Chapter Text
Clay the Mudwing
Clay had seen his guardians fly in and out the cave, many times. Flapping their wings after leaving and then returning. Clay has always been interested in being able to fly, or for his guardians to teach him at least. Why have wings if you're not able to use them for a few more years? The problem was the cave. That's what Clay always blamed when it came to this. It was way too small to even try to fly. Or, was it?
The guardians—or well, just Kestrel and Dune—were out hunting. The food was running low because of Clay; he took the advantage to try to learn to fly by himself.
While searching for an open space in this cave, Clay found Tsunami in the river, she was swimming from one side to the other and quickly noticed him. Clay couldn't hold back and he went ahead and greeted her.
"Hey tsunami!"
"Hey Clay! How are you doing?" Tsunami greeted Clay back, splashing some water with her tail to Clay's direction in a playful way. Clay stepped back but giggled.
"Oh, I've been doing fine, I'm kind of hungry too. But guess what? I planned to learn to fly!"
"How so? The cave is way too small to even try!" Tsunami flapped her own wings, not meaning to actually fly but to splash some water out the river.
"Mmm…" Clay mumbled, he still tried to think of an idea of where exactly to go, because yes, the cave was still kind of small.
"Oooh I got an idea." Clay heard from behind, he turned and saw multiple scales shifting colors, each one going through its own color shift, and then they all shifted to reveal one dragonet in specific.
“Oh hey Glory!” Clay exclaimed.
“Hey Clay,” Glory saluted and turned her attention to Tsunami. “What about the guardian’s cave?”
"How would we get there though? Webs is still there and he will definitely not let us in." Tsunami explained, she peeked to the guardian’s cave entrance through the corners of her eyes.
"Mmm you got a point..." Clay mumbled, he kept his wings close to himself trying to think of something. How could they get Webs to go somewhere else to be busy so he can enter? He tried to think really hard and it was clear on his expression, and thinking was not his forte.
"Leave it to me, I got a plan." Glory said, some of her tail scales shifting colors while she lashed her tail side to side. Tsunami looked suspicious and curious.
Clay followed Glory. Tsunami trailed behind them. The cave echoed with the heavy steps of Clay and the other two dragonets. That's when Clay started wondering where might Sunny and Starflight be? He hasn't seen them the whole day—or well, half the day. Clay has spent almost half of the day sleeping and not doing much while waiting for Kestrel and Dune to come back.
The three dragonets stopped to an end, outside of the library entrance.
"Now, why are we at the library again?" Tsunami questioned, her blue tail swinging side to side in impatience. "Going to read some 'How-To-Fly' scroll?"
Glory glanced at Tsunami. Some of the dragonet's scales changed to red as she rolled her eyes and turned to look at the library again then entered the library.
"Let's follow! Glory always knows what to do, she is clever! Come on, Tsunami!" Clay called back as he raced towards Glory. Tsunami rolled her eyes and approached the two.
Clay then saw Starflight! He was lying down while reading a scroll between his talons, his ears twitching a little bit as he heard the steps of the other dragonets entering the library. After a few moments, Starflight looked up from the scroll and met his eyes with the rest of the group. "What brings you all here?" He asks, his grip on the scroll not loosening.
"I'm just here to borrow some scrolls." Glory answered, her claws silently going over a few scrolls.
"And what do we plan on doing with them?" Tsunami whispered in Glory's ear.
"Oh, you'll see long enough. We won't read them though, that's as much as I can tell you." Glory called back, keeping her voice as low as possible.
Clay gave that a small time to think about. What did Glory mean? What were they going to do to those scrolls exactly? Were they going to build a tower of scrolls to practice his flight? That didn't seem right. Clay glanced at Starflight and he caught what seemed like a worried expression but he didn't say anything and as soon as he noticed Clay looking at him, he looked down at his scroll again. He wondered why, but that didn't linger in his mind for long, he already thought of many things that day.
