One True Queen: A Wings of Fire fanfiction

19.

Content warning: depictions of panic attacks and anxiety

Gaze

The gates of Ocotillo are a lot fancier than I thought they'd be, polished steel reaching up towards a cloudless blue sky. For a moment, I worry we made a wrong turn and are about to walk into Queen Scorpion's stronghold—before I remember, you can see it at the very edge of the horizon, and notice the immaculately engraved sign: Welcome to Ocotillo!

And below it, the tag line: Your Home Away from Home.

"That's the worst slogan I've ever seen," Shadowhunter snorts. "Why is this place so terrible? Gaze?"

A tall, elegant fence seems to stretch out around the whole town, guarded by a few dragons here and there. I don't think they're official SandWing military, but it's still unnerving.

"Gaaaaze?" Shadowhunter waves her talon in front of my face. "Hello?"

I flinch. "Uh. Right. I don't know, Shadowhunter."

One of the guards shouts to us, "HEY! YOU! ARE YOU COMING IN OR WHAT?"

We all exchange a panicked glance.

I take a deep breath, forcing a smile. "I... guess that's our cue."

I run over to the gates, rehearsing my speech in my mind one last time.

"Hi. We, um... humbly request passage into your beautiful town." I bow, shooting a look at my companions to follow suit. "I bring you gold in tribute--um, hang on, let me just grab it—" I root through my bag, tossing out tents and blankets and stationery sets onto the sand. Oh, come on Gaze, you knew you were gonna have to do this, but you still didn't get it out ahead of time? Why are you like this? Finally, I find the pouch of gold Clearsight gave me, shake out half into my palm, and toss the rest to him. "There. Gold."

Saguaro wasn't this uptight. Why couldn't we just have stopped at a nice, respectable town?

But Way managed to lose his water canteen, and honestly, now we're so close to finally meeting Epiphany... part of me just wants to delay for as long as possible. And another part of me just wants to ditch these dragons right now and bolt towards the castle.

He wrinkles up his snout, clearly displeased--but reluctantly opens up the gates. "Welcome to Ocotillo. We hope you enjoy your stay."

***

We follow a pristine cobblestone pathway, framed with heaps of yucca in full bloom, swathes of flamboyant, red ocotillo flowers--clearly meant as a nod to the town's name, well-maintained, bush-sized cacti, and elegant palm trees casting the whole thing in a much-needed shade.

Precocious yawns. "When do we stop?" He's not happy about being up this late in the day. "Gaze?"

I shrug. "We need to pick up food first--and water. It won't take that long, though, I promise."

He sighs wearily, stretching out his wings. "All right."

"This is beautiful," Permafrost murmurs, leaning in to smell one of the flowers. Shadowhunter smiles a little, then stares bashfully down at the ground, as though hoping no one will see her. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"Mom would love this," Shadowhunter agrees, examining one of the succulents they'd using as a groundcover. "Maybe I can try and show her with the mirror before we go. She's been trying to get me into gardening since I was old enough to walk, but I'm just really bad at it. Like, once, she was trying to show me how to plant seeds, so I dumped an entire packet on the dirt and told her I didn't have the time for this. I think I was, like, four months old."