Sandy and Stardust: A Sunnyweed Story (NO CRYING UNTIL THE ENDING!)

Sandy

Perspective: Sunny

The festivities after Rust and Tangerine's wedding were beautiful and enticing. Food cooked by Clay of the MudWings and the Dragonets of Destiny was placed at all the enormous wood tables as vines grew down from the giant trees just above and wrapped around the table legs. The smells of bread and freshly grilled meat and sautéed vegetables met Sunny's nostrils like tentacles from a cooked octopus (which Tsunami was busy helping herself to; perhaps a bit to vigorously.) The bride and groom were busy dancing in the air above it all, looking more in love than anyone Sunny had ever seen. Every dragon that attended looked fit and festive enough for something this big, with scale shiner and fancy jewelry. Slow, soft, gentle, beautiful music, the kind that warmed a dragon's heart, wafted over the whole area.

Sunny closed her little green eyes and listened to the lyrics of this particular song, letting it carry her back and forth like a log in a creek.

"What is a castle without a queen?

Just as a sword far from the shield

So I will stand by you in fields of green

For what is a castle without a queen?"

Sunny opened her eyes again and looked around at her friends, her best friends--the Dragonets of Destiny.

Queen Glory of the RainWings and NightWings, who had performed Rust and Tangerine's ceremony, sat next to her loyal bodyguard and boyfriend Deathbringer. Deathy, as she called him, was busy cracking puns and annoying Glory. But Sunny could tell she didn't mind.

Poor Starflight, still blind as ever, sat next to his girlfriend at the main feasting table. Sunny knew that Starflight depended on Fatespeaker like a hatchling dragonet depended on its mother. But she also knew that Fatespeaker loved Starflight to the three moons and back, and she knew that Starflight felt the same way.

Clay was busy churning out the food like one of Rust's machines at the Barterguild, with Peril following close behind, trying not to burn anything. Clay's big brown eyes were full of strong, defensive love for his firescales girlfriend, and Peril's bright blue eyes reflected that love like a pair of little blue mirrors.

And Tsunami and Riptide, current heads of the Talons of Peace, were busy roaming the party, mingling with Rust's family and many of the students from Jade Mountain. Even among those students, love was not absent. Sunny spotted Moon and Qibli sitting in one of the larger trees, kissing each other passionately. Turtle and Kinkajou were busy talking with two other SeaWings, the ones, Sunny had been told, were Turtle's cousins Harpoon and Siren.

Everywhere, there was love. Everywhere dragons had significant others and spouses and dragonets. Sunny saw little dragonets flying around over her head, playing with their friends and just being... happy.

Sunny longed for love like nothing she'd ever felt before. More than anything, she longed for some handsome and wonderful male to whisk her away to a wonderful life. She longed to someday have dragonets of her own and raise them. She longed to have someone to confess her undying love to before a good-night kiss.

It was something she feared would never come.

She had grown up with two attractive male dragons in her life--Clay and Starflight--but she didn't like either of them in that way. Clay was like a sweet, snuggly, protective older brother, and Starflight was more like her twin. And the other male dragons at Jade Mountain Academy she had thought of as students rather than as boyfriend material.