"Ah, these ones will do." Glory called, her scales shifting to many different colors, mainly yellow and some other shades of said color. She turned to the other two and left. Once Glory was a little bit farther than the exit, she signaled them to follow. Tsunami followed first and then Clay. But the brown-colored dragonet looked once more at Starflight, meaning to say his good-bye's, but he caught that Starflight flinched in their direction and looked down at his scroll, so Clay didn't say anything.
Uh, weird...
Clay followed Glory. Tsunami did too, she was right besides Clay. This last one felt tired, he just wanted to fly! He wouldn't say that to anyone, though. He would never argue with Glory nor her plans. So he just followed.
Clay thought that he saw part of someone with the corner of his eye. When he takes a better look, he notices that yes, in fact, Sunny was there! And she seemed to notice them too, so she approached the group.
"Hey Sunny!" Clay greeted, he smiled widely.
"Ah! Sunny! Just the dragonet I was looking for!" Glory exclaimed at the same time as Clay, overlapping his greeting. But Clay didn't mind that.
"A-ah, me?" Sunny asked, tilting her tiny head to the side. "What for? Did you need help with something?"
"Burn these scrolls for me, would you?" Glory asked, her scales shifting to a soft blue which to Clay's understanding, meant calmness. ((*I don't know if this is true, I don't know my RainWings' colors IM SORRYRY😭--I just took them from a google image))
Calmness? Clay felt the opposite. Burning things was a bad idea. Bad ideas usually involved Kestrel, and Kestrel usually involved yelling. But Glory never had a bad idea, did she?
"Burn them? W-why? What's wrong with them?" Sunny whispered. She glanced at the library and then at the group.
"It's for Clay's flight practice. We need to make a distraction. Burn them, Sunny. It's the only way to get Webs out of the guardian cave." Tsunami explained, spreading her wings out, careful to not hit Clay nor Glory.
"But... the library. And my fire isn't—I can't just destroy the scrolls! What if Starflight needs these?"
Good point, Clay thought. Starflight always needed scrolls. Clay could easily think Starflight would be miserable with his scrolls.
"Pretty pleasee!!" Glory chirped. "Yeah, come on, Sunny, it'll be quick," Tsunami added.
"Fine. But if Kestrel finds out, I'm pointing at you two." Sunny turned to look up at Glory and Tsunami. Glory dropped a stack of heavy scrolls onto the cave floor with a soft thud. They all backed away. "Let me just...—" The tiny golden-scaled dragonet positioned herself. Smoke started to rise from her snout. At last, she breathed fire, it took a while, but it was done. Sunny was exhausted, Glory looked at the smoke rise, Tsunami stepped back covering her snout with her wing to prevent her from breathing the smoke, and Clay just stood there.
How is this supposed to help me fly? Clay wondered to himself.
"Follow me," Glory called to Clay, who quickly followed.
...
"Why did I have to do that...?" Sunny asked.
"No idea." Tsunami answered.
...
Clay and Glory walked to the guardians' cave. The smoke had spread as far as these two had gone, Webs was inside but too distracted to even notice the smoke spreading across the whole mountain caves. Glory walked inside, and beckoned Clay to follow. Glory spread her wings covering Clay's body completely.
"Stay there, and don't move." Glory whispered to Clay, but Webs had noticed her.
"Glory? What are you—IS THAT SMOKE?" Webs sounded alarmed, he quickly approached the entrance and saw the amount of smoke rising and fire.
"Oh yeah, I wanted to let you know. So you could put it off or something."
Saying no more, Webs quickly left the cave. Now it was just Glory and Clay.
"Go ahead, flap your wings." Glory called, Sitting down and letting Clay have his space.
Finally, Clay would be able to fly. What he most desired to do today. He relaxed his wings, dropping them. He waited for the exact moment, sometime, anytime. Something told him to wait, to feel this moment, to relax every part of him. His first time flying, was just going to be. Clay flapped his wings as hard as he could, it was way harder than it seemed, or maybe it was just because that was his first time, he had no prior experience of flying more than to just watch his guardians flying in and out, in and out. Clay lifted, not much before touching the ground again. But he did it. He flew.
"Liked it?" Glory asked.
"Very much." Clay answered back, joy filling his face and body.
"Alright, my turn!"