Candlelight (SimplyStardust)

TW\\ BRIEF MENTIONS OF ABUSE
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adopted by kindle! Hehe she’s mine now >:3
(design and art by Cloud!)
Small wings, soft features. A smile constantly threatening to peek out beneath the frown. Scales the color of sunset clouds rolling across the sky. Candlelight is a SkyWing, though she is not built like one.
She's about average height for dragonets of her age, though she may border slightly on the smaller side. Candlelight's features differ from the rest of her tribe in that her legs are shorter, her wings smaller, and her snout rounder. In fact, many of her features just look... sweeter, softer. She looks much younger than her actual age, and the constant bounce in her step only adds to this factor.
Her mainscales are pale sunset orange, reflecting sunlight in small foggy clouds, gathering in white wisps on her scales. This gives Candlelight a very interesting, delicate air. A line of tangerine orange scales march down the top of her back. Daffodil yellow colors her underscales, horns, and spikes, a pale, neutral shade with undertones of pink.
An uneven muddled mix of colors is splashed onto Candlelight's wings. Here a patch of gold, there a splotch of pink, running together, bleeding into each other like a sunset through stained glass. She likes it, sometimes, when the nice adult dragons kneel down and coo about "her weird gorgeous wings." Other days, she scrubs and scrubs at them with the suds from her bucket and watches the water drip down, leaving no trace of cleanliness whatsoever.
She doesn't wear much, due to her family's poverty. Her only constant adornment is a worn leather armband, gifted to her mother by her father, and in turn, passed down to her. When she gets nervous, she tends to twist the armband around and around on her right front wrist, the circular motion soothing, calming her. Candlelight is clumsy and trips often, leaving countless faded scars on her knees.
Baby fat rounds her features, and she's a tad bit chubby, having never learned to fly quite right. Tiny white specks fleck her citrus-orange eyes, usually bright with poorly-disguised excitement. Candlelight holds herself like the typical palace worker, her bowed head and submissive posture hiding her other odd features. Her eyes are the only thing that give her away, besides her constant small tail flicks or talon taps.
Candlelight lacks the tiny horn on her snout, though most dragons don't notice. All she is is a servant, bowing and scraping to the queen, tending to a lavish world of riches that she and her mother will never know.
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A dreamer trapped in a dragon's body, Candlelight is free-spirited and easygoing. She skips through life, never pausing for too long, her gaze fluttering over flowers and never stopping to smell them. Often she catches herself drifting off in a daydream, waves of imagination floating her away from the shore. A bit different from other SkyWings, yes, but she doesn't mind that much. As long as she has a smile on her face, everything is fine.
Candlelight is sociable and extroverted, never minding the spotlight and loving every minute of it. She isn't exactly an attention-seeker, but she certainly does like it when other dragons acknowledge her. Candlelight has a drive to be recognized, to do something great in the world. Right now, most of her exposure to others comes from when they talk to her mother and say something along the lines of "your dragonet is positively adorable." She's seen as a child, and she doesn't want to be.
She's talkative almost to the point of annoyingness, although she doesn't often realize it. Candlelight has a tendency to strike up conversations with strangers, seeing them as "friends I haven't met yet." (Coincidentally, she's also the kind of dragon who likes to spout motivational quotes for every imaginable situation, and then some.) Friends are the things she finds greatest joy in, and as a result, she's one of the most popular dragonets in the area. She could be described as a social butterfly, or a ditzy airhead - both cruel, but accurate.
A people-pleaser at heart, Candlelight likes to call herself strong and independent, but the truth is that she depends on others for reassurance and guidance. She bows to her friends and family far too often, especially when they drag her into something she doesn't want to do. Candlelight considers praise from others the epitome of success, so much of her accomplishments are done for the other dragons in her life. This makes her rather naïve, since she really wants to believe in the best of others, and that they'll always do the right thing. Sadly, this scenario is near impossible.
Most of the time, she's energetic and passionate, never wanting to slow down, always up for the challenge. Candlelight is fiercely devoted to the dragons and things she believes in, maybe even to a fault. Blind loyalty is not always a good thing. When she finds a new interest, she won't rest until she's milked it for all its worth, analyzing and practicing and talking about it until everyone around her is just plain tired of it. Then, just as quickly as she was sucked in - she'll move on, never to see it again.
