Fourth Wheel ||Qinter||

Chapter One - Jade Mountain Academy

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Qibli raced through the cave tunnels. Moon followed closely behind him.

"When will we get there?" Qibli panted breathlessly.

"Almost there," Moon replied. She stared forward, not daring to make eye contact with Qibli. He might be able to look through her dark green eyes, and see what she was not telling him - she could read minds. It was awkward enough that, at that very moment, Qibli was fantasising about being in a relationship with her. At least they were good friends, so it wasn't as awkward.

"It's that one," Moon said. "First one on the right."

"Right," Qibli said. "I wonder who else is in our winglet this year?"

Inside the cave sat Turtle, a small, awkward SeaWing, fiddling with a plain gold armband which was studded with glittering black jewels. Moon instinctively reached out with her mind-reading powers, but pulled back as she was deafened by an eerie, staticky noise.

"Hi," She said, pretending nothing had happened. "I'm Moonwatcher, or just Moon for short." "And I'm Qibli!" QIbli piped up. "Hi! We're your roommates this year."

"Phew," Turtle said, relieved. "I thought I would be stuck with that weird IceWing for the whole year. He's Queen Glacier's nephew. Royals are always snobs, but I barely count, since Queen Coral has around thirty sons. Even so, I'm the useless one. I'm the failure. I'm Turtle, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Turtle!" Qibli chirped optimistically. "I'm also a failure."

Moon furrowed her brow. "A- an... IceWing? An IceWing... my roommate?"

"Yeah. Winter. an IceWing." Turtle said. "Anything wrong?"

"No, not really..." Moon said. "It's just that I'm a NIghtWing, and Winter is IceWing royalty, and..." Moon's voice trailed off. She didn't have to say anything more.

Suddenly, a dragon came barreling into the cave. He was an IceWing. An extremely pale, extremely shiny, extremely spiky IceWing.

He was beautiful.

Turtle's dark green and turquoise scales were nothing more than a black silhouette against Winter's blinding brightness. He stalked silently into the room, his talons making no noise as they touched the cave floor. He moved softly, silently and somewhat elegantly, like an assassin. For a moment, he did nothing but stare them all down with his striking blue eyes, assessing each and every one of them carefully, before walking away. Was it only Qibli's imagination, or had his eyes lingered for a few seconds longer on him than than on Moon and Turtle?

The next few days were normal days, average days, with all sorts of back to school preparations, like getting to know the other dragonets at Jade Mountain Academy, getting to know the founders, aka the Dragonets of Destiny: Clay, limping from a huge scar on one of his legs, strange, small, golden Sunny, with green eyes, no tail barb, and she was happy all the time, Starflight, the blind librarian, Tsunami, a loyal, protective, fierce yet caring SeaWing (Moon described her as fiercely caring, and fiercely kind), and finally, Glory, a sarcastic, beautiful RainWing, who replaced the SkyWing in the prophecy. Glory, Queen of the RainWings and the NightWings, was rather similar to Tsunami in many ways. She had come from the Rainforest Kingdom for the first week of school, and would be back in the Rainforest Kingdom by the next week. Of course, she trusted Deathbringer, but she had to be in her Queendom most of the year.

After all, she was the Queen.

In the days that followed, the three dragonets got to know each other. Winter remained distant, wary, and pessimistic, but Qibli, Moon and Turtle discovered that they had a lot in common, and they realised that they all had secrets that they wanted to keep secret forever. Moon's secret was her mind-reading. Turtle's secret was that he was an animus. As for Qibli's secret...

Qibli had a huge crush on Winter.