Secrets: A Jade Mountain Tale

(Apologies in advance, this is my first fanfic. We'll see how it goes ; )
= Chapter One- Hurricane =
Hurricane was a dragon with something to hide.
She had a secret, but no one knew or even recognized it. She barely knew it herself. But she had a different claim to fame. 
Since her mother was Princess Tsunami, many people knew of her parents, and, by extension, of her. She was often asked by strangers what her mother was like, and other personal questions she did not dignify with an answer. She wouldn't say she was better than other dragons, but, maybe in some ways, she was-
“Hurricane, are you even listening to me?” a voice interrupted her.
Hurricane glanced up into the dark blue eyes of her father, Riptide.
Oh, um, yes, uh, totally paying attention. Yup. Definitely, Hurricane flashed in Aquatic, the only way she could speak. She hurriedly picked up her ink pen and began scratching ‘notes’ on it with the wrong end of it. Riptide sighed and shook his head, but not unkindly. This had become their usual classroom attitude, since Hurricane knew she was going to actual school soon. Jade Mountain Academy! She’d been waiting to be accepted there, although she knew she would. Her mother was the head of school after all! 
Riptide could see Hurricane drifting out of focus again, so he said, “This lesson is finished for today-” but before he had finished, Hurricane was up and out of the door to the small classroom in Riptide’s house. 
The two of them lived in Sanctuary, since Riptide couldn't go back to the Kingdom of the Sea and Hurricane wanted to stay with her father. Tsunami visited occasionally, but she was usually busy at Jade Mountain, which made Hurricane grateful that Sanctuary was close to the school. But tomorrow, I’ll be at the school! Hurricane thought happily. 
She spread her wings and soared up in the air, then dove down into the lake with a splash of small, cold bubbles.
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Hurricane’s wings were SO TIRED. She couldn't even BELIEVE IT. She struggled to flap her royal blue wings again, trying to just ride the wind currents instead of propelling herself. Ugh, she thought to herself. I can’t do this for much longer…
The trip had taken much longer than Hurricane had anticipated. She could see the twin pinnacles of Jade Mountain up ahead, so she flapped her wings, once, twice, and canted down toward the school. 
Lots of other dragons were gathered there as well. Hurricane saw a family of MudWings group-hug, before three of them flew away and left the other one to walk into the building. A SandWing hugged her mother's leg, not wanting her to leave. A couple of SkyWings waved to their friends as they sauntered inside.`       
They landed on the platform with a heavy thump, and Hurricane lay gasping on the ground for a few moments extra before following her father inside. 
Fatespeaker’s familiar voice spoke to them as they entered. “Well, hello there!” she called cheerily. “Riptide and Hurricane! Tsunami’s been waiting for you!” 
Riptide smiled and walked up to her small desk by the entrance of the school. Hurricane followed.
“Hurricane!” Fatespeaker exclaimed. “Holy moons, you’re so much bigger than when I last saw you! How old are you now, four? Five?”
Four, Hurricane flashed with a small smile, looking up at one of her mother’s favorite friends. The silver scale glinted from the corner of her eye as she moved in the bright sunlight outside. 
“Well I am SO GLAD you finally came.” Fatespeaker declared. “You are going to have SO MUCH FUN here! Your cave is the fourth on the left.” She pointed a claw at one of the tunnels branching off of the main hall. 
Hurricane smiled at her, hugged Riptide one last time, and set off down the tunnel.
= Chapter Two- Allseer =
Allseer was a dragon with a secret.
A secret she had carried since the moment she hatched.
A secret she kept from her family.
A secret she kept from everyone.
Allseer could read minds. And see the future.
She hated her powers. But she hated mine-reading the most. It kept her away from her parents, because she was always afraid of the judgemental thoughts she would always hear. It kept her from making friends, because she would answer the wrong question when they asked one thing but thought another. It kept her from crowded places, or else she would get a massive headache.
She bore her burden alone, but she was fine with it. She had to make her family proud.
Her whole family prized knowledge and notability above all, and how can you do that if you’re a mind-reader, always shy and uncomfortable in every situation? And if she told her parents, they’d probably never let her go out of the house for fear she’d ruin their reputations. 
So she just dealt with it, discovering tricks to keep her headaches at bay and trying to be the best daughter her parents could have. 
