One True Queen: A Wings of Fire fanfiction

50.

Gaze

We fall into a new routine as we travel through the desert. Sometimes, I forget that it hasn't always been like this, the quicksand days starting to feel like an eternity. Maybe it's just wishful thinking.

As we get closer and closer to the Night Kingdom, the landscape starts to change—small trees and shrubs cropping up around the large oases, the sand replaced by dust, caking onto my scales and getting in my lungs.

After sending Way and Precocious to bed, Epiphany and I end up climbing some kind of weird desert tree, leaning over the oasis. She's good company, and I always get a bit spooked being out here on my own. Ever since I've given up trying to convince her that she should be queen, I've found out that we have a lot in common. She's tough—in a weird, shy way—and surprisingly funny, and... not as selfish as thought.

I help heave her up to a branch wide enough that both of us can sit on it. I haven't climbed a tree since I was a little dragonet.

The sun has just started to rise, but most of the sky is still dark, and a cool wind blows through our wings. It feels so much higher up than it looked from below.

"Okay, can I tell you a secret?" I ask, a smile tugging at my snout.

Epiphany sighs. "I know you had the last roasted lizard. It's all right. I didn't really need it."

I laugh, shoving her. "No! I mean, okay, fine, I did and I'm not sorry, they were delicious. But I was going to say that I know, like, three constellations," I say sheepishly. "Even though I took two years' worth of astronomy. But I was always really tired, 'cause it was the last class of the night. I fell asleep a couple of times. And retained approximately none of it."

Epiphany laughs. "You wanna know my secret?"

"What?" I ask, already sort of guessing.

"I remember, like, five," she admits. "They're not even the ones about how my family rose to power, a bajillion years ago. Or whatever the story is." She sighs.

"Oh, really? I remember those ones." I hesitate, then point up at the sky. "There's Queen Abyss, right above us—she was the first queen of the NightWings, supposedly, from thousands and thousands of years ago."

"That does not look like a dragon," Epiphany observes. "That looks like a box."

"Oh, shush," I say, swatting her. "Let me finish. So, when we split off from the RainWings, she led the battle, and supposedly lead our tribe to our new home.

"But Queen Paradise was cunning—she didn't want us to leave. But she would never have said it aloud, and risk another battle against such a formidable tribe, killing more of her soldiers. So when Abyss declared her tribe independent, Queen Paradise accepted the deal, and agreed to let her go. But her forest had other plans. It created a trail for the NightWings to walk for quite some ways, before splitting off into two paths, one of which would lead to the death, and the other salvation. So Queen Abyss looked to the three moons, who favoured the NightWings above all other tribes, and asked for foresight, to help her lead the way.

"They took the path to the right, and travelled for many more hours before they found the second challenge. It was Queen Paradise herself in disguise as a strange old dragon, who would only let them pass if Abyss could answer her riddle. Abyss, knowing she would never beat such a cunning foe without help, looked to the moons again—and was granted the power of mind-reading, and plucked the answer from Paradise's mind in an instant. Furious, Queen Paradise banished them from the forest, leaving the new tribe without any territory of their own. But the smallest moon still had yet to grant her a wish—and when she looked up to it, it made her a crown, and raised our kingdom out from the sea."