Wavebreaker Chapter 1

First chapter of a new fan fiction. The protagonist is Conch. Please leave comments! 
“Come on son! Use your claws!” The SandWing jumped to the left and right on the beach, trying to encourage his son to fight. 
“I don’t have good claws!” Conch exclaimed, swerving back to avoid the point of his father’s tail. He knew that he would never really be stung in battle practice, but the barb made him uneasy. He curled the edge of his own tail, feeling the smooth surface of the clamshell guard over the venomous tip. “Why do--”
He was cut off by his father’s jump towards him, spraying sand as he landed. The horn on his yellow snout was only inches from Conch’s face. “Use your tail!” his father yelled. “If those SeaWing muscles can make waves on the water, surely they’d work over the sand!”
Conch gave a halfhearted flick at the beach with the tip of his tail, his father’s voice still blaring in his ears. 
“You can do better,” his father encouraged, giving a half-smile. 
Conch inhaled, and then slapped the ground by his back talons as hard as he could. Sand flew off of the ground and scattered all over his father's scales like waves breaking, nearly reaching his eyes and mouth if the SandWing hadn’t covered his face in time. He took a step back, brushing the tiny brown grains off his scales. “That’s it!” 
Conch twitched his ears. “How? Why would that help in a fight?”
“Because your enemies won’t expect it like me. If you can send it flying off the ground, it’ll wind up in their eyes and nostrils and under their scales. It’s annoying and will distract them.” He gazed proudly forward, watching the bright sunlight dragged across the ocean surface and into his black eyes. 
“Why do I want to distract my enemies?” Conch continued. 
“It gives you the upper hand in a fight,” his father explained. 
“But why would I be in a fight? It’s just us and Mother on the island.” Conch furrowed his brow. 
The SandWing sighed. “I’ve told you before, son. You are a hybrid and an outlaw. When you are only a few miles away from the closest Sea Kingdom Island and you are a hybrid, son of a SeaWing and a SandWing of all dragons, you’d inspire er, some negativity.” 
“But--but we’re careful! We hardly even swim on the side of the island facing the SeaWings and nobody knows we’re here!” conch protested. 
Father gave him a sympathetic look. “Oh Conch. It’s not that easy. SeaWings might explore the farther islands. After all, we’re still in their territory, its in their every right. Even if they don’t see you, they’s notice any sign of life. And word gets around quickly over there, just ask your mother. If that happens, you’ll need to fight.”
“Oh.” Conch’s heart sank. 
“And someday, Conch, you may want to leave this island. Go to the Sea Kingdom or the Sand Kingdom or Possibility or another town. And you’d have to fight. Even if you don’t like it, it’s something you just have to do as an outlaw.” 
Conch ran his webbed talons through the silky sand. He’d known, after living in and probably breathing sand for all his life, that although sand was always painted as yellow, it wasn’t really. It was more creamy on top with lilac shadows, maybe with brown overtones blended in. And seawater wasn’t just blue, it was green and yellow and indigo and brown and teal all at the same time. “Let’s have lunch,” he offered to his father. The SandWing nodded, and Conch set out to get the roasted crabs, his necklace and the mat he had woven out of palm fronds. When he got back from the food den, he dropped the crab for his father and the two dragons sprawled out on the blanket, their tails trailing off the mat into the soft sand, watching the sun across the sky as they bit into the hard red crabs. 
Conch never remembered anything other than this place. His parents, a SandWing and a Seawing, had rushed to a secret island in the Bay of a Thousand Scales in the Sea Kingdom for the mother to lay the eggs. She only had one dragonet--a son, Conch, a hybrid of the two tribes. 
His mother, Dorsal, always told Conch that this island was especially chosen for the family of three. It was near the ocean, still with plenty of fish and coral reefs for Dorsal to swim through, but it had hot sandy beaches to remind Conch’s father of home in the Sand Kingdom. The forest in the center was mostly mossy, small trees and never felt cramped or crowded. The whole island felt full of air. 