No matter how hard she tries, it's difficult for Candlelight to think things through. She has issues with blurting out words before she filters them through her brain, or jumping into situations when she should still be considering the consequences. She's easily distracted by a butterfly or a flower, and her brain can jump between two concepts incredibly quickly. Although she has about average intelligence levels, it's very hard for her to learn in a traditional school setting because of her distractibility.
Candlelight is imaginative and an abstract thinker, preferring to express herself through colors than words. She tends to look at the big picture before minor details, becoming forgetful as a result. She's remarkably bad at carrying out practical tasks simply because her thoughts are too much. She does indeed try her best, but it's just too easy for her brain to move on swiftly before she even truly digs deep into one thing.
A concept that she is devoted to, though, is reading. Or, perhaps, learning reading. Due to her family's poor upbringing, she's never been to school, whiling away her days as a servant in the queen's palace instead. Every night, after her mother's gone to sleep, she stumbles through a battered textbook by the light of a sputtering lantern. Candlelight has the reading skills of a dragonet much younger than she is, and she's trying to improve, but it's difficult for her to sit still and study.
When she's at work as a servant, Candlelight tries her best to hide her real personality. She masks her smile with a scowl and tries her best to keep her mouth shut. She becomes a new dragon, one that's quiet and obedient and never, ever seems to dream. At least, that's what they think.
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Honestly, Candlelight has never been special - but that doesn't invalidate her story in the slightest. Like every other dragon on Pyrrhia, she has a tale to tell.
She was hatched in the dead of night, peering out of her splintering eggshell to only the rays of the moon and stars. Oh, and her mother, of course.
Desire looked down at her dragonet and watched the silvery light brighten her pale orange scales. It made her think of the flickering sources of light around her, the ones slowly burning down, fading away. She couldn't afford more. She could never afford more.
Desire looked at her dragonet and named her Candlelight, for the illumination she hoped she would provide.
The very early stages of her life were quite normal. She spent her days frolicking with the other dragonets of her little mountain town and flapping through the air while learning to fly. As soon as Candlelight began to string words together, she began pestering Desire about her father, a word she'd learned from her friends, something she'd never really known. Desire brushed her off every time, not wanting to talk about her abusive ex-husband. It had been all she could do to run away, taking Candlelight's egg with her, and she didn't want her dragonet to grow up with that kind of knowledge.
Gradually, Candlelight learned that the topic of her father was strictly off-limits. She left her mother alone about it (Desire breathed a sigh of relief), and the two of them lived in harmony for a couple years. Then financial issues overtook them, and Desire secured a job for not just herself, but Candlelight as well: servants in the SkyWing queen's palace.
It hurt Desire to see her dragonet forced into work already, a servant instead of a student, a little girl trapped in a life she shouldn't be in. Yet they had no other option. They were already scrounging for money, and there was no possibility of them getting by if Desire was the only one working.
And so Candlelight's childhood proceeded. She grew taller, her wings unfurled, but she never lost that childish energy that all dragonets are filled with. But when she was at work, Desire taught her to press down her real personality, to become a gracefully poised adult far earlier than she should.
Queen Scarlet scared her, at first. She was the tallest SkyWing Candlelight had ever seen, and her eyes were cold and her crown glinted strangely. In the evenings, though, her mother let her curl up in the crook of her ruby-red wing and read her fairytales about famous SkyWing heroes. Desire taught Candlelight about joy, and hope, and faith in the impossible.
But at her job, Candlelight was forced to squash down her true personality. When the queen ordered her to fetch a glass of water, she poured plain water, not juice. When she was assigned to kitchen duty, she simply scrubbed the floor, resisting the temptation to dance with the broom. Sometimes she failed a task, dropped a bucket of water, was late to a call. She was punished then. But Candlelight always held her head high, and she never gave up. (She certainly thought of it a few times, but then she remembered her mother scrounging for money, and she turned back to her task with renewed strength.)
But as she aged into her teenage years, and figured out how to balance her work time with hanging out among friends, Candlelight discovered something. Her friend group complained incessantly about school, but it was obvious that they... liked it. She felt a new emotion, jealousy - of the friends they got to make, the learning they got to do.
She knew she could never quit their job, not with the struggles they already were dealing with. But she could at least teach herself something. So Candlelight borrowed an easy reader book from one of her friends and brought it home, hiding it from her mother.
