to serve the same purpose that the healer's pavilion did back at home. Eventually, as I spent more and more time around the island, I found a room of bars and chains and cages. In there were a couple of NightWings and one RainWing, and when I moved closer, I realized it was Splendor, one of the rotating queens. She was asleep, and I left her alone. 
About a week after I'd freed myself, I decided to try and eavesdrop in the fortress a bit. I was still sleeping in the "library", as the black dragons called it, but I was tired of not knowing what anything said in it. Maybe I could get a dragonet to teach me to read. However, I soon discovered that every single dragonet was asleep, and scrapped that plan. 
Even so, I managed to gather some information. I found a cave with more dragonets sleeping in it, but not NightWings- the four of them were pale, dusty yellow, deep red, greenish, and brown-gold. I recognized the brown one- they occasionally showed up in the rainforest- but the other three were completely foreign. All four of them were asleep. I watched them for a bit, then was surprised by a NightWing dragonet coming in behind me. I jumped out of the way before we ran into each other and then left, heading for the adult's quarters. They mentioned some "dragonets of destiny" and talked about orders. "No hunting in there?" one grumbled to the other. "What are we supposed to do, starve?" 
"I guess," replied the other one. "Didn't Deathbringer say there were threats in the rainforest?" 
"You can't trust Deathbringer," the first said with disdain. "More likely he's trying to do something in there and doesn't want anyone to know." 
"What would he be doing?" the second grumbled. "It's not like he has friends on the continent. He's a NightWing assassin." 
The rest of the conversation wasn't very interesting. I wandered back to the forest and looked for fruit for the rest of the night. There was so little left, I was starting to consider the prey. The way the NightWings hunted was very easy to steal from; they half killed their prey and then left it, then came back and ate it when it was fully dead. It was honestly disgusting, but I wondered if I could steal the prey before it went completely disgusting. 
Still, the thought of killing and eating prey made my stomach twist. I'd never eaten meat before and never wanted to. I decided to give it until I couldn't find any more fruit, and then try if I really had to. 
Rather than going back to the library, I found a secluded cave on the other side of the island. It didn't smell as good, but my nose had gotten a little more accustomed to the volcano smell. I went deep into the cave, then spread my wings wide and let them turn all the colors they wanted. Pink, yellow, green, blue... no emotions really, just beautiful color in this island of gray and black and orange and red, of ash and lava. 
I slept in that cave, trying to fully relax my muscles. It felt like trying to free myself all over again- something that you really want to do, even need to do, but it takes so much effort that you wonder if it's worth it. It's always worth it in the end, though. 
I slept, and for the first time in a while, I dreamed. 
I don't dream much and I don't really mind that I don't dream much. When I do dream, it's usually nightmares. So it was that night- I dreamed of myself, moving about too late and a thousand NightWings coming for me, chasing me in an endless stream of wings and claws and gleaming spears. I dreamed they chased me around the island again and again, going and going and going, until I finally tripped, the black wings boiling over my head- 
and then I woke up, breathing hard, all the work I had done to relax the night before completely ruined, and the smoke and ash smell clogging my nose and throat. 
More than ever, I wanted to be off this island. 
As I came out of the little cave, camouflaged once more, I thought I saw a RainWing being carried by two NightWings. They flew off towards the RainWing prisons, but by the time I could get aloft, I had lost them behind the peak of the volcano. 
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon)