When Glaciers Melt

Part 1: The Past

Blaze stood at the opened doors of her fortress, her teeth gritted against the cold. The arctic wind cracked and roared, tossing wave after wave of diamond cut ice around like an ocean surge. Blaze could barely see two feet ahead of her; it was as if the air itself had been made dense with grey, shimmering flecks.

Icy snow scratched the soft scales along Blaze's eyes; she wrapped her cloak tightly around her wings and chest. She had been here for years now, but the ferocity of the Ice Kingdom never failed to shake her. Just the other day it had been endless clear skies; blue like the waters of the deepest oasis. The snow had been particularly sparkly that day. Blaze had given herself a head-ache staring at it. Now, though, Blaze feared the sky was collapsing inward like the crown of an egg being hammered in.

It would have been so much better if Glacier were there with her. The Queen of the IceWings was always infuriatingly unimpressed when it came to whether calamities, which somehow made Blaze feel better about it all. The IceWing would toss her head back, the gesture like a mountain shrugging off a gale, and say, 'Honestly Blaze, it's only 40 inches of snow. That's nothing to fret over.' or 'It sounds worse than it is. If you'd just come flying with me I could teach you how an IceWing handles themselves. There's no reason to be afraid.'

To that offer, Blaze had shaken off Glacier's comforting wings and said, "The day I go flying in a blizzard will be the day the Kingdom of Sand freezes over."

Blaze now regretted never taking Glacier up on the offer. If she had, she wouldn't be stranded here in this dismally lit and hollow fortress. Sure, she had her loyal SandWings around her, but more often than not she felt like her presence was a weight on their wings. Smiles that were either too tight or too wide often greeted her when she entered a room; warm chatter dripped away before her talons.

Glacier had said the silence meant they respected Blaze, but when Blaze turned those moments around in her head, as one would inspect the cut of a gem, she didn't see respect. She saw disappointment.

"Why in all the claws of the Great Ice Dragon are you leaving the door open? Aren't you cold?" A high-pitched and clipped voice cracked Blaze's nerves like a whip. She nearly jumped out into the snowbank that was accumulating at the door.

Blaze stumbled backwards, trying frantically to shake off the snow that had slipped past the opening of her cloak. She already recognized the voice, and was therefore unsurprised to find Crystal, Glacier's daughter, standing behind her. Her shimmering, evenly white face contorted in a frown that was equal parts petulant and dour.

"Crystal!" Blaze gasped and placed a talon over her thundering heart, "By all the moons you nearly scared my horns off!" Crystal didn't apologize or bow her head in acknowledgement. She didn't even blink. Blaze held back a sigh.

It wasn't that Blaze disliked dragonets, in fact most of the time she liked them. Crystal, however, was not like most dragonets - granted Blaze didn't really know what most dragonets were like. She could barely even remember being that young, and she certainly couldn't remember the last time she had needed to interact with a dragonet as young as Crystal.

Nonetheless, Blaze softened her tone in what she hoped was soothing and kind. "Crystal, remember how I said you aren't supposed to sneak up on dragons like that? It's creepy."

This had not been the first time today that Crystal had pulled this stunt. And like all the other times, the young IceWing merely titled her head, which did NOT improve the creepy factor. Blaze swallowed another sigh and looked into the dragonet's face in hopes of seeing some sort of understanding. Or any emotion at all, really.

Where Glacier's face had been shaped and cut to diamond perfection by the screeching storms that ploughed through her kingdom, Crystal's was soft and unchipped. Her eyes were wide and round, like the wells they used to dig in the Kingdom of Sand when the droughts made dragons desperate. Her gaze was devouring, too. Blaze usually loved being watched, especially when she wore her glittering tiara and bracelets that chimed together like music. But right now she felt like hiding. She felt swallowed by those eyes.