His father, Buzzard, was born and raised in Fossil Hill in the southern region of the desert. Dorsal always referred to his life before meeting her as a “merchant,” but Buzzard himself had said his routine was to steal things and resell them for more. Sometimes he stole things he knew the owner would want back desperately and would pay anything to get back, like artwork, and made enough money from that. Conch never really liked the stories his father told him, but could never seem to get much out of his mother. “It’s boring,” she would tell him whenever he asked. “My life was not an adventurous one. I was a poor Northern SeaWing unable to say or do much. Your father, he was a way out of the misery. We moved here to have you, and now you can enjoy the sandy beaches and cool oceans.”
“Huh,” Conch replied, often losing interest at this point. He always wanted to know about SeaWing culture. From the glimpses of their homes he got from the expeditions with Dorsal, it all seems beautiful. But he was forced to avoid it at all costs, with a few keepsakes being the only things he had reminding him of his SeaWing heritage. 
“Woah.” His father suddenly sat straight up and pointed at Conch’s neck. “What are these?”
“What? My scales?” Conch asked, cocking his head. 
“No, no, your necklace!” Buzzard cried, throwing his talons up. 
“What do you mean?” Conch carefully removed the pearl necklace, wound tightly high up on his neck. 
“How’d you make those?” Buzzard asked, studying them carefully, while Conch let them drip into his webbed talons. 
“Oh, I just string them along a little palm frond and tied it in the back--”
“No, I mean the pearls,” Father corrected. “How did you get them looking so real?”
“They are real.” Conch shined one of the glassy pink and white beads with his talon. “I’ve been collecting them on expeditions with Mother. It’s to practice my diving, but sometimes I grab a little pearl if I can find one on the seafloor. It took me a few months to make this one.” 
“Can I see it?” Buzzard asked. Conch hesitated for a moment and then nodded, dropping the jewelry into his father’s cupped palms. “Wow.” Buzzard help two ends of the necklace and spread it out in front of the sky, studying each of the pearls. “This would sell for a lot of money back home.” 
“Father!” Conch cried. He snatched the pearls away from Buzzard’s claws. “You’re not selling them. They’re mine. You live alone, remember? There’s no one to trade these away to.”
Buzzard looked dismayed, “Sorry son. Its--it’s just a habit. See something nice, I get the urge to sell it and gauge how much I could earn for it.” He turned and stared at Conch directly in the eye. “It’s been over a year since I last set foot in the desert, and yet…..”
“You still miss a part of your life back there,” Conch finished. 
Buzzard dug his hand into the ground and pulled out a talonful of sand, before letting it slide between his fingers, forming a steady stream of sand grains. “I don’t think I miss the stealing and scamming and trading, though. I miss the culture, the music, the weaving, the landscapes.” He glanced behind him. “And when your mother gets back, don’t tell her I said this, but I miss dragons who look like me. Your mother can glimpse SeaWings occasionally, but I have never seen a SandWing in years. I want other dragons who look like me.”
“But there are no dragons who look like me!” Conch cried, gesturing to his misshapen body. “I’m the only SandWing SeaWing hybrid that I know of, and probably the only one with this combination of traits.” He slapped his webbed foot onto the ground, his lip quivering. 
“I know. It’s hard, living on this island. It’s a paradise, but I’ve wanted to relive SandWing culture, the good parts of it, more than anything since we moved. And I want to show some of it to you. I think you’d like it a lot.” He sighed, looking more disappointed than eager. 
Conch paused for a minute, watching a bird squealing from the canopy of a coconut tree. “Then go. You should go back to the Kingdom of Sand. Get souvenirs. Pick up whatever you can, but don’t worry about making enough to survive. And bring me and Dorsal something back if you want.” He waved his father away, as though he would leave right then and there. 
“Really?” Buzzard tipped his head in disbelief. “You think your mother would allow it?” 
“She might miss you, but I don’t think she’d be mad. She wants to revisit the Sea Palace too. Dorsal may be jealous, but if you bring her back a great gift, I’m sure she’ll be happy for you.” 
Father closed his eyes, thinking for a moment. “I guess the thought never really came to me. I’d be happy to go if t meant being able to give you a different taste of SandWing life.” He stood up, shaking sand off his tail. “Alright. Thank you son.” He smiled at Conch, before flying across the island, planning to meet up with Dorsal.
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