So of course, she was the NightWing to get the invitation to Jade Mountain Academy. 
Allseer fiddled with the scroll, reading the invitation message again. Her purple-black scales shone in the sunlight that filtered through the rainforest canopy, and the small silver scales under her wings caught in the light and glowed like a million tiny diamonds.
“Allseer! What are you doing? We’re going to be late!” her mother’s voice called to her. 
She got up slowly, sighed, tucked the scroll in the little pouch under her wing, and went to her mother, Honorwings.
The large, pitch-black NightWing adjusted her necklace that was dropped with tiny sapphires and looked imperiously down at her daughter. 
“We should have started for Jade Mountain ten minutes ago if we wish to be on time!” Honorwings chastised her.
Allseer ducked her head, hearing her mother think, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this dragonet. She never seems to pay attention to anything! Allseer tried not to wince. She had gotten used to thoughts like this in her four years living with Honorwings and her husband, Allseer's father, Truthsearcher. 
“Let us leave at once, lest we be late for your first day,” she said briskly, and took off into the canopy, not once looking behind to see if her dragonet was following her. 
Allseer sighed again and launched into the sky behind her.
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They were early, of course.
When the two NightWings landed lightly on the rocky platform in front of Jade Mountain, no dragons were in visible sight.
Honorwings pushed Allseer forward, motioning toward the cave entrance, then said, “Goodbye, Allseer. Learn much and make us proud.”
And with nothing else to say, she spread her wings and departed.
Allseer sighed, which she seemed to have been doing a lot of recently, and headed into the cave. 
She didn’t so much as see the dragon in the shadows, but more like sensed him. Not only by the thoughts running through his head, but by the mixed emotions closing the gap between them. Like a mixture of anger and sorrow and… pity.
Allseer’s head snapped up and scanned the shadows near the entrance, seeing nothing.
Then a dragon’s face emerged slowly, shimmering dark green and blue and framed with a black and blue ruff. The forest-green eyes were accusing, but also sympathetic. The thoughts that reached Allseer’s mind were complicated, a combination of NightWing and does she know? and would she have helped?
Allseer let out a small, startled noise before the RainWing said, “Wow. Great mother you got there.”
= Chapter Three- Jaguar =
Jaguar was a dragon with nothing.
He had no friends, no family, no home. No relations. No ties. Nothing holding him down.
He had lived in the RainWing village for three of his four years, with his mother and father and sister. His queen, Queen Glory, was just and fair, there was plenty of fruit for each RainWing to eat, everyone was happy, and life was good.
Until NightWings had burned it all down.
It had been a normal evening. Jaguar had been sitting down to dinner with his sister, Ocelot, his mother running in and out of the pantry and laying a wide assortment of fruits on the table for them. When Tangerine, his mother, finally settled down, and Jaguar’s father, Peacock, came into the room, dinner commenced.
As Jaguar picked up a banana and began peeling, he thought he smelled a faint scent of… smoke? But RainWings don’t use fire! And we’re not close enough to the RainWing village to smell it from theirs.
He looked up at his family, but they seemed unconcerned. Although he did catch a glimpse of Ocelot sniffing the air and looking confused before going back to her dinner.
Now Jaguar could hear something, too. A sort of crackling, like a dragon stepping over layers of dead leaves, mixed with pops and snaps.
Tangerine looked up from her fruit and said, “Do any of you… smell anything?” Her brow was furrowed and her scales were turning orange-purple with confusion.
Ocelot inhaled again, then answered, “Yeah, I definitely smell smoke.” Jaguar nodded to show he did too.
His mother got up and scanned the house, then inhaled sharply when she saw that the back porch was in flames. Her scales turned an odd combination of pale green and orange-red and she said shortly, “Get outside and find some water. Let’s see if we can put this out before  it spreads.”
Jaguar and Ocelot rushed to the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “The door’s stuck!” Ocelot hollered, her normally yellow scales turning to white-and-green tumbles. 
The smoke was fogging up the house now, and the door to the back porch was on fire. 
There was no way to escape.
The wall caught, then the roof. We sat, dazed, unsure of what to do.
Just then, a piece of ceiling fell from the roof and landed in front of me, creating a hole just wide enough for a small dragonet to squeeze through.
Jaguar leaped into the air, calling back to his family, “I’ll go get some water and maybe someone who can break open the door!” Then he soared through the hole, singing his scales a little, and flew out into the sky.