Whenever Desire saw Candlelight around something she didn't have, her eyes got teary and her voice quivered with guilt. Candlelight didn't like seeing her mother like that. So she studied her book in secret, stumbling through the words by the sputtering light of a lantern in the evenings. It's hard for her, just sitting down and doing nothing but studying, but Candlelight pushes on anyway through sheer willpower. Deep down, she feels like she won't ever truly belong until she learns how to read.
For now, Candlelight is stuck in this situation. Working during daylight and studying at night. It's an impossible existence that most dragons wouldn't be able to bear, but she's getting through it with a smile on her face, a laugh in her voice, and always, hope in her heart. Hope for having, someday, a better life.
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Desire: Her mother is probably the dragon Candlelight loves most in her life. Right from the moment she was hatched, through thick and thin and everything in between, Desire has been there for her. Sure, they fight every once in a while, but every time, they make up. Some of Candlelight's favorite memories include curling up with her mother at night, listening to Desire read bedtime stories in her gentle cadence. Candlelight can get frustrated about her mother's evasive behavior sometimes, but deep down, she loves her and she always will.
Father: Unusual as it is, Candlelight knows nothing about her father - not even his name. Desire refuses to tell her anything about him. However, over the years, Candlelight has picked up several facts about her father, many of them contradictory. One one hand, he was charming in Desire's stories. Sometimes. On the other hand, it hadn't been hard to figure out that something about him had been... bad. (She has no idea about the abuse he put Desire through.) She's resigned to the fact that she'll never know about him, but it doesn't completely stop her curiosity.
Firefly: Candlelight's very best friend is a lot like her, though they share a few key differences. He's thoughtful where she's reckless, he's self-assured when she's indecisive. But both their naturally curious natures led to them being drawn towards each other all those years ago. He was a shoulder for her to cry on when she tried to give up her reading studies, and she was a constant reassurance behind him as he came out as a trans male. Sometimes they fall out of contact for a few days because life is busy, but they always come back to each other.
Queen Scarlet: Even though Candlelight is around the queen almost every day, Scarlet... scares her, to be honest. Something about her cunning eyes and sharp talons puts Candlelight on edge. Being around the queen often feels like being around a rather large grenade - Candlelight never knows when her temper will explode, and it scares her every time. Candlelight tries her best to avoid the queen, and she often ducks her head awkwardly when she's near her. However, she is grateful for the opportunities Scarlet offers her and her mother.
Friends: Alpenglow the artist. Daybreak the athlete. Violet the writer. Candlelight isn't as close with any of them as she is with Firefly, but she loves them just as much. Whenever Candlelight is going through a rough patch with her mother or her studies, she knows she can count on her companions for help. When they're together, they have an easy dynamic, talking and joking and laughing like there's no tomorrow. They work through their disagreements - well, not perfectly, but consistently. It's obvious to everyone that the five of them will be friends for a long time.
Servants: Queen Scarlet's workers come from a variety of different backgrounds, but Candlelight gets along with most of them just fine. She especially likes the elderly kitchen maid Swan, with their pale peach scales and easygoing manner. Because many of the other servants are older than her, they sometimes treat her in a condescending manner, which she secretly hates. But for the most part, when having to do a chore, she will seek one of her fellow servants out to help her do it - or at least sit on the sidelines to chat with her while she works.
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*Probably around 15 HY mentally
*Extremely lesbian
*Has many failed "hobbies" - she's currently collecting pressed flowers, but will probably move on in a few weeks
*Likes to sing with her mother in the evenings, though neither of them are very good
*Would be vegetarian if meat didn't taste so good
*A fairly good artist, though not exceptional
*Yearns for some kind of pet
*Hates being away from her friends for any period of time longer than a couple days
*Laughs easily and brightly
*Favorite story is about a banished prince who returns to his country (and saves it in the process)
*After she earns enough money to support her mother, she wants to go to art school
*Is only shy around girls she likes
*Not the best flier, even by non-SkyWing standards
*Hugs stuffed animals whenever she's stressed
*Secretly adores rainy days because it means she can stay inside and hang out with Desire
Category:Characters
Category:SkyWings
Category:Dragonets
Category:Occupation (Other)
Category:LGBT+
Category:Content (Stardust the IceWing-RainWing)
Category:Females