Glancing back at the blazing pillar that was his home, Jaguar glanced at the spot where the door was.
Black scales blinked in the moonlight for a moment, then were gone.
And then the roof fell in in a blazing mess of timbers and leaves.
Crushing the only thing he had left.
Jaguar didn’t know what to do, but he did know that water wouldn’t be enough to stop it. With nothing to go back to, Jaguar dove into the jungle, vowing he would never return.
So he had lived out there, alone, never wanting to see another dragon again. If he met someone else, and became attached to them, that meant something could hurt him. You can’t be hurt if there’s no one to hurt you. No dragon he loved would be stuck in a burning house while the roof collapsed if he didn’t love anyone.  So he stayed alone.
But when the RainWing had found him while she was in the woods, she had brought him back to the village and enrolled him in Jade Mountain Academy. A place where you have to know people. Where you have something holding you down. Something you could lose.
It should be obvious that Jaguar hated NightWings. For they must have been the ones to burn his house down, since RainWings used no fire. They had killed his sister and stolen his life away.
So Jaguar had no idea why he started talking to that NightWing dragonet.
His plan had been to hide until the dragon who had dropped him off there had left, then run away, back to the rainforest, where he belonged. 
But something about her made her seem different than the NightWings he had known. And besides, her mother was horrible from what Jaguar could see.
So, for some reason, he had invited her to hide with him in the shadows before going in, just to see what kind of dragons were attending this year. 
So maybe, maybe, Jaguar would stay.
= Chapter Four- Owl =
Owl was a dragon who didn’t belong.
She knew it was risky to go to Jade Mountain with a secret like hers. They’d see straight through her hooded cloak and SandWing scales, to the ice that lurked just beneath the surface.
That’s right.
Owl was a hybrid.
Those four words had haunted Owl for as long as she could remember. It had kept her from many things, and from many friends, and it was horrible. 
But it was worse when she found out hybrids couldn’t go to Jade Mountain. Apparently the winglets only had seven spots, one for each tribe. 
So without a singular tribe, Owl couldn't get one of the precious spots to the greatest academy in all of Pyrrhia.
So she had devised a plan. A very badly thought-up plan, but still, something that could get her into the school. She had donned a hood to cover her icicle horns, and darkened her pale, off-white scales so they were closer to the dark, sandy color of a real SandWing. Then she enrolled as Owl of the SandWings, and they accepted her.
The journey there was filled with anxious thoughts and doubts that swirled in Owl’s mind incessantly, so that by the time she actually arrived at the school, she was filled with worry from top to bottom. All these dragons, she thought as she sidestepped two hugging RainWings and ducked under a departing troop of MudWings. I'm bound to slip up at some point. How am I going to do this?
A voice called out to her from inside the cave, and Owl quickly stepped inside to hear it better. "Are you Owl of the SandWings?" asked a purplish NightWing near the cave entrance. 
"Y-yes, that's me. Of the SandWings," Owl stammered. 
"Hi, Owl! I'm Fatespeaker. Your cave is third on the right." Fatespeaker pointed a claw down one of the rocky passages. Owl thanked her and scrambled towards them. 
The tunnel was bedecked with flowers and brightly colored glass globes that shone with a hidden light and cast multicolored shadows on the stone floor. Owl ran her claw down a bright lemon yellow one, and noticed a spot for a candle inside. Clever, she thought to herself, then realized she'd been so distracted by the tunnel decorations that she'd forgotten to count the caverns as she went. Quickly, she backtracked to the third cave and stepped lightly into it. 
Her cave had pale yellow, blue and green globes strung across the top, and three sleeping spots were placed around the room, each one with a corresponding scroll rack. There was a mat of reeds in one corner, a nest of carpets in another, and a hard icy rock slab hung on one wall. She thought it was empty at first, but then a shift went through the icy blue surface of the rock and a huge IceWing dragonet rose from the slab and lept down to the rocky floor.
He was larger than most dragonets his age, and his unusually long spikes helped make the impression that he was extremely tall. His scales were an icy blue-gray, and his eyes were the color of moonbeams on snow. He shook himself, spikes clattering.
Oh no, Owl thought to herself. I have to share a cave with an IceWing?! This just got so much harder...
= Chapter Five- Wolverine =
(TBC)
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon)